Mama said good night to the two of us. Then she leaned down, kissed me, and whispered in my ear, “Madame Wang told us what we needed to do. Be happy, little one, be happy.”
So there we were, the two of us side by side with a light cotton quilt over us. We were such little girls, but as tired as we were we couldn’t stop whispering. Snow Flower asked about my family. I asked about hers. I told her how Third Sister had died. She told me that her third sister had died from a coughing disease. She asked about our village and I told her that Puwei meant Common Beauty Village in our local dialect. She explained that Tongkou meant Wood Mouth Village, and that when I visited her I would see why this was so.
Moonlight came in through the lattice window, illuminating Snow Flower’s face. Elder Sister and Beautiful Moon fell asleep, but still Snow Flower and I talked. As women, we are told never to discuss our bound feet, that it is improper and unladylike, and that such conversation only inflames the passions of men. But we were girls and still in the process of our footbinding. These things were not memories, like they are for me now, but pain and suffering we were living at that time. Snow Flower talked about how she had hidden from her mother and begged her father to have mercy on her. Her father had almost given in, which would have consigned Snow Flower to the life of an old maid in her parents’ home or a servant in someone else’s.
“But when my father started smoking his pipe,” Snow Flower explained, “he forgot his promise to me. With his mind far away, my mother and aunt took me upstairs and tied me to a chair. This is why I, like you, am a year late in my footbinding.” This didn’t mean—once her fate had been sealed—that she embraced it. No, she struggled against everything in her early months, even tearing off her bindings completely one time. “My mother bound my feet—and me to the chair—even tighter the next time.”
“You can’t fight your fate,” I said. “It is predestined.”
“My mother says the same thing,” Snow Flower responded. “She untied me only to walk to break my bones and to let me use the chamber pot. All the time, I looked out our lattice window. I watched the birds fly by. I followed the clouds on their travels. I studied the moon as it grew larger, then shrank. So much happened outside my window that I almost forgot what was happening inside that room.”
How these sentiments scared me! Snow Flower had the true independent streak of the horse sign, only her horse had wings that carried her far above the earth, while mine had a plodding nature. But a feeling in the pit of my stomach—of something naughty, of pushing against the boundaries of our preordained lives—gave me an internal thrill that in time would become a deep craving.
Snow Flower snuggled close to me so that we were face-to-face. She put her hand on my cheek and said, “I am happy we are old sames.” Then she closed her eyes and fell asleep.
Lying next to her, looking at her face in the moonlight, feeling the delicate weight of her small hand on my cheek, listening to her breathing deepen, I wondered how could I make her love me the way I longed to be loved.
Love
WE WOMEN ARE EXPECTED TO LOVE OUR CHILDREN AS SOON as they leave our bodies, but who among us has not felt disappointment at the sight of a daughter or felt the dark gloom that settles upon the mind even when holding a precious son, if he does nothing but cry and makes your mother-in-law look at you as though your milk were sour? We may love our daughters with all our hearts, but we must train them through pain. We love our sons most of all, but we can never be a part of their world, the outer realm of men. We are expected to love our husbands from the day of Contracting a Kin, though we will not see their faces for another six years. We are told to love our in-laws, but we enter those families as strangers, as the lowest person in the household, just one step on the ladder above a servant. We are ordered to love and honor our husbands’ ancestors, so we perform the proper duties, even if our hearts quietly call out gratitude to our natal ancestors. We love our parents because they take care of us, but we are considered worthless branches on the family tree. We drain the family resources. We are raised by one family for another. As happy as we are in our natal families, we all know that parting is inevitable. So we love our families, but we understand that this love will end in the sadness of departure. All these types of love come out of duty, respect, and gratitude. Most of them, as the women in my county know, are sources of sadness, rupture, and brutality.
But the love between a pair of old sames is something completely different. As Madame Wang said, a laotong relationship is made by choice. While it’s true that Snow Flower and I didn’t mean all the words we’d written to each other in our initial contact through the fan, when we first looked in each other’s eyes in the palanquin I felt something special pass between us—like a spark to start a fire or a seed to grow rice. But a single spark is not enough to warm a room nor is a single seed enough to grow a fruitful crop. Deep love—true-heart love—must grow. Back then I didn’t yet understand the burning kind of love, so instead I thought about the rice paddies I used to see on my daily walks down to the river with my brother when I still had all my milk teeth. Maybe I could make our love grow like a farmer made his crop to grow—through hard work, unwavering will, and the blessings of nature. How funny that I can remember that even now! Waaa! I knew so little about life, but I knew enough to think like a farmer.
So, as a girl, I prepared my earth—getting a piece of paper from Baba or asking Elder Sister for a tiny scrap of her dowry cloth—on which to plant. My seeds were the nu shu characters I composed. Madame Wang became my irrigation ditch. When she stopped by to see how my feet were progressing, I gave her my missive—in the form of a letter, a piece of weaving, or an embroidered handkerchief—and she delivered it to Snow Flower.
Nothing can grow without the sun—the one thing completely outside the farmer’s control. I came to believe that Snow Flower filled that role. For me, sunshine came in the form of her answers to my nu shu letters. When I received something from Snow Flower, all of us gathered to decipher the meaning, for she already used words and images that challenged Aunt’s knowledge.
I wrote little-girl things: I am fine. How are you? She might respond: Two birds balance on the top branches of a tree. Together they fly into the sky. I might write: Today Mama taught me how to make sticky rice wrapped in taro leaf. Snow Flower might write back: Today I looked out my lattice window. I thought of the phoenix rising to find a companion, and then I thought of you. I might write: A lucky date has been chosen for Elder Sister’s wedding. She might write back: Your sister is now in the second stage of her many marriage traditions. Happily, she will be with you for a few more years. I might write: I want to learn everything. You are smart. Can I be your student? She might write back: I am learning from you too. This is what makes us a pair of mandarin ducks nesting together. I might write: My meanings are not deep and my writing crude, but I wish you were here and we could whisper together at night. Her response: Two nightingales sing in the darkness.
Her words both frightened and exhilarated me. She was clever. She had much more learning than I did. But this was not the scary part. In every message she spoke of birds, of flight, of the world away. Even back then, she flew against what was presented to her. I wanted to cling to her wings and soar, no matter how intimidated I was.