We returned to the butcher’s house. Spring Moon made tea, while the three sworn sisters and I went upstairs to clean away all signs of death.
It was through them that I learned of my greatest shame. They told me that Snow Flower was not their sworn sister. I didn’t believe it. They tried to convince me otherwise.
“But the fan?” I cried out in frustration. “She wrote that she was joining you.”
“No,” Lotus corrected. “She wrote that she didn’t want you to worry about her anymore, that she had friends here to console her.”
They asked if they could see the words for themselves. Snow Flower, I learned, had taught these women how to read nu shu. Now they crowded over the fan like a gaggle of hens, exclaiming and pointing out to one another hallmarks that Snow Flower had told them about over the years. But when they came to the last entry, they turned serious.
“Look,” Lotus said, pointing to the characters. “There is nothing here about her becoming our sworn sister.”
I snatched the fan away and took it to a corner where I could examine it myself. I have too many troubles, Snow Flower had written. I cannot be what you wish. You won’t have to listen to my complaints anymore. Three sworn sisters have promised to love me as I am—
“You see, Lady Lu?” Lotus said to me from across the room. “Snow Flower wanted us to listen to her. In exchange she taught us the secret language. She was our teacher, and we respected and loved her for that. But she didn’t love us, she loved you. She wanted that love returned, unburdened by your pity and your impatience.”
That I had been shallow, stubborn, and selfish did not alter the gravity and stupidity of what I had done. I had made the greatest mistake for a woman literate in nu shu: I had not considered texture, context, and shades of meaning. More than that, my belief in my own self-importance had made me forget what I had learned on the first day I’d met Snow Flower: She was always more subtle and sophisticated in her words than this mere second daughter of a common farmer. For eight years, Snow Flower had suffered because of my blindness and ignorance. For the rest of my life—which has been nearly as many years as Snow Flower was when she died—I have lived with the regret.
But they were not done with me.
“She tried to please you in every way,” Lotus said, “even by doing bed business with her husband too soon after giving birth.”
“That’s not true!”
“Every time she lost a baby, you offered no more sympathy than her husband or mother-in-law,” Willow went on. “You always said that her only worth was from giving birth to sons, and she believed you. You told her to try again, and she obeyed.”
“This is what we are supposed to say,” I answered indignantly. “This is how we women give comfort—”
“But do you think those words were a consolation when she had lost another baby?”
“You weren’t there. You didn’t hear—”
“Try again! Try again! Try again!” Plum Blossom taunted. “Can you deny you said these things?”
I couldn’t.
“You demanded that she follow your advice on this and many other things,” Lotus picked up. “Then when she did, you criticized her—”
“You’re changing my meaning.”
“Are we?” Willow asked. “She talked about you all the time. She never said a bad word against you, but we heard the truth of what happened.”
“She loved you as a laotong should for everything that you were and everything you were not,” Plum Blossom concluded. “But you had too much man-thinking in you. You loved her as a man would, valuing her only for following men’s rules.”
Finished with one cycle, Lotus began another.
“Do you remember when we were in the mountains and she lost the baby?” she asked, in a tone that made me dread what was coming.
“Of course I remember.”
“She was already sick.”
“That’s not possible. The butcher—”
“Maybe her husband brought it on that day,” Willow admitted. “But the blood that burst from her body was black, stagnant, dying, and none of us saw a baby in that mess.”
Again, Plum Blossom finished. “We were here with her for many years, and this thing happened several more times. She was already quite sick when you sang your Letter of Vituperation.”
I hadn’t been able to argue successfully with them before. How could I argue this point now? The tumor had to have been growing for a very long time. Other things from back then fell into place: Snow Flower’s loss of appetite, her skin going so pale, and her loss of energy at the very moment when I was nagging her to eat better, pinch her cheeks to lure in more color, and do all of her expected chores to bring harmony to her husband’s home. And then I remembered that just two weeks back when I’d first arrived in this house, she’d apologized. I hadn’t done the same—not even when she was in her worst pain, not even when her death was imminent, not even when I was smugly telling myself I still loved her. Her heart had always been pure, but mine had been as shriveled, hard, and dry as an old walnut.
I sometimes think about those sworn sisters—all dead now, of course. They had to be careful in what they said to me, because I was Lady Lu. But they were not going to let me walk away from that house without knowing the truth.
I went home and retired to my upstairs chamber with the fan and a few saved letters. I ground ink until it was as black as the night sky. I opened the fan, dipped my brush into the ink, and made what I thought would be my final entry.
You who always knew my heart now fly above the clouds in the warmth of the sun. I hope one day we will soar together. I would have many years to consider those lines and do what I could to change all the harm I had caused to the person I loved most in the world.
Sitting Quietly
Regret
I AM NOW TOO OLD TO USE MY HANDS TO COOK, WEAVE, OR embroider, and looking at them I see the spots brought by living too many years, whether you work outside under the sun or are sheltered your whole life in the women’s chamber. My skin is so thin that pools of blood collect just under the surface where I bump into things or things bump into me. My hands are tired from grinding ink against the inkstone, my knuckles swollen from holding my brush. Two flies sit on my thumb, but I’m too weary to shoo them away. My eyes—the watery eyes of a very old lady—have been watering too much these past days. My hair—gray and thin—has fallen from the pins that should hold it in place beneath my headdress. When visitors come, they try not to look at me. I try not to look at them either. I have lived too long.
After Snow Flower died, I still had half of my life ahead of me. My rice-and-salt days were not over, but in my heart I began my years of sitting quietly. For most women, this begins with their husband’s death. For me, it began with Snow Flower’s death. I was “the one who has not died,” but things kept me from being completely still or quiet. My husband and family needed me to be a wife and mother. My community needed me to be Lady Lu. And then there were Snow Flower’s children, whom I needed—so that I could make amends to my laotong. But it’s hard to be truly generous and behave in a forthright manner when you don’t know how.
The first thing I did in the months immediately following Snow Flower’s death was to take her place in all her daughter’s wedding traditions and ceremonies. Spring Moon seemed resigned to the prospect of marriage, sad to be leaving home, uncertain—having seen the way her father treated her mother—about what lay in store for her. I told myself these were the kinds of things all girls worry about. But on her wedding night, after her new husband fell asleep, Spring Moon committed suicide by throwing herself in the village well.