Read Snow Flower and the Secret Fan for Free Online Page A

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