Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (21 page)

Snow Flower put her hands on my stomach. I did the same to hers. I had grown accustomed to the way my baby kicked and pushed against my skin from the inside, especially at night. Now I felt Snow Flower’s baby moving inside her against my hands. We were in that moment as close as two women could be.

“I am happy we are together,” she said, then let a finger trace a spot where my baby was reaching out an elbow or a knee to her.

“I’m happy too.”

“I feel your son. He’s strong. Just like his mother.”

Her words made me feel proud and full of life. Her finger stopped, and once again she held my belly in her warm hands.

“I’ll love him as much as I love you,” she said. Then, as she had since the time she was a little girl, she trailed one hand up to my cheek and let it rest there until we both fell asleep.

I would turn twenty in a couple of weeks, my baby would come soon, and my real life was about to begin.

Sons

Lily,

I write to you as a mother.

My baby was born yesterday.

A boy with black hair.

He is long and thin.

My childbearing pollution days are not over.

For one hundred days my husband and I will sleep apart.

I think of you in your upstairs room.

I await word of your baby.

Let it be born alive.

I pray for the Goddess to protect you from any problems.

I long to see you and know you are well.

Please come to the one-month celebration.

You will see what I wrote about my son on our fan.

Snow Flower

I WAS HAPPY THAT SNOW FLOWER’S SON WAS BORN HEALTHY
and hoped he would remain so, because life in our county is very fragile. We women hope to have five children who reach adulthood. For that to happen, we must get pregnant every one or two years. Many of those babies die through miscarriages, at childbirth, or from illnesses. Girls—so susceptible to weakness from poor food and neglect—never outgrow their vulnerability. We either die young—from footbinding as my sister died, in giving birth, or from too much work with too little nourishment—or we outlive those we love. Baby boys, so precious, can die just as easily, their bodies too young to have taken root, their souls too tempting for spirits from the afterworld. Then, as men, they are at risk from infection from cuts, food poisoning, problems in the fields or on roads, or hearts that can’t stand the stress of watching over an entire household. This is why there are so many widows. But no matter what, the first five years of life are insubstantial for boys and girls.

I worried not only for Snow Flower’s son but for the baby I carried as well. It was hard to be afraid and have no one to encourage or comfort me. When I was still in my natal home, my mother had been too busy enforcing oppressive traditions and customs to offer me any practical advice, while my aunt, who had lost several unborn children, tried to avoid me completely so that her bad luck would not touch me. Now that I was in my husband’s home, I had no one. My in-laws and my husband had concern for the baby’s well-being, of course, but none of them seemed troubled that I might die delivering their heir.

Snow Flower’s letter felt like a good omen. If childbirth had gone easily for her, surely my baby and I would survive it too. It gave me strength to know that even though we were in new lives, our love for each other had not diminished. If anything, it was stronger as we embarked on our rice-and-salt days. Through our letters we would share our ordeals and triumphs, but as with everything else we needed to follow certain rules. As married women who had fallen into our husbands’ homes, we had to abandon our girlish ways. We wrote stock letters, with accepted formats and formalized words. In part, this was because we were foreigners in our husbands’ homes, busy learning the ways of new families. In part, it was because we did not know who might read our letters.

Our words had to be circumspect. We could not write anything too negative about our circumstances. This was tricky, since the very form of a married woman’s letter needed to include the usual complaints—that we were pathetic, powerless, worked to the bone, homesick, and sad. We were supposed to speak directly about our feelings without appearing ungrateful, no-account, or unfilial. Any daughter-in-law who lets the real truth of her life become public brings shame to both her natal and husband’s families, which, as you know, is why I have waited until they were all dead to write my story.

At first I was lucky, because I didn’t have anything bad to report. When I became betrothed, I’d learned that my husband’s uncle was a
jinshi,
the highest level of imperial scholar. The saying I had heard as a girl—“If one person becomes an official, then all of his family’s dogs and cats go to heaven”—now became clear. Uncle Lu lived in the capital and left the care of his holdings to Master Lu, my father-in-law, who was out most days before dawn, walking the land, speaking with farmers about crops, supervising irrigation projects, and meeting with other elders in Tongkou. All accounts and responsibility for what happened on the land rested on his shoulders. Uncle Lu spent the money with no concern for how it arrived in his coffers. He had done so well that his two youngest brothers lived in their own nearby houses—though not as fine as this one. They often visited with their families for dinner, while their wives called almost daily to our upstairs women’s chamber. In other words, everyone in Uncle Lu’s family—the dogs and cats, all the way down to the five big-footed servant girls who shared a room off the kitchen—benefited from his position.

Uncle Lu was the ultimate master, but I secured my place by being the first daughter-in-law and then by giving my husband his first son. As soon as my baby was born and the midwife put him in my arms, I was so blissful that I forgot the pain of childbirth and so relieved that I didn’t worry about all the bad things that could still happen to him. Everyone in the household was happy and their gratitude came to me in many forms. My mother-in-law made me special soup with liquor, ginger, and peanuts to help my milk come in and my womb shrink. My father-in-law sent through his concubines blue brocaded silk so that I might make his grandson a jacket. My husband sat and talked to me.

For these reasons I have told the young women who have married into the Lu family, and the others I eventually reached through my teaching of
nu shu,
that they should hurry to have a baby boy. Sons are the foundation of a woman’s self. They give a woman her identity, as well as dignity, protection, and economic value. They create the link between her husband and his ancestors. This is the one accomplishment a man cannot achieve without the aid of his wife. Only she can guarantee the perpetuation of the family line, which, in turn, is the ultimate duty of every son. This is the supreme way he completes his filial duty, while sons are a woman’s crowning glory. I had done all this and I was ecstatic.

Snow Flower,

My son is here beside me.

My childbearing pollution days are not over.

My husband visits in the morning.

His face is happy.

My son has eyes that stare at me in question.

I can’t wait to see you at the one-month party.

Please use your best words to put my son on our fan.

Tell me of your new family.

I don’t see my husband very often. Do you?

I look out the lattice window to yours.

You are always singing in my heart.

I think of you every day.

Lily

Why do they call these rice-and-salt days? Because they are composed of common chores: embroidery, weaving, sewing, mending, making shoes, cooking meals, washing the dishes, cleaning the house, washing the clothes, keeping the brazier going, and being ready at night to do bed business with a man you still do not know well. They are also days filled with the anxiety and drudgery of being a young mother with your first baby. Why does it cry? Is it hungry? Is it getting enough milk? Will it ever sleep? Does it sleep too much? And what of fevers, rashes, bug bites, too much heat, too much cold, colic, not to mention all the illnesses that sweep through the county taking babies each year, despite the best efforts of herbal doctors, offerings on family altars, and the tears of mothers? Quite apart from the baby who suckles at your breast, you have to worry on a deeper level about the true responsibility of womanhood: to have more sons and ensure the next generation and generations after that. But during the first few weeks of my son’s life I had another concern, which had nothing to do with my daughter-in-law, wife, or mother duties.

When I asked my mother-in-law to invite Snow Flower to my son’s one-month party, she said no. This slight is something people in our county consider a terrible insult. I was crushed and confused that she would do this but powerless to change her mind. The day turned out to be one of the most important and festive occasions of my life, and I experienced it without Snow Flower at my side. The Lu family visited the ancestral temple to place my son’s name on the wall with all their other family members. Red eggs—a symbol of life dyed red for celebration—were given to the guests and relatives. A grand banquet was served with birds-nest soup, salted birds that had been pickled for six months, and wine-fed duck stewed with ginger, garlic, and fresh red and green hot peppers. Through it all I missed Snow Flower horribly and later wrote to her as many details as I could recall, not thinking that they might remind her of the dreadful oversight. Apparently she accepted the lapse, because she sent a gift of an embroidered baby jacket and a hat decorated with small charms.

When my mother-in-law saw these, she said, “A mother must always be careful whom she chooses to let into her life. Your son’s mother cannot associate with a butcher’s wife. Filial women raise filial sons, and we expect you to obey our wishes.”

With her words I realized that my in-laws not only did not want Snow Flower to come to the party, they didn’t want me to see her at all. I was horrified, terrified, and, since I’d just had the baby, crying all the time. I didn’t know what to do. I would have to fight my in-laws on this matter, not realizing how dangerous it would be.

In the meantime, Snow Flower and I secretly wrote to each other nearly every day. I had thought I knew all about
nu shu
and that men should never touch or see it, but now that I lived in the Lu household, where all the men knew men’s writing, I saw that our secret women’s writing wasn’t much of a secret. Then it dawned on me that men throughout the county had to know about
nu shu.
How could they not? They wore it on their embroidered shoes. They saw us weaving our messages into cloth. They heard us singing our songs and showing off our third-day wedding books. Men just considered our writing beneath them.

It is said that men have hearts of iron, while women are made of water. This comes through in men’s writing and women’s writing. Men’s writing has more than 50,000 characters, each uniquely different, each with deep meanings and nuances. Our women’s writing has perhaps 600 characters, which we use phonetically, like babies, to create about 10,000 words. Men’s writing takes a lifetime to learn and understand. Women’s writing is something we pick up as girls, and we rely on context to coax meaning. Men write about the outer realm of literature, accounts, and crop yields; women write about the inner realm of children, daily chores, and emotions. The men in the Lu household were proud of their wives’ fluency in
nu shu
and dexterity in embroidery, though these things had as much importance to survival as a pig’s fart.

Since the men deemed our writing insignificant, they paid no attention to the letters I wrote or received. My mother-in-law was another story. I had to skirt the edges of her awareness. For now she didn’t demand to know to whom I was writing, and over the next several weeks Snow Flower and I perfected a delivery system. We used Yonggang to run between our villages to transport our notes, embroidered handkerchiefs, and weaving. I liked to sit at the lattice window and watch her. I thought, so many times, I could make the trip myself
.
It was not that far away and my feet were strong enough to make it, but we had rules governing such things. Even if a woman can walk a great distance, she should not be seen alone on the road. Kidnapping by low types was a danger, while reputations were under even greater threat if a woman did not have the proper escort—her husband, her sons, her matchmaker, or her bearers. I could have walked to Snow Flower, but I never would have risked it.

Lily,

You ask about my new family.

I am very lucky.

In my natal home, there was no happiness.

My mother and I had to be quiet all day, all night.

The concubines, my brothers, my sisters, and the servants were gone.

My natal home felt empty.

Here I have my mother-in-law, my father-in-law, my husband, and his younger sisters.

There are no concubines or servants in my husband’s home.

Only I fill those roles.

I do not mind the hard work.

Everything I needed to know came from you, your sister, your mother, your aunt.

But the women here are not like your family.

They do not like fun.

They do not tell stories.

My mother-in-law was born in the year of the rat.