(2001) The Bonesetter's Daughter (33 page)

GaoLing took off her shoes. The heels were broken, the sides were split, and her soles had bleeding blisters. “My feet hurt so much I thought they would kill me with the pain.” She snorted. “Maybe I should let Fu Nan think I was killed. Yes, make him feel he is to blame. Though probably he’d feel nothing. He’d just go back to his cloudy dreams. Every day is the same to him, war or no war, wife or no wife.” She laughed, ready to cry. “So Big Sister, what do you say? Should I go back to him?”

What could I do except insist four times that she stay with me? And what could she do except insist three times that she did not want to be a burden? Finally, I took her to my room. She wiped her face and neck with a wet cloth, then lay on my cot with a sigh, and fell asleep.

Sister Yu was the only one who objected to GaoLing’s living with me at the school. “We’re not a refugee camp,” she argued. “As it is, we have no cots to take any more children.”

“She can live in my room, stay in my bed.”

“She is still a mouth to feed. And if we allow one exception, then others will want an exception, too. In Teacher Wang’s family alone, there are ten people. And what about the former students and their families? Should we let them in as well?”

“But they’re not asking to come here.”

“What? Is moss growing on your brain? If we are at war,
everyone
will soon ask. Think about this: Our school is run by the Americans. The Americans are neutral on the Japanese. They are neutral on the Nationalists and the Communists. Here you don’t have to worry which side wins or loses from day to day. You can just watch. That’s what it means to be neutral.”

For all these years, I had bitten back my tongue when Sister Yu was bossy. I had shown her respect when I felt none. And even though I was now a teacher, I still did not know how to argue with her. “You talk about kindness, you say we should have pity”—and before I could tell her what I really thought of her, I said, “and now you want to send my sister back to an opium addict?”

“My eldest sister also had to live with one,” she replied. “When her lungs were bleeding, her husband refused to buy any medicine. He bought opium for himself instead. That’s why she’s dead—gone forever, the only person with deep feeling for me.” It was no use. Sister Yu had found yet another misery to compare as greater than anyone else’s. I watched her hobble out of the room.

When I found Kai Jing, we walked out the gate and around the back wall of the orphanage to snuggle. And then I told him my complaints about Sister Yu.

“You may not think so, but she really does have a good heart,” he said. “I’ve known her since we were children together.”

“Maybe you should marry her, then.”

“I prefer a woman with ticks on her pretty bottom.”

I slapped his hands away. “You mean to be loyal,” he went on. “She means to be practical. Don’t fight differences of meaning. Find where you mean the same. Or simply do nothing for now. Wait and see.” I can honestly say I admired Kai Jing as much as I loved him. He was kind and sensible. If he had a fault, it was his foolishness in loving me. And as my head floated in the pleasure of this mystery and his caresses, I forgot about big wars and small battles.

When I returned to my room, I was startled to see Sister Yu there, shouting at GaoLing: “As hollow as a worm-eaten tree trunk!”

GaoLing shook her fist and said: “The morals of a maggot.”

Then Sister Yu laughed. “I hate that man to the very marrow of my bones!”

GaoLing nodded. “Exactly my feeling, too.”

After a while, I understood that they were not fighting with each other but in a contest to name the worst insult for the devils who had wronged them. For the next two hours, they tallied their grievances. “The desk that was in my father’s family for nine generations,” GaoLing said, “gone in exchange for a few hours of pleasure.”

“No food, no coal, no clothes in winter. We had to huddle so tightly together we looked like one long caterpillar.”

Later that night, GaoLing said to me, “That Sister Yu is very wise, also a lot of fun.” I said nothing. She would soon learn this woman could also be like a stinging wasp.

The next day, I found them seated together in the teacher’s dining room. Sister Yu was talking in a quiet voice, and I heard GaoLing answer her, “This is unbearable to even hear. Was your sister pretty as well as kind?”

“Not a great beauty, but fair,” Sister Yu answered. “Actually, you remind me of her—the same broad face and large lips.”

And GaoLing acted honored, not insulted at all. “If only I could be as brave and uncomplaining.”

“She
should
have complained,” Sister Yu said. “You, too. Why must those who suffer also be quiet? Why accept fate? That’s why I agree with the Communists! We have to struggle to claim our worth. We can’t stay mired in the past, worshipping the dead.”

GaoLing covered her mouth and laughed. “Careful what you say, or the Japanese and Nationalists will take turns whacking off your head.”

“Whack away,” Sister Yu said. “What I say, I mean. The Communists are closer to God, even though they don’t believe in Him. Share the fish and loaves, that’s what they believe. It’s true, Communists are like Christians. Maybe they should form a united front with Jesus worshippers rather than with the Nationalists.”

And GaoLing put her hand over Sister Yu’s mouth. “Are all Christians as stupid as you are?” They were freely insulting each other, as only good friends can.

A few days after this, I found the two of them sitting in the courtyard before dinner, reminiscing like comrades stuck together through the ages like glue and lacquer. GaoLing waved me over to show me a letter with a red seal mark and the emblem of the rising sun. It was from the “Japanese Provisional Military Police.”

“Read it,” Sister Yu said.

The letter was to Chang Fu Nan, announcing that his wife, Liu GaoLing, had been arrested at Wanping as an anti-Japanese spy. “You were arrested?” I cried.

GaoLing slapped my arm. “You melonhead, read more.”

“Before she escaped from the detention center, where she was awaiting execution,” the letter said, “Liu GaoLing confessed that it was her husband, Chang Fu Nan, who sent her to the railway station to conduct her illegal mission. For this reason, the Japanese agents in Peking wish to speak to Chang Fu Nan of his involvement in her spying activities. We will be coming soon to Chang Fu Nan’s residence to discuss the matter.”

“I typed the words,” Sister Yu boasted.

“And I carved the seals,” GaoLing said.

“It’s very realistic,” I told them. “My heart went
peng-peng-peng
when I read it.”

“Fu Nan will think firecrackers have exploded in his chest,” said GaoLing. She and Sister Yu squealed like schoolgirls.

“But won’t Mother and Father be in agony when they hear you’re missing?”

“I’ll go see them next week if the roads are safe.”

And that’s what GaoLing did, went to Immortal Heart, where she discovered that Fu Nan had told no one about the letter. About a month later, she returned to the school as Sister Yu’s helper. “Mother and Father knew only what the Chang father told him,” she reported. “‘That husband of yours,’ Father said to me. ‘I thought he was all boast and no backbone. And then we hear he’s joined the army—didn’t even wait to be forced to go.’”

“I also told Mother and Father that I ran into you at the railway station at the Mouth of the Mountain,” GaoLing said. “I bragged you were an intellectual, working side by side with the scientists—and you’d soon be married to one.”

I was glad she had said this. “Were they sorry about what they did to me?”

“Ha! They were proud,” GaoLing said. “Mother said, ‘I always knew we did well by her. Now you see the result.’”

The dew turned to frost, and that winter we had two kinds of weddings, American and Chinese. For the American part, Miss Grutoff gave me a long white dress she had made for her own wedding but never wore. Her sweetheart died in the Great War, so it was a bad-luck dress. But she had such happy tears when she gave me the gown, how could I refuse? For the Chinese banquet, I wore a red wedding skirt and head scarf that GaoLing had embroidered.

Since GaoLing had already told Mother and Father I was to be married, I invited them out of politeness. I hoped they would use the convenient excuse of war to not come. But Mother and Father did come, as did the aunts and uncles, big and little cousins, nephews and nieces. No one talked of the great embarrassment of what we all knew. It was very awkward. I introduced Mother and Father as my aunt and uncle, which would have been a true fact if I had not been a love child without proper claim to any family. And most everyone at the school acted politely toward them. Sister Yu, however, gave them critical stares. She muttered to GaoLing, loud enough for Mother to hear: “They threw her away, and now they stuff their mouths at her table.” All day long, I felt confused—happy in love, angry with my family, yet strangely glad that they were there. And I was also worried about the white wedding dress, thinking this was a sign that my happiness would not last for long.

Only two of the scientists, Dong and Chao, came to our party. Because of the war, it was too dangerous for anyone to work in the quarry anymore. Most of the scientists had fled for Peking, leaving behind almost everything except the relics of the past. Twenty-six of the local workers stayed, as did Kai Jing, Dong, and Chao, who also lived on the former monastery grounds. Someone needed to keep an eye on the quarry, Kai Jing reasoned. What if the Japanese decided to blow up the hill? What if the Communists used the quarry as a machine-gun trench? “Even if they used it as an open pit toilet,” I said to him, “how can you stop them?” I was not arguing that he and I should run to Peking as well. I knew he would never separate from his old father, and his old father would never separate from the school and the orphan girls. But I did not want my husband to go into the quarry as hero and come out as martyr. So much was uncertain. So many had already gone away. And many of us felt left behind. As a result, our wedding banquet was like the celebration of a sad victory.

After the banquet, the students and friends carried us to our bedchamber. It was the same storeroom where Kai Jing and I had gone for that disaster of a first night. But now the place was clean: no rats, no urine, no ticks or straw. The week before, the students had painted the walls yellow, the beams red. They had pushed the statues to one side. And to keep the Three Wise Men from watching us, I had made a partition of ropes and cloth. On our wedding night, the students remained outside our door for many hours, joking and teasing, laughing and setting off firecrackers. Finally they tired and left, and for the first time Kai Jing and I were alone as husband and wife. That night, nothing was forbidden, and our joy was effortless.

The next day, we were supposed to visit the houses of our in-laws. So we went to the two rooms at the other end of the corridor, where Teacher Pan lived. I bowed and served him tea, calling him “Baba,” and we all laughed over this formality. Then Kai Jing and I went to a little altar I had made with the picture of Precious Auntie in a frame. We poured tea for her as well, then lighted the incense, and Kai Jing called her “Mama” and promised he would take care of my entire family, including the ancestors who had come before me. “I am your family now, too,” he said.

All at once, a cold breath poured down my neck. Why? I thought of our ancestor who died in the Monkey’s Jaw. Was that the reason? I remembered the bones that were never brought back, the curse. What was the meaning of this memory?

“There are no such things as curses,” Kai Jing later told me. “Those are superstitions, and a superstition is a needless fear. The only curses are worries you can’t get rid of.”

“But Precious Auntie told me this, and she was very smart.”

“She was self-taught, exposed to only the old ideas. She had no chance to learn about science, to go to a university like me.”

“Then why did my father die? Why did Precious Auntie die?”

“Your father died because of an accident. Precious Auntie killed herself. You said so yourself.”

“But why did the way of heaven lead to these things?”

“It’s not the way of heaven. There is no reason.”

Because I loved my husband very much, I tried to abide by the new ideas: no curses, no bad luck, no good luck, either. When I worried over dark clouds, I said there was no reason. When wind and water changed places, I tried to convince myself that there was no reason for this as well. For a while, I had a happy life, not too many worries.

Every evening after dinner, Kai Jing and I paid a visit to his father. I loved to sit in his rooms, knowing this was my family home, too. The furnishings were plain, old, and honest, and everything had its place and purpose. Against the west wall, Teacher Pan had placed a cushioned bench that was his bed, and above that, he had hung three scrolls of calligraphy, one hundred characters each, as if done in one breath, one inspiration. By the south-facing window, he kept a pot of flowers in season, bright color that drew the eye away from shadows. Against the east wall were a simple desk and a chair of dark polished wood, a good place for thought. And on the desk were precious scholar-objects arranged like a still-life painting: a lacquered leather box, ivory brush holders, and an inkstone of
duan,
the best kind of stone, his most valuable possession, a gift from an old missionary who had taught him in his boyhood.

One night Teacher Pan gave me that
duan
inkstone. I was about to protest, but then I realized that he was my father now, and I could accept it openly with my heart. I held that circle of
duan
and ran my ringers over its silky smoothness. I had admired that inkstone since the days when I first came to the school as his helper. He had brought it to class once to show to the students. “When you grind ink against stone you change its character, from ungiving to giving, from a single hard form to many flowing forms. But once you put the ink to paper, it becomes unforgiving again. You can’t change it back. If you make a mistake, the only remedy is to throw away the whole thing.” Precious Auntie had once said words that were similar.
You should think about your character. Know where you are changing, how you will be changed, what cannot be changed back again.
She said that when I first learned to grind ink. She also said this when she was angry with me, during the last days we were together. And when I heard Teacher Pan talking about this same thing, I promised myself I would change and become a better daughter.