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dropped to her knees and put her forehead to the floor. Beggars like this came to my door often, for I was known to be generous.

“Lady Lu, only you can help me,” the girl implored, as she shuffled her crumpled form toward me until her forehead rested on my lily feet.

I reached down and touched her shoulder. “Give me your bowl and I’ll fill it.”

“I have no beggar’s bowl and I don’t need food.”

“Then why are you here?”

The girl began to weep. I asked her to rise and when she didn’t I tapped her shoulder again. Next to me, Yonggang stared at the floor. “Get up!” I ordered.

The girl lifted her head and looked up into my face. I would have recognized her anywhere. Snow Flower’s daughter looked exactly like her mother at that age. Her hairfought against the restriction of her pins and fell in loose tendrils about her face, whichwas as pale and clear as the spring moon she was named for. I wistfully remembered thisgirl before she was born. Through the mists of memory I saw Spring Moon as a beautifulbaby, then during those terrible days and nights of our Taiping winter. Once this prettylittle thing would have been my daughter’s laotong. Now here she was, her foreheaddropping back to my feet, begging for my help.

“My mother is very sick. She will not last the winter. We can do nothing for her now except settle her fretful mind. Please come to her. She calls out to you. Only you can answer.”

Even five years earlier the depth of my pain would have still been so great that I mighthave sent the girl on her way, but I had learned a lot in my duties as Lady Lu. I couldnever forgive Snow Flower for all the sadness she had caused me, but for my own position in the county I had to show my face as a gracious lady. I told Spring Moon to go home and promised that I would arrive there shortly; then I arranged for a palanquin totake me to Jintian. Riding there, I buttressed myself against seeing Snow Flower and thebutcher, their son, who I realized must have married in by now, and, of course, the sworn sisters.

The palanquin set me down before Snow Flower’s threshold. The place had not changed.A pile of wood rested against the side of the house. The platform with its embedded wokwaited for fresh kill. I hesitated, taking it all in. The butcher’s form loomed in the darkdoorway, and then he was before me—older, stringier, but the same in so many ways.“I cannot bear to see her suffer” were the first words he spoke to me after eight years. He roughly wiped the dampness at his eyes with the back of his hand. “She gave me a son, who has helped me do better at my business. She gave me a good and useful daughter.She made my house more beautiful. She cared for my mother until she died. She did第 173 页 共 189 页

everything a wife should do, but I was cruel to her, Lady Lu. I see that now.” Then hebrushed past me, adding, “She is better off in the company of women.” I watched himstalk toward the fields, the one place where a man can be alone with his emotions.

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. Istood 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, Iwould not have recognized Snow Flower if I had seen her on the street outside theTemple of Gupo.

And yes, the other women were there—Lotus, Willow, and Plum Blossom. As I suspectedall 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 ofdisease, 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 ofwater, wrung it out, and handed it to me. I took it and wiped away the sweat that hadcollected 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.”

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As I accepted her apology, another spasm hit, this one worse than the first. Her eyes shutagainst 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 makedinner. Alone with Snow Flower, I pulled back her quilt. Her disease had eaten the flesharound 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 Iwould never forgive Snow Flower, but instead of dwelling on that my mind tumbled withthe realization that my laotong’s womb had betrayed her again and that the tumor insideher 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. Shewas the only one ever who saw my weaknesses and loved me in spite of them. And I hadloved 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 hissister. 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 indisappointment, 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 thelove 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 tookaway. Every day I washed Snow Flower, then used the same water to wash myself. Ashared bowl of water many years before was how I knew Snow Flower loved me. Now Ihoped 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 warmthto her shriveled form and alleviate the torment that so wracked her body that shewhimpered 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

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cheek, her hollowed eyes staring at me.

For many years, Jintian’s doctor had attended to Snow Flower. Now I sent for my own. Hetook 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 ofdeath. 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 lifeforce slows. Soon, I suspect, her breathing will change. You’ll recognize it. An inhale, anexhale, then nothing. Just when you think she is gone she will take another breath. Do notcry, Lady Lu. At that time the end will be very near, and she will not even be aware of herpain.”

The doctor left packets of herbs for us to brew into a medicinal tea; I paid him and vowedI would never use him again. After he left, Lotus, the eldest of the sworn sisters, tried tocomfort me. “Snow Flower’s husband brought in many doctors, but one doctor, twodoctors, three doctors could do nothing for her now.”

The old fury threatened to rise up in me, but I saw the sympathy and compassion inLotus’s face, not just for Snow Flower but for me as well. I remembered that bitter wasthe most yin of flavors. It caused contractions, reduced fevers, and calmed the heart andspirit. Convinced that bitter melon was something that would stall Snow Flower’s disease,I called upon her sworn sisters to help by making sautéed bitter melon with black beansauce and bitter melon soup. The three women did as I asked. I sat on Snow Flower’s bedand fed her spoonful after spoonful. At first she ate without arguing. Then she clampedher mouth shut and looked away from me as though I weren’t there.

The middle sworn sister ulled me aside. At the top of the stairs, Willow took the bowlfrom my hands, and whis ered, “It’s too late for this. She doesn’t want to eat. You musttry to let her go.” Willow p

pppatted my face kindly. Later that day, she would be the one whocleaned 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 itfrom 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 andpray.”

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 prayingand singing to the Goddess of Mercy, while Snow Flower’s voice weakly repeated herlines. Once the diviner saw us busy with our tasks, he took a piece of paper from hispocket, wrote some incantations on it, set it on fire, and ran back and forth across theroom, trying to drive away the hungry ghost. Next he used a sword to slice through thesmoke: swish, swish, swish. “Ghost out! Ghost out! Ghost out!” But this did not help. I paid第 176 页 共 189 页

the diviner and from Snow ’Flowers lattice window watched as he got into his pony-drawn cart and trotted off down the road. I vowed that from here on I would use diviners only to find propitious dates.

Plum Blossom, the third and youngest of the sworn sisters, came to stand next to me.“Snow Flower is doing everything you ask of her. But I hope you see, Lady Lu, that sheonly does these things for you. This torment has gone on too long. If she were a dog,would you keep her suffering so?”

Pain exists at many levels: the physical agony that Snow Flower endured, the sorrow atseeing her suffer and believing that I couldn’t bear another moment, the torturous regretI felt for the things I had said to her eight years ago—and to what purpose? To berespected by the women of my village? To hurt Snow Flower as she had hurt me? Or hadit come down to my pride—that if she wouldn’t be with me, she shouldn’t be withanyone? I’d been wrong on every count, including the last one, because during those long days I saw the solace that the other women brought to Snow Flower. They had not come to her just at this final moment as I had; they had watched over her for many years. Theirgenerosity—in the form of little bags of rice, cut vegetables, and gathered firewood—hadkept her alive. Now they came every day, neglecting their duties at home. They did notcrowd in on our special relationship. Instead, they hovered like benign spirits, praying,continuing to light fires to scare away ghosts eager for Snow Flower, but always leavingus to ourselves.

I must have slept, but I don’t remember it. When I wasn’t attending to Snow Flower, I was making burial shoes for her. I chose colors I knew she would love. I threaded my needleand embroidered one shoe with a lotus blossom for continual and a ladder for climbing tosuggest that Snow Flower was on a continual climb to heaven. On the other, Iembroidered tiny deer and curly-winged bats, symbols that meant long life—the same ones that you see on wedding garments and hang as celebratory notices at birthdays— tolet Snow Flower know that, even after her death, her blood would continue through her son and her daughter.

Snow Flower deteriorated. When I had first arrived and washed and rewrapped her feet, Isaw that her curled toes had already turned dark purple. As the doctor said it would, thathorrible death color crept up to her calves. I tried to make Snow Flower fight the disease.In the early days I begged her to call on her horse nature to kick away those spirits whowanted to claim her. Now, I knew, all that was left was to ease her way to the afterworldas best we could.

Yonggang saw all this when she came to see me each morning, bringing fresh eggs, clean clothes, and messages from my husband. She had been obedient and loyal to me for many years, but at this time I discovered that she had once broken faith with me in a way for which I will be forever grateful. Three days before Snow Flower died, Yonggang arrivedfor one of her early morning visits, knelt before me, and laid a basket at my feet. “I saw

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you, Lady, many years ago,” she said, her voice cracking in fear. “I knew you couldn’tmean what you were doing.”

I didn’t know what she was talking about or why she had chosen this moment to confess.Then she pulled the cloth from the top of the basket, reached in, and took out letters,handkerchiefs, embroideries, and Snow Flower and my secret fan. These were things I’dlooked for when I was burning our past, but this servant had risked being thrown into thestreet to save them, during those days of Cutting a Disease from My Heart, and then keptthem protected all these years.

Seeing this, Spring Moon and the sworn sisters scurried around the room, digging intoSnow Flower’s embroidery basket, rifling through drawers, and reaching under the bedto find secret hiding places. Soon I had before me all the letters I had ever written SnowFlower and everything I had ever made for her. In the end, everything—except what I hadonce destroyed—was there.