One day—perhaps two weeks into my searching—I came across a group from Getan Village huddled under a rocky overhang. I asked if they knew Elder Sister.
“Yes, yes, we do!” one of the women chirped.
“We were separated from her on the first night,” her friend said. “Tell her, if you find her, to come be with us. We can shelter one more family.”
Yet another—the one who appeared to be their leader—cautioned that they only had space for people from Getan, in case I got any ideas.
“I understand,” I said. “But if you see her, could you tell her I’m looking for her? I’m her sister.”
“Her sister? Are you the one known as Lady Lu?”
“Yes,” I responded warily. If they thought I had anything to give them, they were mistaken.
“Men came looking for you.”
My stomach jumped at these words. “Who were they? My brothers?”
The women looked at each other, then at me, sizing me up. Their leader spoke again. “They were mindful not to say who they were. You know how things are up here. One among them was the master. I would say he had a good build. His shoes and clothes were of good quality. His hair came down on his forehead like this.”
My husband! It had to be!
“What did he say? Where is he now? How—”
“We don’t know, but if you are Lady Lu, know that a man is looking for you. Don’t worry.” The woman reached up and patted my hand. “He said he would come back.”
But as much as I searched, I never heard another story like this. Soon I came to believe that those women had used their own bitterness against me, but when I returned to the spot where I had met them, a different set of families huddled under the rocky shelf. After that discovery, I went back to my camp feeling nothing but deep despair. Supposedly I was Lady Lu, but looking at me no one would know it. My lavender silk with the expertly embroidered chrysanthemum pattern was filthy and torn, while my shoes were blackened with my blood and scuffed from daily wear in the outdoors. I could only imagine what the sun, wind, and cold were doing to my face. From my age of eighty, I can look back now and say with certainty that I was a frivolous and stupid young woman to think of vanity when the lack of food and the unrelenting cold were our true villains.
Snow Flower’s husband became a hero to our small band of people. By being in an unclean profession, he did many things that needed to be done, without complaint and without thanks. He was born under the sign of the rooster—handsome, critical, aggressive, and deadly if required. It was in his nature to look to the earth for survival; he could hunt, clean an animal, cook it over an open fire, and dry the skins for us to use for warmth. He could carry heavy loads of firewood and water. He never tired. Up here, he wasn’t a polluter; he was a guardian and champion. Snow Flower was proud of him for being such a leader, and I was—and am—forever grateful that his actions kept me alive.
Aiya! But that rat mother of his! She was always skulking and slinking about. In these most desperate circumstances, she continued to denounce and complain, even over the most unimportant things. She always sat closest to the fire. She never released the quilt she had been handed that first night and at every opportunity took one of the others until we demanded it back. She hid food in her sleeves, pulling it out when she thought we weren’t looking to shove bits of burnt flesh into her mouth. You often hear that rats are clannish. We saw this every day. She constantly wheedled and manipulated her son, but she didn’t have to. He did what any filial son would do. He obeyed. So when that old woman went on and on about how she needed more food than her daughter-in-law, he made sure that she, and not his wife, ate. Being filial myself, I couldn’t argue with the logic of that, so Snow Flower and I began to share my portion. Then one day, after we had reached the bottom of our rice sack, the butcher’s mother said that the eldest son shouldn’t be given food that the butcher had hunted or scavenged.
“It’s too precious to waste on someone so weak,” she said. “When he dies, we will all be relieved.”
I looked at the boy. He was eleven that year, the same age as my eldest son. He stared at his grandmother with sunken eyes, too pathetic to fight for himself. Certainly Snow Flower would say something on his behalf. He was the first son after all. But my old same did not love that boy the way she should have. Her eyes, even in that terrible moment when he was being consigned to certain death, were not on him but on her second son. As clever, resilient, and strong as the second boy was, I could not let this happen to an eldest son. It went against all tradition. How would I answer my ancestors when they asked how I had let the child die? How would I greet that poor boy when I saw him in the afterworld? As the eldest son, he deserved more food than any of us, including the butcher. So I began sharing my portion with Snow Flower and her son. When the butcher realized what was happening, he slapped the boy and then his wife.
“That food is for Lady Lu.”
Before either of them could respond, his rat mother jumped in. “Son, why give food to that woman anyway? She is just a stranger to us. We must think of our own blood: you, your second son, and me.”
No mention, of course, of the first son or Spring Moon, both of whom had survived this far on scraps and had become frailer with each passing day.
But for once the butcher didn’t buckle under his mother’s pressure.
“Lady Lu is our guest. If I bring her back alive, there may be a reward.”
“Money?” his mother asked.
Such a typical rat question. That woman could not hide her greed and acquisitiveness.
“There are things Master Lu can do for us that go beyond money.”
The old woman’s eyes narrowed to slits as she considered this. Before she could speak, I said, “If there is to be a reward, I will need a larger portion. Otherwise”—and here I twisted my face into one of the spoiled grimaces I remembered from my father-in-law’s concubines—”I will say that I found no hospitality from this family, only avarice, inconsideration, and vulgarity.”
Such a tremendous risk I took that day! The butcher could have thrown me out of the group right then. Instead, despite his mother’s never-ending complaints, I received the largest amount of food, which I was able to share with Snow Flower, her eldest son, and Spring Moon. Oh, but how hungry we were. We became little more than corpses—lying still all day, our eyes closed, breathing as shallowly as possible, trying to harness whatever resources we had left. Maladies considered mild at home continued to reduce our numbers. With little food, energy, hot cups of tea, or fortifying doses of herbs, no one had the strength to fight these nuisances. As more succumbed, few among us had the strength to move the bodies.
Snow Flower’s eldest son sought my side whenever possible. He was unloved, true, but he was not as stupid as his family believed. I thought of the day that Snow Flower and I had gone to the Temple of Gupo to pray for sons and how we wanted them to have elegant and refined tastes. I could see these things lay dormant in the boy, though he had received no formal education. I could not help him learn men’s writing, but I could repeat what I had overheard Uncle Lu teach my son. “The five things the Chinese people respect the most are Heaven, Earth, the emperor, parents, and teachers. . . .” When I ran out of lessons I could remember, I told him a didactic tale carried by the women in our county about a second son who becomes a mandarin and returns home to his family, but I changed it to fit this poor boy’s circumstances.
“A first son runs by the river,” I began. “He is as green as bamboo. He knows nothing of life. He lives with his mama, baba, younger brother, and younger sister. The younger brother will follow his father’s trade. The younger sister will marry out. Mama’s and Baba’s eyes never rest upon their eldest son. When they do, they beat his head until it is as swollen as a melon.”