Together Snow Flower and I laid our fans on the altar with our right hands, while with our left hands we each snatched a pair of the baby shoes from the altar and hid them in our sleeves. We then left the temple quickly, hoping not to be caught. In Yongming County, all women who want a healthy child steal outright—but with the pretense of covertness—a pair of shoes from the goddess’s altar. Why? As you know, in our dialect the word for shoe sounds the same as the word for child. When our babies are born we return a pair of shoes to the altar—which explains the supply that we stole from—and make offerings as thanks.
We stepped back outside into the beautiful day and made our way to the thread kiosk. As we had for twelve years, we searched for colors that we felt would capture the ideas for the designs we had in our minds. Snow Flower held out a selection of greens for me to examine. Here were greens bright as spring, dry as withered grass, earthy as leaves at the end of summer, vibrant as moss after a rain, dull as that moment before the yellows and reds of fall begin to set in.
“Tomorrow,” Snow Flower said, “let’s stop by the river on our way home. We’ll sit and watch the clouds drift by overhead, listen to the water wash the stones, and embroider and sing together. In this way our sons will be born with elegant and refined tastes.”
I kissed her cheek. Away from Snow Flower I sometimes let my mind ramble into dark places, but now I loved her as I always had. Oh, how I had missed my laotong.
Our visit to the Temple of Gupo would not have been complete without lunch at the taro stand. Old Man Zuo grinned toothlessly when he saw us with our baby bellies. He made a special meal for us, taking care that he followed all the dietary requirements for our condition. We savored every bite. Then he brought our favorite dish, the deep-fried taro coated in caramelized sugar. Snow Flower and I were like two girls in our giddiness, rather than two married ladies about to give birth.
That night in the inn after we had slipped into our nightclothes, Snow Flower and I lay in bed facing each other. This would be our last night of togetherness before we became mothers. We had learned so many lessons about what we should or shouldn’t do and how these things would affect our unborn children. If my son could respond to hearing profane language or the touch of white jade against my skin, then certainly he had to feel my love for Snow Flower in his little body too.
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.