“I had to get everyone out of Tongkou,” he explained. “Then I had to see our children safely on their way. . . .”
These actions, which I didn’t fully understand until later, were what changed my husband from the son of a good and generous headman to a much-respected headman in his own right.
His body trembled as he added, “I looked for you many times.”
So often in our women’s songs, we say, “I had no feelings for my husband” or “My husband had no feelings for me.” These are popular lines, used in chorus after chorus, but on that day I had deep feelings for my husband, and he for me.
My last moments in Jintian went by in a blur. My husband paid the butcher a handsome reward. Snow Flower and I embraced. She offered me the fan to take home, but I wanted her to keep it, for her sorrow was still near and all I felt was happiness. I said goodbye to Snow Flower’s son and promised I would send him some notebooks to study men’s writing. Finally, I bent down to Snow Flower’s daughter. “I will see you very soon,” I said. Then I got on the cart and my husband flicked the reins. I looked back to Snow Flower, waved, and turned toward Tongkou—toward my home, my family, my life.
Letter of Vituperation
THROUGHOUT THE COUNTY PEOPLE WENT ABOUT REBUILDING their lives. Those of us who survived that year had experienced too much, first with the epidemic and then with the rebellion. We were depleted—emotionally, and by the numbers of those we’d lost—but grateful to be alive. Slowly we gained weight. Men went back to the fields and sons returned to the main hall for study, while women and girls retired to their upstairs rooms to embroider and weave. We all moved forward, invigorated by our good fortune.
Sometimes in the past I had wondered about the outer realm of men. Now I vowed I would never venture into it again. My life was meant to be spent in the upstairs chamber. I was happy to see my sisters-in-law’s faces and looked forward to long afternoons spent with them in needlework, tea, song, and story. But this was nothing to how I felt upon seeing my children. Three months was forever, in their eyes and in mine. They had grown and changed. My eldest son had turned twelve while I was away. Safe in the county seat during the chaos, protected by the emperor’s troops, he had studied very hard. He had learned the supreme lesson: All scholars, no matter where they lived or what dialect they spoke, read the same texts and took the same exams so that loyalty, integrity, and a singular vision would be maintained across the realm. Even far from the capital, in remote counties like ours, local magistrates—all trained in an identical manner—helped people to understand the relationship between themselves and the emperor. If my son stayed on this track, one day he would surely sit for the examinations.
I saw Snow Flower more that year than since we were girls. Our husbands did not try to stop us, even though the rebellion still raged in other parts of the country. After all that had happened, my husband believed I would be safe in the butcher’s care, while the butcher encouraged his wife’s visits to my home, knowing she always returned with gifts of food, books, and cash. We shared a bed in each other’s homes, while our husbands moved to other rooms to allow us time together. The butcher dared not object, following my husband’s lead in this regard. But how could they have stopped any of it—our visits, our nights together, our whispered confidences? We had no fear of sun or rain or snow. “Obey, obey, obey, then do what you want.”
Snow Flower and I continued to meet in Puwei for festivals as we always had. It was good for her to see Aunt and Uncle, whose lifetime of goodness within the family had earned them love and respect. Aunt was beloved as a grandmother to all her “grandchildren.” At the same time, Uncle was also in a better position than he had been when my father was alive. Elder Brother needed Uncle’s advice in the fields and in keeping the accounts, and Uncle was honored to give it. Aunt and Uncle had found a happy ending that no one could have imagined.
That year when Snow Flower and I went to the Temple of Gupo, our thanks were profound and deep. We made offerings, kowtowing in thanks that we had survived the winter. Then, arm in arm, we walked to the taro stand. Sitting there, we planned our daughters’ futures and discussed the methods of footbinding that would ensure perfect golden lilies. Back in our own homes, we made bindings, purchased soothing herbs, embroidered miniature shoes to place at the altar of Guanyin, formed glutinous rice balls to present to the Tiny-Footed Maiden, and fed our daughters red-bean dumplings to soften their feet. Separately, we spoke with Madame Wang about our daughters’ match. When Snow Flower and I met again, we compared conversations, laughing at how her aunt was still the same, with her powdered face and wily ways.
Even now, looking back at those months of spring and early summer, I see how blithely happy I was. I had my family and I had my laotong. As I said, I moved forward. This was not the case with Snow Flower. She did not regain the weight she had lost. She picked at her food—a few grains of rice, two bites of vegetable—preferring instead to drink tea. Her skin became pale again, while her cheeks refused to fill out. When she came to Tongkou and I suggested that we visit her old friends, she politely declined, saying, “They wouldn’t want to see me” or “They won’t remember me.” I nagged her until she agreed she would come with me next year to the Sitting and Singing ceremony of a Lu girl here in Tongkou, who was Snow Flower’s second cousin twice removed and my next-door neighbor.
In the afternoons Snow Flower sat with me as I did my embroidery, but she gazed out the lattice window, her mind elsewhere. It was as though she had jumped off the cliff after all, on our last day in the mountains, and was in a soundless fall. I saw her sadness but refused to accept it. My husband warned me several times about this. “You are strong,” he said one night after Snow Flower had returned to Jintian. “You came back from the mountains and you make me more proud every day with the way you manage our household and set a good example for the women of our village. But you—and please, do not get angry with me—are blind when you look at your old same. She is not your same in every way. Maybe what happened last winter was too much for her. I do not know her well, but surely you can see she puts a brave face on a bad situation. It has taken you many years to understand this, but not every man is like your husband.”
That he would confide this to me embarrassed me deeply. No, that’s not right. Rather, I was irritated that he dared to interfere in the inner-realm affairs of women. But I did not argue with him, because it wasn’t my place. Still, in my own mind I had to prove him wrong and myself right. So I looked more closely at Snow Flower when she next visited. I listened, really listened. Life had degenerated for Snow Flower. Her mother-in-law had cut back on her food, allowing her only one-third of the rice required for subsistence.
“I eat only clear porridge,” she said, “but I accept it. I’m not so hungry these days.”
Far worse, the butcher had not stopped beating her.
“You said he wouldn’t do it again,” I protested, not wanting to believe what my husband had seen so clearly.
“If he assaults me, what can I do? I can’t fight back.” Snow Flower sat across from me, her embroidery lying in her lap as limp and wrinkled as tofu skin.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
She answered with a question of her own. “Why should I trouble you with things you cannot change?”
“We can shift fate if we try hard enough,” I said. “I changed my life. You can too.”
She stared at me with mouse eyes.
“How often does it happen?” I asked, trying to keep my voice calm but frustrated that her husband was still using his fists against her, angry that she accepted it so passively, and hurt that she hadn’t confided in me—again.