“Lady Lu, it’s been too long,” she said, as she plopped down in a chair in the main room. When I did not offer tea, she looked around anxiously. “Is your husband here?”
“Master Lu will be home later, but you get ahead of yourself. My daughter is too young for him to negotiate a marriage match.”
Madame Wang slapped her thigh and chortled. When I didn’t join in, she sobered. “You know I am not here for that. I have come to discuss a laotong match. This business is for women only.”
I slowly began to tap the nail of my index finger against the teak arm of my chair. The sound was loud and unnerving even to me, but I did not stop.
She reached into her sleeve and pulled out a fan. “I brought this for your daughter. Perhaps I can give it to her.”
“My daughter is upstairs, but Master Lu would not consider it proper for her to see something that he has not examined first.”
“But, Lady Lu,” Madame Wang confided, “this is in our women’s writing.”
“Then give it to me.” I reached out my hand.
The old matchmaker saw my hand shaking and hesitated. “Snow Flower—”
“No!” The syllable came out harsher than I intended, but I could not bear to hear that name spoken. I calmed myself, then said, “The fan, please.”
She reluctantly gave it to me. Inside my head I had an army of brushes with black ink, obliterating the thoughts and memories that kept popping up. I called upon the hardness of the bronzes in the ancestral temple, the hardness of ice in winter, and the hardness of bones dried out under an unrelenting sun to give me strength. In one swift movement I opened the fan.
I understand there is a girl of good character and women’s learning in your home. These were the first characters Snow Flower had written to me so many years ago. I looked up and saw Madame Wang’s gaze upon me, watching for my reaction, but I kept my features as placid as the surface of a pond on a still night. Our two families plant gardens. Two flowers bloom. They are ready to meet. You and I are of the same year. Shall we not be old sames? Together we will soar above the clouds.
I heard Snow Flower’s voice in every carefully drawn character. I snapped the fan shut and held it out to Madame Wang. She did not take it from my outstretched hand.
“I think, Madame Wang, there has been a mistake. The eight characters of these two girls do not match. They were born on different days in different months. More importantly, their feet did not match before binding began, and I doubt they will match when they are done. And”—I waved my hand idly to take in the main room—”family circumstances do not match. All of this is common knowledge.”
Madame Wang’s eyes narrowed. “You think I don’t know the truth of these things?” She snorted. “Let me tell you what I know. You have severed your bond with no explanation. A woman—your laotong—weeps in confusion—”
“Confusion? Do you know what she did?”
“Speak to her,” Madame Wang went on. “Don’t disrupt a plan that was agreed upon by two loving mothers. Two girls have a bright future together. They can be as happy as their mothers.”
I couldn’t possibly agree to the matchmaker’s suggestion. I was weak with sorrow, and too many times in the past I’d let myself be taken in—diverted, influenced, convinced—by Snow Flower. I also couldn’t risk seeing Snow Flower with her sworn sisters. My mind was already tormented enough imagining their whispered secrets and physical intimacies.
“Madame Wang,” I said, “I would not bring my daughter so low as to match her to the spawn of a butcher.”
I was intentionally spiteful, hoping the matchmaker would abandon the subject, but it was as though she hadn’t heard me, because she said, “I remember the two of you together. Crossing a bridge, you were mirrored in the water below—same height, same size feet, same courage. You pledged fidelity. You promised you would never be a step apart, that you would be together forever, never separated, never distant—”
I’d done all of those things with an open heart, but what about Snow Flower?
“You do not know of what you speak,” I said. “On the day your niece and I signed our contract, you said, ‘No concubines allowed.’ Do you remember that, old woman? Now go ask your niece what she has done.”
I tossed the fan into the matchmaker’s lap and turned my face away, my heart as chilled as the river water that used to run over my feet. I felt that old woman’s eyes on me, weighing, wondering, questioning, but she did not have the will to go on. I heard her rise unsteadily. Her eyes continued to bore into me, but I did not waver in my steadfastness.
“I will relay your message,” she said at last, her voice filled with kindness and a deep understanding that agitated me, “but know this. You are a rare person. I saw that long ago. Everyone in our county envies your good luck. Everyone wishes you longevity and prosperity. But I see you breaking two hearts. It is so sad. I remember the little girl you were. You had nothing but a pretty pair of feet. Now you have abundance in your life, Lady Lu—an abundance of malice, ingratitude, and forgetfulness.”
She hobbled out the door. I heard her get into her palanquin and order her bearers to take her to Jintian. I could not believe that I had allowed her to have the last word.
A YEAR WENT by. The day of Snow Flower’s cousin’s Sitting and Singing in the Upstairs Chamber next door approached. I was still devastated, my mind beating a never-ending rhythm—ta dum, ta dum, ta dum—like a heart or a woman’s chant. Snow Flower and I had planned to go to the celebration together. I didn’t know if she would still come. If she did, I hoped we could avoid a confrontation. I didn’t want to fight her as I’d fought my mother.
The tenth day of the tenth month arrived—a good and propitious date for the neighbor girl to begin her wedding activities. I walked next door and went to the upstairs chamber. The bride was pretty in a wan sort of way. Her sworn sisters sat around her. I spotted Madame Wang and, next to her, Snow Flower: clean, her hair pulled back in the style befitting a married lady, and dressed in one of the outfits I had given her. That sensitive spot where my ribs came together above my stomach constricted. The blood seemed to drain from my head and I thought I might faint. I didn’t know if I could sit through this event with Snow Flower in the room and still maintain my dignity as a woman. I quickly glanced at the other faces. Snow Flower had not brought Willow, Lotus, or Plum Blossom with her for companionship. I let my breath out in a whoosh of relief. If one of them had been there, I would have run away.
I took a seat across the room from Snow Flower and her aunt. The celebration had all of the usual singing, complaints, stories, and jokes. Then the mother of the bride asked Snow Flower to tell us of her life since leaving Tongkou.
“Today I will sing a Letter of Vituperation,” Snow Flower announced.
This was not at all what I had anticipated. How could Snow Flower possibly want to make a public grievance against me when I was the one who had been wronged? If anything, I should have prepared a chant of accusation and retaliation.