Part 2 (2/2)
There are no snapshots of my mother In two small portraits, however, there is a black thus, as if sos come into fashi+on after you had the picture taken?” One time she said yes Another tierprints on your forehead?” she said, ”Your First Uncle did that” I disliked the unsureness in her voice
The last scroll has colulish is ”Department of Health, Canton,” iraph as on the diplo to see whether she was afraid Year after year my father did not come home or send for her Their two children had been dead for ten years If he did not return soon, there would be no more children (”They were three and two years old, a boy and a girl They could talk already”) My father did send h, and she had nobody to spend it on but herself She bought good clothes and shoes Then she decided to use thea doctor She did not leave for Canton immediately after the children died In China there was tis As e by shi+p There was a sea bird painted on the shi+p to protect it against shi+pwreck and winds She was in luck The following shi+p was boarded by river pirates, who kidnapped every passenger, even old ladies ”Sixty dollars for an old lady” hat the bandits used to say ”I sailed alone,” she says, ”to the capital of the entire province” She took a brown leather suitcase and a seabag stuffed with two quilts
At the dorned her to a roo when she careeted them But no one wanted to start friendshi+ps until the unpacking was done, each item placed precisely to section off the room My mother spotted the name she had written on her application pinned to a headboard, and the annoyance she felt at not arriving early enough for first choice disappeared The locks on her suitcase opened with two satisfying clicks; she enjoyed again how neatly her belongings fitted together, clean against the green lining She refolded the clothes before putting them in the one drawer that was hers Then she took out her pens and inkbox, an atlas of the world, a tea set and tea cannister, sewing box, her ruler with the real goldpaper, envelopes with the thick red stripe to signify no bad news, her bowl and silver chopsticks These things she arranged one by one on her shelf She spread the two quilts on top of the bed and put her slippers side by side underneath She owned raphs-but she had left such troublesoet all of it back
The women who had arrived early did not offer to help unpack, not wanting to interfere with the pleasure and the privacy of it Not ot to live out the daydream of woets messed up when she e she had pressed flat with her hand, and no one would co plowed or the leak in the roof She would clean her ol and a small, limited area; she would have one drawer to sort, one bed to make
To shut the door at the end of the workday, which does not spill over into evening To throay books after reading theh boxes on New Year's Eve and throw out half of what is inside Soance to pick a bunch of flowers for the one table Other women besides me must have this daydrea a contented wo Above her head is her one box on a shelf The words stenciled on the box ile,” but literally say, ”Use a little heart” The woman looks very pleased The Revolution put an end to prostitution by giving women what they wanted: a job and a room of their own
Free from families, my mother would live for two years without servitude She would not have to run errands for my father's tyrant mother with the bound feet or thread needles for the old ladies, but neither would there be slaves and nieces to wait on her Now she would get hot water only if she bribed the concierge When I went away to school es”
Two of anized their corners to their satisfaction, made tea and set a small table with their leftover travel food ”Have you eaten, Lady Scholar?” they invited my mother ”Lady Scholar, co your own cup” This largess ht out s she had preserved on the farm Everyone coes they cao by My mother did not let it be known that she had already had two children and that sohters
Then everyone went to the auditorium for two hours of speeches by the faculty They told the students that they would begin with a text as old as the Han empire, when the prescription for i, father ofand and yin yin, blew through the huhthis book on colds and fevers After they had ht the most up-to-date western discoveries By the tiraduated-those of thee would be wider than that of any other doctor in history Wo medicine for about fifty years, said one of the teachers, a wo nuht es” At the end of the program, the faculty turned their backs to the students, and everyone bowed the three board the picture of Doctor Sun Yat-sen, as a western surgeon before he beca hall to eat Myher books immediately after supper
There were two places where a student could study: the dining hall with its tables cleared for work, everyone chanting during the common memorization sessions; or the table in her own roo hall for the company there My mother usually stayed in her room or, when a roo place she had hunted out during the first week of school Once in a while she dropped by the dining hall, chanted for a short while with thea syllable, yawned early, and said good-night She quickly built a reputation for being brilliant, a natural scholar who could glance at a book and know it
”The other students fought over who could sit next to lioing”
”Did you ever try to stop the your paper?”
”Of course not They only needed to pick up a word or two, and they could reet a lot nosis Patients talk endlessly about their ailertips-so much clearer than the paperdolls in the textbooks I'd chant the symptoms, and those feords would start a whole chapter of cures tu out Most people don't have the kind of brains that can do that” She pointed at the photograph of the thirty-seven graduates ”One hundred and twelve students began the course at the saht kind of brains either, my father the one who can recite whole poeave herself twenty years' headstart over the young girls, although she admitted to only ten, which already forced her to push Older people were expected to be smarter; they are closer to the Gods She did not want to overhear students or teachers say, ”Sheno better than anyone else when she is a generation older She's so duht”
”I studied far in advance,” saysfroh the alls was deep and even The night before exams, when the other students stayed up, I went to bed early They would say, 'Aren't you going to study?' and I'd say, 'No, I',' or, 'I want to write letters tonight' I let the next to me at the tests” The sweat of hard work is not to be displayed It is raceful to appear favored by the Gods
Maybe my mother's secret place was the rooh they had to crowd the other roo wo with a bedful of siblings and grannies, they fitted their privacy tighter rather than claim the haunted room as human territory No one had lived in it for at least five years, not since a series of hauntings had host fear that shattered their brains for studying The haunted ones would give high, startled cries, pointing at the air, which sure enough was becoo back the way they had come When they rounded a corner, they flattened the to catch what followed unawares raphs she had taken of friends in that roo at its sides who stood beside the wall in the background of the photograph was a ghost The girl would insist there had been nobody there when she took the picture ”That was a Photo Ghost,” said my mother when the students talked-story ”She needn't have been afraid Most ghosts are only nightled her ears to wake her up”
My -Wall Ghost, Frog Spirit (frogs are ”heavenly chickens”), Eating Partner She could find descriptions of phenos-the Green Phoenix stories, ”The Seven Strange Tales of the Golden Bottle,” ”What Confucius Did Not Talk About” She could validate ghost sightings
”But ghosts can't be just nightht out into the roo and incense sticks waving through the air We got the ht He also saw the incense tips tracing orange figures in the dark-ideographs, he said He followed the glow patterns with his inkbrush on red paper And there it was, a er helpings and a Ford in front of his plaque And e did, the haunting stopped immediately”
”I like to think the ancestors are busier than that,” my mother said, ”or more at rest Yes, they're probably more at rest Perhaps it was an anirandfather had soht was a suitably tactful pause, she said, ”Hoe know that ghosts are the continuance of dead people? Couldn't ghosts be an entirely different species of creature? Perhaps hus just die, and that's the end I don't think I'd host who is constantly wanting to be fed? Or nothing?”
If the other storytellers had been reassuring one another with science, then my mother would have flown stories as factual as bats into the listening night A practical woman, she could not invent stories and told only true ones But tonight the younger wohost room with its door open steps away
”Did you hear that?” soh, whenever their voices stilled simultaneously, a thump or a creak would unirls would ju
”That was the wind,” myin bed; she dropped her book” She neither juled
”If you're so sure,” said an iirl, perhaps the one with the disdainful chin, ”why don't you go out there and take a look?”
”Of course,” saidthat,” and she took a lamp and left her friends, i the angular shadows up and down the corridor She walked to both ends of the hallway, then explored another wing for good host roo inside, swung light into its corners She saw cloth bags in knobby nomes Suitcases and boxes threw shadow stairs up the walls and across the floor Nothing unusual looe, no smell
She turned her back on the roo She did not want to get back too soon Her friends, although one owes nothing to friends, hly After a sufficiently brave ti,” she said ”There's nothing to be afraid of in the whole dorhost room I checked there too I went inside just now”
”The haunting begins at irl with the adamantine chin ”It's not quite eleven”
My oness (”my toteer she fanned out her dragon claws and riffied her red sequin scales and unfolded her coiling green stripes Danger was a good ti in temple eaves, my mother looked down on plain people ere lonely and afraid
”I'm so sleepy,” ht I'll go sleep in the ghost roo happens, I won't host when I see it Souises, they aren't particularly interesting”
”Aiaa Aiaa,” the storytellers exclaihed with satisfaction at their cries
”I'll call out if so all together, you will probably be able to scare any ghost away”
Some of them promised to come; some offered their talismans-a branch froood words written on it But host will hide frohost it is, or whether or not a ghost lives in there at all I'll only bring a knife to defend et bored and can't sleep You keep the char theot weapon and book, though not a novel but a textbook
Two of her roohost room ”Aren't you afraid?” they asked
”What is there to be afraid of?” she asked ”What could a ghost do to me?” But my mother did pause at the door ”Listen,” she said, ”if I aet to tweak et home” She told them her personal name
She walked directly to the back of the room, where the boxes formed a seat She sat with the lamp beside her and stared at her yellow and black reflection in the night glass ”I aht She cupped her hands to theto see out A thin rass waved ”That is the saht, ”the same stars” (”That is the sah shi+fted a little”) When she set the lamp next to the bed, the roo in the bare night She wrapped herself well in her quilt, which herIn the randle, a red heart to protect my mother at the neck, as if she were her baby yet
My mother read aloud; perhaps the others could hear how calht hear her too; she did not knohether her voice would evoke it or disperse it Soon the ideographs lifted their feet, stretched out their wings, and flew like blackbirds; the dots were their eyes Her own eyes drooped She closed her book and turned off the lamp
A new darkness pulled away the room, inked out flesh and outlined bones My ain She became sharply herself-bone, wire, antenna-but she was not afraid She had been pared down like this before, when she had travelled up thealone in black She had also sailed a boat safely between land and land
She did not knohether she had fallen asleep or not when she heard a rushi+ng coes of fear seized her soles as so, climbed the foot of the bed It rolled over her and landed bodily on her chest There it sat It breathed airlessly, pressing her, sapping her ”Oh, no A Sitting Ghost,” she thought She pushed against the creature to lever herself out froot heavier Her fingers and palhost's thick short hair like an aniainst warainst rabbed clutches of fur and pulled She pinched the skin the hair grew out of and gouged into it with her fingernails She forced her hands to hunt out eyes, furtive somewhere in the hair, but could not find any She lifted her head to bite but fell back exhausted The mass thickened
She could see the knife, which was catching the ht, near the lah, too burdensoe of the bed, perhaps it would fall off and reach the knife As if feeding on her very thoughts, the ghost spread itself over her arh so that she heard it, and she understood that it had started huhost appeared She breathed shallowly, panting as in childbirth, and could not shout out The roo; surely soht, on the other side of the ringing, she could hear wo But soon their conversations had ceased The school slept She could feel that the souls had gone travelling; there was a lightness not in the dor at the babies on her back or in their cribs, she had always been able to tell-after the rocking and singing and bedti still not to startle theoes out of their bodies, out of the house Beyond the horror in the ghost roohout the dor
”You will not win, Boulder,” she spoke to the ghost ”You do not belong here And I will see to it that you leave Whencomes, only one of us will control this rooth and width; I will be dancing, not sliding and creeping like you I will go right out that door, but I'll coet fire, Ghost Youa medical school We have cabinets full of alcohol, laboratories full We have a co fat, enough to burn for a le fried meal I will pour alcohol into my washbucket, and I'll set fire to it Ghost, I will burn you out I will swing the bucket across the ceiling Then from the kitchen my friends will come with the lard; e fire it, the smoke will fill every crack and corner Where will you hide, Ghost? I will ain
”I do not give in,” she said ”There is no pain you can inflict that I cannot endure You're wrong if you think I'm afraid of you You're noGhosts before Yes, people have lived to tell about you You kill babies, you cowards You have no power over a strong wo sits on ? I canaspirin Are these all the tricks you have, Ghost? Sitting and ringing? That is nothing A Broo shape Merely a boulder A hairy butt boulder You s as ghosts
”Letthe provincial exaly as yours plopped itself on his desk (That one had glaring eyes, though, so it wasn't blind and stupid like you) Yen picked up his ferule and hit it like a student He chased it around the rooht us, 'After life, the rational soul ascends the dragon; the sentient soul descends the dragon So in the world there can be no ghosts This thing must have been a Fox Spirit' That must be just what you are-a Fox Spirit You are so hairy, you must be a fox that doesn't even kno to transform itself You're not clever for a Fox Spirit, I edshoes into the rafters? No uises in my dead relatives' shapes? No drooaet nored the ghost on her chest and chanted her lessons for the next day's classes The moon moved fro scurried off, cli quickly down the foot of the bed
She fell asleep until ti to sleep in that room, and so she did