The Bonesetter's Daughter Part 16

"'Eat until full, but do not h.o.a.rd,'" I read.

One of the ladies gave me a pencil and a sheet of paper. "Can you write those same words down?" I did, and they both exclaimed: "She didn't even look back at the sign." More questions flew at me: Could I also use a brush? What books had I read? Afterward, they again spoke to each other in foreign talk, and when they were done, they announced that I could stay.

Later I learned I had been welcomed so that I could be both student and tutor. There were only four teachers, former students of the school, who now lived in one of the thirty-six rooms and buildings in the compound. Teacher Pan taught the older girls. I was his helper. When he had been a student fifty years before, the school was for boys only. Teacher w.a.n.g taught the younger girls, and her widowed sister-we called her Mother w.a.n.g-took care of the babies in the nursery, as did older girls she a.s.signed as helpers. Then there was Sister Yu, a tiny woman with a bony hunched back, a hard hand, and a sharp voice. She was in charge of Cleanliness, Neatness, and Proper Behavior. Besides scheduling our baths and our tasks for the week, she liked to boss around the cook and his wife.

The missionary ladies, I found out, were not equally old. Miss Grutoff, the curly-haired one, was thirty-two, half the age of the other. She was the nurse and headmistress of the school. Miss Towler was the director of the orphanage, and she begged donations from people who should have pity on us. She also led our Sunday chapel, conducted dramas of Christian history, and played the piano while teaching us to sing "like the angels." At the time, of course, I did not know what an angel was. I also could not sing.

As for the foreign men, they were not Communists but scientists who worked the quarry where the bones of Peking Man had been found. Two foreign and ten Chinese scientists lived in the north end of the monastery compound, and they ate their morning and evening meals in the temple hall with us. The quarry was nearby, about a twenty-minute walk down and up and down a winding path.

Altogether, there were seventy or so children: thirty big girls, thirty little girls, and ten babies, more or less, depending on how many grew up and how many died. Most of the girls were like me, the love children of suicides, singsong girls, and unmarried maidens. Some were like the entertainers GaoLing and I had seen on Beggars Lane-girls without legs or arms, a cyclops, a dwarf. And there were also half-breed girls, all of them fathered by foreigners, one English, one German, one American. I thought they were strangely beautiful, but Sister Yu was always mocking them. She said they had inherited haughtiness in the Western part of their blood and this had to be diluted with humility. "You can have pride in what you do each day," said Sister Yu, "but not arrogance in what you were born with." She also often reminded us that self-pity was not allowed. That was an indulgence.

If a girl wore a long face, Sister Yu would say, "Look at Little Ding over there. No legs, and still she smiles all day long." And Little Ding's fat cheeks rose and nearly swallowed her eyes, she was that glad to have buds instead of limbs. According to Sister Yu, we could find immediate happiness by thinking of someone else whose situation was much worse than our own.

I acted as big sister to this same Little Ding without legs, and Little Ding was big sister to a younger girl named Little Jung who had only one hand. Everyone had a relations.h.i.+p like that, being responsible to someone else, just like in a family. The big and small girls shared the same living quarters, three rooms of twenty girls each, three rows of beds in each room. The first row was for the youngest girls, the second row was for the in-between girls, and the third row was for the oldest girls. In this way, Little Ding's bed was below mine, and Little Jung's was below Little Ding's, everyone positioned by her level of responsibility and respect.

To the missionaries, we were Girls of New Destiny. Each cla.s.sroom had a big red banner embroidered with gold characters that proclaimed this. And every afternoon, during exercise, we sang our destiny in a song that Miss Towler had written, in both English and Chinese: We can study, we can learn,

We can marry whom we choose.

We can work, we can earn,

And bad fate is all we lose.

Whenever special visitors came by the school, Miss Grutoff had us perform a skit and Miss Towler played piano music, very dramatic to hear, like the kind in silent movies. One group of girls held up signs that were connected to Old Fate: opium, slaves, the buying of charms. They stumbled around on bound feet and fell down helpless. Then the New Destiny girls arrived as doctors. They cured the opium smokers. They unbound the feet of the fated ones and picked up brooms to sweep away the useless charms. In the end, they thanked G.o.d and bowed to the special guests, the foreign visitors to China, thanking them as well for helping so many girls overcome bad fate and move forward with their New Destiny. In this way, we raised a lot of money, especially if we could make the guests cry.

During chapel, Miss Towler always told us that we had a choice to become Christians or not. No one would ever force us to believe in Jesus, she said. Our belief had to be genuine and sincere. But Sister Yu, who had come to the orphanage when she was seven, often reminded us of her old fate. She had been forced to beg as a child, and if she did not collect enough coins, she was given nothing but curses to eat. One day when she protested she was hungry, her sister's husband threw her away like a piece of garbage. In this school, she said, we could eat as much as we wanted. We never had to worry that someone would kick us out. We could choose what we wanted to believe. However, she added, any student who did not choose to believe in Jesus was a corpse-eating maggot, and when this unbeliever died, she would tumble into the underworld, where her body would be pierced by a bayonet, roasted like a duck, and forced to suffer all kinds of tortures that were worse than what was happening in Manchuria.

Sometimes I wondered about the girls who could not choose. Where would they go when they died? I remember seeing a baby even the missionaries did not think had a New Destiny, a baby that had been fathered by her own grandfather. I saw her in the nursery, where I worked every morning. No one gave her a name, and Mother w.a.n.g told me not to pick her up, even if she cried, because something was wrong with her neck and head. She never made a sound. She had a face as flat and round as a large platter, two big eyes, and a tiny nose and mouth stuck in the middle. Her skin was as pale as rice paste, and her body, which was too small for her head, was as still as a wax flower. Only her eyes moved, back and forth, as if watching a mosquito drift across the ceiling. And then one day, the crib where she once lay was empty. Miss Grutoff said the baby was now a child of G.o.d, so I knew she had died. Over the years that I lived at the orphanage, I saw six other babies that looked the same, always fathered by a grandfather, born with the same "universal face," as Mother w.a.n.g called it. It was as though the same person had come back into the same body for someone else's mistake. Each time, I welcomed that baby back like an old friend. Each time, I cried when she left the world again.

Because I came from a family of inkmakers, I was the best calligraphy student the school had ever had. Teacher Pan said so. He often recounted to us the days of the Ching, how everything had become corrupt, even the examination system. Yet he also spoke of those old times with a sentimental fondness. He said to me, "LuLing, if you had been born a boy back then, you could have been a scholar." Those were his exact words. He also said I was a better calligrapher than his own son, Kai Jing, whom he taught himself.

Kai Jing, who was a geologist, was actually a very good calligrapher, especially for someone whose right side had been weakened by polio when he was a child. Lucky for him, when he fell ill, the family spent a great deal of money, their entire savings, to hire the best Western and Chinese doctors. As a result, Kai Jing recovered with only a small limp and a drooped shoulder. The missionaries later helped him get a scholars.h.i.+p at the famous university in Peking where he studied to become a geologist. After his mother died, he returned home to take care of his father and work with the scientists in the quarry.

Every day he rode his bicycle from the orphanage to the quarry and back, pedaling right to the door of his father's cla.s.sroom. Teacher Pan would perch sideways on the back of the bicycle, and as his son pedaled off to their rooms at the other end of the compound, we students and teachers called out, "Be careful! Don't fall off!"

Sister Yu admired Kai Jing a great deal. She once pointed him out to the children and said, "See? You, too, can set a goal to help others rather than remain a useless burden." Another time I heard her say, "What a tragedy that a boy so handsome has to be lame." Perhaps this was supposed to comfort the students as well. But to my mind she was saying Kai Jing's tragedy was greater than that of others simply because he had been born more pleasing to the eye. How could Sister Yu, of all people, think such a thing? If a rich man loses his house, is that worse than if a poor man loses his?

I asked an older girl about this, and she said, "What a stupid question. Of course! The handsome and the rich have more to lose." Yet this did not seem right to me.

I thought of Precious Auntie. Like Kai Jing, she had been born with a natural beauty, and then her face was ruined. I heard people say all the time, "How terrible to have a face like that. It would have been better if she had died." Would I have felt the same if I had not loved her? I thought of the blind beggar girl. Who would miss her?

Suddenly I wanted to find that beggar girl. She could talk to Precious Auntie for me. She could tell me where she was. Was she wandering in the End of the World or was she stuck in the vinegar jar? And what about the curse? Would it find me soon? If I died this moment, who would miss me me in this world? Who would welcome me in the next? in this world? Who would welcome me in the next?

When the weather was good, Teacher Pan took us older girls to the quarry at Dragon Bone Hill. He was proud to do so, because his son was one of the geologists. The quarry had started as a cave like the one that belonged to Precious Auntie's family, but when I saw it, it was a giant pit about one hundred fifty feet deep. From top to bottom and side to side, the walls and floor had been painted with white lines, so that it looked like a giant's fishnet had been placed inside. "If a digger finds a piece of an animal, a person, or a hunting tool," Kai Jing explained to us, "he can write down that it came from this square of the quarry and not that one. We can calculate the age of the piece by where it was found, the eighth layer being the oldest. And then the scientists can go back to that spot and dig some more."

We girls always brought thermoses of tea and small cakes for the scientists, and when they saw us arrive, they quickly climbed up from the bottom, refreshed themselves, and said with grateful sighs, "Thank you, thank you. I was so thirsty I thought I would turn into another one of these dried-up bones." Every now and then, a rickshaw made its way up the steep road, and a pipe-smoking foreigner with thick gla.s.ses stepped out and asked if anything new had been found. Usually the scientists pointed this way and that, and the man with gla.s.ses nodded but seemed disappointed. But sometimes he became very excited, and sucked on his pipe faster and faster as he talked. Then he got back in the rickshaw and went down the hill, where a s.h.i.+ny black car would be waiting to take him back to Peking. If we ran to a lookout point on the hill, we could see to the far end of the flat basin, and there was the black car, running along the narrow road, sending up streams of dust.

When winter came, the scientists had to hurry before the ground grew too hard and the season of digging came to an end. They let some of us girls climb down and help put the dug-up dirt in boxes, or repaint the white lines on the quarry floor, or carefully sift what had already been sifted ten times. We were not allowed in any of the places where there were ropes-that was where human bones had been found. To an inexperienced eye, it was easy to mistake the bones for rocks or bits of pottery, but I knew the difference from all those times I had collected bones with Precious Auntie. I also knew that Peking Man was the bones not just from one person, but from many-men, women, children, babies. The pieces were small, not enough to make even one whole person. I did not say these things to the other girls. I did not want to show off. So like them, I helped only where the scientists said we could be, where there were mostly animal bones, deer horns, and turtle sh.e.l.ls.

I remember the day Teacher Pan's son gave me special praise. "You are a careful worker," Kai Jing said. After that, sifting dirt carefully was my favorite job. But then the weather turned icy cold and we could no longer feel our fingers or cheeks. So that was the end of that kind of work and praise.

My next-favorite job was tutoring the other students. Sometimes I taught painting. I showed the younger students how to use the brush to make cat ears, tails, and whiskers. I painted horses and cranes, monkeys, and even a hippopotamus. I also helped the students improve their calligraphy and their minds. I recalled for them what Precious Auntie had taught me about writing characters, how a person must think about her intentions, how her ch'i ch'i flowed from her body into her arm, through the brush, and into the stroke. Every stroke had meaning, and since every word had many strokes, it also had many meanings. flowed from her body into her arm, through the brush, and into the stroke. Every stroke had meaning, and since every word had many strokes, it also had many meanings.

My least favorite job was whatever Sister Yu a.s.signed me to do for the week: sweeping the floors, cleaning the basins, or lining up the benches for chapel and putting them back at the tables for lunch. These jobs would not have been so bad if Sister Yu had not always picked apart what I had done wrong. One week, for a change, she put me in charge of crawling insects. She complained that the monks had never killed them, thinking they might have been former mortals and holy ones. "Former landlords is what these bugs likely were," Sister Yu grumbled, then told me: "Step on them, kill them, do whatever you must to keep them from coming in." The doors to most of the rooms, except those belonging to the foreigners, were never closed except in the winter, so the ants and c.o.c.kroaches marched right over the thresholds. They also came in through any crack or hole in the wall, as well as through the large wooden latticed panels that allowed breezes and light to come in. But I knew what to do. Precious Auntie had taught me. I glued paper over the lattices. And then I took a stick of chalk from the schoolroom and drew a line in front of all the thresholds and around the cracks. The ants would sniff that chalk line and get confused, then turn around and leave. The c.o.c.kroaches were braver. They walked right through the chalk, and the dust went into their joints and under their sh.e.l.ls, and the next day they lay upside down, with their legs in the air, choked to death.

That week Sister Yu did not criticize me. Instead I received an award for Remarkable Sanitation, two hours free to do anything I wanted, as long as it was not evil. In that crowded place, there was no room to be alone. So that was what I chose to do with my prize. For a long time, I had not reread the pages Precious Auntie had written to me before she died. I had resisted because I knew I would cry if I saw those pages again, and then Sister Yu would scold me for allowing self-pity in front of Little Ding and the other younger girls. On a Sunday afternoon, I found an abandoned storeroom, smelling of must and filled with small statutes. I sat on the floor against one wall near a window. I unfolded the blue cloth that held the pages. And for the first time I saw that Precious Auntie had sewn a little pocket into the cloth.

In that pocket were two wondrous things. The first one was the oracle bone she had shown me when I was a girl, telling me I could have it when I had learned to remember. She had once held this, just as her father had once held this. I clutched that bone to my heart. And then I pulled out the second thing. It was a small photograph of a young woman wearing an embroidered headwrap and a padded winter jacket with a collar that reached up to her cheeks. I held the picture up to the light. Was it...? I saw that it was indeed Precious Auntie before she had burned her face. She had dreamy eyes, daring eyebrows that tilted upward, and her mouth-such plump pouting lips, such smooth skin. She was beautiful, but she did not look the way I remembered her, and I was sorry it was not her burnt face in the photo. The more I looked, however, the more she became familiar. And then I realized: Her face, her hope, her knowledge, her sadness-they were mine. Then I cried and cried, glutting my heart with joy and self-pity.

Once a week, Miss Grutoff and the cook's wife went to the railway station to pick up packages and mail. Sometimes there were letters from their friends at other missionary schools in China or from the scientists at Peking Union Medical College. Other times there would be letters with pledges of money. These came from far away: San Francisco in California, Milwaukee in Wisconsin, Elyria in Ohio. Miss Grutoff would read the letters aloud at Sunday chapel. She would show us on a globe, "Here we are, there they are. And they are sending you love and lots of money." Then she would spin the globe so we could become dizzy with this idea. I used to wonder, Why would a stranger love another stranger? Mother and Father were like strangers to me now. They did not love me. To them, I no longer existed. And what about GaoLing's promises to find me? Had she tried? I did not think so.

One afternoon, after I had been at the orphanage for two years, Miss Grutoff handed me a letter. I recognized the handwriting immediately. It was noontime, and in that noisy main hall, I became deaf. The girls nearest me clamored to know what the letter said and who had written it. I ran away from them, guarding my treasure like a starved dog. I still have it, and this is what I read: "My dearest sister, I apologize for not writing sooner. Not one day has pa.s.sed that I don't think of you. But I could not write. Mr. Wei would not tell me where he had taken you. Neither would Mother. I finally heard in the market last week that the quarries at Dragon Blue Hill were becoming busy again, and that the American and Chinese scientists were living in the old monastery, along with the students of the orphanage. The next time I saw First Brother's Wife, I said, 'I wonder if LuLing has met the scientists, since she lives so close to them.' And she answered, 'I was wondering the same.' So then I knew.

"Mother is well, but she complains that she is so busy her fingertips are always black. They are still working hard to replenish the inksticks lost in the fire. And Father and our uncles had to rebuild the shop in Peking. They borrowed the money and lumber from Chang the coffinmaker, who now owns most of the business. They received part of the business when I married Chang Fu Nan, the fourth son, the boy you were supposed to marry.

"Mother said we were lucky the Changs wanted any of the girls in our family at all. But I don't think I'm lucky. I think you are lucky that you did not become a daughter-in-law to this family. Every day, with each bite I eat, I am reminded of the Changs' position over our family. We are in debt to them for the wood, and the debt keeps growing. In a hundred years, the Liu clan will still be working for them. The inksticks no longer sell as well or for as much money. To be honest, the quality is no longer as good, now that the ingredients are inferior and Precious Auntie is no longer here to do the carvings. As reminder of our family's debt, I receive no spending money of my own. To buy a stamp for this letter, I had to barter away a hairpin.

"You should also know that the Chang family is not as rich as we believed when we were children. Much of their fortune has been drained away by opium. One of the other son's wives told me that the problem began when Fu Nan was a baby and tore his shoulder out of the socket. His mother began feeding him opium. Later, the mother died, beaten to death, some say, although Chang claims she fell off the roof by accident. Then Chang took another wife, who used to be the girlfriend of a warlord who had been trading opium for coffins. The second wife had the habit, too. The warlord told Chang that if he ever harmed her, he would turn him into a eunuch. And Chang knew this could happen, because he had seen other men who were missing parts of their body for failing to pay their opium debts.

"This household is a misery of shouting and madness, a constant search for money for more opium. If Fu Nan could sell pieces of me for his smoke, he would do so. He's convinced I know where to find more dragon bones. He jabbers that I should tell him, so we will all be rich. If only I did know, I would sell them to leave this family. I would even sell myself. But where would I go?

"Sister, I am sorry for any suffering or worry this letter causes you. I write this only so you know why I have not come to see you and why you are lucky to be where you are. Please do not write back to me. This would only cause me trouble. Now that I know where you are, I will try to write again. In the meantime, I hope your health is good and you are content. Your sister, Liu GaoLing."

When I finished, the letter was still shaking in my hands. I remembered that I had once been jealous of GaoLing. Now her fate was worse than mine. Sister Yu had said we could find happiness in our own situation when we thought of people whose lives were much worse. But I was not happy.

Yet in time, I did become less unhappy. I accepted my life. Maybe it was the weakness of memory that made me feel less pain. Perhaps it was my life force growing stronger. All I knew was, I had become a different girl from the one who had arrived at the orphanage.

Of course, by then even the G.o.ds in the monastery had changed their minds. Over the years, Miss Towler had been removing the coverings from the statues, one by one, as cloth was needed for making clothes or quilts. Eventually, all the statues revealed themselves, mocking Miss Towler, so she said, with their red faces, three eyes, and bare bellies. And there were many, many statues, both Buddhist and Taoist, because the monastery had been occupied by both kinds of monks in different centuries, depending on which warlord was in charge of the land. One day, before Christmas, when it was too cold to go anywhere, Miss Grutoff decided that we should convert the Chinese G.o.ds into Christians. We would baptize them with paint. The girls who had grown up in the orphanage since they were babies thought this would be a lot of fun. But some of the students who had come later did not want to deface the G.o.ds and tempt their wrath. They were so scared that when they were dragged to the statues they screamed and foamed at the mouth, then fell to the ground as if possessed. I was not afraid. I believed that if I was respectful to both the Chinese G.o.ds and the Christian one, neither would harm me. I reasoned that Chinese people were polite and also practical about life. The Chinese G.o.ds understood that we were living in a Western household run by Americans. If the G.o.ds could speak, they, too, would insist that the Christian deities have the better position. Chinese people, unlike foreigners, did not try to push their ideas on others. Let the foreigners follow their own ways, no matter how strange they were, that was their thinking. As my brush ran over their gold-and-red faces, I said, "Pardon me, Jade Ruler, forgive me, Chief of the Eight Immortals, I am only making a disguise for you, in case the Communists or the j.a.panese come and recruit statues for a bonfire." I was a good artist. With some of the G.o.ds, I glued on sheep's hair for beards, noodles for long hair, feathers for wings. In this way, Buddha became fat Jesus, the G.o.ddess of Mercy was Mary of the Manger, the Three Pure Ones, boss G.o.ds of the Taoists, turned into the Three Wise Men, and the Eighteen Lohan of Buddha were converted to the Twelve Apostles with six sons. Any small figures in h.e.l.l were promoted to angels. The following year, Miss Grutoff decided we should also paint the little Buddha carvings throughout the compound. There were hundreds of those.

The year after that, Miss Grutoff found the musty storeroom where I had gone to reread Precious Auntie's pages. The statues there, Sister Yu said, were for a Taoist diorama that showed what would happen if a person went to the underworld. There were dozens of figures, very realistic and scary to see. One was a kneeling man with horned animals feeding on his entrails. Three figures dangled from a pole like pigs on a spit. Four people sat in a vat of boiling oil. And there were giant devils, red-faced with pointed skulls, ordering the dead to go into battle. When we finished painting those, we had a complete nativity scene, Baby Jesus, Mother Mary, Father Joseph, everybody including Santa Claus. Even so, the mouths on the statues were still wide open in screaming fright. No matter what Miss Grutoff said, most of the girls did not think the nativity statues were singing "Joy to the World."

After we finished with those statues, there were no more idols to be changed to angels. By then, I too had changed, from tutor to teacher, from lonely girl to one who was in love with Teacher Pan's son.

The way we started was this.

Every year, during the small New Year, the students painted good-luck banners for the temple fair in the Mouth of the Mountain. And so I was with Teacher Pan and our students in the cla.s.sroom one day, painting the long red strips, which covered the desks and floors.

As usual, Kai Jing came by on his bicycle to take his father to his rooms. The ground at Dragon Bone Hill was frozen hard, so most of Kai Jing's time was devoted to drawing diagrams, writing reports, and making casts of different spots where bones were found. On this particular day, Kai Jing came early, and Teacher Pan was not ready to leave. So Kai Jing offered to help us paint banners. He stood next to me at my table. I was glad for the extra hands.

But then I noticed what he was doing. Whatever character or figure I drew, he would make the same. If I drew "fortune," he drew "fortune." If I wrote "abundance," he wrote "abundance." If I painted "all that you wish," he painted the same, stroke by stroke. He used almost the same rhythm, so that we were like two people performing a dance. That was the beginning of our love, the same curve, the same dot, the same lifting of the brush as our breath filled as one.

A few days later, the students and I took the banners to the fair. Kai Jing accompanied me, walking alongside, talking quietly. He held a little book of brush paintings done on mulberry paper. On the cover it said: The Four Manifestations of Beauty. The Four Manifestations of Beauty. "Would you like to know what's inside?" he asked. I nodded. Anyone who overheard us would have thought we were speaking of school lessons. But really, he was speaking of love. "Would you like to know what's inside?" he asked. I nodded. Anyone who overheard us would have thought we were speaking of school lessons. But really, he was speaking of love.

He turned the page. "With any form of beauty, there are four levels of ability. This is true of painting, calligraphy, literature, music, dance. The first level is Competent." We were looking at a page that showed two identical renderings of a bamboo grove, a typical painting, well done, realistic, interesting in the detail of double lines, conveying a sense of strength and longevity. "Competence," he went on, "is the ability to draw the same thing over and over in the same strokes, with the same force, the same rhythm, the same trueness. This kind of beauty, however, is ordinary.

"The second level," Kai Jing continued, "is Magnificent." We looked together at another painting, of several stalks of bamboo. "This one goes beyond skill," he said. "Its beauty is unique. And yet it is simpler, with less emphasis on the stalk and more on the leaves. It conveys both strength and solitude. The lesser painter would be able to capture one quality but not the other."

He turned the page. This painting was of a single stalk of bamboo. "The third level is Divine," he said. "The leaves now are shadows blown by an invisible wind, and the stalk is there mostly by suggestion of what is missing. And yet the shadows are more alive than the original leaves that obscured the light. A person seeing this would be wordless to describe how this is done. Try as he might, the same painter could never again capture the feeling of this painting, only a shadow of the shadow."

"How could beauty be more than divine?" I murmured, knowing I would soon learn the answer.

"The fourth level," Kai Jing said, "is greater than this, and it is within each mortal's nature to find it. We can sense it only if we do not try to sense it. It occurs without motivation or desire or knowledge of what may result. It is pure. It is what innocent children have. It is what old masters regain once they have lost their minds and become children again."

He turned the page. On the next was an oval. "This painting is called Inside the Middle of a Bamboo Stalk. Inside the Middle of a Bamboo Stalk. The oval is what you see if you are inside looking up or looking down. It is the simplicity of being within, no reason or explanation for being there. It is the natural wonder that anything exists in relation to another, an inky oval to a page of white paper, a person to a bamboo stalk, the viewer to the painting." The oval is what you see if you are inside looking up or looking down. It is the simplicity of being within, no reason or explanation for being there. It is the natural wonder that anything exists in relation to another, an inky oval to a page of white paper, a person to a bamboo stalk, the viewer to the painting."

Kai Jing was quiet for a long time. "This fourth level is called Effortless," he said at last. He put the booklet back in his jacket and looked at me thoughtfully. "Recently I have felt this beauty of Effortlessness in all things," he said. "How about you?"

"It's the same for me," I said, and began to cry.

For we both knew we were speaking about the effortlessness with which one falls in love without intending to, as if we were two stalks of bamboo bent toward each other by the chance of the wind. And then we bent toward each other and kissed, lost in the nowhere of being together.

[image]

EFFORTLESS.

The first night Kai Jing and I tried forbidden joy, it was summertime, a bright-moon night. We had slipped into a dark storage room at the abandoned end of a corridor, far from the eyes and ears of others. I had no shame, no guilty feelings. I felt wild and new, as though I could swim the heavens and fly through waves. And if this was bad fate, let it be. I was the daughter of Precious Auntie, a woman who also could not control her desires, who then gave birth to me. How could this be bad when the skin on Kai Jing's back was so smooth, so warm, so fragrant? Was it also fate to feel his lips on my neck? When he unb.u.t.toned the back of my blouse and it fell to the floor, I was ruined, and I was glad. Then the rest of my clothing slipped off, piece by piece, and I felt I was growing lighter and darker. He and I were two shadows, black and airy, folding and blending, weak yet fierce, weightless, mindless of others-until I opened my eyes and saw that a dozen people were watching us.

Kai Jing laughed. "No, no, they're not real." He tapped one. They were the painted-over theater of h.e.l.l, now converted to Merry Christmas.

"They're like an audience at a bad opera," I said, "not so pleased." There was Mother Mary with a screaming mouth, the sheepherders with pointed heads, and Baby Jesus, whose eyes stuck out like a frog's. Kai Jing draped my blouse over the head of Mary. He covered Joseph with my skirt, while Baby Jesus received my slip. Then Kai Jing put his own clothes over the Three Wise Men and turned the sheepherders around. When all their eyes faced the wall, Kai Jing guided me to lie down in the straw, and once more we became shadows.

But what happened after that was not like a poem or a painting of the fourth level. We were not like nature, as beautifully harmonious as a leafy tree against the sky. We had expected all these things. But the straw made us itch and the floor stank of urine. A rat stumbled out of its nest, and this caused Kai Jing to roll off me and knock Baby Jesus out of his crib. The frog-eyed monster lay next to us, as if it were our love child. Then Kai Jing stood up and lighted a match, searching for the rat. And when I looked at Kai Jing's private parts, I saw he was no longer possessed. I also saw he had ticks on his thigh. A moment later, he pointed out three on my bottom. I jumped up and was dancing to shake them off. I had to try very hard not to laugh and cry as Kai Jing turned me around and inspected me, then burned off the ticks with the tip of a match. When I took back my blouse from Mary's head, she looked glad that I was ashamed, even though we had not fulfilled our desires.

As we quickly dressed, Kai Jing and I were too embarra.s.sed to talk. He also said nothing as he walked me to my room. But at the door, he told me, "I'm sorry. I should have controlled myself." My heart hurt. I didn't want to hear his apology, his regrets. I heard him add: "I should have waited until we're married." And then I gasped and began to cry, and he embraced me and uttered promises that we would be lovers for ten thousand lifetimes, and I vowed the same, until we heard a loud "Shhhh!" Even after we quieted, Sister Yu, whose room was next to mine, kept grumbling: "No consideration for others. Worse than roosters..."

The next morning, I felt like a different person, happy but also worried. Sister Yu had once said that you could tell which girls in the lanes were prost.i.tutes because they had eyes like chickens. What she meant by this, I didn't know. Did the eyes become redder or smaller? Would others see in my eyes that I had a new kind of knowledge? When I arrived in the main hall for breakfast, I saw that almost everyone was there, gathered in a circle, talking in serious voices. As I walked in, it seemed that all the teachers lifted their eyes to stare at me, shocked and sad. Then Kai Jing shook his head. "Bad news," he said, and the blood drained from my limbs so that even if I had wanted to run away I was too weak to do so. Would I be kicked out? Had Kai Jing's father refused to let him marry me? But how did they know? Who told? Who saw? Who heard? Kai Jing pointed to the shortwave radio that belonged to the scientists, and the others turned back to listen. And I wondered: Now the radio radio is announcing what we did? In English? is announcing what we did? In English?

When Kai Jing finally told me, I didn't have even one moment to be relieved that the bad news was not about me. "The j.a.panese attacked last night," he said, "close to Peking, and everyone is saying it is war for sure."

Maku polo this, this, maku polo maku polo that, I heard the radio voice say. I asked: "What is this that, I heard the radio voice say. I asked: "What is this maku maku thing?" thing?"

Sister Yu said, "The Maku Polo Maku Polo Bridge. The island dwarves have captured it." I was surprised to hear her use this slur for the j.a.panese. In the school, she was the one who taught the girls not to use bad names, even for those we hated. Sister Yu went on: "Shot their rifles in the air-just for practice, they said. So our army shot back to teach the liars a lesson. And now one of the dwarves is missing. Probably the coward ran away, but the j.a.panese are saying one missing man is enough reason to declare war." With Sister Yu translating the English into Chinese, it was hard to tell which was the news and which were her opinions. Bridge. The island dwarves have captured it." I was surprised to hear her use this slur for the j.a.panese. In the school, she was the one who taught the girls not to use bad names, even for those we hated. Sister Yu went on: "Shot their rifles in the air-just for practice, they said. So our army shot back to teach the liars a lesson. And now one of the dwarves is missing. Probably the coward ran away, but the j.a.panese are saying one missing man is enough reason to declare war." With Sister Yu translating the English into Chinese, it was hard to tell which was the news and which were her opinions.

"This Maku Polo Bridge," I said, "how far away is it?"

"North of here, in Wanping," Miss Grutoff said, "close to the railway station."

"But that's the Reed Moat Bridge, forty-six kilometers from my village," I said. "When did they start calling it something else?"

"More than six hundred years ago," Miss Grutoff said, "when Marco Polo first admired it." And as everyone continued to talk about the war, I was wondering why no one in our village knew the bridge had changed its name so long before. "Which way are the j.a.panese advancing?" I asked. "North to Peking or south to here?"

Everyone stopped talking at once. A woman stood in the doorway. With the bright sun behind her, she was a shadow, and I could not make out who she was, only that she wore a dress. "Is Liu LuLing still living here?" I heard her say. I squinted. Who was asking this? I was already confused about so many things, now this as well. As I walked toward her, my confusion turned into a guess, then the guess into a certainty. Precious Auntie. Precious Auntie. I had often dreamed that her ghost would come back. As in dreams, she could talk and her face was whole, and as in dreams, I rushed toward her. And at last, this time she did not push me away. She threw open her arms and cried: "So you still recognize your own sister!" I had often dreamed that her ghost would come back. As in dreams, she could talk and her face was whole, and as in dreams, I rushed toward her. And at last, this time she did not push me away. She threw open her arms and cried: "So you still recognize your own sister!"

It was GaoLing. We spun each other around, danced and slapped each other's arms, taking turns to cry, "Look at you." I had not heard from her since she wrote me the letter four or five years before. In minutes, we were treating each other like sisters once again. "What's happened to your hair?" I joked, grabbing her messy curls. "Was it an accident, or did you do this on purpose?"

"Do you like it?"

"Not bad. You look modern, no longer the country girl."

"No flies circling your head, either. I heard rumors you're now a high-and-mighty intellectual."

"Only a teacher. And you, are you still-"

"Wife to Chang Fu Nan. Six years already, hard to believe."

"But what's happened to you? You look terrible."

"I haven't eaten since yesterday."

I jumped up, went to the kitchen, and brought her back a bowl of millet porridge, some pickles and steamed peanuts, and little cold dishes. We sat in a corner of the hall, away from news of the war, she eating with much noise and speed. "We've been living in Peking, Fu Nan and I, no children," she said between thick mouthfuls. "We have the back rooms of the ink shop. Everything's been rebuilt. Did I tell you this in my letter?"

"Some."

"Then you know that the Changs own the business, our family owns only the debt. Father and our uncles are back in Immortal Heart village, churning out ink till it sweats from their pores. And now that they're home all the time, they have bad tempers and argue constantly among themselves about who is to blame for this, that, and the weather."

"What about First Brother and Second Brother?" I asked. "Home, too?"

"The Nationalists conscripted First Brother five years ago. All the boys his age had to go. And Second Brother ran off to join the Communists two years after that. Big Uncle's sons followed, then Big Uncle cursed that all three should never come back. Mother didn't speak to him until the United Front was formed and Uncle apologized, saying now it didn't matter which side they were on."

"And Mother, how's her health?"

"Remember how black her hair used to be? Now it's like an old man's beard, white and wiry. She no longer dyes it."

"What? I thought it was naturally black from working with the ink."

"Don't be stupid. They all dyed their hair-Great-Granny, the aunts. But these days Mother doesn't care what she looks like. She claims she hasn't slept in two years. She's convinced the tenants are stealing from us at night and rearranging the furniture. And she also believes Great-Granny's ghost has returned to the latrine. She hasn't had a bowel movement bigger than a bean sprout in months. The s.h.i.+t's hardened to mortar, she says, that's why she's distended like a summer gourd."

"This is terrible to hear." Though this was the same Mother who had kicked me out, I took no pleasure in hearing about her difficulties. Perhaps a little bit of me still thought of Mother and Father as my parents.

"What about Precious Auntie's ghost? Did she ever come back?"