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All I knew was that footbinding would make me more marriageable and therefore bringme closer to the greatest love and greatest joy in a woman’s life—a son. To that end, my goal was to achieve a pair of perfectly bound feet with seven distinct attributes: They should be small, narrow, straight, pointed, and arched, yet still fragrant and soft intexture. Of these requirements, length is most important. Seven centimeters— about thelength of a thumb—is the ideal. Shape comes next. A perfect foot should be shaped likethe bud of a lotus. It should be full and round at the heel, come to a point at the front, withall weight borne by the big toe alone. This means that the toes and arch of the foot mustbe broken and bent under to meet the heel. Finally, the cleft formed by the forefoot andheel should be deep enough to hide a large cash piece perpendicularly within its folds. If Icould attain all that, happiness would be my reward. On the morning of the twenty-fourthday of the eighth lunar month, we offered the Tiny-Footed Maiden glutinous rice balls,while our mothers placed the miniature shoes they had made before a small statue ofGuanyin. After this, Mama and Aunt gathered together alum, astringent, scissors, specialnail clippers, needles, and thread. They pulled out the long bandages they had made; eachwas five centimeters wide, three meters long, and lightly starched. Then all the women inthe household came upstairs. Elder Sister arrived last, with a bucket of boiled water inwhich mulberry root, ground almonds, urine, herbs, and roots steeped.

As the eldest, I went first, and I was determined to show how brave I could be. Mama washed my feet and rubbed them with alum, to contract the tissue and limit theinevitable secretions of blood and pus. She cut my toenails as short as possible. During

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this time, my bandages were soaked, so that when they dried on my skin, they wouldtighten even more. Next, Mama took one end of a bandage, placed it on my instep, then pulled it over my four smallest toes to begin the process of rolling them underneath my foot. From here she wrapped the bandage back around my heel.

Another loop around the ankle helped to secure and stabilize the first two loops. The idea was to get my toes and heel to meet, creating the cleft, but leaving my big toe to walk on. Mama repeated these steps until the entire bandage was used; Aunt and Grandmother looked over her shoulder the entire time, making sure no wrinkles saw their way into those loops. Finally, Mama sewed the end tightly shut so the bindings would not loosen and I would not be able to work my foot free.

She repeated the process on my other foot; then Aunt started on Beautiful Moon. Duringthe binding, Third Sister said she wanted a drink of water and went downstairs. Once Beautiful Moon’s feet were done, Mama called for my sister, but she didn’t answer. An hour before, I would have been told to go and find her, but for the next two years I wouldnot be allowed to walk down our stairs. Mama and Aunt searched the house and then went outside. I wanted to run to the lattice window and peek out, but already my feetached as the pressure on my bones built and the tightness of the bindings blocked my blood’s circulation. I looked over at Beautiful Moon, and her face was as white as her name implied. Twin streams of tears ran down her cheeks.

From outside, Mama’s and Aunt’s voices carried up to us as they called, “Third Sister,Third Sister.”

Grandmother and Elder Sister moved to the lattice window and looked out.

“Aiya,” Grandmother muttered.

Elder Sister glanced back at us. “Mama and Aunt are in the neighbors’ house. Can you hear Third Sister squealing?”

Beautiful Moon and I shook our heads no.

“Mama’s dragging Third Sister down the alley,” Elder Sister reported. Now we heardThird Sister yell, “No, I won’t go, I won’t do it!”

Mama scolded her loudly. “You’re a worthless nothing. You’re an embarrassment to our ancestors.” These were ugly words but not uncommon; they were heard almost every day in our village.

Third Sister was pushed into the room, but as soon as she fell to the floor she clamberedto her feet, ran to a corner, and cowered there.

“This will happen. You have no choice,” Mama declared, as Third Sister’s eyes dartedfrantically around the room, looking for a place to hide.

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She was trapped and nothing could stop the inevitable. Mama and Aunt advanced on her.She made one final effort to scramble under their outstretched arms, but Elder Sistergrabbed her. Third Sister was only six years old, but she struggled and fought as hard asshe could. Elder Sister, Aunt, and Grandmother held her down, while Mama hurriedlyapplied the bandages. The whole while, Third Sister screamed. A few times an arm brokefree, only to be restricted again. For one second, Mama loosened her grip on Third Sister’sfoot, and soon that entire leg flailed, the long bandage twirling through the air like anacrobat’s ribbon. Beautiful Moon and I were horrified. This was not the way someone inour family should act. But all we could do was sit and stare, because by now growingdaggers of pain were shooting from our feet up our legs. Finally, Mama finished her task.She threw Third Sister’s wra ped foot to the floor, stood, looked down at her youngestdaughter with disgust, and sp

ppat out a single word: “Worthless!”

Now I will write about the next few minutes and weeks, the length of which in a lifetimeas long as mine should be insignificant but to me were an eternity.

Mama looked at me first, because I was the eldest. “Get up!”

The idea was beyond my comprehension. My feet were throbbing.

Just a few minutes ago I had been so sure of my courage. Now I did my best to hold backmy tears and failed.

Aunt tapped Beautiful Moon’s shoulder. “Stand up and walk.”

Third Sister still wailed on the floor.

Mama yanked me out of the chair. The word pain does not begin to describe the feeling.My toes were locked under my feet so that my body weight fell entirely on the top ofthose appendages. I tried to balance backward on my heels. When Mama saw this, she hitme.

“Walk!”

I did the best I could. As I shuffled toward the window, Mama reached down and pulledThird Sister to her feet, dragged her to Elder Sister, and said, “Take her back and forthacross the room ten times.” Hearing this, I understood what was in store for me, and itwas nearly unfathomable. Seeing what was happening and being the lowest-rankedperson in the household, my aunt roughly took her daughter’s hand and pulled her upand out of the chair. Tears coursed down my face as Mama led me back and forth acrossthe women’s chamber. I heard myself whimpering. Third Sister kept hollering and tryingto wrestle away from Elder Sister. Grandmother, whose duty as the most importantwoman in our household was merely to oversee these activities, took Third Sister’s otherarm. Flanked by two people much stronger than she, Third Sister’s physical body had toobey, but this did not mean that her verbal complaints lessened in any way. OnlyBeautiful Moon buried her feelings, showing that she was a good daughter, even if she too

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was lowly in our household.d.

After our ten round-trips, Mama, Aunt, and Grandmother left us alone. We three girlswere nearly paralyzed from our physical torment, yet our trial had barely begun. We could not eat. Even with empty stomachs, we vomited out our agony. Finally, everyone inthe household went to bed. What a reprieve it was to lie down. Even to have our feet on the same level as the rest of our bodies was a relief. But as the hours passed a new kind ofsuffering overtook us. Our feet burned as though they lay among the coals of the brazier.Strange mewling sounds escaped from our mouths. Poor Elder Sister had to share theroom with us. She tried her best to comfort us with fairy stories and reminded us in themost gentle way possible that every girl of any standing throughout the great country ofChina went through what we were going through to become women, wives, and mothers of worth.

None of us slept that night, but whatever we thought we felt on the first day was twice as bad on the second. All three of us tried to rip our bindings, but only Third Sister actuallyfreed a foot. Mama beat her on her arms and legs, rewrapped the foot, and made her walkan extra ten rounds across the room as punishment. Over and over, Mama shook her roughly and demanded, “Do you want to become a little daughter-in-law? It’s not too late.That future can be yours.”

Our whole lives we had heard this threat, but none of us had ever seen a little daughter-in-law. Puwei was too poor for people to take in an unwanted, stubborn, big-footed girl,but we hadn’t seen a fox spirit either and we believed fully in those. So Mama threatenedand Third Sister temporarily surrendered.

On the fourth day, we soaked our bandaged feet in a bucket of hot water. The bindings were then removed, and Mama and Aunt checked our toenails, shaved calluses, scrubbedaway dead skin, dabbed on more alum and perfume to disguise the odor of our putrefyingflesh, and wrapped new clean bindings, even tighter this time. Every day the same. Every fourth day the same. Every two weeks a new pair of shoes, each pair smaller. The neighbor women visited, bringing us red-bean dumplings, in hopes that our bones wouldsoften faster, or dried chili peppers, in hopes that our feet would adopt that slim and pointed shape. Elder Sister’s sworn sisters arrived with little gifts that had helped them during their footbinding. “Bite the end of my calligraphy brush. The tip is thin anddelicate. This will help your feet to become thin and delicate too.” Or, “Eat these water chestnuts. They will tell your flesh to think small.” The women’s chamber turned into a room of discipline. Instead of doing our usual chores, we walked back and forth across the room. Every day Mama and Aunt added more rounds. Every day Grandmother was enlisted to help. When she tired, she rested on one of the beds and directed our activities from there. When it got colder, she pulled extra quilts over her body. As the days grew shorter and darker, her words got shorter and darker too, until she rarely spoke but juststared at Third Sister, willing her with her eyes to keep up with her rounds.

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For us, the pain didn’t lessen. How could it? But we learned the most important lesson for all women: that we must obey for our own good.

Even in those early weeks, a picture began to form of what the three of us would be likeas women. Beautiful Moon would be stoic and beautiful in all circumstances. Third Sister would be a complaining wife, bitter about her lot, ungracious about the gifts that were given to her. As for me—the so-called special one—I accepted my fate without argument.

One day, as I made one of my trips across the room, I heard something crack. One of my toes had broken. I thought the sound was something internal to my own body, but it was so sharp that everyone in the women’s chamber heard it. My mother’s eyes zeroed in on me. “Move! Progress is finally being made!” Walking, my whole body trembled. By nightfall the eight toes that needed to break had broken, but I was still made to walk. I feltmy broken toes under the weight of every step I took, for they were loose in my shoes.The freshly created space where once there had been a joint was now a gelatinous infinityof torture. The freezing weather did not begin to numb the excruciating sensations thatraged through my entire body. Still, Mama was not happy with my compliance. That nightshe told Elder Brother to bring back a reed cut from the riverbank. Over the next two days, she used this on the backs of my legs to keep me moving. On the day that my bindings were rewrapped, I soaked my feet as usual, but this time the massage to reshape the bones was beyond anything I had experienced so far. With her fingers Mama pulledmy loose bones back and up against the soles of my feet. At no other time did I see Mama’s mother love so clearly.

“A true lady lets no ugliness into her life,” she repeated again and again, drilling the wordsinto me. “Only through pain will you have beauty. Only through suffering will you findpeace. I wrap, I bind, but you will have the reward.”

Beautiful Moon’s toes broke a few days later, but Third Sister’s bones refused. Mama sent Elder Brother out on another errand. This time he needed to find small stones that couldbe wrapped against Third Sister’s toes for extra pressure. I have already said she was resistant, but now her cries were even louder, if such a thing were possible. BeautifulMoon and I thought she responded this way because she wanted more attention.

After all, Mama was devoting her efforts almost entirely to me. But on the days when our bindings were removed, we could see differences between our feet and Third Sister’s.Yes, blood and pus seeped through our bandages, as was normal, but with Third Sister the fluids that oozed from her body had taken on a new and different smell. And whileBeautiful Moon’s and my skin had wilted to the pallor of the dead, Third Sister’s skinshone as pink as a flower.

Madame Wang came for another visit. She inspected the work my mother had done and made a few recommendations of herbs that could be made into a tea to help the pain. Idid not try that bitter brew until the days of snow set in and the bones in my mid-footcracked apart. My mind was in a haze brought on by the combination of suffering and the第 20 页 共 189 页

herbs, when Third Sister’s condition suddenly changed. Her skin burned. Her eyes glittered with water and fever insanity, and her round face waned into sharp angles.When Mama and Aunt went downstairs to prepare the midday meal, Elder Sister tookpity on her pathetic sibling by letting her stretch out on one of the beds. Beautiful Moon and I took a break from our walking rounds. Afraid to be caught sitting, we stood at ThirdSister’s side. Elder Sister rubbed Third Sister’s legs, trying to give her some relief. But itwas the deepest part of winter and we all wore our clothes with the heaviest padding.With our help, Elder Sister pulled Third Sister’s pant leg up to her knee so she couldmassage the calf directly. That’s when we saw the brutal red streaks that rose from underneath Third Sister’s bindings, snaked their way up her leg, and disappeared backunder her pants. We looked at one another for a moment and then quickly examined theother leg. The same red streaks were there too.

Elder Sister went downstairs. To tell what we’d found, she had to confess her failure inher duties. We expected to hear Mama’s hand strike Elder Sister’s face. But no. Mama and Aunt hurried back upstairs instead. They stood at the top of the landing and surveyed theroom: Third Sister staring at the ceiling with her little legs exposed, two other girlswaiting meekly to be punished, and Grandmother asleep under her quilts. Aunt took one look at the scene and went to boil water.

Mama walked to the bed. She didn’t have her cane and she flapped across the room like a bird with broken wings, and as a person she was about as useless to help her own daughter. As soon as Aunt returned, Mama began to unwrap the bindings. A disgustingodor infused the room. Aunt gagged. Although it was snowing, Elder Sister tore away therice paper that covered the windows to give the stench an exit. Finally, Third Sister’s feetwere fully exposed. The pus was dark green and the blood had coagulated into brownish,putrid mud. Third Sister was brought to a sitting position and her unbound feet set into a steaming bowl of water. She was so far away in her mind that she didn’t cry out.