I licked my finger and looked at the whiteness of Snow Flower’s skin. When my wet finger touched her stomach just above her belly button, I felt her intake of breath. Her breasts rose, her stomach hollowed, and goose bumps shimmered across her flesh.
“I,” she said. This was correct. I wrote the next character below her belly button. “Think,” she said. Then I followed exactly what she had done and wrote on the flesh adjacent to her right hip bone. “Light.” Now her left hip bone. “Snow.” She knew the poem, so there was no mystery to the words, just the sensations of writing and reading them. I had followed every place that she had written on my body. Now I had to find a new spot. I chose that soft place where the two sides of her ribs came together above her stomach. I knew from my own body that this area was sensitive to touch, to fear, to love. Snow Flower shivered beneath my fingertip as I wrote. “Early.”
Just two more words to finish the line. I knew what I wanted to do, but I hesitated. I let my fingertip float along the tip of my tongue. Then, emboldened by the heat, the moonlight, and the way her skin felt against my own, I let my wet finger write on one of her breasts. Her lips parted and her breath came out in a tiny moan. She did not speak the character and I did not demand one. But for my last character in the line, I lay on my side next to Snow Flower so I could see up close the way her skin would respond. I licked my finger, wrote the character, and watched her nipple tighten and pucker. We stayed completely still for a moment. Then, with her eyes still shut, Snow Flower whispered the complete phrase: “I think it is the light snow of an early winter morning.”
She rolled on her side to face me. She put her hand tenderly on my cheek as she did every night since we had begun sleeping together all those years ago. Her face glowed in the moonlight. Then she let her hand move down along my neck over my breast down to my hip. “We have two more lines.”
She sat up and I rolled onto my back. I thought I was hot these past nights, but now, naked, in the moonlight, I felt as though a fire burned inside me far hotter than anything the gods could inflict on us through the mere cycles of the seasons.
I made myself concentrate when I realized where she was planning on writing the first character. She had moved to the end of the bed and had lifted my feet onto her lap. Just on the inside of my left ankle directly above the edge of my red sleeping slipper she began to write. When she was done, she turned her attention to my right ankle. From there, she alternated from limb to limb, always staying just above the bindings. My feet—those places of so much pain and sorrow, so much pride and beauty—tingled with pleasure. We had been old sames for eight years, yet we had never been this close. The line when she was done: “Looking up, I enjoy the full moon in the night sky.”
I was eager for her to experience what I had felt. I held her golden lilies in my hands, then set them to rest on my thighs. I chose the spot that had been most exquisite for me: the shallow between the ankle bone and the tendon that rose up the back of the leg. I wrote the character, which can mean bending over, kowtowing, or prostrating oneself. On her other ankle I traced the word I.
I set her feet down and wrote a character on her calf. After this, I moved to a spot on the inside of her left thigh just above her knee. My last two characters were high up on her thighs. I leaned down to concentrate on writing the most perfect characters possible. I blew on my strokes, knowing the sensation it would cause, and watched as the hair between her legs swayed in response.
Afterward we recited the entire poem together.
“The bed is lit by moonlight.
I think it is the light snow of an early winter morning.
Looking up, I enjoy the full moon in the night sky.
Bending over, I miss my hometown.”
We all know that poem is about a scholar who is traveling and missing his home, but on that night and forever after I believed it was about us. Snow Flower was my home, and I was hers.
Beautiful Moon
BEAUTIFUL MOON RETURNED THE NEXT DAY, AND WE GOT BACK to work. Months ago, each of our future in-laws had Delivered the Dates for our weddings, along with the first installments of our official bride-prices—more pork and candy, as well as empty wooden boxes to fill with all the things we would make for our dowries. Finally, and, most important, they sent cloth.
I have told you that Mama and Aunt made cloth for our family, and by now Beautiful Moon and I were adept at weaving ourselves. But the word homegrown comes to mind when I think of what we created. The cotton was cultivated by Baba and Uncle, the harvest cleaned by the women in our household, the beeswax we used to create designs and the dyes for turning the fabric blue were used sparingly because we were so frugal.
Other than what we made ourselves, I could only compare my bridal cloth to that used in Snow Flower’s tunics, trousers, and headdresses, which had been constructed from beautiful fabrics and sophisticated patterns into a stylish wardrobe. One of my favorite outfits she wore in those days was made from indigo cloth. The intricate design of the indigo and the cut of the jacket were better than anything the married women in Puwei owned or made. Still, Snow Flower wore it with ease until it started to fade and fray. What I’m trying to say is that the cloth and its cut inspired me. I wanted to make clothes for myself that would be suitable for everyday wear in Tongkou.
But the cotton my in-laws sent as part of my bride-price changed all my perceptions. It was soft, without seeds, with complex designs, and dyed in the rich deep indigo so prized by the Yao people. With that gift I realized I still had much to learn and accomplish, but even this cotton was nothing compared to the silk. What arrived for me was not only of fine quality but perfect in color. Red for marriage, but also for anniversaries, New Year’s celebrations, and other festivities. Purple and green, both appropriate for a young wife. A bluish gray the color of the sky before a storm and a bluish green the color of a village pond in summer for my years as a matron and later a widow. Black and dark blue for the men in my new home. Some of the silks were plain, while others had been woven to include double-happiness, peony, or cloud patterns.
The rolls of silk and cotton my in-laws sent were not given to me to do with as I pleased. They were to be used in preparing my dowry, just as Beautiful Moon and Snow Flower had to use their gifts to build their dowries. We had to make enough quilts, pillowcases, shoes, and clothes to last a lifetime, since Yao nationality women believe they should never take anything from their in-laws. Quilts! Let me tell you about those. They are boring and hot to make. However, since everyone believes that the more quilts you bring with you to your in-laws’ house, the more children you will have, we made as many as possible.
What we loved to make were shoes. We made them for our husbands, our mothers-in-law, our fathers-in-law, and anyone else who lived in our new home, including brothers, sisters, sisters-in-law, and all children. (I was lucky; my husband was the eldest son. He had three younger brothers only. Men’s shoes were not ornate, so I could do them quickly. Beautiful Moon had a greater burden. Her new home had one son, plus his parents, five sisters, an aunt, an uncle, and their three children.) We girls also made sixteen pairs for ourselves, four pairs for each of the four seasons. These more than the other things we made would be highly scrutinized, but we were happy with that knowledge because we gave each and every pair the greatest care possible, from creating the soles to the final embroidery stitch. Shoemaking allowed us to display our technical as well as our artistic skills, but it also sent a joyful and optimistic message. In our dialect, the word for shoe sounds the same as the word for child. Just as with the quilts, the more shoes we made, the more children we would have. The difference is that shoemaking requires delicacy, while quiltmaking is a heavy chore. Because three girls worked side by side, we competed in the friendliest way to compose the most beautiful designs on the outside of each pair of shoes, while giving great strength and support to the inside.