White Lily (2 page)

During the meal, as servants scooted to and fro with plates of savory stewed chicken, roast duck, steamed fish, stir-fried vegetables, and heaping bowls of rice, she even escaped the usual warnings
from Nai-nai and her father not to eat and talk at the same time.

No one can sit still on occasions like this, surrounded by so many people and so much delicious food, White Lily assured herself. Across the table, her father, Nai-nai, the merchant and his wife — her future father-and mother-in-law — chatted and laughed as they plied their chopsticks and tipped their wine cups.

But something was wrong with her mother, White Lily noticed. All through the meal — no, all through the day, she recalled — Mother had been unusually quiet. Now she seemed sad.

“Is Mother ill?” White Lily whispered to Fu-gui.

“Not really,” he answered without looking at her.

“Then you know. Why don’t you tell me?”

“Keep your voice down, White Lily,” Fu-gui hissed. “You’ll find out soon enough.”

4

D
arkness fell. After the guests had left, the house grew quiet. White Lily sat up in her bed, too excited to sleep.
If only each day were New Year’s Day
, she wished.
If only I could be this happy always!

Silently, her bedroom door opened. Mother hobbled in, holding between her hands a red wooden basin, a wisp of steam clouding above it.

“Mother, what’s the hot water for?” White Lily asked as Nai-nai, too, entered the room, a bundle of white bandages tucked under her arm and a low stool in one hand. As her mother put the basin down on the floor, in front of White Lily’s bed, tears rolled down her cheeks, like pearls from a broken necklace.

White Lily’s cheerfulness evaporated like the
steam that hung over the basin. “Mother, is something wrong?”

Nai-nai spoke, her voice quaking hoarsely. “My dear White Lily, come, come and sit on this stool. It’s time … time …”

“Time?” White Lily stammered. “Time for what?”

But no one answered. Instead, Mother tenderly pulled off White Lily’s socks and guided her feet into the warm water. White Lily stared wide-eyed at the blankness on her mother’s face. Her mouth opened and closed but not a word came out. The silence began to frighten her.
It’s New Year
, White Lily thought.
So why is Mother weeping, as if somebody died?

“Don’t be afraid,” Nai-nai murmured, firmly gripping one of White Lily’s legs under her arm. One by one she started folding White Lily’s four small toes under, until they pointed along the curve of the sole, until they touched the heel.

“Grandma! That hurts!” White Lily gasped as she tried to pull her leg free. But Nai-nai’s hands were too strong. While Nai-nai held White Lily’s foot, her mother wrapped the dampened bandage around it, over and over again, ignoring White
Lily’s screams and heart-rending pleas. It seemed as if both Mother and Nai-nai had suddenly lost their hearing. Nai-nai clasped the struggling girl as Mother wound the cloth around the other foot, turn after turn, to bind White Lily’s little toes in that painful and unnatural position. The agony was too much to bear. Finally, White Lily passed out from horror and exhaustion.

Outside, children’s laughter and shouts and the sound of their running footsteps floated into the house, amid the explosion of firecrackers that were to chase away the bad luck and misery of the past.

5

W
hen dawn broke, White Lily awoke to find her mother sitting beside her bed, dozing. White Lily groaned. Her feet felt heavy as stones. They ached so!

“Mother, please, please take off the bandages,” she begged weakly, reaching for the hated bindings.

“No, no, my dear. I can’t. Your father and Nai-nai would never let it happen,” Mother whispered sadly, gently pushing White Lily back onto the bed. “The worst part is over, and the pain will go away. Soon you will get used to it, just like Nai-nai and I did. It’s the bitterness all females have to eat.”

“Not me, Mother!” cried White Lily. “I want my own feet back.”

The bandages stayed on. Every passing day White Lily’s pain increased as the layers of cloth
dried and shrank. They formed bulky, hard shells, like plaster, ruthlessly squeezing her toes against her soles.

There were many visitors. Each of them brought White Lily her favorite candies and cakes and gave out the highest compliments. White Lily pleaded with every one of them to remove the bandages and set her feet free, but embarrassed silence was their only response.

“I’ll never run barefoot again,” she promised her father. But each time he walked away, his face clouded with fury.

When her future father-in-law got wind of White Lily’s complaints and lack of cooperation, he was displeased and muttered that he might have chosen the wrong wife for his son.

White Lily’s tears ran dry and her pleas fell on deaf ears. Day after day she watched helplessly the wrapping and unwrapping of her aching and distorted feet. Now I understand why Mother calls her own feet teardrops, she thought bitterly.

Two months later, White Lily was told that she should try to walk, without assistance.
Mother and Fu-gui held her up and watched her make awkward steps. Her feet felt like wooden clubs. The pain of each step she took, tottering on her heels and the knuckles of her toes, was like arrows shot into her heart.

“Bound feet are supposed to make you beautiful, and that means a good marriage and a secure future,” Mother explained to White Lily. She used herself as an example: wife of a rich landowner and learned official, a glory to her family and ancestors, living a life with no worry about food and clothing.

“Your father’s family never would have chosen me as their daughter-in-law if my parents hadn’t solemnly promised to have my feet bound. The custom has prevailed for centuries. We women can only obey.”

She paused a moment, and went on. “My daughter, your father has heard your cries, but can do nothing to help you either. We must all bow to the old rules and traditions.”

Yet Nai-nai pointed out that only the lucky ones were entitled to have “Three-Inch Golden Lilies.” Unbound feet were “peasant’s feet,” she said, and they belonged to the poor. “You don’t want to be a worthless girl, do you, Granddaughter?”

“Will Brother Fu-gui have a poor life and an uncertain future?” White Lily asked her father one day as he pored over a ledger in his study. “Why haven’t his feet been bound?”

“Stop talking nonsense, you silly girl!” stormed her father, throwing down his writing brush. “How dare you utter such unlucky words against your brother. Fu-gui is a man, and that is his asset. His future lies in his head, not in the size of his feet. He’s going to be a scholar, an intellectual like me, governing those who labor with their hands.”

“Then, why can’t I become a scholar, Father? Why can’t you send me to school to learn to read and — ?”

Before she finished her sentence, her father shooed her out of the room.

6

F
u-gui was four years older than White Lily, and a bright student. He loved his sister dearly. During the past weeks, White Lily’s every cry of pain and every appeal for help had ripped his heart to pieces. Each time he begged his father’s mercy to set his sister’s feet free, he was harshly criticized and punished with excessive homework. One evening while studying in his room, he put down his book and went to his father’s study once again. There he made a solemn vow to his father: He would look after his sister for the rest of her life if only he could take off the cruel binding from her feet.

“She doesn’t need to marry the merchant’s son, or anyone else if that’s what concerns you, Father. I will take care of her to the very end,” he swore.

If it were not for Nai-nai’s intercession and Mother’s firm reminder that Fu-gui was their only son, Fu-gui would have been sent away to the Imperial Army for contradicting and disobeying his father.

Meanwhile, during her many sleepless nights, White Lily thought over her father’s words again and again until they spun around in her head. She gazed at the ceiling for hours in the darkness, wishing with her whole heart that she could find a solution, or a miracle.

One morning, when the first light gilded the top of the willow tree, a thought landed in her mind.
Later, while walking stiffly on a paddy dike, holding Fu-gui’s arm for support, she told him her idea.

That evening, according to the plan she and Fu-gui had worked out, White Lily made a solemn pledge to Nai-nai, her mother, and her father. She would cause them no further trouble, she promised. She would no longer loosen or unwrap the bandages as she had done whenever she had a chance. She assured them that she had finally come to accept her bound feet. “The rice has been cooked,” she quoted her father’s saying. “And I also promise to bathe and rebind my feet by myself.”

Nai-nai and Father happily agreed, with great relief. But Mother, who knew White Lily best, wondered.

White Lily’s compliance brought back the usual peacefulness to the Lee household and regained the satisfaction and approval of the merchant.

7

I
f Fu-gui had been praised as an obedient and dutiful son by the villagers, he was admired more nowadays as a caring big brother. When White Lily was able to walk on her own, she was frequently seen hobbling around the village with Fu-gui at her side, like an inseparable shadow. Sometimes they traversed the paddy dikes; at others they lingered by the lily ponds. They always ended their daily walks at the riverbank, where they would sit and while away the rest of the afternoon, continuing their seemingly endless conversations. When one pair of lips ceased moving, the other pair went on. They would trail their fingers in the loose black sand, up and down, left and right, sometimes rapidly, sometimes snail-like, as if in slow motion. Anyone who approached them closely enough
would see the brother and sister locked in a game of “Xs and Os.” But after the curious villager passed by, the game was swept from the sand, and the fingers danced again.