It is hard for me to think about this even after all these years. I thought I had erased Snow Flower from my memory and cut her from my heart. I had truly believed I would never forgive her for loving sworn sisters more than me, but the moment I saw Snow Flower on her bed, all those thoughts and emotions fell away. Time—life—had brutalized her. I stood there, an older woman, true, but my skin was still smooth from creams, powders, and nearly a decade protected from the sun, while my clothes spoke to the whole county about the person I was. In the bed across the room lay Snow Flower, an aged crone dressed in rags. Unlike her daughter, whose face had been immediately familiar to me, I would not have recognized Snow Flower if I had seen her on the street outside the Temple of Gupo.
And yes, the other women were there—Lotus, Willow, and Plum Blossom. As I suspected all those years ago, Snow Flower’s sworn sisters were the women who’d lived with us under the tree in the mountains. We did not exchange greetings.
As I approached the bed, Spring Moon rose and stepped aside. Snow Flower’s eyes were closed and her skin was deathly pale. I looked at her daughter, unsure of what to do. The girl nodded and I took Snow Flower’s cold hand in my own. She stirred without opening her eyes, then licked her cracked lips.
“I feel . . .” She shook her head as though trying to rid her mind of a thought.
I called her name softly, then gently squeezed her fingers.
My laotong‘s eyes blinked open and she tried to focus, at first not believing who was before her. “I felt your touch,” she murmured at last. “I knew it was you.” Her voice was weak, but when she spoke, the years of pain and horror fell away. Behind the ravages of disease, I saw and heard the little girl who invited me to become her laotong all those years ago.
“I heard you call for me,” I lied. “I came as fast as I could.”
“I was waiting.”
Her face contorted in anguish. Her other hand clutched her stomach and she pulled up her legs reflexively. Snow Flower’s daughter wordlessly dipped a cloth into a bowl of water, wrung it out, and handed it to me. I took it and wiped away the sweat that had collected on Snow Flower’s forehead during the spasm.
Through her agony she spoke. “I’m sorry for everything, but you should know I never wavered in my love for you.”
As I accepted her apology, another spasm hit, this one worse than the first. Her eyes shut against the pain, and she did not speak again. I refreshed the cloth and put it back on her forehead; then I once again took her hand and sat with her until the sun went down. By that time, the other women had left and Spring Moon had gone downstairs to make dinner. Alone with Snow Flower, I pulled back her quilt. Her disease had eaten the flesh around her bones and fed it to a tumor that had grown to the size of a baby inside her belly.
Even now I can’t explain my emotions. I had been hurt and angry for so long. I thought I would never forgive Snow Flower, but instead of dwelling on that my mind tumbled with the realization that my laotong‘s womb had betrayed her again and that the tumor inside her must have been growing for many years. I had a duty to care. . . .
No! That’s not it. The whole time I was hurt it was because I still loved Snow Flower. She was the only one ever who saw my weaknesses and loved me in spite of them. And I had loved her even when I hated her most.
I tucked the quilt back around her and began plotting. I had to get a proper doctor. Snow Flower should eat, and we needed a diviner. I wanted her to fight as I would fight. You see, I still didn’t understand that you cannot control the manifestations of love, nor can you change another person’s destiny.
I lifted Snow Flower’s cold hand to my lips; then I went downstairs. The butcher slouched at the table. Snow Flower’s son, a grown man now, stood next to his sister. They looked at me with expressions that came directly from their mother—proud, enduring, long-suffering, beseeching.
“I’m going home now,” I announced. Snow Flower’s son’s face crumpled in disappointment, but I held up my hand placatingly. “I will be back tomorrow. Please arrange a place for me to sleep. I will not leave this place until . . .” I couldn’t go on.
I thought that once I settled in we would win this battle, but two weeks were all we had. Two weeks out of what would turn out to be my eighty years to show Snow Flower all the love I felt for her. Not once did I leave that room. Whatever went into my body, Snow Flower’s daughter brought. Whatever went out of my body, Snow Flower’s daughter took away. Every day I washed Snow Flower, then used the same water to wash myself. A shared bowl of water many years before was how I knew Snow Flower loved me. Now I hoped she would see my actions, remember the past, and know that nothing had changed.
At night, after the others left, I moved from the cot the family had prepared for me and into the bed next to Snow Flower. I wrapped my arms around her, trying to bring warmth to her shriveled form and alleviate the torment that so wracked her body that she whimpered even in her dreams. Each night I fell asleep wishing my hands were sponges that would absorb the growth in her belly. Each morning I woke to find her hand upon my cheek, her hollowed eyes staring at me.
For many years, Jintian’s doctor had attended to Snow Flower. Now I sent for my own. He took one look and shook his head.
“Lady Lu, a cure is not possible,” he said. “All you can do now is wait for the onset of death. You can see it already in the purple tint of her flesh just above her bindings. First, her ankles; then her legs will come next, swelling and turning the skin purple as her life force slows. Soon, I suspect, her breathing will change. You’ll recognize it. An inhale, an exhale, then nothing. Just when you think she is gone she will take another breath. Do not cry, Lady Lu. At that time the end will be very near, and she will not even be aware of her pain.”
The doctor left packets of herbs for us to brew into a medicinal tea; I paid him and vowed I would never use him again. After he left, Lotus, the eldest of the sworn sisters, tried to comfort me. “Snow Flower’s husband brought in many doctors, but one doctor, two doctors, three doctors could do nothing for her now.”
The old fury threatened to rise up in me, but I saw the sympathy and compassion in Lotus’s face, not just for Snow Flower but for me as well.
I remembered that bitter was the most yin of flavors. It caused contractions, reduced fevers, and calmed the heart and spirit. Convinced that bitter melon was something that would stall Snow Flower’s disease, I called upon her sworn sisters to help by making sauteed bitter melon with black bean sauce and bitter melon soup. The three women did as I asked. I sat on Snow Flower’s bed and fed her spoonful after spoonful. At first she ate without arguing. Then she clamped her mouth shut and looked away from me as though I weren’t there.
The middle sworn sister pulled me aside. At the top of the stairs, Willow took the bowl from my hands, and whispered, “It’s too late for this. She doesn’t want to eat. You must try to let her go.” Willow patted my face kindly. Later that day, she would be the one who cleaned up Snow Flower’s bitter-melon vomit.
My next and final plan was to bring in the diviner. He came into the room and announced, “A ghost has attached itself to your friend’s body. Do not worry. Together we will drive it from this room and she will be cured. Miss Snow Flower,” he said, bending over the bed, “here are some words for you to chant.” Then to the rest of us, he ordered, “Kneel and pray.”
So Spring Moon, Madame Wang—yes, the old matchmaker was there through most of it—the three sworn sisters, and I dropped to our knees around the bed and began praying and singing to the Goddess of Mercy, while Snow Flower’s voice weakly repeated her lines. Once the diviner saw us busy with our tasks, he took a piece of paper from his pocket, wrote some incantations on it, set it on fire, and ran back and forth across the room, trying to drive away the hungry ghost. Next he used a sword to slice through the smoke: swish, swish, swish. “Ghost out! Ghost out! Ghost out!”