Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See

breathing deepen, I wondered how could I make her love me the way I longed to be loved.

Love

    WE WOMEN ARE EXPECTED TO LOVE OUR CHILDREN AS SOON as they leave our bodies, but who among us has not felt disappointment at the sight of a daughter or felt the dark gloom that settles upon the mind even when holding a precious son, if he does nothing but cry and makes your mother-in-law look at you as though your milk were sour? We may love our daughters with all our hearts, but we must train them through pain. We love our sons most of all, but we can never be a part of their world, the outer realm of men. We are expected to love our husbands from the day of Contracting a Kin, though we will not see their faces for another six years. We are told to love our in-laws, but we enter those families as strangers, as the lowest person in the household, just one step on the ladder above a servant. We are ordered to love and honor our husbands’ ancestors, so we perform the proper duties, even if our hearts quietly call out gratitude to our natal ancestors. We love our parents because they take care of us, but we are considered worthless branches on the family tree. We drain the family resources. We are raised by one family for another. As happy as we are in our natal families, we all know that parting is inevitable. So we love our families, but we understand that this love will end in the sadness of departure. All these types of love come out of duty, respect, and gratitude. Most of them, as the women in my county know, are sources of sadness, rupture, and brutality.
    But the love between a pair of old sames is something completely different. As Madame Wang said, a
laotong
relationship is made by choice. While it’s true that Snow Flower and I didn’t mean all the words we’d written to each other in our initial contact through the fan, when we first looked in each other’s eyes in the palanquin I felt something special pass between us—like a spark to start a fire or a seed to grow rice. But a single spark is not enough to warm a room nor is a single seed enough to grow a fruitful crop. Deep love—true-heart love—must grow. Back then I didn’t yet understand the burning kind of love, so instead I thought about the rice paddies I used to see on my daily walks down to the river with my brother when I still had all my milk teeth. Maybe I could make our love grow like a farmer made his crop to grow—through hard work, unwavering will, and the blessings of nature. How funny that I can remember that even now!
Waaa!
I knew so little about life, but I knew enough to think like a farmer.
    So, as a girl, I prepared my earth—getting a piece of paper from Baba or asking Elder Sister for a tiny scrap of her dowry cloth—on which to plant. My seeds were the
nu shu
characters I composed. Madame Wang became my irrigation ditch. When she stopped by to see how my feet were progressing, I gave her my missive—in the form of a letter, a piece of weaving, or an embroidered handkerchief—and she delivered it to Snow Flower.
    Nothing can grow without the sun—the one thing completely outside the farmer’s control. I came to believe that Snow Flower filled that role. For me, sunshine came in the form of her answers to my
nu shu
letters. When I received something from Snow Flower, all of us gathered to decipher the meaning, for she already used words and images that challenged Aunt’s knowledge.
    I wrote little-girl things:
I am fine. How are you?
She might respond:
Two birds balance on the top branches of a tree. Together they fly into the sky.
I might write:
Today Mama taught me how to make sticky rice wrapped in taro leaf.
Snow Flower might write back:
Today I looked out my lattice window. I thought of the phoenix rising to find a companion, and then I thought of you.
I might write:
A lucky date has been chosen for Elder Sister’s wedding.
She might write back:
Your sister is now in the second stage of her many marriage traditions. Happily,