Zigu, Goddess of the Latrine

The village of Shuixi lay along a stream, and each New Year's Eve its women would gather in the back court to welcome the goddess Zigu and learn what the coming year would bring. The rite was simple. They took a rice winnowing basket, covered it with a clean cloth, and thrust a pair of bamboo chopsticks through as a brush; beneath it they set a tray of fine ash. Two women would grasp the handles of the basket, close their eyes, and call upon the spirit. When the goddess came, the basket moved of itself and wrote upon the ash, laying bare the hidden griefs of a household.

It is said that Zigu was once a concubine, hated by the wife, who died at the privy on the fifteenth of the first month; the Lord of Heaven, pitying her wrong, made her goddess of the latrine. The old women of the village held that, dwelling in so low and foul a place, she best understood the sorrows of women, and so they welcomed her only beside the privy, and never lightly.

Ruan Qiaoniang was three-and-twenty when her husband Shen Wenqing died. He had been frail of body; three years after their marriage a cold sickness took him, and no medicine availed. He left a daughter, Pan'er, then four years old, who babbled unaware that her father was gone. From that day Qiaoniang kept the house alone. At dawn she carried Pan'er to the fields, barefoot in the mud, weeding and watering; at night she lit a bean-oil lamp and spun hemp until the third watch, the loom ticking. The villagers saw her hands like withered bamboo, the knuckles knotted and split, and sighed: "That woman has a fierce heart."

Among the clan was Shen Abao, a wastrel cousin, idle and given to gambling. He had long eyed the two mu of dowry fields and the two thatched rooms that Qiaoniang had brought. He went privately to the clan elder, Shen Jingzhi: "Wenqing left no son; his land should return to the ancestral hall, not stay with a widow of another surname." Jingzhi, old and greedy, took a shoulder of pork and two jugs of wine from Abao and agreed.

Now when Qiaoniang married, her father, pitying the distant match, had given those two mu as her dowry and drawn up a deed: "These fields are the private dowry of the Ruan house, not the ancestral estate of the Shen; while the fields stand the woman stands, when the fields go the woman dies." It was witnessed by old Wang, a village dame, and by Sanniang, Wenqing's sister. Abao learned of it, climbed the wall one night, and stole the deed, hiding it on the beam above the kitchen hearth, meaning to strip Qiaoniang of her proof. After that he came often to drive her out. She would not yield. In his anger he sent men to pull up her wheat by night, and smeared filth upon her door. Qiaoniang did not weep, nor rail; each day she took Pan'er and stood at the head of the field, and when the usurpers came she said plainly: "This is my father's dowry field; the deed is plain. To seize it is first to seize my father's heart. While the field stands I stand; if it goes, I die with it." Then she carried her daughter home, barred the door, and spun the faster.

On the day before the festival, wind and snow filled the wild. Jingzhi led Abao and four or five clansmen to Qiaoniang's house, spread wine and meat in the court, and called it "settling the estate" — but in truth to force her to sign the fields away. Qiaoniang barred the door and would not come out. Abao, hot-tempered, kicked it open and shattered her earthen pot; the thin gruel inside spilled across the floor. Pan'er wailed in fright. Qiaoniang shielded the child with her own body and did not change color. "The pot can be made again," she told Abao, "but the field, once taken, cannot be returned. You break my pot today; some day the goddess will break your heart." Abao spat and left.

Old Wang heard the commotion and came through the snow. Seeing Qiaoniang sit by the cold hearth with the child, the lamp no bigger than a bean, she whispered to Sanniang: "Your sister-in-law's wrong runs deep, and there is no man of the clan to lean on, nor will the magistrate hear her. Why not welcome Zigu and ask?" Sanniang wiped her eyes. "My sister is proud; she would say women's basket-play is but a jest." Wang said: "The proud need the goddess most. She dwells by the privy and listens to those who bow their heads — would she laugh at them?"

At the second watch the village crackers popped and fireworks lit the snow. In the back court, beside the privy, Qiaoniang swept a clean space, burned three sticks of incense, set the ash tray, covered the basket, and called Sanniang and old Wang to hold its handles. The three knelt in the wind and snow, their clothes already white. Qiaoniang composed her face and wept as she spoke: "I am Ruan Qiaoniang. My husband dead, I have no one; only these two mu of dowry fields keep my daughter and me alive. The elder takes bribes, the wastrel destroys my proof, and they would cast us out. Zigu, who are charged with the hidden wrongs, I beg one word upon the ash, to clear my heart." She closed her eyes.

At first the basket was still. Then it trembled, and by degrees moved as if pushed by unseen hands; the chopstick tip scratched the ash with a sound like silkworms eating leaves. Wang could not help but open one eye; by the lamp she saw, and cried out, "Look — there are words in the ash!" Sanniang bent close: eight characters stood there, cut deep and even, beyond any human hand — "The dowry field is not the clan's; the deed is on the beam." She read them and her face went the color of death. The basket moved again and wrote another line: "Jingzhi took the pork; Abao hid the deed." And yet a third: "On the fifteenth of the first month, wronged wives weep together." The last two strokes cut through the ash to the tray.

Qiaoniang opened her eyes, saw the words, and her tears fell with her voice. Sanniang ran to the kitchen, climbed a stool, and felt along the beam above the hearth; there indeed was the deed, its edges soaked with grease, but her father's name still clear. Old Wang took it and beat on Jingzhi's door through the snow. Jingzhi and Abao had been warming chestnuts by the brazier, half drunk; at the sight of the deed, and the tale of Zigu's writing, they stared at one another in horror, and cup and chopsticks fell. Abao's thighs shook; he bowed to the ground and confessed the hiding of the deed. Jingzhi sighed: "The goddess's eye is like lightning; we thought ourselves cunning, and are less than a god of the privy." He bade Abao return the deed, restored the fields to Qiaoniang, and set his seal, swearing never again to speak of taking them back.

The next day was the new year's morning, and the snow had cleared. Qiaoniang opened her door and saw the fields white as a spread quilt, a single line of green at the far hills. Pan'er played on the step, drawing in the snow with a dry twig. Qiaoniang went alone to the privy side, burned a stick of incense, and set out a bowl of fresh thin gruel. "You dwell in the foulest place," she murmured, "yet hear the smallest wrong. I shall not forget." Ever after, each New Year's Eve, she made offering there, to the end of her days.