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yy. But I see you breaking two hearts. It is so sad. I remember the little girl youwere. 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 totake 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 UpstairsChamber next door approached. I was still devastated, my mind beating a never-endingrhythm—ta dum, ta dum, ta dum—like a heart or a woman’s chant. Snow Flower and Ihad planned to go to the celebration together. I didn’t know if she would still come. If shedid, I hoped we could avoid a confrontation. I didn’t want to fight her as I’d fought mymother.

The tenth day of the tenth month arrived—a good and propitious date for the neighborgirl 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 spottedMadame Wang and, next to her, Snow Flower: clean, her hair pulled back in the stylebefitting a married lady, and dressed in one of the outfits I had given her. That sensitivespot where my ribs came together above my stomach constricted. The blood seemed todrain from my head and I thought I might faint. I didn’t know if I could sit through thisevent with Snow Flower in the room and still maintain my dignity as a woman. I quicklyglanced at the other faces. Snow Flower had not brought Willow, Lotus, or Plum Blossomwith her for companionship. I let my breath out in a whoosh of relief. If one of them hadbeen there, I would have run away.

I took a seat across the room from Snow Flower and her aunt. The celebration had all ofthe usual singing, complaints, stories, and jokes. Then the mother of the bride asked SnowFlower to tell us of her life since leaving Tongkou.

“Today I will sing a Letter of Vituperation,” Snow Flower announced. This was not at allwhat I had anticipated. How could Snow Flower possibly want to make a public grievanceagainst me when I was the one who had been wronged? If anything, I should haveprepared a chant of accusation and retaliation.

“The pheasant squawks and the sound carries far,” she began. The women in the roomturned to her upon hearing the familiar opening for this traditional type of

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communication. Then Snow Flower began to sing in that same ta dum, ta dum, ta dumrhythm I had been hearing for months. “For five days I burned incense and prayed to findthe courage to come here. For three days I boiled fragrant water to cleanse my skin and my clothing so I would be presentable to my old friends. I have put my soul into my song.As a girl, I was prized as a daughter, but everyone here knows how hard my life has been. I lost my natal home. I lost my natal family. The women in my family have been unluckyfor two generations. My husband is not kind. My mother-in-law is cruel. I have been pregnant seven times, but only three babies breathed the air of this world. Now only a son and a daughter live. It seems I am cursed by fate. I must have done bad deeds in a former life. I am seen as less than others.” The bride’s sworn sisters wept in sympathy as they were supposed to. Their mothers listened attentively—oohing and aahing over thesad parts, shaking their heads at the inevitability of a woman’s fate, and admiring the way that Snow Flower drew upon our language of misery.

“I had but one happiness in my life, my laotong,” Snow Flower went on—ta dum, ta dum,ta dum. “In our contract we wrote there would never be a harsh word between us, and for twenty-seven years this was so. We always spoke true words. We were like long vines,reaching out to each other, forever entwined. But when I told her of my sadness, she hadno patience. When she saw how poor I was in spirit, she reminded me that men farm and women weave, that industriousness brings no hunger, believing I could change my destiny. But how can there be a world without the poor and ill-fated?”

I watched the women in the room cry for her. I was beyond stunned.

“Why have you turned away from me?” she sang out, her voice high and beautiful. “You and I are laotong—together in our souls even when we couldn’t be together in our dailylives.” Abruptly she brought in a new subject. “And why have you hurt my daughter?Spring Moon is too young to understand why, and you will not say. I did not expect you tohave a malicious heart. I beg you to remember that once our good feeling was as deep as the sea. Do not make a third generation of women suffer.”

At this last bit, the air in the room changed as the others took in this final injustice. Lifewas hard enough for girls without my making it harder for someone far weaker than myself.

I drew myself up. I was Lady Lu, the woman with the greatest respect in the county, and Ishould have risen above this. Instead, I listened to that inner music that had been pounding in my head and heart for months now.

“The pheasant squawks and the sound carries far,” I said, as a Letter of Vituperation began to form in my mind. I still wanted to be reasonable, so I addressed Snow Flower’slast and most unfair accusation first. I looked from woman to woman as I sang. “Our two girls cannot be laotong. They are not the same in any way. Your old neighbor wants something for her daughter, but I won’t break the taboo. In saying no, I have done what

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any mother would do.”

Then, “All the women in this room know hardship. As girls, we are raised as uselessbranches. We may love our families, but we are not with them for long. We marry out intovillages we do not know, into families we do not know, to men we do not know. We workendlessly, and if we complain we lose what little respect our in-laws have for us. We bearchildren; sometimes they die, sometimes we die. When our husbands tire of us, they takein concubines. We have all faced adversity—crops that don’t come in, winters that are toocold, planting seasons with no rain. None of this is so special, but this woman seeksspecial attention for her woes.” I turned to Snow Flower. Tears stung my eyes as I sang toher, and I regretted the words as soon as they left my mouth. “You and I were matched asa pair of mandarin ducks. I always remained true, but you’ve shunned me to embracesworn sisters. A girl sends a fan to one girl, not writing new ones to many. A good horsedoes not have two saddles; a good woman is not unfaithful to her laotong. Perhaps yourperfidy is why your husband, your mother-in-law, your children, and, yes, the betrayedold same before you, do not cherish you as they might. You shame us all with your girlishfancies. If my husband came home today with a concubine, I would be thrown from mybed, neglected, dismissed from his attentions. I—as all the women here—would have toaccept it. But . . . from . . . you . . .” My throat closed in on itself and the tears I’d beenholding back escaped from my eyes. For a moment I thought I couldn’t go on. I shiftedaway from my own pain and tried to bring this back to something all the women in theroom would understand. “We might expect this loss of affection from our husbands—theyhave a right, and we are only women— but to endure this from another woman, who byher very sex has experienced much cruelty just by living, is merciless.” I went on,reminding my neighbors of my status, of my husband who had brought salt to the village,and of the way he had made sure that all of the people of Tongkou were transported tosafety during the rebellion. “My doorstep is clean,” I declared, then turned to SnowFlower. “But what about yours?”

At that moment, an unta ed spring of anger came bubbling to the surface, and not onewoman in that room stop

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pped me from expressing it. The words I used came from such adark and bitter place that I felt as though I’d been sliced open with a knife. I kneweverything about Snow Flower, and I proceeded to use it against her under the guise ofsocial correctness and the strength of my being Lady Lu. I humiliated her in front of theother women, revealing every weakness. I held nothing back, because I had lost allcontrol. Unbidden, a long-ago memory came to me of my younger sister’s leg flailing andher loose bindings twirling around her.

With each invective I threw out, I felt as though my bindings had come loose and I wasfinally free to say what I really thought. It took me many years to realize that myperceptions at this time were completely wrong. The bindings weren’t flying through theair and slapping at my laotong. Rather, they were whirling tighter and tighter around me,trying to squeeze away the deep-heart love I’d longed for my entire life. “This womanwho was your neighbor took with her a dowry that was made from her mother’s dowry,so that when that poor woman went out onto the street she had no quilts or clothes to

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keep her warm,” I proclaimed. “This woman who was your neighbor does not keep a clean house. Her husband carries on a polluted business, killing pigs on a platform outside her front door. This woman who was your neighbor had many talents, but shesquandered them, refusing to teach the women in her husband’s household our secretlanguage. This woman who was your neighbor lied about her circumstances as a girl inher daughter days, lied as a young woman in her hair-pinning days, and continues to lieas a wife and mother in her rice-and-salt days. She has lied not only to all of you but toher laotong as well.”

I paused, gauging the women’s faces around me. “How does she spend her time? I’ll tellyou how! Her lust! Animals go into heat seasonally, but this woman is always in heat. Her rutting causes the whole household to go silent. When we were in the mountains running from the rebels”— I rocked forward and the others leaned toward me—“she did bedbusiness with her husband rather than be with me—her laotong. She says she must have done bad deeds in a former life, but I, as Lady Lu, tell you that her bad deeds in this lifemade her fate.”

Snow Flower sat across from me, tears running down her cheeks, but I was so desolateand confused that I could show only my anger. “We wrote a contract as girls,” I concluded.“You made a promise, which you broke.”

Snow Flower took a deep quivering breath. “You once asked that I always tell you thetruth, but when I tell it to you, you misunderstand or you don’t like what you hear. I have found women in my village who do not look down on me. They do not criticize me. They do not expect me to be someone I am not.”

Every word she spoke reinforced everything I had suspected.

“They do not humiliate me in front of others,” Snow Flower went on. “I have embroideredwith them, and we console one another when we are troubled. They do not pity me. They visit me when I have not been well. . . . I am lonely and alone. I need women to comfort me every day, not just at the times of your choosing. I need women who can hear me as I am and not how they remember me or wish me to be. I feel like a bird flying alone. I cannotfind my mate. . . .”

Her soft words and gentle excuses were just what I was afraid of. I closed my eyes, tryingto block my feelings. To protect myself I had to hold on to this grievance as I had with my mother. When I opened my eyes, Snow Flower had lifted herself to her feet and was delicately swaying toward the stairs. When Madame Wang did not follow her, I felt a pang of sympathy. Even her own aunt, the only one among us who made a living and survivedon her wits, would not offer solace.

As Snow Flower disappeared step-by-step down the stairs, I promised myself I wouldnever see her again.

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when i look back on that day, I know that I failed terribly in my duties and obligations as a woman. What she had done was unforgivable, but what I said was despicable. I had let my anger, hurt, and ultimately my desire for revenge take control of my actions. Ironically,the very things that embarrassed me and that I later felt much regret over completed my passage to becoming Lady Lu. My neighbors had seen me be brave when my husband was away in Guilin. They knew how I’d cared for my mother-inlaw during the epidemic and shown proper filial piety at my in-laws’ funerals. After I survived the winter in themountains, they’d watched as I’d sent teachers to outlying villages, attended ceremonies in nearly every home in Tongkou, and generally acquitted myself well as the wife of theheadman. But on that day, I truly earned the respect that came with being Lady Lu bydoing what all women are supposed to do for our country but can rarely accomplish. Awoman must set an example of decorum and right thinking in the inside realm. If she issuccessful, these things will travel from her door to the next, making not only women and children behave properly but inspiring our men to make the outside realm as safe andsettled as possible so the emperor can look out from his throne and see peace. I did allthat in the most public way possible by showing my neighbors that Snow Flower was a low and base woman who should not be a part of our lives. I had succeeded even as Idestroyed my laotong. My Song of Vituperation became known. It was recorded on handkerchiefs and fans. It was taught to girls as a didactic lesson and sung during themonth of wedding festivities to warn brides of life’s pitfalls. In this way, Snow Flower’sdisgrace spread throughout the county. As for me, all that had happened crippled me.What was the point of being Lady Lu if I didn’t have love in my life?

Into the Clouds

eight years passed. during that time, emperor xianfeng died, Emperor Tongzhi assumedpower, and the Taiping Rebellion ended somewhere in a distant province. My first son married in and his wife got pregnant, fell into our home, and had a son—the first of many precious grandsons. My son also passed his exams to become a shengyuan districtscholar. He immediately began studying to become a xiucai scholar, from the province. He did not have much time for his wife, but I think she found comfort in our upstairs chamber. She was a young woman of good learning and home skills. I liked her very much. My daughter, a girl of sixteen well into her hair-pinning days, was betrothed to theson of a rice merchant in faraway Guilin. I might never see Jade again, but this alliance would further protect our ties to the salt business. The Lu family was wealthy, wellrespected, and without bad fortune. I was forty-two years old, and I had done my very best to forget about Snow Flower.

On a day late in fall in the fourth year of Emperor Tongzhi’s reign, Yonggang came into the upstairs room and whispered in my ear that someone wanted to see me. I asked her to show the guest upstairs, but Yonggang’s eyes went to my daughter-in-law anddaughter, who were embroidering together, and shook her head no. This was either impertinence on Yonggang’s part or something more serious. Without a word to theothers, I went downstairs. As I entered the main room, a young girl in worn clothes