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“I don’t think the master would want me to leave you here,” Yonggang said, her face a mask of worry.

“The master knows where I am,” I responded, without thinking.

“Lily.” Snow Flower’s voice had a quality of sad desperation to it I had never heard before.第 82 页 共 189 页

Then a memory from just a few days ago flashed in my mind. My mother had told me thatas a woman I couldn’t avoid ugliness and I had to be brave. “You have promised to beunited for life,” she’d said. “Be the lady you were meant to be.” She hadn’t been talkingabout bed business with my husband. She’d been talking about this. Snow Flower was my old same for life. I had a greater and deeper love for her than I could ever feel for theperson who was my husband. This was the true meaning of a laotong relationship.

I took a step and heard something like a whimper from Yonggang. I didn’t know what todo. I had never had a servant before. I patted her shoulder hesitatingly. “Go along.” I triedto sound like a mistress should, however that was. “I will be fine.”

“If you need to leave for any reason, just step outside and call for help,” Yonggang suggested, still concerned. “Everyone here knows Master and Lady Lu. People will takeyou back to your in-laws’ home.”

I reached out and took the basket from her hand. When she didn’t budge, I nodded at her to move along. She sighed in resignation, bowed quickly, backed herself to the threshold,turned, and left.

With my basket gripped firmly in my hand, I climbed the stairs. As I neared Snow Flower,I saw that her cheeks were streaked with tears. Like the servant woman, she was dressedin gray, ill-fitting, and badly repaired padded clothes. I stopped one stair below thelanding.

“Nothing has changed,” I said. “We are old sames.”

She took my hand, helped me up the final step, and led me into the women’s chamber. Icould see that it too had been lovely at one time. It was perhaps three times the size of thewomen’s chamber in my natal home. Instead of vertical bars on the lattice window, an intricately carved wooden screen covered the opening. Otherwise, the room was emptybut for a spinning wheel and a bed. The beautiful woman I had seen downstairs, her hands folded neatly in her lap, perched gracefully on the edge of the bed. Her peasant clothes couldn’t disguise her breeding.

“Lily,” Snow Flower said, “this is my mother.”

I crossed the room, linked my hands together, and bowed to the woman who had broughtmy laotong into this world.

“You must forgive our circumstances,” Snow Flower’s mother said. “I can only offer you tea.” She rose. “You girls have much to talk over.” With that, she swayed out of the room with the sublime grace that comes from feet perfectly bound.

When I left my natal home four days ago, tears had poured down my face. I was sad,happy, and afraid all at the same time. But now, as I sat with Snow Flower on her bed, Isaw on her cheeks tears of remorse, guilt, shame, and embarrassment. I longed to yell at第 83 页 共 189 页

her, Tell me! Instead, I waited for the truth, realizing that each word from Snow Flower’slips would cause her to lose whatever face she had left.

“Long before you and I met,” Snow Flower said at last, “my family was one of the best inthe county. You can see”—she estured around her helplessly—“ this once was glorious.We were very prosperous. My g

ggreatgrandfather the scholar received many mou from theemperor.”

I listened, my mind spinning.

“When the emperor died, my great-grandfather fell out of favor, so he came home toretire. Life was good. When he died, his son, my grandfather, took over. My grandfatherhad many workers and many servants. He had three concubines, but they gave him onlydaughters. My grandmother finally bore a son and secured her place. They married in mymother for that son. People said she was like Hu Yuxiu, who was so talented andcharming she had attracted an emperor. My father wasn’t an imperial scholar, but he waseducated in the classics. People said of him that he would one day be the headman ofTongkou. Mama believed it. Others saw a different future. My grandparents recognized inmy father the weakness of having been raised as the only son in a house with too manysisters and too many concubines, while my aunt suspected that he was cowardly andsusceptible to vice.”

Snow Flower’s eyes were distant as she relived a past that no longer existed. “Two yearsafter I was born, my grandparents died,” she continued. “My family had everything— stunning clothes, plentiful food, lots of servants. My father took me on trips; my mothertook me to the Temple of Gupo. I saw and learned a lot as a girl. But my father had to takecare of Grandfather’s three concubines and marry out his four sisters by blood and thefive half sisters who had come from the concubines. He also had to provide work, food,and shelter for the field workers and the house servants. Marriages for his sisters and halfsisters were arranged. My father tried to show everyone what a big man he was. Eachbride-price was more extravagant than the last. He began to sell fields to the biglandowner in the west of our province so he could pay for more silk or for another pig tobe slaughtered as a bride-price. My mother—you saw her—she is beautiful on the outsidebut inside she is much like I was before I met you: pampered, sheltered, and ignorantabout women’s work other than embroidery and nu shu. My father . . .” Snow Flowerhesitated, then blurted out, “My father took to the pipe.”

I remembered back to the day that Madame Gao had made such a nuisance of herselftalking about Snow Flower’s family. She’d mentioned gambling and concubines but alsothat Snow Flower’s father had taken to the pipe. I was nine years old. I had thought hesmoked too much tobacco. Now I realized not only that Snow Flower’s father had fallenvictim to the opium pipe, but that everyone in the upstairs women’s chamber that day,except for me, had known exactly what Madame Gao was talking about. My mother knew,my aunt knew, Madame Wang knew. They had all known, yet every one of them had

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agreed that this common knowledge should not be shared with me.knowledge should not be shared with me.

“Is your father still alive?” I asked tentatively. Surely she would have told me if he’d died,but then again—given all her other lies—maybe not. She nodded but offered nothingmore.

“Is he downstairs?” I asked, thinking of the strange and disgusting smell that hadpervaded the main room.

Her features went very still; then she lifted her eyebrows. I took this to mean yes.

“The turning point came with the famine,” Snow Flower resumed. “Do you rememberthat? We hadn’t met yet, but there was a particularly bad crop followed by a very cruelwinter.”

How could I forget? The best we’d eaten was rice gruel flavored with dried turnips. Mamawas frugal, Baba and Uncle barely ate, and we had survived.

“My father was not prepared,” Snow Flower admitted. “He smoked his pipe and forgotabout us. One day my grandfather’s concubines left. Maybe they went back to their natalhomes. Maybe they died in the snow.

No one knows. By the time spring arrived, only my parents, my two brothers, my twosisters, and I lived in the house. On the surface we still had our elegant life, but inactuality the debt collectors were beginning to visit us regularly. My father sold off morefields. Finally, we had only the house. By then he cared more for his pipe than he did forus. Before he would pawn the furniture—oh, Lily, you can’t imagine how prettyeverything was—he thought he would sell me.”

“Not as a servant!”

“Worse. As a little daughter-in-law.”

This had alwa s been the most horrible thing I could imagine: not having your feet bound,being raised by

yy strangers who had to be of such low morals that they didn’t want aproper daughter-in-law, being treated lower than a servant. And now that I was married Iunderstood the most terrible aspect of this life. You might be nothing but a bit of bedbusiness for any male who lived in the household.

“We were saved by my mother’s sister,” Snow Flower said. “After you and I becamelaotong, she arranged a so-so match for my elder sister. She does not come here anymore.Later my aunt sent my elder brother to apprentice in Shangjia xu. Today my youngerbrother works in the fields for your husband’s family. My young

ngnger sister died, as youknow—” But I didn’t care about people I had never met and had only heard lies about.“What happened to you?”

“My aunt changed my future with scissors, cloth, and alum. My father objected, but you

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know Auntie Wang. Who’s going to say no to her once she’s made a decision?”

“Auntie Wang?” My mind reeled. “You mean our Auntie Wang, the matchmaker?”

“She is my mother’s sister.”

I pressed my fingers to my temples. The very first day I met Snow Flower and we went tothe Temple of Gupo, she had addressed the matchmaker as Auntie. I thought she’d done this out of courtesy and respect, and from then on I’d also used the honorific when Ispoke to Madame Wang. I felt stupid and foolish.

“You never told me,” I said.

“About Auntie Wang? That was the one thing I thought you knew.”

The one thing I thought you knew. I tried to absorb those words.

“Auntie Wang saw right through my father,” Snow Flower went on.

“She understood he was weak. She looked at me too. She read in my face that I did not liketo obey, that I didn’t pay attention, that I was hopeless in the arts of home care, but thatmy mother could teach me embroidery, how to dress, how to act in front of a man, our secret writing. Auntie is only a woman, but as a matchmaker she is also business-minded.She saw where things were headed for our family and for me. She began looking for a laotong match, hoping it would send a good message through the countryside that I was educated, loyal, obedient—”

“And marriageable,” I concluded. This was true for me as well. “She searched the county,traveling far outside her usual matchmaking territory until she heard about you from thediviner. Once she met you, she decided to hitch my fate to yours.”

“I don’t understand.”

Snow Flower smiled ruefully. “You were headed up and I was going down. When you and I first met, I didn’t know anything. I was supposed to learn from you.”

“But you’re the one who taught me. Your embroidery has always been better than mine.And you knew the secret writing so well. You trained me to live in a home with a highthreshold—”

“And you taught me how to haul water, wash clothes, cook, and clean the house. I have tried to teach my mother, but she sees things only as they were.”

I had sensed already that Snow Flower’s mother held on to a past that no longer existed,but having just heard Snow Flower tell her family story, I think my laotong also saw things through the happy veil of memory. Knowing her for all those years, I knew shebelieved in the idea that the women’s inner realm should be beautiful and without worry.Perhaps she thought things would somehow go back to the way they once were.

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“From you I learned what I needed to know for my new life,” Snow Flower said, “exceptthat I have never been able to clean as well as you.” True, she had never been good at it. Ihad always thought it was her way of blinding herself to the messiness of the way welived. Now I realized it was easier for her mind to glide through the air far above theclouds than to acknowledge the ugliness right before her eyes.

I needed to know for my new life,” Snow Flower said, “exceptthat I have never been able to clean as well as you.” True, she had never been good at it. Ihad always thought it was her way of blinding herself to the messiness of the way welived. Now I realized it was easier for her mind to glide through the air far above theclouds than to acknowledge the ugliness right before her eyes.

“But your house is much larger and harder to clean than mine, and you were just a girl inyour hair-pinning years,” I argued stupidly, trying to make her feel better. “You had—”

“A mother who could not help me, a father who was an opium addict, and brothers andsisters who left one by one.”

“But you’re marrying—”

Suddenly I recalled that last day when Madame Gao had come into the upstairs chamberand I witnessed her final argument with Madame Wang. What had she said about SnowFlower’s betrothal? I tried to remember what I knew about the arrangement, but SnowFlower rarely if ever talked about her future husband; she rarely if ever showed us any ofher brideprice gifts. We had seen bits and pieces of cotton and silk that she was workion, true, but she always said these were everyday projects like shoes for herself. Nothing

ngngfancy.

A frightening thought began to formulate in my mind. Snow Flower had to be marryingout into a very low family. The question was, just how low?

Snow Flower seemed to read my thoughts. “Auntie did the best she could for me. I’m notmarrying a farmer.”

That hurt a little, since my father was a farmer.

“He’s a merchant then?” A merchant would have a dishonorable profession, but he mightbe able to restore some of Snow Flower’s lost circumstances. “I will be marrying out tonearby Jintian Village, just as Auntie Wang said, but my husband’s family”—again shehesitated—“they are butchers.” Waaa! This was the worst marriage possible! SnowFlower’s new husband would have some money, but what he did was unclean anddisgusting.

In my mind I replayed everything from the last month as we’d prepared for my wedding.In particular I recalled how Madame Wang had stayed at Snow Flower’s side, offeringcomfort, quietly cajoling. Then I remembered the matchmaker telling “The Tale of WifeWang.” With deep shame I saw that the story had not been meant for me at all but forSnow Flower.

I didn’t know what to say. I had heard the truth in snippets, ever since I was nine, but hadchosen not to believe or acknowledge it. Now I thought, Isn’t it my duty to make mylaotong happy? Make her forget these troubles? Make her believe that everything will be第 87 页 共 189 页

fine?

I put my arms around her. “At least you will never go hungry,” I said, although I turnedout to be wrong about that. “There are worse things that can happen to a woman,” I said,but I couldn’t think what they could be. She buried her face in my shoulder and sobbed. Amoment later, she roughly pushed me away. Her eyes were wet with tears, but I saw notsadness in them but wild ferocity.

“Don’t pity me! I don’t want it!”

Pity had not entered my mind. I felt sick with confusion and sadness.

Her letter to me had ruined my enjoyment of my wedding. Her not showing up for thereading of my third-day weddi books had deeply wounded me. And now this. Under allmy turmoil simmered the feeling

ngng that Snow Flower had betrayed me. For all our nightstogether, why hadn’t she told me the truth? Was it that she honestly didn’t believe whather fate was to be? That because in her mind she was always flying away, she thought thiswould happen in real life too? Did she truly believe that our feet would leave the groundand our hearts would actually soar with the birds? Or was she just trying to save face bykeeping her many secrets, believing this day would never come?