The women under our tree continued to watch over Snow Flower. We tended to her cuts, using boiled snow to douse away potential infections, wrapping them in cloth torn from our own bodies. The women wanted to make her soup from the marrow of the animals the butcher brought to feed us. When I reminded them that Snow Flower was a vegetarian, we took turns walking in groups of two to forage in the forest for bark, weeds, and roots. We made a bitter broth and spoon-fed it to her. We sang songs of comfort.
But our words and deeds did nothing to ease her mind. She would not sleep. She sat by the fire, her knees drawn up, her arms wrapped around them. Her whole body rocked with gut-wrenching despair. None of us had clean clothes, but we had tried to remain neat in appearance. Snow Flower no longer cared. She neglected to wash her face with clumps of snow or rub her teeth with the hem of her tunic. Her hair hung loose, reminding me of the night my mother-in-law sank into illness. She became more and more like Third Sister-in-law on that same evening—barely present with us at all, her mind floating, floating, floating away.
There came a point every day when Snow Flower wrested herself away from the fire to wander the snowy mountains. She walked as if in a dream, lost, uprooted, untethered. Every day I went with her, unasked, holding on to her arm, the two of us tottering over the icy rocks on our lily feet as she wound her way to the edge of the cliff, where she wailed into the great expanse, the sound flying away on the strong northern wind.
I was terrified, always thinking back to our terrible escape into the hills and the hideous sounds of the women’s screams as they fell to their deaths so many meters below. Snow Flower did not share my trepidation. She looked out over the cliffs, watching snow hawks soar on the mountain winds. I thought of all of the times Snow Flower had talked about flying. How easy it would have been for her to take one step out and over the cliff. But I never left her side, never let go of her arm.
I tried to talk to her about things that would tie her to earth. I might say something like, “Would you prefer to approach Madame Wang about our daughters or shall I?” When she didn’t respond, I would try something else. “You and I live so close. Why should we wait for the girls to become old sames before they meet? The two of you should come for a long visit. We will bind their feet together. Then they will have those days to remember too.” Or, “Look at that snow flower. Spring is coming and soon we will leave this place.” For ten days she answered only in monosyllables.
Then, on the eleventh day, as she veered to the edge of the cliff, she finally spoke. “I have lost five children, and my husband has blamed me each time. He always takes his frustration and stuffs it in his fists. When those weapons need to find their release, they find me. I used to think he was angry that I’d been pregnant with girls. But now, with my son . . . Was it grief all along that my husband felt?” She paused and tilted her head as she tried to work things out in her mind. “Either way, he has to put his fists somewhere,” she concluded despairingly.
Which meant that these beatings had been going on since the first year she’d fallen permanently into the butcher’s house. Although her husband’s actions were common and accepted in our county, it hurt that she had hidden this from me so well and for so long. I had thought she would never again lie to me and that we would no longer have secrets, but I wasn’t upset about that. Instead, I felt guilty for having ignored the signs of my laotong‘s unhappy life for too long.
“Snow Flower—”
“No, listen. You think my husband has evil in his heart, but he is not an evil man.”
“He treats you as less than human—”
“Lily,” she cautioned, “he is my husband.” Then her thoughts plunged to an even darker place. “I’ve wanted to die for a long time, but someone is always around.”
“Don’t say such things.”
She ignored me. “How often do you think about fate? I think about it nearly every day. What if my mother had not married out to my father’s house? What if my father had not taken to the pipe? What if my parents had not married me out to the butcher? What if I had been born a son? Could I have saved my family? Oh, Lily, I have been so ashamed of my circumstances before you. . . .”
“I never—”
“Ever since you first entered my natal home I have seen your pity.” She shook her head to prevent me from speaking. “Don’t deny it. Just hear me.” She paused for a moment before continuing. “You see me and you think I fell so far, but what happened to my mother was far worse. As a girl, I remember her crying all day and all night in sorrow. I’m sure she wanted to die, but she wouldn’t abandon me. Then, after I went to my husband permanently, she wouldn’t abandon my father.”
I saw where this was heading, so I said, “Your mother never allowed herself an embittered heart. She never gave up—”
“She went with my father on the road. I’ll never know what happened to them, but I’m sure she did not allow herself to die until he was gone first. It’s been twelve years now. So often I’ve wondered if I could have helped her. Could she have come to me? I’ll answer this way. I dreamed I’d get married and find happiness away from the sickness of my father and the sadness of my mother. I did not know I would be a beggar in my husband’s home. Then I learned how to get my husband to bring home food I would eat. You see, Lily, there are things they don’t tell us about men. We can make them happy if we show them pleasure. And, you know, it is fun for us too, if we let it be.”
She sounded like one of those old women who are always trying to frighten girls before they marry out with that kind of talk.
“You don’t have to lie. I’m your laotong. You can be truthful.”
She pulled her eyes away from the clouds and for the briefest moment looked at me as though she didn’t recognize me. “Lily”—her voice came out sad and sympathetic—”you have everything, and yet you have nothing.”
Her words cut me, but I couldn’t think about them now as she confessed. “My husband and I didn’t follow the rules concerning the pollution of a wife after childbirth. We both wanted more sons.”
“Sons are a woman’s worth—”
“But you’ve seen what happens. Too many girls come into my body.”
To this undeniable problem I had a practical response.
“It wasn’t their destiny to live,” I said. “Be thankful, for something was probably wrong with them. We women can only try again—”
“Oh, Lily, when you talk like that my head feels empty. I hear only the wind rushing through the trees. Do you feel how the ground wants to give way beneath my feet? You should go back now. Let me be with my mother. . . .”
Many years had passed since Snow Flower lost her first daughter. Then, I hadn’t been able to understand her grief. But by now I’d experienced more of life’s miseries and saw things very differently. If it is perfectly acceptable for a widow to disfigure herself or commit suicide to save face for her husband’s family, why should a mother not be moved to extreme action by the loss of a child or children? We are their caretakers. We love them. We nurse them when they are sick. In the case of sons, we prepare them to take their first steps into the men’s realm. In the case of daughters, we bind their feet, teach them our secret writing, and train them to be good wives, daughters-in-laws, and mothers, so they will fit into the upstairs chambers of their new homes. But no woman should live longer than her children. It is against the law of nature. If she does, why wouldn’t she wish to leap from a cliff, hang from a branch, or swallow lye?