Part 3 (1/2)
She ahen the students caetting under the quilt to keep war happen?”
”Take my earlobes, please,” said my mother, ”and pull them back and forth In case I lost any of my self, I want you to call me back I was afraid, and fear may have driven me out of my body and mind Then I will tell you the story” Two friends clasped her hands while a third held her head and took each earlobe between thu, ”Cohosts and won Return to To Keung School, Kwangtung City, Kwangtung Province Your class for you, scholarly Brave Orchid Come home Come ho soon Coe, Kwangtung Province Your brother and sisters call you Your friends call you We need you Return to us Return to us at the To Keung School There's work to do Come back, Doctor Brave Orchid, be unafraid Be unafraid You are safe now in the To Keung School All is safe Return”
Abundant co waves warmed my mother Her soul returned fully to her and nestled happily inside her skin, for thisin the past where her children were nor to A many people She rested after battle She let friends watch out for her
”There,” said the roo, ”you are cured Now tell us what happened”
”I had finished readinghappened I was listening to the dogs bark far away Suddenly a full-grown Sitting Ghost loo and pounced on top of me Mounds of hair hid its claws and teeth No true head, no eyes, no face, so low in its level of incarnation it did not have the shape of a recognizable anier than a wolf, bigger than an ape, and growing I would have stabbed it I would have cut it up, and ould beGhost mutation-it had an extra arm that wrested my hand away from the knife
”At about 3 AM AM I died for a while I andering, and the world I touched turned into sand I could hear wind, but the sand did not fly For ten years I lost ot about you; there was soup coins in a dream But I returned I walked fro School That took another two years, outwitting Wall Ghosts en route (The way to do that is to go straight ahead; do not play their side-to-side games In confusion they will instantly revert to their real state-weak and sad humanity No matter what, don't commit suicide, or you will have to trade places with the Wall Ghost If you are not put off by the foot-long lolling tongues and the popped-out eyes of the hanged ones or the open veins or the drowned skin and seaweed hair-and you shouldn't be because you're doctors-you can chant these poor souls on to light) ”No white bats and no black bats flew ahead to guide me to my natural death Either I would die without my whole life or I would not die I did not die I ath and control Good people do not lose to ghosts
”Altogether I was gone for twelve years, but in this room only an hour had passed Thepulling shadows into itself, setting up in on the rest of the dormitory It would eat us up It threw boulders at h it could drive you crazy Didn't you hear it?”
Yes, they had Wasn't it like the electric wires that one soy a
”You were lucky you slept because the sound tears the heart I could hear babies crying in it I could hear tortured people screa, and the cries of their relatives who had to watch”
”Yes, yes, I recognize that ThatI heard in h too strangely for our daytihost if you sweep under the bed The ghost fattens at night, its dark sacs e on th to feed on you Ithe monster's fur so that the hollow hairs could not draw I never let up willing its size s Ghost tehost is listening to us right now, and tonight it alk again but stronger We may not be able to control it if you do not helpGhost has hosts auzy appearances that eyewitnesses doubt their own sightings This one can conjure up enough substance to sit solidly throughout a night It is a serious ghost, not at all playful It does not twirl incense sticks or throw shoes and dishes It does not play peekaboo or wear fright masks It does not bother with tricks It wants lives I a after adults It grows It is mysterious, not ed ht now in a piece of wood or inside one of your dolls Perhaps in daylight we accept that bag to be just a bag”-she pointed with the flat of her pal Ghost” The studentsscraps and pulled up their feet that were dangling over the edge of the bed
”You have to help me rid the world of this disease, as invisible and deadly as bacteria After classes, come back here with your buckets, alcohol, and oil If you can find dog's blood too, our ill go fast Act unafraid Ghost chasers have to be brave If the ghost co the day, spit at it Scorn it The hero in a ghost story laughs a niold on all the creatures around hi woical spells should their patients be disappointed and not get well, now hurried to get to classes on tihost chase grew, and students snatched alcohol and matches froement of the buckets and burners into orderly rows and divided the fuel ”Let's fire the oil all at once,” she said ”Now”
”Whup Whup” My mother told the sound of new fire so that I re blue The tarry oil, which soe witch, fu bucket overhead The smoke curled in black boas around the wohost roo s corners, down to the floor corners,clouds across the walls and floors, under the bed, around one another
”I told you, Ghost,” my mother chanted, ”that ould come after you” ”We told you, Ghost, that ould coht has co Run, Ghost, run fro here Go back, dark creature, to your native country Go ho the women
When the smoke cleared, I think my mother said that under the foot of the bed the students found a piece of wood dripping with blood They burned it in one of the pots, and the stench was like a corpse exhuhed at the s School of Midwifery were neoot scared as a child, one of my mother's threethe frighted spirit back from the farthest deserts A relative would know personal naades and decide which ones were lucky in a chant, but these outside women had to build a path froh there were things owed beggars and ure out how to helpSchool as ”ho out of her real descent line would have led her to the wrong place, the village These strangers had to make her come back to them They called out their own names, woeneration They pieced together new directions, and my mother's spirit followed them instead of the old footprints Maybe that is why she lost her hoe and did not reach her husband for fifteen years
When htwith hers and er at children who hurt theone An old-fashi+oned woman would have called in the streets for her sick child She'd hold its little ehty child” When the coat puffed up, she'd quickly button up the spirit inside and hurry it home to the child's body in bed But my mother, a modern woman, said our spells in private ”The old ladies in China had many silly superstitions,” she said ”I know you'll co a fool of myself in the streets”
Not ere afraid, but ere wide awake and lucid,Province, New Society Village, the river Khich runs past the village ”Go the e caet Just give your father's naer can point out our house” I am to return to China where I have never been
After two years of study-the graduates of three-week and six-week courses wereat such wondrous speeds-e a doctor She elcoarlands and cymbals the way people welcome the ”barefoot doctors” today But the Communists wear a blue plainness dotted with one red Mao button Myheels, and she rode hoone away ordinary and coicians who came down from the mountains
”When I stepped out of ood shoes and own I always dressed hen I ht out their lion and danced ahead ofto America” Until my father sent for her to live in the Bronx, sties She stayed awake keeping watch nightly in an epideht that had been crooked for years while relatives held the cripples down, and she did all this never dressed less elegantly than when she stepped out of the sedan chair
Nor did she change her naht to use their rated,no Aencies
Walking behind the palanquin so that the crowd took her for one of theirl She carried a white puppy and a rice sack knotted at the tails and the puppy's tail ended in red yarn She hter or a slave
When one to Canton s She had received her diploma, and it was time to celebrate She had hunted out the seed shops to taste their lichees, various as wines, and bought a sack that was taller than a child to bedazzle the nieces and nephews Aof narrow leaves My mother popped the thin wood shell in her curled palm The white fruit, an eye without an iris, ran juices like spring rivers inside my mother's mouth She spit out the brown seed, iris after all
She had bought a turtle forto the bottos She gave beggars rice and letter-writers coins so that they would talk-story (”Soave was all they had, and stories”) She let a fortuneteller read the whorls on her fingerprints; he predicted that she would leave China and have sixYou are such a lucky woman Six is the universe's number The four compass points plus the zenith and the nadir are six There are six low phoenix notes and six high, six worldly environations, six classes of ideograph, six domestic animals, six arts, and six paths of o, six states cora Six, which is China” As interesting as his list of sixes was, my mother hurried on her way; she had come to market to buy herself a slave
Between the booths and stores, whoever could squeeze a space-a old, twenty-five acrobats on one unicycle, a man who could swim-displayed his or her newest feat for e purple textiles, dolls with big feet, geese with brown tufts on their heads, chickens hite feathers and black skin, gaames and puppet shows, intricate ways to fold pastry and ancestors'stance
Herders roped off alleys to pen their goats, which stared out of the dirass, ht and watched the tiny yellos close and open again as the goats skipped backward into the shade Two far this year's cow, passed each other, shouting prices Usuallyin a crowd, delighting in the ame the people would play with the rival herders, ere now describing each other's cows-”skinny shoulder blades,” ”lare face” But today she hurried even when looking over the her than her head She paused only a while in front of the ducks, which honkedas soes Mya pond for thes She decided that the drake with the green head would be the best buy, the noblest, although she would not buy hi a nobler duck on the fares, and water tanks were the sellers of little girls So by the side of the road selling one girl There were fathers and hters, whoain My mother turned her face to look at pottery or embroidery rather than at these miserable families who did not have the sense to leave the favored brothers and sisters home All the children bore still faces MyThey would try to keep you talking to find out what kind of mistress you were to your slaves If they could just hear from the buyer's own mouth about a chair in the kitchen, they could tell each other in the years to co in the kitchen chair It was arden, a sweet feeble grandmother, food
My irls stood neatly in a row and bowed together when a custo ”How do you do, Madairls chorused ”We've been taught to bargain We've been taught to sew We can cook, and we can knit” Some of the dealersa happy song about flowers
Unless a group of little girls chanted some especially clever riddle, arts, went over to the quiet older girls with the dignified bows ”Any merchant who advertises 'Honest Scales'then ”Children and Old Men Not Cheated”
There were girls barely able to toddle carrying infant slaves tied in slings to their backs In the undisciplined groups the babies crawled into gutters and the older girls each acted as if she were alone, a daughter a
”Greet the lady,” the dealer coirls' mothers had when visitors cairls
My mother did not need to bow back, and she did not She overlooked the infants and toddlers and talked to the oldest girls
”Open your mouth,” she said, and examined teeth She pulled down eyelids to check for aneirls' wrists to sound their pulses, which tell everything
She stopped at a girl whose strong heart sounded like thunder within the earth, sending its power into her fingertips ”I would not have sold a daughter such as that one,” she told us My mother could find no flaw in the beat; it matched her own, the real rhythm There were people jumpy with silly rhythms; broken rhythms; sly, secretive rhythms They did not follow the sounds of earth-sea-sky and the Chinese language
My iven her when he left It had a map of each hemisphere on the inside covers and a clasp that shut it like a pocketbook ”Watch carefully,” she said With an American pencil, she wrote a word, a felicitous word such as ”longevity” or ”double joy,” which is syirl's face ”If you can write this word from memory, I will take you with me Concentrate now” She wrote in a plain style and folded the page a irl took the pencil and wrote surely; she did not leave out a single stroke
”What would you do,” old watch in a field?”
”I know a chant on the finger bones,” said the girl ”But even if I landed on the bone that says to look no o to theoutward until I reached the field's edge Then I would believe the chant and look no more” She drew inpath
”How do you cast on yarn?”
The girl pantoe hands
”How much water do you put in the rice pot for a fa so that it doesn't unravel?”
Noas time to act as if she were very dissatisfied with the slave's answers so that the dealer would not charge her extra for a skillful worker
”You tie the loose ends into tassles,” said the girl
My mother frowned ”But suppose I like a finished border?”
The girl hesitated ”I could, uh, press the fibers under and sew the the fibers off?”