That last part I knew to be true. The one who slept between us was both difficult and weak. Snow Flower needed to have another son . . . just in case.
Too soon, our three days were over. My heart felt lighter. My palanquin dropped Snow Flower back in front of her house; then I went home. No one had spotted my diversion on the road, and the cash I paid my bearers guaranteed their silence. Emboldened by my success, I knew I would be able to see Snow Flower more often. Many festivals throughout the year required married women to return to their natal homes, and we also had our annual visit to the Temple of Gupo. We might be married ladies, but we were still old sames, no matter what my mother-in-law said.
OVER THE FOLLOWING months, Snow Flower and I continued to write each other, our words flying back and forth over the fields as free as two birds floating on a high breeze. Her complaints lessened and so did mine. We were young mothers and our lives were bright with the day-to-day adventures of our sons—new teeth coming in, first words spoken, steps taken. To my mind, we were both content as we settled into the rhythms of our new homes, learned how to please our mothers-in-law, and adjusted to the duties of being wives. I even grew more accustomed to writing Snow Flower about my husband and our intimate moments. By now I understood the old instruction: “Ascend the bed, act like a husband; descend the bed, act like a gentleman.” I preferred my husband when he descended the bed. By day, he followed the Nine Considerations. He was clearheaded, listened carefully, and appeared affable. He was modest, loyal, respectful, and righteous. When in doubt, he asked his father questions, and on those rare occasions when he got angry, he was careful not to let it show. So by night, when he ascended the bed, I was happy for his enjoyment but relieved when he finished with me. I did not understand what my aunt had talked about when I was in my hair-pinning days, and I truly didn’t comprehend Snow Flower’s pleasure in bed business. But no matter how deep my ignorance, I knew one thing: You cannot break the pollution laws without paying a heavy toll.
Lily,
My daughter was born dead. She left without planting roots, so she knew nothing of the sorrows of life. I held her feet in my hands. They would never know the agony of footbinding. I touched her eyes. They would never know the sadness of leaving her natal home, of seeing her mother for the last time, of saying goodbye to a dead child. I put my fingers over her heart. It would never know pain, sorrow, loneliness, shame. I think of her in the afterworld. Is my mother with her? I don’t know either of their fates.
Everyone in my household blames me. My mother-in-law says, “Why did we marry you in if not to bear sons?” My husband says, “You are young. You will have more children. Next time you will bring me a son.”
I have no way to vent my sorrow. I have no one to listen to me. I wish I could hear you coming up the stairs.
I imagine myself as a bird. I would soar in the clouds, and the world below would seem very far away.
The piece of jade I wore around my neck to protect my unborn child weighs upon me. I cannot stop thinking about my dead baby girl.
Snow Flower
Miscarriages were common occurrences in our county, and women were not supposed to care if they had one, especially if the child was a girl. Stillbirths were considered dreadful only if the baby was a son. If a stillborn child was a girl, parents were usually thankful. No one needed another worthless mouth to feed. For me, while I’d been petrified when I was pregnant that something might happen to my baby, I honestly didn’t know how I would have felt if he had been a daughter and had died before breathing the air of this world. What I’m trying to say is that I was bewildered that Snow Flower felt the way she did.
I had begged her to tell me the truth, but now that she had I didn’t know how to respond. I wanted to reply with sympathy. I wanted to give her comfort and solace. But I was scared for her and didn’t know what to write. Everything that had happened in Snow Flower’s life—the reality of her childhood, her terrible marriage, and now this—was beyond my understanding. I had just turned twenty-one. I had never experienced real misery, my life was good, and these two things left me with little empathy.
I searched my mind for the right words to write the woman I loved, and to my great shame I let the conventions I’d grown up with wrap around my heart as I’d done that day in the palanquin. When I picked up my brush, I retreated to the safety of the formal lines appropriate for a married woman, hoping this would remind Snow Flower that our only real protection as women was the placid face we presented, even in those moments of greatest distress. She had to try to get pregnant again—and soon—because the duty of all women was to keep trying to give birth to sons.
Snow Flower,
I am sitting in the upstairs chamber thinking deeply.
I write to console you.
Please listen to me.
Dear one, quiet your heart.
Think of me beside you—my hand on yours.
Imagine me crying at your side.
Our tears form four streams that run forever.
Know this.
Your sorrow is deep but you are not alone.
Do not grieve.
This was preordained, just as riches and poverty are preordained.
Many babies die.
This is a mother’s heartbreak.
We cannot control these things.
We can only try again.
Next time, a son. . . .
Lily
Two years passed during which our sons learned to walk and talk. Snow Flower’s son did these things first; he should have. He was six weeks older, but his legs weren’t sturdy trunks like my son’s. His thinness stayed with him, and it seemed a thinness of personality. This is not to say he wasn’t smart. He was very clever, but not as clever as my son. By age three, my son already wanted to pick up the calligraphy brush. He was magnificent, the darling of the upstairs chamber. Even the concubines showered him with attention, bickering over him as they did over new pieces of silk.
Three years after my first son was born, my second son arrived. Snow Flower did not share the good luck of my destiny. She may have enjoyed bed business with her husband, but it produced nothing—except a second stillborn daughter. After this loss, I recommended she go to the local herbalist to procure herbs to help her conceive a son and enhance her husband’s strength and frequency in his below-the-belt region. Thanks to my advice, Snow Flower informed me, she and her husband had been satisfied in numerous ways.
Joy and Sorrow
WHEN MY ELDER SON REACHED FIVE YEARS, MY HUSBAND started to talk about bringing in a traveling tutor to begin our boy’s formal education. Since we lived in my in-laws’ home and had no resources of our own, we had to ask them to bear the expense. I should have been ashamed of my husband’s desires, but I never regretted that I wasn’t. For their part, my in-laws could not have been more pleased than the day the tutor moved in and my son left the upstairs chamber. I wept to see him go, but it was one of the proudest moments of my life. I secretly harbored the hope that perhaps one day he might take the imperial exams. I was only a woman, but even I knew that these exams provided a stepping-stone for even the poorest scholars from the most wretched circumstances to a higher life. Nevertheless, his absence in the upstairs chamber left me with a black emptiness that was not filled by my second son’s amusing antics, the squawking of the concubines, the bickering of my sisters-in-law, or even my periodic visits with Snow Flower. Happily, by the first month of the new lunar year, I found myself pregnant again.
By this time, the upstairs chamber was very crowded. Third Sister-in-law had moved in and given birth to a daughter. She was followed by Fourth Sister-in-law, whose complaining grated on everyone. She, too, had a daughter. My mother-in-law expended particular cruelty on Fourth Sister-in-law, who later lost two sons in childbirth. So it is fair to say that the other women in the household greeted my news with envy. Nothing caused more consternation in the upstairs chamber than the monthly arrival of one of the wives’ bleeding. Everyone knew; everyone talked about it. Lady Lu always noted these events and loudly cursed the young woman in question for all to hear. “A wife who does not bear a son can always be replaced,” she might say, though she hated with her entire soul her husband’s concubines. Now, when I looked around the women’s chamber, I saw jealousy and smoldering resentment, but what could the other women do but wait and see if another son came out of my body? I, however, had experienced a change of heart. I wanted a daughter, but for the most practical reason. My second son would leave me for the world of men very shortly, while daughters did not leave their mothers until they married out. My secret ambition flamed with news that Snow Flower was also with child. I cannot tell you how much I wanted her to have a daughter too.