You are a plant.
Look at you, lying on your bed uselessly, curled up like a baby. You spend your whole day in that bed, staring at the ceiling—if you're not crying that is. In this state, you really aren't much better than a plant. Are you trying to hide from the world? Why? Are you afraid of the world? Since you're a plant, I guess you should be. You're going to get eaten alive, as useless and weak as you are.
What was that pathetic whimper? Were you trying to say something? 'I'm not a plant', hmm? Not-plants don't lie in bed crying all day, and they don't sound like dying horses. You do, so you must be a plant.
Ah, so you haven't completely lost your backbone. Don't be so offended, though; I'm only saying the truth. You've been like this for the past two months. Staring aimlessly at the ceiling, hardly eating—you've lost so much weight, I can barely see you!—with the curtains closed and the lights turned off. It's like you're trying to fade away. Why? Are you too weak to live anymore? Really? Where's your strength, war hero?
Pfft! You say you still have it, and yet, here you are, lying in your bed like a plant. Even your voice is weak; I can barely hear you. Speak up and clearly too. I did not raise a daughter who whispers; if you're going to whisper, better not say anything at all—that'll save everyone's breath.
Well. At least you haven't lost your sarcasm.
When Cho turned eleven, her mother sat her down on her living room couch. Cho was confused by her mother's somber expression; from the moment she had received her acceptance letter to Hogwarts, she'd been practically walking on air. It seemed inappropriate for her mother to be so serious and yet here she was, with her familiar fear-inducing expression that had Cho scrambling to her seat.
"Now that you are almost a woman," her mother started, "It's time I tell you the story of the Chinese women warriors." Cho stared at her mother with an intrigued expression; the Chinese women warriors? She had taken to reading lots of myths and books, and she had never come across this story. Her mother noticed her confusion, "This is a special story, one that mothers pass onto their daughters when their daughters become women. This story will teach you how to be a warrior and not a slave." Cho felt a rising urgency inside her, pressing her to pay attention; her back straightened and her eyes fixed on her mother's face as she listened with rapt attention to the story.
Once upon a time, when China was ruled by a cruel and lazy emperor, men from the Chinese army found a group of five women in a shed in an abandoned village. The women had been locked in this shed for up to two or three months, and the time without sunlight, ample food, or water had sucked all their strength from them. The lack of sunlight had made their skin pale, hollow; they hissed at even the slightest hint of sunlight, their eyes burning. The lack of food made their faces sunken and their bodies so thin that if they turned to their sides, they seemed to disappear.
They had had no means of escaping; their arms had been tied behind their backs, twisted so they had no hope of freeing them. Their feet had been bound up to five times, forced tighter and smaller, toes squished together with no relief. Their now petite, tiny feet were shaped like the coveted three-inch golden lotuses, a symbol of beauty, but when the women tried to walk, they screamed in pain and teetered and tottered; they were forced to crawl on their hands and knees instead.
The women had also been gagged and forced silent; when they spoke for the first time in these many months, their voices came out scratchy, alien, and incomprehensible. In gagging them, their attackers had not only stolen their voices but their words, reducing them to nonsensical sounds. Now, they had no chance of telling the soldiers what had happened to them or who was responsible.
These women were irreparably broken, and perhaps it would've been wiser to kill them then and there. Their lives promised nothing but more hardship and pain, and it did not seem worth it, as even if they were perfectly healthy, they would still be forced to spend their entire lives on their hands and knees—that was simply the reality of being a woman.
But the women fixed the soldiers with a serious stare. They did not glare, smile, cry, or beg; they simply met the men eye-to-eye, refusing to look away. That look showed what had not been crushed in the two or three months they'd been locked in this shed, what had only grown and hardened. Their eyes held a steel edge, fashioned from their persisting pain and willpower, powerful enough that the soldiers decided to take them to a nearby village where they would be able to work in the fish market. "They will not earn any money," one soldier later explained, "they're just too weak. But if we didn't bring them here, I think they may have actually killed us."
How funny that these women, whose petite and dainty hands now incapable of even holding a string, could strangle a grown man's throat.
You haven't been the same for a while now.
No, I'm not just talking about since the end of the war—but that's true. After that battle, you've been a plant, but even before that, I could see that you were broken. I think it was since the year of the Triwizard Tournament when—
Oh, okay. I won't talk about it, if it's only going to make you cry more. I'm rather tired of your tears by now.
You know, before that year, you looked pretty when you cried. It's a Chinese thing; we let our tears fall down our faces quietly so they almost melt into our faces. It's like they're not even there. Remember your nana's funeral? All your aunts, cousins, me... we did not make a sound. No ugly sobbing and sniffling. Just silent, invisible tears.
Since that year, though, you've been crying ugly non-Chinese tears. You snort sometimes. Your tears stick to your face. It's very unattractive.
Darling, put your wand down. There's no reason to get angry with me. I'm just wondering where my daughter went, because I don't know this broken shell she left behind.
The broken women were taken to the fishing village and given work as washers; with their frailty, there was not much else they could do. Their sensitivity to sunlight forced them to say hidden in the shade, under parasols, where they often seemed to fade into the background. Because their eyes would burn at the slightest hint of light, they were forced to look down at the ground instead. Their weak hands and broken feet forced them to stay in one place.
As broken as they were, though, the women slowly regained their strength. They started first by learning how to speak again, their voices not returning to the quiet, soft, and feminine tones that they had been but becoming overly bold and blunt, shockingly clear and completely unhesitant. They did not let the words they wanted to say linger on their tongues, but shouted them with fierce clarity, so loud villagers across the street could hear their alien voices. They became familiar with the bitter taste of anger; they kept this taste under their tongues, as a constant reminder of the pain they'd suffered. They learned how to voice their revenge as whispers to one another, how to draw strength from each others' voices, murmuring truths under their breaths, the only words they spoke quietly.
Before they could raise their eyes to the sun, the women used their hands to explore the world, their delicate fingers tracing every crevice and curve the world had to offer, whether it was the prickle of a thorn or the soft velvet of a rose petal. From jagged edges to smooth curves, they braved it all, and as a reward, became able to see from their touch. They learned how to listen and feel the earth and piece together the clues to develop a clear picture of the world; when they finally looked up from the ground, their eyes were a secondary sense of sight. Their sight had become so clear that people looked away from them, afraid that the women would be able to see past their skin and bones and see the delicate wireframe of hopes, fears, and secrets that composed them.
The hardest obstacle for them to overcome was their permanently disfigured feet, squished and molded like blocks, so walking was painful. At first, the women were forced to crawl on their hands on knees, but as they became stronger, they started to walk on their hands. Those delicate fingers, incapable of holding onto even a fishing line, now carried them effortlessly. As they grew stronger and learned how to transform their pain to strength, the women transitioned to walking with their feet on the ground—but rather than keeping the soles of their feet flat on the ground, they floated, their feet barely touching the ground between each of their steps. As they started to regain weight and their cheeks flushed with color, passers-by would stop and stare at the sight of these ethereal beauties, practically dancing through the village.
Eventually, the broken women learned too how to ride on horses; though they had grown strong, their permanently bound feet were too slow, so they resorted instead to creatures instead. They mounted their horses in one swift motion, finding that they were able to sit naturally, spreading their legs and straightening their backs. The villagers were appalled at the sight of the women on the horses, seated like men; they called the women inhuman. Their shock increased more when the women started wielding swords, carrying them at their hips like female Chinese soldiers.
They were broken no longer, but they were not the same women who had been thrown into the shed, bound and helpless.
I was just thinking about the first Quidditch game of yours I saw. It was only in a photograph; I couldn't be there in person. But even in that picture, I could see your happiness when you kicked off the ground.
Your smile was so big, I thought your face would crack in two. You looked so happy—like you were completely free. And you looked so confident too, so strong—I remember you almost fell off your broom, but you grabbed it tightly and swung yourself back on and laughed the entire time. I almost had a heart attack!
And then you had this look of concentration on your face; your face was so serious, stern, so focused. It scared me a little, that look; you looked like you were a tiger, hunting prey. But I was also so proud. That's my daughter. That's what I said to everyone.
I kept the picture, you know. It's in my wallet; I was looking at it earlier. I just wanted to remember how free you looked. Then, I thought that you would never be a slave; up in the air, no one could bind your feet and steal your voice.
Yet here you are, unable to move or speak.
"After two years of healing, the woman warriors had regained their strength to the point that they no longer needed to hide in their fishing village anymore," Cho's mother continued.
They had grown strong enough to silence grown men with a look and a single word and could best even the most experienced fishermen in catching fish with their fast, lithe, firm hands, so the women decided to leave the village. They had trained and grown, and were ready to take their revenge on the men who had thrown them into the shed. With their faces painted in white and donning black and red dresses, they mounted their horses and rode off.
On their horses, they rode so fast, they felt like they were flying; the wind whipped through their hair and with each thundering step the horses took, the women felt their hearts beating to the same hammering rhythm. Starting from their old fishing village, they headed northward first; at the first village they stopped, they saw a gang of men trying to force a woman down to her knees. In that woman they saw themselves, so the woman warriors unmounted their horses and beheaded the bastard men, freeing the woman, who looked up at them in her crumpled position on the ground with reverence. The warrior women could see their own hopes and fears, the ones they'd whispered to one another in the quiet moments before sleep, reflected in her eyes, so they helped to her feet and stole some rice from the homes of the men who'd tried to attack her. They gave this rice to her and told her to come join them in a year when she had regained her voice and grown as strong as she could be.
They continued this for months, riding through all of China, bringing a storm on their heels. They attacked the vicious and greedy bastard men who tried to bind women, steal their voices, and throw them into sheds. They broke down the locked doors to sheds, freed the whimpering, bound, and broken women curled up inside, and taught them how to walk on their hands and scream their revenge so loud they shattered the eardrums of any other man who dared approach them. They gained a reputation for being female avengers, for striking terror and revolution wherever they went.
And then, they finally learned where the men who had thrown them into the shed in the first place now lived.
The women, after years of endless pain, had been hardened to any sort of melancholic, weak sentiment; they did not cower in fear at this news, but instead sharpened their swords. This was it, the moment of reckoning—their final acts of revenge. The warrior women travelled for three days to reach the village where the men lived, and in the nights, they slept beside one another, whispering their revenge to one another, letting their hopes, fears, and strength echo in their ears, slide between the bones of their ribcages, and fill the silence between their heartbeats. After those three days and nights, they arrived at the village where the men lived.
They were quiet and expressionless as they walked through the village in search of those men; to avoid being too conspicuous, they'd dressed in soft feminine clothing that seemed to restrict their movement. They'd combed their hair back, not letting it fly in their faces as they had for the past two years, and they walked with petite, female steps, rather than the large manly strides they had grown accustomed to taking. However, they kept their heads up, their eyes forward, blazing with a secret determination. Though they looked like china dolls at the surface, the villagers looked away from their eyes, not wanting to feel them shifting through the messes of their souls, finding their darkest secrets.
The women's eyes searched the village marketplace, looking for their prey—they were not difficult to find. Even from fifty feet away, the women warriors could hear the men's robust fat-man laughter; following the sounds, they found the men sitting on thrones at the end of the marketplace, looking at the other vendors. They were surrounded with food and sacks of gold coins, and they were rotund and lazy and laughed too loudly, trying to drown out the voices of all the others in the village.
When the men saw the women, they raised their eyebrows, exchanged looks, and laughed with identical tones of amusement, surprise, and derision. "What do you want, maggots?" they asked, laughing when one of the woman warriors turned her gaze sharply at him, her lips turning down in a slight frown. One of the men laughed again, teasing, "Oh, don't be so offended—you know the saying, right? 'Girls are maggots in the rice.'"
The warrior women were not offended though. How could they be? Their pain had led them to lose any sense of pride; they had been forced to be humble, and this humility had taught them the patience to keep their hands on their swords, and let their words rise from their throats to their tongues, ready to be released at the right moment. So, they let the men laugh rambunctiously, call them maggots, and look at them with a look of a man who wants to devour a woman, to eat her alive and then spit the pieces back up because she's simply not worthy—but she's pretty, so she must be used.
"What are you doing standing there like that? Go back to the markets, or to your homes and husbands." The men grew agitated when the women did not respond, or burst into tears as they expected, and grew angrier when they continued to meet their gazes. The men despised the lack of self-consciousness, femininity, and softness in their eyes—there was only hardness, nurtured from their pain and stubbornness.
"Well? What are you doing still standing here?" the men demanded, fidgeting in their silver thrones.
"We are here to avenge the women you threw into a shed two years and three months ago," the women declared in their alien voices, "and all the men and women that followed. Your tyranny is over. Surrender now and we will take mercy." They withdrew their swords from behind
The men stared at them with seriousness for a moment, before laughing in amused disbelief. "You! But you are women. How can you even hold those swords? Your hands are too weak," they questioned. "We could crush you in a matter of seconds, you're so weak. There's a reason we threw those women into the shed: women are too weak to be of any use. Better to throw them back into the river."
These comments lit a spark of anger in the women warriors' eyes, and they raised their swords. Too weak? Useless? they repeated, their anger enflaming; they charged at the men, releasing a war cry, slicing their heads, slaying the tyrants. as they slayed the bastard men, their anger enflaming them. After, they took the sacks of gold coins and the food that the men had been hoarding and returned it to the people of the village. The villagers stared at the women warriors with clear awe in their eyes, amazed. "Goddesses," they whispered among themselves.
The swordswomen shook their heads, not out of modesty but because this was false. They were not goddesses; they were broken China dolls who picked up their shattered souls and bodies and patched them together in a whole new combination, to create a new sort of woman-not goddesses, but warriors.
Talk. I haven't heard your true voice in months. You used to talk so loud; your voice filled these walls. I'm positive it was the same at Hogwarts, no? You must have been constantly talking, you with your million friends—at least until that year. Now, all I hear are whimpers and whispers from a broken China doll. That's what you are: a China doll that's been dropped and has shattered into a million pieces. I've tried to keep all the pieces together, but only you can patch yourself together.
I'm not helping you? I've been sitting here beside for you for the past two months—I've been watching you cry and stare at the ceiling and be unable to speak and move. I've been trying to feed you, to help you go back to sleep when you wake up screaming from nightmares. I have done everything, everything for a woman who's too weak to help yourself.
I may not know how you feel, but you don't know how I feel. Every time I look at you, I remember the blood on your arms and your face and no light at all in your eyes. When I saw you after that battle, you were gripping your wand so tightly I thought it would break. I had to pry it out of your hands. And then I had to watch you sleep for so long, I thought you wouldn't ever wake up—and then find a girl who was only a shell of herself when you awoke. And I'm not even going to talk about you after Diggory. How do you think I felt, watching my only daughter shatter to pieces? How I felt, watching that, and being unable to do a single thing? You don't know anything.
I feel like I have failed.
I thought I taught you to be stronger than this; I thought I taught you how to patch your broken soul together, how to wage war against those hurt you, and how to be a warrior—like the story of the women warriors. Apparently, all I taught you was how to cry.
Well?
Aren't you going to say anything?
Nearly nine years after her mother told her the story of the women warriors, Cho still did not know what to say. After hearing that story, she'd been amazed—was this true? she asked. What happened next? Did the women rule over China? She begged her mother for more, but her mother smiled her coy, secretive smile and told Cho that she'd tell her when Cho was a little bit older.
Cho was a little bit older now, but she did not need to know the ending.
She imagined that the broken women had gone back to their fishing village after getting their revenge. That they'd taken warrior clothing and removed their make-up. That they'd stared at their reflections and tried to understand who they were now. Flashes of what they'd done, all the blood they'd spilled would flash across their eyes. They had gotten their revenge by beheading those men, certainly, but the pain had still not disappeared. It had grown to be a part of them, eternal in their souls.
Cho imagined them looking at their faces and seeing under the strength to the pain underneath. She imagined them removing their masks of strength to reveal the crying women underneath, whose tears never disappeared—whose tears could not disappear after all the pain they'd suffered, seen, and caused.
Cho wiped away her tears now, sitting up in bed and staring at the empty spot where her mother used to sit.
She didn't need to know the ending of their story—she was living their ending.
A/N: Firstly, I have to give credit to Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior for the inspiration behind this; I used her memoir as inspiration for the myth of the swordswomen (though this was only mentioned in passing in the second chapter of her book; I added many elements to it). This myth is also partially inspired by the true story of Hua/Fa Mu Lan. The while "you are a plant" aspect is also inspired by The Woman Warrior.
I hope you liked this and that the narrative structure of this made sense; the italics are Cho's mother speaking to her in the present, if it wasn't clear. (If it wasn't, man, this really didn't do its job!)