Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (5 page)

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 back my 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 of those appendages. I tried to balance backward on my heels. When Mama saw this, she hit me.

“Walk!”

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

After our ten round-trips, Mama, Aunt, and Grandmother left us alone. We three girls were 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 in the 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 of suffering 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 the room with us. She tried her best to comfort us with fairy stories and reminded us in the most gentle way possible that every girl of any standing throughout the great country of China 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 actually freed a foot. Mama beat her on her arms and legs, rewrapped the foot, and made her walk an 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 threatened and 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, scrubbed away dead skin, dabbed on more alum and perfume to disguise the odor of our putrefying flesh, 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 would soften 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 and delicate. 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 just stared at Third Sister, willing her with her eyes to keep up with her rounds.

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 like as 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 felt my 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 infinity of torture. The freezing weather did not begin to numb the excruciating sensations that raged through my entire body. Still, Mama was not happy with my compliance. That night she 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 pulled my 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 words into me. “Only through pain will you have beauty. Only through suffering will you find peace. 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 could be 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. Beautiful Moon 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 while Beautiful Moon’s and my skin had wilted to the pallor of the dead, Third Sister’s skin shone 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. I did not try that bitter brew until the days of snow set in and the bones in my mid-foot cracked apart. My mind was in a haze brought on by the combination of suffering and the 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 took pity 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 Third Sister’s side. Elder Sister rubbed Third Sister’s legs, trying to give her some relief. But it was 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 could massage 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 back under her pants. We looked at one another for a moment and then quickly examined the other leg. The same red streaks were there too.

Elder Sister went downstairs. To tell what we’d found, she had to confess her failure in her 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 the room: Third Sister staring at the ceiling with her little legs exposed, two other girls waiting 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 disgusting odor infused the room. Aunt gagged. Although it was snowing, Elder Sister tore away the rice paper that covered the windows to give the stench an exit. Finally, Third Sister’s feet were 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.

All of Third Sister’s screams of the past weeks took on a different meaning. Did she know on that first day that something bad might happen? Was that why she had resisted? Had Mama made some terrible mistake in her haste? Had Third Sister’s blood poisoning been triggered by wrinkles in her bindings? Was she weak from bad nutrition as Madame Wang claimed I had been? What had she done in her previous life to deserve this punishment now?

Mama scrubbed at those feet, trying to remove the infection. Third Sister fainted. The water in the bucket became murky with noxious discharge. Finally Mama pulled the broken appendages from the bucket and patted them dry.

“Mother,” Mama called to her mother-in-law, “you have more experience than I. Please help me.”

But Grandmother didn’t stir under her quilts. Mama and Aunt disagreed about what to do next.

“We should leave her feet open to the air,” Mama suggested.

“You know that’s the worst thing,” Aunt came back. “Many of her bones have already broken. If you don’t bind them, they will never heal properly. She’ll be crippled. Unmarriageable.”

“I would rather keep her on this earth unmarried than lose her forever.”

“Then she would have no purpose and no value,” Aunt reasoned. “Your mother love tells you this is no future.”

The whole time they argued, Third Sister didn’t move. Alum was spread over her skin and her feet were rebound. The next day, the snow still fell and she was worse. Though we were not rich, Baba went out into the storm and brought back the village doctor, who looked at Third Sister and shook his head. It was the first time I saw that gesture, which means that we are powerless to stop the soul of a loved one from leaving for the spirit world. You can fight it, but once death has grasped hold, nothing can be done. We are meek in the face of the afterworld’s desires. The doctor offered to make a poultice and prepare herbs for a tea, but he was a good and honest man. He understood our situation.

“I can do these things for your little girl,” he confided to Baba, “but they will be money spent on a no-use cause.”

But the bad news of that day was not yet done. While we kowtowed to the doctor, he looked round the room and saw Grandmother under her quilts. He moved to her, touched her forehead, and listened to the secret pulses that measured her
chi.
He looked up at my father. “Your honored mother is very sick. Why did you not mention this before?”

How could Baba answer this and save face? He was a good son, but he was also a man, and this business fell within the inner realm. Still, Grandmother’s welfare was his most important filial duty. While he was downstairs smoking his pipe with his brother and waiting for winter to end, upstairs two people had fallen under the spell of ghost spirits.

Again, our whole family set to questioning. Was too much time spent on worthless girls that the one woman of value and esteem in our home was allowed to weaken? Had all that walking back and forth across the room with Third Sister stolen Grandmother’s storehouse of steps? Had Grandmother—tired of hearing Third Sister’s screams—closed down her
chi
to shut out the irksome racket? Had the ghost spirits who’d come to prey on Third Sister been tempted by the possibility of another victim?

After so much noise, and after all the attention that had been paid in recent weeks to Third Sister, all focus now shifted to Grandmother. My father and uncle left her side only to smoke, eat, or relieve themselves. Aunt assumed all the household duties, making meals for everyone, washing, and caring for all of us. I never saw Mama sleep. As the first daughter-in-law, she had two main purposes in life: to provide sons to carry on the family and to care for her husband’s mother. She should have watched Grandmother’s health more assiduously. Instead, she had allowed man-hope to enter her mind by shifting her attention to me and my good-luck future. Now, with the fierce determination born of her earlier neglectfulness, she performed all the prescribed rituals, preparing special offerings to the gods and to our ancestors, praying and chanting, even making soup from her own blood to rebuild Grandmother’s life force.