The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts

by Maxine Hong Kingston

  “It’s too many years gone by,” said the niece.

  Brave Orchid turned suddenly—another Moon Orchid, this one a neat little woman with a bun. She was laughing at something the person ahead of her in line said. Moon Orchid was just like that, laughing at nothing. “I would be able to tell the difference if one of them would only come closer,” Brave Orchid said with tears, which she did not wipe. Two children met the woman with the cherries, and she shook their hands. The other woman was met by a young man. They looked at each other gladly, then walked away side by side.

  Up close neither one of those women looked like Moon Orchid at all. “Don’t worry, Aunt,” said the niece. “I’ll know her.”

  “I’ll know her too. I knew her before you did.”

  The niece said nothing, although she had seen her mother only five years ago. Her aunt liked having the last word.

  Finally Brave Orchid’s children quit wandering and drooped on a railing. Who knew what they were thinking? At last the niece called out, “I see her! I see her! Mother! Mother!” Whenever the doors parted, she shouted, probably embarrassing the American cousins, but she didn’t care. She called out, “Mama! Mama!” until the crack in the sliding doors became too small to let in her voice. “Mama!” What a strange word in an adult voice. Many people turned to see what adult was calling, “Mama!” like a child. Brave Orchid saw an old, old woman jerk her head up, her little eyes blinking confusedly, a woman whose nerves leapt toward the sound anytime she heard “Mama!” Then she relaxed to her own business again. She was a tiny, tiny lady, very thin, with little fluttering hands, and her hair was in a gray knot. She was dressed in a gray wool suit; she wore pearls around her neck and in her earlobes. Moon Orchid would travel with her jewels showing. Brave Orchid momentarily saw, like a larger, younger outline around this old woman, the sister she had been waiting for. The familiar dim halo faded, leaving the woman so old, so gray. So old. Brave Orchid pressed against the glass. That old lady? Yes, that old lady facing the ghost who stamped her papers without questioning her was her sister. Then, without noticing her family, Moon Orchid walked smiling over to the Suitcase Inspector Ghost, who took her boxes apart, pulling out puffs of tissue. From where she was, Brave Orchid could not see what her sister had chosen to carry across the ocean. She wished her sister would look her way. Brave Orchid thought that if she were entering a new country, she would be at the windows. Instead Moon Orchid hovered over the unwrapping, surprised at each reappearance as if she were opening presents after a birthday party.

  “Mama!” Moon Orchid’s daughter kept calling. Brave Orchid said to her children, “Why don’t you call your aunt too? Maybe she’ll hear us if all of you call out together.” But her children slunk away. Maybe that shame-face they so often wore was American politeness.

  “Mama!” Moon Orchid’s daughter called again, and this time her mother looked right at her. She left her bundles in a heap and came running. “Hey!” the Customs Ghost yelled at her. She went back to clear up her mess, talking inaudibly to her daughter all the while. Her daughter pointed toward Brave Orchid. And at last Moon Orchid looked at her—two old women with faces like mirrors.

  Their hands reached out as if to touch the other’s face, then returned to their own, the fingers checking the grooves in the forehead and along the sides of the mouth. Moon Orchid, who never understood the gravity of things, started smiling and laughing, pointing at Brave Orchid. Finally Moon Orchid gathered up her stuff, strings hanging and papers loose, and met her sister at the door, where they shook hands, oblivious to blocking the way.

  “You’re an old woman,” said Brave Orchid.

  “Aiaa. You’re an old woman.”

  “But you are really old. Surely, you can’t say that about me. I’m not old the way you’re old.”

  “But you really are old. You’re one year older than I am.”

  “Your hair is white and your face all wrinkled.”

  “You’re so skinny.”

  “You’re so fat.”

  “Fat women are more beautiful than skinny women.”

  The children pulled them out of the doorway. One of Brave Orchid’s children brought the car from the parking lot, and the other heaved the luggage into the trunk. They put the two old ladies and the niece in the back seat. All the way home—across the Bay Bridge, over the Diablo hills, across the San Joaquin River to the valley, the valley moon so white at dusk—all the way home, the two sisters exclaimed every time they turned to look at each other, “Aiaa! How old!”

  Brave Orchid forgot that she got sick in cars, that all vehicles but palanquins made her dizzy. “You’re so old,” she kept saying. “How did you get so old?”

  Brave Orchid had tears in her eyes. But Moon Orchid said, “You look older than I. You are older than I,” and again she’d laugh. “You’re wearing an old mask to tease me.” It surprised Brave Orchid that after thirty years she could still get annoyed at her sister’s silliness.

  Brave Orchid’s husband was waiting under the tangerine tree. Moon Orchid recognized him as the brother-in-law in photographs, not as the young man who left on a ship. Her sister had married the ideal in masculine beauty, the thin scholar with the hollow cheeks and the long fingers. And here he was, an old man, opening the gate he had built with his own hands, his hair blowing silver in twilight. “Hello,” he said like an Englishman in Hong Kong. “Hello,” she said like an English telephone operator. He went to help his children unload the car, gripping the suitcase handles in his bony fingers, his bony wrists locked.

  Brave Orchid’s husband and children brought everything into the dining room, provisions for a lifetime move heaped all over the floor and furniture. Brave Orchid wanted to have a luck ceremony and then to put things away where they belonged, but Moon Orchid said, “I’ve got presents for everybody. Let me get them.” She opened her boxes again. Her suitcase lids gaped like mouths; Brave Orchid had better hurry with the luck.

  “First I’ve got shoes for all of you from Lovely Orchid,” Moon Orchid said, handing them out to her nieces and nephews, who grimaced at one another. Lovely Orchid, the youngest aunt, owned either a shoe store or a shoe factory in Hong Kong. That was why every Christmas she sent a dozen pairs, glittering with yellow and pink plastic beads, sequins, and turquoise blue flowers. “She must give us the leftovers,” Brave Orchid’s children were saying in English. As Brave Orchid ran back and forth turning on all the lights, every lamp and bulb, she glared sideways at her children. They would be sorry when they had to walk barefoot through snow and rocks because they didn’t take what shoes they could, even if the wrong size. She would put the slippers next to the bathtub on the linoleum floors in winter and trick her lazy children into wearing them.

  “May I have some scissors? Oh, where are my scissors?” said Moon Orchid. She slit the heel of a black embroidered slipper and pulled out the cotton—which was entangled with jewels. “You’ll have to let me pierce your ears,” she told her nieces, rubbing their earlobes. “Then you can wear these.” There were earrings with skewers like gold krisses. There was a jade heart and an opal. Brave Orchid interrupted her dashing about to rub the stones against her skin.

  Moon Orchid laughed softly in delight. “And look here. Look here,” she said. She was holding up a paper warrior-saint, and he was all intricacies and light. A Communist had cut a wisp of black paper into a hero with sleeves like butterflies’ wings and with tassels and flags, which fluttered when you breathed on him. “Did someone really cut this out by hand?” the children kept asking. “Really?” The eyebrows and mustache, the fierce wrinkles between the eyes, the face, all were the merest black webs. His open hand had been cut out finger by finger. Through the spaces you could see light and the room and each other. “Oh, there’s more. There’s more,” said Moon Orchid happily. She picked up another paper cutout and blew on it. It was the scholar who always carries a fan; her breath shook its blue feathers. His brush and quill and scrolls tied with ribbon jutted out of lace vases. “
And more”—an orange warrior-poet with sword and scroll; a purple knight with doily armor, holes for scales; a wonderful archer on a red horse with a mane like fire; a modern Communist worker with a proud gold hammer; a girl Communist soldier with pink pigtails and pink rifle. “And this is Fa Mu Lan,” she said. “She was a woman warrior, and really existed.” Fa Mu Lan was green and beautiful, and her robes whirled out as she drew her sword.

  “Paper dolls,” said Brave Orchid to her children. “I’d have thought you were too old to be playing with dolls.” How greedy to play with presents in front of the giver. How impolite (“untraditional” in Chinese) her children were. With a slam of her cleaver, she cracked rock candy into jagged pieces. “Take some,” she urged. “Take more.” She brought the yellow crystals on a red paper plate to her family, one by one. It was very important that the beginning be sweet. Her children acted as if this eating were a bother. “Oh, all right,” they said, and took the smallest slivers. Who would think that children could dislike candy? It was abnormal, not in the nature of children, not human. “Take a big piece,” she scolded. She’d make them eat it like medicine if necessary. They were so stupid, surely they weren’t adults yet. They’d put the bad mouth on their aunt’s first American day; you had to sweeten their noisy barbarous mouths. She opened the front door and mumbled something. She opened the back door and mumbled something.

  “What do you say when you open the door like that?” her children used to ask when they were younger.

  “Nothing. Nothing,” she would answer.

  “Is it spirits, Mother? Do you talk to spirits? Are you asking them in or asking them out?”

  “It’s nothing,” she said. She never explained anything that was really important. They no longer asked.

  When she came back from talking to the invisibilities, Brave Orchid saw that her sister was strewing the room. The paper people clung flat against the lampshades, the chairs, the tablecloths. Moon Orchid left fans unfolded and dragons with accordion bodies dangling from doorknobs. She was unrolling white silk. “Men are good at stitching roosters,” she was pointing out bird embroidery. It was amazing how a person could grow old without learning to put things away.

  “Let’s put these things away,” Brave Orchid said.

  “Oh, Sister,” said Moon Orchid. “Look what I have for you,” and she held up a pale green silk dress lined in wool. “In winter you can look like summer and be warm like summer.” She unbuttoned the frogs to show the lining, thick and plaid like a blanket.

  “Now where would I wear such a fancy dress?” said Brave Orchid. “Give it to one of the children.”

  “I have bracelets and earrings for them.”

  “They’re too young for jewelry. They’ll lose it.”

  “They seem very big for children.”

  “The girls broke six jade bracelets playing baseball. And they can’t endure pain. They scream when I squeeze their hands into the jade. Then that very day, they’ll break it. We’ll put the jewelry in the bank, and we’ll buy glass and black wood frames for the silk scrolls.” She bundled up the sticks that opened into flowers. “What were you doing carrying these scraps across the ocean?”

  Brave Orchid took what was useful and solid into the back bedroom, where Moon Orchid would stay until they decided what she would do permanently. Moon Orchid picked up pieces of string, but bright colors and movements distracted her. “Oh, look at this,” she’d say. “Just look at this. You have carp.” She was turning the light off and on in the goldfish tank, which sat in the rolltop desk that Brave Orchid’s husband had taken from the gambling house when it shut down during World War II. Moon Orchid looked up at the grandparents’ photographs that hung on the wall above the desk. Then she turned around and looked at the opposite wall; there, equally large, were pictures of Brave Orchid and her husband. They had put up their own pictures because later the children would not have the sense to do it.

  “Oh, look,” said Moon Orchid. “Your pictures are up too. Why is that?”

  “No reason. Nothing,” said Brave Orchid. “In America you can put up anybody’s picture you like.”

  On the shelf of the rolltop desk, like a mantel under the grandparents’ photos, there were bowls of plastic tangerines and oranges, crepe-paper flowers, plastic vases, porcelain vases filled with sand and incense sticks. A clock sat on a white runner crocheted with red phoenixes and red words about how lucky and bright life is. Moon Orchid lifted the ruffles to look inside the pigeon holes. There were also pen trays and little drawers, enough so that the children could each have one or two for their very own. The fish tank took up half the desk space, and there was still room for writing. The rolltop was gone; the children had broken it slat by slat when they hid inside the desk, pulling the top over themselves. The knee hole had boxes of toys that the married children’s children played with now. Brave Orchid’s husband had padlocked one large bottom cabinet and one drawer.

  “Why do you keep it locked?” Moon Orchid asked. “What’s in here?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “Nothing.”

  “If you want to poke around,” said Brave Orchid, “why don’t you find out what’s in the kitchen drawers so you can help me cook?”

  They cooked enough food to cover the dining room and kitchen tables. “Eat!” Brave Orchid ordered. “Eat!” She would not allow anybody to talk while eating. In some families the children worked out a sign language, but here the children spoke English, which their parents didn’t seem to hear.

  After they ate and cleaned up, Brave Orchid said, “Now! We have to get down to business.”

  “What do you mean?” said her sister. She and her daughter held one another’s hands.

  “Oh, no. I don’t want to listen to this,” said Brave Orchid’s husband, and left to read in bed.

  The three women sat in the enormous kitchen with the butcher’s block and two refrigerators. Brave Orchid had an inside stove in the kitchen and a stove outside on the back porch. All day long the outside stove cooked peelings and gristle into chicken feed. It horrified the children when they caught her throwing scraps of chicken into the chicken feed. Both stoves had been turned off for the night now, and the air was cooling.

  “Wait until morning, Aunt,” said Moon Orchid’s daughter. “Let her get some sleep.”

  “Yes, I do need rest after travelling all the way from China,” she said. “I’m here. You’ve done it and brought me here.” Moon Orchid meant that they should be satisfied with what they had already accomplished. Indeed, she stretched happily and appeared quite satisfied to be sitting in that kitchen at that moment. “I want to go to sleep early because of jet lag,” she said, but Brave Orchid, who had never been on an airplane, did not let her.

  “What are we going to do about your husband?” Brave Orchid asked quickly. That ought to wake her up.

  “I don’t know. Do we have to do something?”

  “He does not know you’re here.”

  Moon Orchid did not say anything. For thirty years she had been receiving money from him from America. But she had never told him that she wanted to come to the United States. She waited for him to suggest it, but he never did. Nor did she tell him that her sister had been working for years to transport her here. First Brave Orchid had found a Chinese-American husband for her daughter. Then the daughter had come and had been able to sign the papers to bring Moon Orchid over.

  “We have to tell him you’ve arrived,” said Brave Orchid.

  Moon Orchid’s eyes got big like a child’s. “I shouldn’t be here,” she said.

  “Nonsense. I want you here, and your daughter wants you here.”

  “But that’s all.”

  “Your husband is going to have to see you. We’ll make him recognize you. Ha. Won’t it be fun to see his face? You’ll go to his house. And when his second wife answers the door, you say, ‘I want to speak to my husband,’ and you name his personal name. ‘Tell him I’ll be sitting in the family room.’ Walk past her as if she were a s
ervant. She’ll scold him when he comes home from work, and it’ll serve him right. You yell at him too.”

  “I’m scared,” said Moon Orchid. “I want to go back to Hong Kong.”

  “You can’t. It’s too late. You’ve sold your apartment. See here. We know his address. He’s living in Los Angeles with his second wife, and they have three children. Claim your rights. Those are your children. He’s got two sons. You have two sons. You take them away from her. You become their mother.”

  “Do you really think I can be a mother of sons? Don’t you think they’ll be loyal to her, since she gave birth to them?”

  “The children will go to their true mother—you,” said Brave Orchid. “That’s the way it is with mothers and children.”

  “Do you think he’ll get angry at me because I came without telling him?”

  “He deserves your getting angry with him. For abandoning you and for abandoning your daughter.”

  “He didn’t abandon me. He’s given me so much money. I’ve had all the food and clothes and servants I’ve ever wanted. And he’s supported our daughter too, even though she’s only a girl. He sent her to college. I can’t bother him. I mustn’t bother him.”

  “How can you let him get away with this? Bother him. He deserves to be bothered. How dare he marry somebody else when he has you? How can you sit there so calmly? He would’ve let you stay in China forever. I had to send for your daughter, and I had to send for you. Urge her,” she turned to her niece. “Urge her to go look for him.”

  “I think you should go look for my father,” she said. “I’d like to meet him. I’d like to see what my father looks like.”

  “What does it matter what he’s like?” said her mother. “You’re a grown woman with a husband and children of your own. You don’t need a father—or a mother either. You’re only curious.”

  “In this country,” said Brave Orchid, “many people make their daughters their heirs. If you don’t go see him, he’ll give everything to the second wife’s children.”