by Amy Tan
“Miss Banner,” I said, “you are asking me to be a murderer?”
And she answered: “If you are my loyal friend, you would do me this favor.”
Loyal friend! Like a slap in the face! I said to myself, “Who is she to talk about being a loyal friend?” Kill me, Miss Moo! Hnh! I knew what she really wanted—for me to soothe her, tell her how the Jesus Worshippers would not be angry, how they would understand that she’d been fooled by a bad man.
“Miss Banner,” I said, choosing my words very carefully, “don’t be an even bigger fool. You don’t really want me to smash your head. You’re pretending.”
She answered: “Yes, yes, kill me! I want to die!” She beat her fist on the ground.
I was supposed to persuade her against this idea at least one or two more times, arguing until she agreed, with much reluctance, to live. But instead I said, “Hm. The others will hate you, this is true. Maybe they will even kick you out. Then where will you go?”
She stared at me. Kick her out? I could see this idea running through her mind.
“Let me think about this,” I said. After a few moments, I announced in a firm voice: “Miss Banner, I’ve decided to be your loyal friend.”
Her eyes were two dark holes swimming with confusion.
“Sit with your back against this tree,” I told her. She didn’t move. So I grabbed her arm and dragged her to the tree and pushed her down. “Come, Miss Banner, I’m only trying to help you.” I put the hem of her Sunday dress between my teeth and ripped it off.
“What are you doing!” she cried.
“What does it matter?” I said. “Soon you’ll be dead anyway.” I tore her hem into three pieces of cloth. I used one strip to tie her hands behind the skinny tree trunk. By now she was trembling a lot.
“Miss Moo, please let me explain—” she started to say, but then I tied another strip around her mouth. “Now, even if you must scream,” I said, “no one will hear you.” She was mumbling uh-uh-uh. I wrapped the other strip over her eyes. “Now you can’t see the terrible thing I must do.” She began to kick her feet. I warned her: “Ah, Miss Banner, if you struggle like this, I may miss, and smash only your eye or nose. Then I would have to do it again. . . .”
She was making muffled cries, wagging her head and bouncing on her bottom.
“Are you ready, Miss Banner?”
She was making the uh-uh-uh sounds and shaking her head, her whole body, the tree, shaking so hard the leaves started to fall as if it were autumn. “Farewell,” I said, then touched her head lightly with my fist. Just as I thought she would, she fainted right away.
What I had done was mean but not terrible. What I did next was kind but a lie. I walked over to a flowering bush. I broke off a thorn and pricked my thumb. I squeezed and dribbled blood onto the front of her dress, along her brow and nose. And then I ran to get the Jesus Worshippers. Oh, how they praised and comforted her. Brave Miss Banner!—tried to stop the General from stealing the mule. Poor Miss Banner!—beaten, then left to die. Dr. Too Late apologized that he had no medicine to put on the bumps on her face. Miss Mouse said it was so sad that Miss Banner had lost her music box. Mrs. Amen made her invalid soup.
When she and I were alone in her room, Miss Banner said, “Thank you, Miss Moo. I don’t deserve such a loyal friend.” Those were her words, I remember, because I was very proud. She also said, “From now on, I’ll always believe you.” Just then Yiban entered the room without knocking. He threw a leather bag on the floor. Miss Banner gasped. It was her bag of clothes for running away. Now her secret had been discovered. All my meanness and kindness were for nothing.
“I found this in the pavilion,” he said. “I believe it belongs to you. It contains your hat, also some gloves, a necklace, a lady’s hairbrush.” Yiban and Miss Banner stared at each other a long time. Finally he said, “Lucky for you, the General forgot to take it with him.” That’s how he let her know that he too would keep her pitiful secret.
All that week as I did my work, I asked myself, Why did Yiban save Miss Banner from disgrace? She had never been his friend, not like me. I thought about that time I pulled Miss Banner from the river. When you save a person’s life, that person becomes a part of you. Why is that? And then I remembered that Yiban and I had the same kind of lonely heart. We both wanted someone to belong to us.
Soon Yiban and Miss Banner were spending many long hours together. Mostly they spoke in English, so I had to ask Miss Banner what they said. Oh, she told me, nothing very important: their life in America, their life in China, what was different, what was better. I felt jealous, knowing she and I had never talked about these not very important things.
“What is better?” I asked.
She frowned and searched her mind. I guessed she was trying to decide which of the many Chinese things she loved should be mentioned first. “Chinese people are more polite,” she said, then thought some more. “Not so greedy.”
I waited for her to continue. I was sure she would say that China was more beautiful, that our thinking was better, our people more refined. But she did not say these things. “Is there anything better in America?” I asked.
She thought a little bit. “Oh . . . comfort and cleanliness, stores and schools, walkways and roadways, houses and beds, candies and cakes, games and toys, tea parties and birthdays, oh, and big loud parades, lovely picnics on the grass, rowing a boat, putting a flower in your hat, wearing pretty dresses, reading books, and writing letters to friends . . .” On and on she went, until I felt myself growing small and dirty, ugly, dumb, and poor. Often I have not liked my situation. But this was the first time I had this feeling of not liking myself. I was sick with envy— not for the American things she mentioned, but that she could tell Yiban what she missed and he could understand her old desires. He belonged to her in ways that I could not.
“Miss Banner,” I asked her, “you feel something for Yiban Johnson, ah?”
“Feel? Yes, perhaps. But just as a friend, though not as good a friend as you. Oh! And not with the feeling between a man and woman—no, no, no! After all, he’s Chinese, well, not completely, but half, which is almost worse. . . . Well, in our country, an American woman can’t possibly . . . What I mean is, such romantic friendships would never be allowed.”
I smiled, all my worries put to rest.
Then, for no reason, she began to criticize Yiban Johnson. “I must tell you, though, he’s awfully serious! No sense of humor! So gloomy about the future. China is in trouble, he says, soon even Changmian will not be safe. And when I try to cheer him up, tease him a little, he won’t laugh. . . .” For the rest of the afternoon, she criticized him, mentioning all his tiny faults and the ways she could change them. She had so many complaints about him that I knew she liked him better than she said. Not just a friend.
The next week, I watched them sitting in the courtyard. I saw how he learned to laugh. I heard the excited voices of boy-girl teasing. I knew something was growing in Miss Banner’s heart, because I had to ask many questions to find out what it was.
I’ll tell you something, Libby-ah. What Miss Banner and Yiban had between them was love as great and constant as the sky. She told me this. She said, “I have known many kinds of love before, never this. With my mother and brothers, it was tragic love, the kind that leaves you aching with wonder over what you might have received but did not. With my father, I had uncertain love. I loved him, but I don’t know if he loved me. With my former sweethearts, I had selfish love. They gave me only enough to take back what they wanted from me.
“Now I am content,” Miss Banner said. “With Yiban, I love and am loved, fully and freely, nothing expected, more than enough received. I am like a falling star who has finally found her place next to another in a lovely constellation, where we will sparkle in the heavens forever.”
I was happy for Miss Banner, sad for myself. Here she was, speaking of her greatest joy, and I did not understand what her words meant. I wondered if this kind of love came
from her American sense of importance and had led to conclusions that were different from mine. Or maybe this love was like an illness—many foreigners became sick at the slightest heat or cold. Her skin was now often flushed, her eyes shiny and big. She was forgetful of time passing. “Oh, is it that late already?” she often said. She was also clumsy and needed Yiban to steady her as she walked. Her voice changed too, became high and childlike. And at night she moaned. Many long hours she moaned. I worried that she had caught malaria fever. But in the morning, she was always fine.
Don’t laugh, Libby-ah. I had never seen this kind of love in the open before. Pastor and Mrs. Amen were not like this. The boys and girls of my old village never acted like this, not in front of other people, at least. That would have been shameful—showing you care more for your sweetheart than for all your family, living and dead.
I thought that her love was another one of her American luxuries, something Chinese people could not afford. For many hours each day, she and Yiban talked, their heads bent together like two flowers reaching for the same sun. Even though they spoke in English, I could see that she would start a thought and he would finish it. Then he would speak, stare at her, and misplace his mind, and she would find the words that he had lost. At times, their voices became low and soft, then lower and softer, and they would touch hands. They needed the heat of their skin to match the warmth of their hearts. They looked at the world in the courtyard—the holy bush, a leaf on the bush, a moth on the leaf, the moth he put in her palm. They wondered over this moth as though it were a new creature on earth, an immortal sage in disguise. And I could see that this life she carefully held was like the love she would always protect, never let come to harm.
By watching all these things, I learned about romance. And soon, I too had my own little courtship—you remember Zeng, the one-eared peddler? He was a nice man, not bad-looking, even with one ear. Not too old. But I ask you: How much exciting romance can you have talking about cracked jars and duck eggs?
Well, one day Zeng came to me as usual with another jar. I told him, “No more jars. I have no eggs to cure, none to give you.”
“Take the jar anyway,” he said. “Give me an egg next week.”
“Next week I still won’t have any to give you. That fake American general stole the Jesus Worshippers’ money. We have only enough food to last until the next boat from Canton comes with Western money.”
The next week Zeng returned and brought me the same jar. Only this time, it was filled with rice. So heavy with feelings! Was this love? Is love rice in a jar, no need to give back an egg?
I took the jar. I didn’t say, Thank you, what a kind man you are, someday I’ll pay you back. I was like—how do you say it?—a diplomat. “Zeng-ah,” I called as he started to leave. “Why are your clothes always so dirty? Look at all those grease spots on your elbows! Tomorrow you bring your clothes here, I’ll wash them for you. If you’re going to court me, at least you should look clean.”
You see? I knew how to do romance too.
WHEN WINTER CAME, Ermei was still cursing General Cape for stealing the pork leg. That’s because all the cured meat was gone, and so was the fresh. One by one, she had killed the pigs, the chickens, the ducks. Every week, Dr. Too Late, Pastor Amen, and Yiban walked many hours down to Jintian to see if the boat from Canton had come, bearing them money. And every week, they walked home with the same long faces.
One time, they returned with blood running down their long faces. The ladies went running toward them, screaming and crying: Mrs. Amen to Pastor Amen, Miss Mouse to Dr. Too Late, Miss Banner to Yiban. Lao Lu and I ran to the well. While the ladies fussed and washed off the blood, Pastor Amen explained what happened and Yiban translated for us.
“They called us devils, enemies of China!”
“Who? Who?” the ladies cried.
“The Taiping! I won’t call them God Worshippers anymore. They’re madmen, those Taiping. When I said, ‘We’re your friends,’ they threw rocks at me, tried to kill me!”
“Why? Why?”
“Their eyes, because of their eyes!” Pastor shouted more things, then fell to his knees and prayed. We looked at Yiban and he shook his head. Pastor began punching the air with his fists, then prayed again. He pointed to the mission and wailed, prayed more. He pointed to Miss Mouse, who started to cry, patting Dr. Too Late’s face, even though there was no more blood to wipe away. He pointed to Mrs. Amen, spit more words out. She stood up, then walked away. Lao Lu and I were like deaf-mutes, still innocent of what he had said.
At night, we went to the Ghost Merchant’s garden to find Yiban and Miss Banner. I saw their shadows in the pavilion on top of the little hill, her head on his shoulder. Lao Lu would not go up there, because of the ghost. So I hissed until they heard me. They walked down, holding hands, letting go after they saw me. By the light of a melon slice of moon, Yiban told us the news.
He had talked to a fisherman when he went with Pastor and Dr. Too Late to the river to learn about the arrival of boats. The fisherman told him, “No boats, not now, not soon, maybe never. The British boats choked off the rivers. No coming in, no going out. Yesterday the foreigners fought for God, today for the Manchus. Maybe tomorrow China will break into little pieces and the foreigners will pick them up, sell them along with their opium.” Yiban said there was fighting from Suzhou to Canton. The Manchus and foreigners were attacking all the cities ruled by the Heavenly King. Ten-ten thousand Taiping killed, babies and children too. In some places, all a man could see were rotting Taiping bodies; in other cities, only white bones. Soon the Manchus would come to Jintian.
Yiban let us think about this news. “When I told Pastor what the fisherman said, he went to his knees and prayed, just as you saw him do this afternoon. The God Worshippers threw stones at us. Dr. Too Late and I began to run, calling Pastor, but he wouldn’t come. Stones hit his back, his arm, a leg, then his forehead. When he fell to the ground, blood and patience ran out of his head. That’s when he lost his faith. He cried, ‘God, why did you betray me? Why? Why did you send us the fake general, let him steal our hopes?’ ”
Yiban stopped talking. Miss Banner said something to him in English. He shook his head. So Miss Banner continued. “This afternoon, when you saw him fall to his knees, he again let the bad thoughts spill out of his brain. Only now he had lost not just his faith, but also his mind. He was shouting, ‘I hate China! I hate Chinese people! I hate their crooked eyes, their crooked hearts. They have no souls to save.’ He said, ‘Kill the Chinese, kill them all, just don’t let me die with them.’ He pointed to the other missionaries and cried, ‘Take her, take him, take her.’ ”
After that day, many things changed, just like my eggs. Pastor Amen acted like a little boy, complaining and crying often, acting stubborn, forgetting who he was. But Mrs. Amen was not angry with him. Sometimes she scolded him, most times she tried to comfort him. Lao Lu said that night she let Pastor curl against her. Now they were like husband and wife. Dr. Too Late let Miss Mouse nurse his wounds long after there was nothing more to heal. And late at night, when everyone was supposed to be asleep but was not, a door would open, then close. I heard footsteps, then Yiban’s whispers, then Miss Banner’s sighs. I was so embarrassed to hear them that soon after that I dug up her music box and gave it back. I told her, “Look what else General Cape forgot to take.”
One by one the servants left. By the time the air was too cold for mosquitoes to come out at night, the only Chinese who remained at the Ghost Merchant’s House were Lao Lu and I. I’m not counting Yiban, because I no longer thought he was more Chinese than Johnson. Yiban stayed because of Miss Banner. Lao Lu and I stayed because we still had our duck-egg fortunes buried in the Ghost Merchant’s garden. But we also knew that if we left, none of those foreigners would know how to stay alive.
Every day Lao Lu and I searched for food. Since I had once been a poor girl in the mountains, I knew where to look. We poked in the places beneath tree trunks where cicadas slept
. We sat in the kitchen at night, waiting for insects and rats to come out for crumbs we couldn’t see. We climbed up the mountains and picked wild tea and bamboo. Sometimes we caught a bird that was too old or too stupid to fly away fast enough. In the springtime, we plucked locusts and grasshoppers hatching in the fields. We found frogs and grubs and bats. Bats you have to chase into a small place and keep them flying until they fall from exhaustion. We fried what we caught in oil. The oil I got from Zeng. Now he and I had more to talk about than just cracked jars and eggs—funny things, like the first time I served Miss Banner a new kind of food.
“What’s this?” she asked. She put her nose to the bowl, looked and sniffed. So suspicious. “Mouse,” I said. She closed her eyes, stood up, and left the room. When the rest of the foreigners demanded to know what I had said, Yiban explained in their language. They all shook their heads, then ate with good appetites. I later asked Yiban what he told them. “Rabbit,” he said. “I said Miss Banner once had a rabbit for a pet.” After that, whenever the foreigners asked what Lao Lu and I had cooked, I had Yiban tell them, “Another kind of rabbit.” They knew not to ask whether we were telling the truth.
I’m not saying we had plenty to eat. You need many kinds of rabbits to feed eight people two or three times a day. Even Mrs. Amen grew thin. Zeng said the fighting was getting worse. We kept hoping one side would win, one side would lose, so we could return to life being better. Only Pastor Amen was happy, babbling like a baby.
One day Lao Lu and I both decided everything had become worse and worse, until now it was the worst. We agreed that this was the best time to eat duck eggs. We argued a little over how many eggs to give each person. This depended on how long Lao Lu and I thought the worst time would last and how many eggs we had to make things better. Then we had to decide whether to give the eggs to people in the morning or at night. Lao Lu said the morning was best, because we could have dreams of eating eggs and have them come true. This, he said, would make us glad if we woke up and discovered we were still alive. So every morning, we gave each person one egg. Miss Banner, oh, she loved those green-skinned eggs—salty, creamy, better than rabbits, she said.