Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (33 page)

Plum Blossom, the third and youngest of the sworn sisters, came to stand next to me. “Snow Flower is doing everything you ask of her. But I hope you see, Lady Lu, that she only does these things for you. This torment has gone on too long. If she were a dog, would you keep her suffering so?”

Pain exists at many levels: the physical agony that Snow Flower endured, the sorrow at seeing her suffer and believing that
I
couldn’t bear another moment, the torturous regret I felt for the things I had said to her eight years ago—and to what purpose? To be respected by the women of my village? To hurt Snow Flower as she had hurt me? Or had it come down to my pride—that if she wouldn’t be with me, she shouldn’t be with anyone? I’d been wrong on every count, including the last one, because during those long days I saw the solace that the other women brought to Snow Flower. They had not come to her just at this final moment as I had; they had watched over her for many years. Their generosity—in the form of little bags of rice, cut vegetables, and gathered firewood—had kept her alive. Now they came every day, neglecting their duties at home. They did not crowd in on our special relationship. Instead, they hovered like benign spirits, praying, continuing to light fires to scare away ghosts eager for Snow Flower, but always leaving us to ourselves.

I must have slept, but I don’t remember it. When I wasn’t attending to Snow Flower, I was making burial shoes for her. I chose colors I knew she would love. I threaded my needle and embroidered one shoe with a lotus blossom for
continual
and a ladder for
climbing
to suggest that Snow Flower was on a continual climb to heaven. On the other, I embroidered tiny deer and curly-winged bats, symbols that meant long life—the same ones that you see on wedding garments and hang as celebratory notices at birthdays—to let Snow Flower know that, even after her death, her blood would continue through her son and her daughter.

Snow Flower deteriorated. When I had first arrived and washed and rewrapped her feet, I saw that her curled toes had already turned dark purple. As the doctor said it would, that horrible death color crept up to her calves. I tried to make Snow Flower fight the disease. In the early days I begged her to call on her horse nature to kick away those spirits who wanted to claim her. Now, I knew, all that was left was to ease her way to the afterworld as best we could.

Yonggang saw all this when she came to see me each morning, bringing fresh eggs, clean clothes, and messages from my husband. She had been obedient and loyal to me for many years, but at this time I discovered that she had once broken faith with me in a way for which I will be forever grateful. Three days before Snow Flower died, Yonggang arrived for one of her early morning visits, knelt before me, and laid a basket at my feet.

“I saw you, Lady, many years ago,” she said, her voice cracking in fear. “I knew you couldn’t mean what you were doing.”

I didn’t know what she was talking about or why she had chosen this moment to confess. Then she pulled the cloth from the top of the basket, reached in, and took out letters, handkerchiefs, embroideries, and Snow Flower and my secret fan. These were things I’d looked for when I was burning our past, but this servant had risked being thrown into the street to save them, during those days of Cutting a Disease from My Heart, and then kept them protected all these years.

Seeing this, Spring Moon and the sworn sisters scurried around the room, digging into Snow Flower’s embroidery basket, rifling through drawers, and reaching under the bed to find secret hiding places. Soon I had before me all the letters I had ever written Snow Flower and everything I had ever made for her. In the end, everything—except what I had once destroyed—was there.

For the last days of Snow Flower’s life, I took us on a journey through our lives together. We had both memorized so much that we could recite whole passages, but she weakened quickly and spent the rest of the time just holding my hand and listening.

At night, in bed together under the lattice window, the moonlight bathing us, we were transported back to our hair-pinning days. I wrote
nu shu
characters on her palm.
The bed is lit by moonlight.
.
.
.

“What did I write?” I asked. “Tell me the characters.”

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I can’t tell. . . .”

So I recited the poem and watched as tears dripped from the edges of Snow Flower’s eyes, ran down her temples, and lost themselves in her ears.

During the last conversation we had, she asked, “Could you do one thing for me?”

“Anything,” I said, and I meant it.

“Please be an aunt to my children.”

I promised that I would.

Nothing helped or relieved Snow Flower’s suffering. In the final hours, I read her our contract, reminding her how we had gone to the Temple of Gupo and bought the red paper, sat down together, and composed the words. I read again the letters we had sent each other. I read happy parts from our fan. I hummed old melodies from our childhood. I told her how much I loved her and said I hoped she would be waiting for me in the afterworld. I talked her all the way to the edge of the sky, not wanting her to go yet yearning to release her into the clouds.

Snow Flower’s skin went from ghostly white to golden. A lifetime of worries melted from her face. The sworn sisters, Spring Moon, Madame Wang, and I listened to Snow Flower’s breathing: an inhale, an exhale, then nothing. Seconds passed; then an inhale, an exhale, then nothing. More excruciating seconds, then an inhale, an exhale, then nothing. The whole time I kept my hand on Snow Flower’s cheek, as she had done for me throughout our entire lives together, letting her know that her
laotong
was there until that final inhale, exhale, and then truly nothing.

SO MUCH OF
what happened reminded me of the didactic story that Aunt used to chant about the girl who had three brothers. I now understand that we learned those songs and stories not just to teach us how to behave but because we would be living out variations of them over and over again throughout our lives.

Snow Flower was carried down to the main room. I washed her and dressed her in her eternity clothes—all of them ragged and faded, but in patterns I remembered from our childhood. The oldest sworn sister combed Snow Flower’s hair. The middle sworn sister patted Snow Flower’s face with powder and painted her lips. The youngest sworn sister decorated her hair with flowers. Snow Flower’s body was placed in a coffin. A small band came to play mourning music as we sat next to her in the main room. The oldest sworn sister had enough money to buy incense to burn. The middle sworn sister had enough money to buy paper to burn. The youngest sworn sister had no money for incense or paper, but she did a very good job crying.

Three days later, the butcher, his son, and the husbands and sons of the sworn sisters carried the coffin to the grave site. They walked very fast, as if they were flying across the ground. I took almost all of Snow Flower’s
nu shu
writing, including much of what I had sent her, and burned it so she would have our words in the afterworld.

We returned to the butcher’s house. Spring Moon made tea, while the three sworn sisters and I went upstairs to clean away all signs of death.

It was through them that I learned of my greatest shame. They told me that Snow Flower was not their sworn sister. I didn’t believe it. They tried to convince me otherwise.

“But the fan?” I cried out in frustration. “She wrote that she was joining you.”

“No,” Lotus corrected. “She wrote that she didn’t want you to worry about her anymore, that she had friends here to console her.”

They asked if they could see the words for themselves. Snow Flower, I learned, had taught these women how to read
nu shu.
Now they crowded over the fan like a gaggle of hens, exclaiming and pointing out to one another hallmarks that Snow Flower had told them about over the years. But when they came to the last entry, they turned serious.

“Look,” Lotus said, pointing to the characters. “There is nothing here about her becoming our sworn sister.”

I snatched the fan away and took it to a corner where I could examine it myself.
I have too many troubles,
Snow Flower had written.
I cannot be what you wish. You won’t have to listen to my complaints anymore. Three sworn sisters have promised to love me as I am—

“You see, Lady Lu?” Lotus said to me from across the room. “Snow Flower wanted us to listen to her. In exchange she taught us the secret language. She was our teacher, and we respected and loved her for that. But she didn’t love us, she loved you. She wanted that love returned, unburdened by your pity and your impatience.”

That I had been shallow, stubborn, and selfish did not alter the gravity and stupidity of what I had done. I had made the greatest mistake for a woman literate in
nu shu:
I had not considered texture, context, and shades of meaning. More than that, my belief in my own self-importance had made me forget what I had learned on the first day I’d met Snow Flower: She was always more subtle and sophisticated in her words than this mere second daughter of a common farmer. For eight years, Snow Flower had suffered because of my blindness and ignorance. For the rest of my life—which has been nearly as many years as Snow Flower was when she died—I have lived with the regret.

But they were not done with me.

“She tried to please you in every way,” Lotus said, “even by doing bed business with her husband too soon after giving birth.”

“
That’s
not true!”

“Every time she lost a baby, you offered no more sympathy than her husband or mother-in-law,” Willow went on. “You always said that her only worth was from giving birth to sons, and she believed you. You told her to try again, and she obeyed.”

“This is what we are supposed to say,” I answered indignantly. “This is how we women give comfort—”

“But do you think those words were a consolation when she had lost another baby?”

“You weren’t there. You didn’t hear—”

“Try again! Try again! Try again!” Plum Blossom taunted. “Can you deny you said these things?”

I couldn’t.

“You demanded that she follow your advice on this and many other things,” Lotus picked up. “Then when she did, you criticized her—”

“You’re changing my meaning.”

“Are we?” Willow asked. “She talked about you all the time. She never said a bad word against you, but we heard the truth of what happened.”

“She loved you as a
laotong
should for everything that you were and everything you were not,” Plum Blossom concluded. “But you had too much man-thinking in you. You loved her as a man would, valuing her only for following men’s rules.”

Finished with one cycle, Lotus began another.

“Do you remember when we were in the mountains and she lost the baby?” she asked, in a tone that made me dread what was coming.

“Of course I remember.”

“She was already sick.”

“That’s not possible. The butcher—”

“Maybe her husband brought it on that day,” Willow admitted. “But the blood that burst from her body was black, stagnant, dying, and none of us saw a baby in that mess.”

Again, Plum Blossom finished. “We were here with her for many years, and this thing happened several more times. She was already quite sick when you sang your Letter of Vituperation.”

I hadn’t been able to argue successfully with them before. How could I argue this point now? The tumor had to have been growing for a very long time. Other things from back then fell into place: Snow Flower’s loss of appetite, her skin going so pale, and her loss of energy at the very moment when I was nagging her to eat better, pinch her cheeks to lure in more color, and do all of her expected chores to bring harmony to her husband’s home. And then I remembered that just two weeks back when I’d first arrived in this house, she’d apologized. I hadn’t done the same—not even when she was in her worst pain, not even when her death was imminent, not even when I was smugly telling myself I still loved her. Her heart had always been pure, but mine had been as shriveled, hard, and dry as an old walnut.

I sometimes think about those sworn sisters—all dead now, of course. They had to be careful in what they said to me, because I was Lady Lu. But they were not going to let me walk away from that house without knowing the truth.

I went home and retired to my upstairs chamber with the fan and a few saved letters. I ground ink until it was as black as the night sky. I opened the fan, dipped my brush into the ink, and made what I thought would be my final entry.

You who always knew my heart now fly above the clouds in the warmth of the sun. I hope one day we will soar together.
I would have many years to consider those lines and do what I could to change all the harm I had caused to the person I loved most in the world.