I pray to the Goddess that one day I’ll have another son.
You should too.
Please listen to me.
You must obey your husband.
You must listen to your mother-in-law.
I ask you not to worry so much.
Instead, remember when we embroidered together and whispered at night.
We are two mandarin ducks.
We are two phoenixes flying across the sky.
Lily
In her next letter, Snow Flower mentioned nothing about her new family other than that her son had learned to sit. When she came to the end, she inquired again about my life:
Tell me about your meals and what is discussed.
Do they recite the classics when they eat?
Does your mother-in-law entertain the men with stories?
Does she sing to them to aid in their digestion?
I tried to answer truthfully. The men in my household discussed finances: what extra piece of land they could lease, who would till it, how much they should seek in rents, the cost of taxes. They had a desire to “get higher,” to “get to the top of the mountain.” Every family says these things at New Year, incorporating special dishes that invoke these wishes—knowing that this is exactly what they are. But my in-laws worked very hard to make them happen. It made for boring conversation that I did not understand, nor did I care to understand. They already had more than anyone in Tongkou. I could not imagine what else they could desire, yet their eyes never wavered from the top of the mountain.
I hoped that Snow Flower was happier now, conforming—as all wives must—to circumstances completely different from anything she had known before. Then, one dark afternoon as I nursed my son, I heard Madame Wang’s palanquin stop outside our threshold. I expected to see her come up the stairs. Instead, my mother-in-law entered the room and with a disapproving frown dropped a letter on the table beside me. As soon as my son was asleep, I pulled the oil lamp closer and opened it. I noticed right away that the format was different. With a feeling of trepidation I began to read.
bq. Lily,
I sit upstairs and cry. Outside I hear my husband killing a pig. He compounds his violation of the pollution laws.
When I first married in, my mother-in-law made me stand on the platform outside the house and watch as a pig was killed so I could see where our livelihood comes from. My husband and father-in-law brought the pig to our threshold. He was carried upside down on a pole strung between my father-in-law’s and my husband’s shoulders. The pig was between them, crying, crying, crying. He knew what was coming. I have heard this many times now, because they all know what is about to happen and their cries echo through our village much too often.
My father-in-law held the pig down next to a large wok filled with boiling water. (Do you remember that wok outside my house? The one embedded in the platform? Below that is a place to burn coal.) My husband slit the pig’s throat. First, he collected the blood for blood custard, then he shoved the body in the wok. The pig was boiled to soften its skin. My husband asked me to scrape the hairs off the hide. I cried and cried, but not as noisily as the pig had done. I told them I would never watch or be a part of this pollution again. My mother-in-law condemned me for being so weak.
Every day I become more and more like Wife Wang. Do you remember when my aunt told us that story? I have become a vegetarian. My in-laws don’t care. It leaves more meat for them.
I am alone in the world but for you and my son.
I wish I had never lied to you. I promised I would always tell you the truth, but I don’t like you knowing of my ugly life.
I sit at the lattice window and look across the fields to my home village. I imagine you at your window looking back at me. My heart flies across the fields to you. Are you sitting there? Do you see me? Do you feel me?
Without you I am sad. I urge you to write or visit me.
Snow Flower
This was horrible! I looked out the lattice window toward Jintian, wishing that I could at least see Snow Flower. I felt terrible knowing that she was suffering and I couldn’t put my arms around her to comfort her. In front of my mother-in-law and the other women in the upstairs chamber I pulled out a piece of paper and mixed ink. Before I picked up the brush, I reread Snow Flower’s letter. The first time I had taken in only her sadness. Now I realized she’d broken from the traditional stylized lines used by wives in their letters and was using her nu shu to write more candidly and forthrightly about her life.
With her bold act, I realized the true purpose of our secret writing. It was not to compose girlish notes to each other or even to introduce us to the women in our husbands’ families. It was to give us a voice. Our nu shu was a means for our bound feet to carry us to each other, for our thoughts to fly across the fields as Snow Flower had written. The men in our households never expected us to have anything important to say. They never expected us to have emotions or express creative thoughts. The women—our mothers-in-law and the others—put up even greater blockades against us. But from here on out, I hoped Snow Flower and I would be able to write the truth of our lives, whether we were together or apart. I wanted to drop the set phrases that were so common among wives in their rice-and-salt days and express my real thoughts. We would write as we had talked when we were huddled together in the upstairs chamber of my natal home.
I had to see Snow Flower and tell her things would be better. But if I visited her against my mother-in-law’s wishes, I would be committing one of the worst crimes possible. Sneaking around to write or read letters paled in comparison to this, but I had to do it if I wanted to see my laotong.
bq. Snow Flower,
I cry to think of you in that place. You are too good to have such ugliness in your life. We must see each other. Please come to my natal home for Expel Birds Festival. We will bring our sons. We will be happy again. You will forget your troubles. Remember that beside a well one does not thirst. Beside a sister one does not despair. In my heart I am forever your sister.
Lily
Sitting in the upstairs chamber, I planned and schemed, but I was scared. Simplicity seemed best—I would pick up Snow Flower in my palanquin on my way home—but it would also be the easiest way to get caught. The concubines might look out the lattice window and see my palanquin veer to the right toward Jintian. Even more dangerous, the roads would be busy with many women—including my mother-in-law—returning to their natal homes for the festival. Anyone might see us; anyone might report us, if only to curry favor with the Lu family. But by the time the festival arrived, I had built up my bravery to the point I thought we might succeed.
THE FIRST DAY of the second lunar month marked the beginning of farming season, hence the Expel Birds Festival. Inside, on that morning, the women in our household rose early to make sticky rice balls; outside, birds waited for the men to begin planting rice seeds. I worked next to my mother-in-law, squeezing together the balls, using this rice to protect more rice, that most precious of daily foods. When the time came, Tongkou’s unmarried women carried the bird feast outside and set the balls on sticks in the fields to attract the birds, while the men sprinkled poisoned grain along the edges of the fields for the birds to continue gorging themselves. Just as the birds pecked at their first deadly mouthfuls, Tongkou’s married women stepped into palanquins, got on carts, or climbed onto the backs of big-footed women to be taken through the fields back to their natal villages. The old women tell us that if we don’t leave, the birds will eat the rice seeds our husbands are about to sow and we won’t be able to give them any more sons.
As planned, my bearers stopped in Jintian. I did not get out of the palanquin for fear someone might see me. The door swung open and Snow Flower, with her son asleep on her shoulder, joined me. It had been eight months since I’d seen her at the Temple of Gupo. With all the work she did, I had imagined that whatever plumpness she had gained during her pregnancy would be gone, but she was still shapely beneath her tunic and skirt. Her breasts were larger than mine, although I could see that her son was scrawny compared to my own. Her stomach also bulged, which was why she’d placed her son on her shoulder instead of cradled in her arms.