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.
Can you imagine anyone worse for someone born in the year of the horse?
The rat believes the horse is selfish and thoughtless, though I am not.
The horse believes the rat is scheming and demanding, which she is.
But she does not beat me.
She does not yell at me beyond what is customary for a new daughter-in-law.
Have you heard about my mother and father?
Within days of my falling into my husband’s home,
Mama and Baba sold off the last of their belongings.
They took the cash and slipped away into the night.
As beggars, they will not have to pay taxes or other debts.
But where are they?
I worry about my mother.
Is she still alive?
Is she in the afterworld?
I do not know.
Perhaps I will never see her again.
Who would have guessed that my family was so unlucky?
They must have done bad deeds in former lives.
But if they did, then what about me?
Do you hear any words you can tell me?
And you, are you happy?
Snow Flower
Now that I knew this tragic news about Snow Flower’s parents, I began to listen more carefully to the household gossip. Word began to filter in from merchants and salesmen who roamed the county that they had seen Snow Flower’s parents sleeping under a tree, begging for food, or wearing dirty and tattered clothes. I thought often of how my laotong‘s family had once been powerful in Tongkou and how her beautiful mother must have felt to be marrying into the family of an imperial scholar. Now look how low she had been brought. I feared for her with her lily feet. Without influential friends, Snow Flower’s parents had been reduced to the mercy of the elements. Without a natal home, Snow Flower was worse than an orphan. I believed it was better to have dead parents, whom you could worship and honor as ancestors, than parents who had disappeared into the transient life of beggars. How would she know when they died? How would she be able to provide a proper funeral, clean their graves at New Year, or appease them when they fretted in the afterworld? That she was sad and without me to hear her thoughts was hard for me and had to be unbearable for her.
As for Snow Flower’s last question—was I happy?—I wasn’t sure how to respond. Should I write about the women in my new home? My new upstairs chamber housed too many women who did not like one another. I was the first daughter-in-law, but not long after I arrived in Tongkou the second son’s wife came to live in the house. She had gotten pregnant right away. She was barely eighteen and cried nonstop for her family. She gave birth to a daughter, which upset my mother-in-law and made matters worse. I tried to befriend Second Sister-in-law, but she kept to a corner with her paper, ink, and brush, constantly writing to her mother and sworn sisters, still in her home village. I could have told Snow Flower about the unseemly ways Second Sister-in-law tried to impress Lady Lu by constantly kowtowing, whispering obsequious words, and maneuvering for position, while Master Lu’s three concubines bickered among themselves, their petty jealousies pinching their faces and turning their stomachs sour, but I dared not put these sentiments on paper.
Could I have written to Snow Flower about my husband? I suppose I could have, but I didn’t know what to say. I rarely saw him, and when I did he was usually talking to someone else or engaged in important tasks. During daylight hours, he went out to survey the fields and oversee projects on the land, while I embroidered or did other chores in the upstairs room. I served him at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, remembering to be as demure and quiet as Snow Flower had been at my family’s table. He did not speak to me on those occasions. He sometimes came to our room early to visit our son or to do bed business. I assumed we were like any other married couple—even Snow Flower and her husband—so there was nothing of interest to write.
How could I answer Snow Flower’s question about my happiness when the main conflict I had in my life had to do with her?
“I admit you have learned well from Snow Flower,” my mother-in-law said one day, when she caught me writing to my laotong, “and we are grateful for that. But she is no longer a member of our village, nor is she under Master Lu’s protection. He cannot and should not try to change her fate. As you know, we have codes governing wives that have to do with war and other border disagreements. As female guests, wives are not to be harmed during feuds, raids, or wars, because we are seen as belonging to both our husbands’ villages and our natal villages. You see, Lily, as wives we have protection and loyalty from both places. But if something happened to you in Snow Flower’s village, anything we might do could lead to retaliation and possibly even an ongoing fight.”
I listened to Lady Lu’s excuses, but I knew her reasons were far more base. Snow Flower’s natal family was disgraced and she’d married a polluted man. My in-laws simply didn’t want me to associate with her.
“Snow Flower’s fate was preordained,” my mother-in-law went on, venturing closer to the truth, “and it does not meet yours in any way. Master Lu and I would look favorably on a daughter-in-law who decided to break contract with someone who is no longer a true old same. If you need companionship, I will remind you of the young married women in Tongkou to whom I introduced you.”
“I remember them. Thank you,” I mumbled haplessly, while inside I was screaming in terror. Never, never, never!
“They would like you to join a post-marriage sworn sisterhood.”
“Again, thank you—”
“You should consider their invitation an honor.”
“I do.”
“I’m just saying that you need to discharge Snow Flower from your thoughts,” my mother-in-law said, and finished with a variation of her usual admonition. “I don’t want memories of that unfortunate girl influencing my grandson.”
The concubines snickered behind their fingers. They enjoyed seeing me suffer. In moments like these, their status rose and mine fell. But other than this continued criticism, which the others relished and which frightened me deeply, my mother-in-law was kinder to me than my own mother had been. She followed all the rules, just as Snow Flower had said. “When a girl, obey your father; when a wife, obey your husband; when a widow, obey your son.” I had heard this my entire life, so I was not intimidated. But my mother-in-law taught me another axiom one day, when she was aggravated with her husband: “Obey, obey, obey, then do what you want.” For now, my in-laws could prevent me from seeing Snow Flower, but they could never stop me from loving her.
bq. Snow Flower,
My husband treats me well.
I don’t even know where all our family fields are.
I also work hard.
My mother-in-law watches everything I do.
The women in my household are well educated in nu shu.
My mother-in-law has taught me new characters.
I will show them to you when we next meet.
I do embroidery, weaving, and shoemaking.
I spin cloth and prepare meals.
I have a son.