by Amy Tan
I hear scraping sounds and raise my head. Kwan is poking the Swiss Army knife into the keyhole on the front of the chest. “What are you doing?”
“Lost key.” She holds up the knife, searching among its tools for a better implement. She chooses the plastic toothpick. “Long time ago, I put many thing inside here.” She inserts the toothpick into the hole. “Libby-ah, flashlight in bag, you get for me, okay?”
With the light, I can see that the box is made of a dark reddish wood and trimmed in tarnished brass. On the lid is a bas-relief carving of thick trees, a Bavarian-looking hunter, a small dead deer slung over his shoulders, and a dog leaping in front of him.
“What’s in there?”
There’s a click and Kwan sits up. She smiles, gestures toward the box. “You open, see youself.”
I grasp a small brass latch and slowly pull up the lid. Tinkling sounds burst out. Startled, I let the lid drop. Silence. It’s a music box.
Kwan titters. “Hnh, what you thinking—ghost in there?”
I lift the lid again, and the plucked sounds of a silvery tune fill our small tunnel, sounding jarringly cheerful, a jaunty military march for prancing horses and people in bright costumes. Kwan hums along, obviously familiar with the melody. I aim the light toward the interior of the box. In one corner, under a panel of glass, is the apparatus that makes the music, a metal comb brushing against the pins of a rolling cylinder. “It doesn’t sound very Chinese,” I tell Kwan.
“Not Chinese. German-made. You like music?”
“Very pleasant.” So this is the source of her music box story. I’m relieved to know there’s at least some basis for her delusions. I too hum along with the tune.
“Ah, you know song?”
I shake my head.
“I once give you music box, wedding present. Remember?”
Abruptly, the music stops; the tune hangs in the air a few seconds before it fades away. There is only the awful hissing of the stove, a reminder of rain and cold, of Simon’s being in danger. Kwan slides open a wooden panel in the box. She takes out a key, inserts it into a slot, and begins cranking. The music resumes, and I’m grateful for its artificial comfort. I glance at the section of the box that is now exposed. It’s a knickknack drawer, a catchall for loose buttons, a frayed ribbon, an empty vial—things once treasured but eventually forgotten, things meant to be repaired, then put aside for too long.
When the music stops again, I wind the box myself. Kwan is examining a kidskin glove, its fingers permanently squeezed into a brittle bunch. She puts it to her nose and sniffs.
I pick up a small book with deckled edges. A Visit to India, China, and Japan by Bayard Taylor. Inserted between two pages is a bookmark of sorts, the torn flap of an envelope. A phrase on one of the pages is underlined: “Their crooked eyes are typical of their crooked moral vision.” What bigot owned this book? I turn over the envelope flap. Written in brown ink is a return address: Russell and Company, Acropolis Road, Route 2, Cold Spring, New York. “Did this box belong to someone named Russell?” I ask.
“Ah!” Kwan’s eyes grow big. “Russo. You remember!”
“No.” I point the flashlight at the envelope flap. “It says here ‘Russell and Company.’ See?”
Kwan seems disappointed. “At that time, I didn’t know English,” she says in Chinese. “I couldn’t read it.”
“So this box belonged to Mr. Russell?”
“Bu-bu.” She takes the envelope flap and stares at it. “Ah! Russell. I thought it was ‘Russo’ or ‘Russia.’ The father worked for a company named Russell. His name was . . .” Kwan looks me in the eye. “Banner,” she says.
I laugh. “Oh, right. Like Miss Banner. Of course. Her father was a merchant seaman or something.”
“Opium boat.”
“Yeah, I remember now. . . .” And then the oddity of this strikes me, that we’re no longer talking about a bedtime story of ghosts. Here is the music box, here are the things that supposedly belonged to them. I can barely speak. “This was Miss Banner’s music box?”
Kwan nods. “Her first name—ai-ya!—now it’s run out of my head.” She reaches into the knickknack drawer and removes a small tin. “Tst! Her name,” she keeps saying to herself, “how can I forget her name?” From the tin, she removes a small black brick. I think it is an inkstone, until she pinches off a piece and adds it to the tea, now boiling on the stove.
“What’s that?”
“Herb.” She switches to English. “From special tree, new leaf only, very sticky. I make for Miss Banner myself. Good for drinking, also just for smelling. Loosen you mind. Make you feel peace. Maybe give me memory back.”
“Is this from the holy tree?”
“Ah! You remember!”
“No. I remember the story you told.” My hands are shaking. I have a terrible craving for a cigarette. What the hell is going on? Maybe I have become as crazy as Kwan. Maybe the water in Changmian is contaminated with a hallucinogen. Or maybe I’ve been bitten by a Chinese mosquito that infects the brain with insanity. Maybe Simon isn’t missing. And I don’t have things in my lap that belong to a woman from a childhood dream.
The mist and sharp scent of the tea waft upward. I hover over the cup, the steam dampening my face, close my eyes, and inhale the fragrance. It has a calming effect. Maybe I am actually asleep. This is a dream. And if it is, I can pull myself out. . . .
“Libby-ah, look.”
Kwan gives me a hand-stitched book. The cover is made of soft, floppy suede, sepia-colored. OUR SUSTENANCE, it says in embossed gothic lettering. Traces of gold flake rim the bottoms of the letters. As I turn the cover, bits of endpaper crumble off and I see from the exposed leather underneath that the now faded covers were once a somber purple, a color that reminds me of a Bible picture from childhood: a wild-looking Moses, standing on a boulder against a purple sky, breaking the tablets in front of a crowd of turban-headed heathens.
I open the book. On the left side of one page is a message typeset in cramped, uneven lines: “Trust in the Lord delivers us from temptations of the Devil. If you are overflowing with the Spirit, you cannot be fuller.” On the opposite page are the typeset words “The Amen Corner.” And beneath that, in a scrawl full of ink smears and sputters, is a quirky list: “Rancid beans, putrid radishes, opium leaf, pigweed, shepherd’s purse, artemisia, foul cabbage, dried seeds, stringy pods, and woody bamboo. Much served cold or adrift in a grim sea of castor oil. God have mercy.” The pages that follow contain similar juxtapositions, Christian inspiration related to thirst and salvation, hunger and fulfillment, answered by an Amen Corner listing foods that the owner of this journal obviously found offensive yet useful for heretic humor. Simon would love seeing this. He can use it in our article.
“Listen.” I read aloud to Kwan: “ ‘Canine cutlets, bird fricassee, stewed holothuria, worms, and snakes. A feast for honourable guests. In the future, I shall strive to be less than honourable!’ ” I put the journal down. “I wonder what holothuria is.”
“Nelly.”
I look up. “Holothuria means Nelly?”
She laughs, spanks my hand lightly. “No-no-no! Miss Banner, her first name Nelly. But I always call her Miss Banner. That’s why almost don’t remember whole name. Ha. What bad memory! Nelly Banner.” She chuckles to herself.
I grip the journal. My ears are ringing. “When did you know Miss Banner?”
Kwan shakes her head. “Exact date, let me see—”
“Yi ba liu si.” I recall the Chinese words from one of Kwan’s bedtime stories. “Lose hope, slide into death. One eight six four.”
“Yes-yes. You good memory. Same time Heavenly King lose Great Peace Revolution.”
The Heavenly King. I remember that part as well. Was there actually someone called the Heavenly King? I wish I knew more about Chinese history. I rub my palm on the soft cover of the journal. Why can’t they make books like this today?—books that feel warm and friendly in your hands. I turn to another page and read the ent
ry: “ ‘Biting off the heads of lucifer matches (agonizing). Swallowing gold leaf (extravagant). Swallowing chloride of magnesium (foul). Eating opium (painless). Drinking unboiled water (my suggestion). Further to the topic of suicide, Miss Moo informed me that it is strictly forbidden among Taiping followers, unless they are sacrificing themselves in the battle for God.’ ”
Taiping. Tai means “great.” Ping means “peace.” Taiping, Great Peace. That took place—when?—sometime in the mid–nineteenth century. My mind is being pulled and I’m resisting, but barely hanging on. In the past, I’ve always maintained enough skepticism to use as an antidote to Kwan’s stories when necessary. But now I’m staring at sepia ink on yellowed paper, a tarnished locket, the bunched glove, the cramped letters: OUR SUSTENANCE. I’m listening to the music, its lively, old-fashioned melody. I examine the box to see if there is any indication of a date. And then I remember the journal. On the back of the title page, there it is: Glad Tidings Publishers, MDCCCLIX. In Latin, damn it! I corral the letters into numbers: 1859. I flip open the Bayard Taylor book: G. P. Putnam, 1855. So what do these dates prove? That doesn’t mean Kwan knew someone named Miss Banner during the Taiping Rebellion. It’s just coincidence, the story, the box, the dates on the book.
But in spite of all my logic and doubt, I can’t dismiss something larger I know about Kwan: that it isn’t in her nature to lie. Whatever she says, she believes is true. Like what she said about Simon, that she hadn’t seen him as a ghost, which means he’s alive. I believe her. I have to. Then again, if I believe what she says, does that mean I now believe she has yin eyes? Do I believe that she talks to Big Ma, that there actually is a cave with a Stone Age village inside? That Miss Banner, General Cape, and One-half Johnson were real people? That she was Nunumu? And if that’s all true, the stories she told throughout these years . . . well, she must have told me for a reason.
I know the reason. I’ve known since I was a child, really I have. Long ago I buried that reason in a safe place, just as she had done with her music box. Out of guilt, I listened to her stories, all the while holding on to my doubts, my sanity. Time after time, I refused to give her what she wanted most. She’d say, “Libby-ah, you remember?” And I’d always shake my head, knowing she hoped I would say, “Yes, Kwan, of course I remember. I was Miss Banner. . . .”
“Libby-ah,” I hear Kwan say now, “what you thinking?”
My lips are numb. “Oh. You know. Simon. I keep thinking, and everything I think about gets worse and worse.”
She scoots over so that we are sitting side by side. She massages my cold fingers, and instant warmth flows through my veins.
“How ’bout we talk? Nothing to talk about, that’s what we talk. Okay? Talk movie we seen. Talk book you reading. Or talk weather— no-no, not this, then you worry again. Okay, talk political things, what I vote, what you vote, maybe argue. Then you don’t think too much.”
I’m confused. I return a half-smile.
“Ah! Okay. Don’t talk. I talk. Yes, you just listen. Let see, what I talk about? . . . Ah! I know. I tell you story of Miss Banner, how she decide give me music box.”
I catch my breath. “Okay. Sure.”
Kwan switches to Chinese: “I have to tell you this story in Mandarin. It’s easier for me to remember that way. Because when this happened, I couldn’t speak any English. Of course, I didn’t speak Mandarin then, only Hakka, and a little bit of Cantonese. But Mandarin lets me think like a Chinese person. Of course, if you don’t understand a word here and there, you ask me, I’ll try to think of the English word. Let me see, where should I start? . . .
“Ah, well, you already know this about Miss Banner, how she was not like other foreigners I knew. She could open her mind to different opinions. But I think sometimes this made her confused. Maybe you know how that is. You believe one thing. The next day, you believe the opposite. You argue with other people, then you argue with yourself. Libby-ah, do you ever do that?”
Kwan stops and searches my eyes for an answer. I shrug and this satisfies her. “Maybe too many opinions is an American custom. I think Chinese people don’t like to have different opinions at the same time. We believe one thing, we stick to it for one hundred years, five hundred years. Less confusion that way. Of course, I’m not saying Chinese people never change their minds, not so. We can change if there’s a good reason. I’m just saying we don’t change back and forth, right and left, whenever we like, just to be interesting. Actually, maybe today, Chinese people are changing too much, whichever way the money is blowing, that’s the direction they’ll chase.”
She nudges me. “Libby-ah, don’t you think that’s true? In China today people grow more capitalist ideas than pigs. They don’t remember when capitalism was the number-one enemy. Short memory, big profits.”
I respond with a polite laugh.
“Americans have short memories too, I think. No respect for history, only what’s popular. But Miss Banner, she had a good memory, very unusual. That’s why she learned to speak our language so quickly. She could hear something just once, then repeat it the next day. Libby-ah, you have a memory like this—don’t you?—only it’s with your eyes not your ears. What do you call this kind of memory in English? . . . Libby-ah, are you asleep? Did you hear what I asked?”
“Photographic memory,” I answer. She’s pressing all the buttons now. She’s not going to let me hide this time.
“Photographic, yes. Miss Banner didn’t have a camera, so she was not photographic, but she did have the memory part. She always could remember what people said, just like a tape recorder. Sometimes this was good, sometimes bad. She could remember what people said at dinnertime, how they said something completely different the next week. She remembered things that bothered her, could not let them out of her mind. She remembered what people prayed for, what they got instead. Also, she was very good at remembering promises. If you made her a promise, oh, she would never let you forget. This was like her memory specialty. And she also remembered promises she made to other people. To some people, making a promise is not the same thing as doing the promise. Not Miss Banner. To her a promise was forever, not just one lifetime. Like the vow she made to me, after she gave me the music box, when death marched toward us. . . . Libby-ah, where you going?”
“Fresh air.” I walk to the archway, trying to push out of my mind what Kwan is telling me. My hands are trembling, and I know it isn’t because of the cold. This is the promise Kwan always talked about, the one I never wanted to hear, because I was afraid. Of all times, why does she have to tell me this now? . . .
And then I think: What am I afraid of? That I might believe the story is true—that I made a promise and kept it, that life repeats itself, that our hopes endure, that we get another chance? What’s so terrible about that?
I survey the night sky, now clear of rain clouds. I remember another night long ago with Simon, when I said something stupid about the night sky, how the stars were the same that the first lovers on earth had seen. I had been hoping with all my soul that someday he would love me above all others, above all else. But it was for just a brief moment, because my hope felt too vast, like the heavens, and it was easier to be afraid and keep myself from flying out there. Now I’m looking at the heavens again. This is the same sky that Simon is now seeing, that we have seen all our lives, together and apart. The same sky that Kwan sees, that all her ghosts saw, Miss Banner. Only now I no longer feel it is a vacuum for hopes or a backdrop for fears. I see what is so simple, so obvious. It holds up the stars, the planets, the moons, all of life, for eternity. I can always find it, it will always find me. It is continuous, light within dark, dark within light. It promises nothing but to be constant and mysterious, frightening and miraculous. And if only I can remember to look at the sky and wonder about this, I can use this as my compass. I can find my way through chaos no matter what happens. I can hope with all my soul, and the sky will always be there, to pull me up. . . .
“Libby-ah, you thinking t
oo much again? Should I talk more?”
“I was just wondering.”
“Wondering what?”
I keep my back to her, still searching the sky, finding my way from star to star. Their shimmer and glow have traveled a million light-years. And what I now see is a distant memory, yet as vibrant as life can ever be.
“You and Miss Banner. Did you ever look at the sky together on a night like this?”
“Oh yes, many times.” Kwan stands up and walks over to me. “Back then, we had no TV of course, so at night the only thing to do was watch the stars.”
“What I mean is, did you and Miss Banner ever have a night like this, when you were both scared and you didn’t have any idea what would happen?”
“Ah . . . yes, this is true. She was scared to die, scared also because she had lost someone, a man she loved.”
“Yiban.”
Kwan nods. “I was scared too. . . .” She pauses before saying in a hoarse whisper: “I was the reason he wasn’t there.”
“What do you mean? What happened?”
“What happened was—ah, maybe you don’t want to know.”
“Is it . . . is it sad?”
“Sad, yes, happy too. Depends on how you remember.”
“Then I want to remember.”
Kwan’s eyes are wet. “Oh, Libby-ah, I knew someday you would remember with me. I always wanted to show you I really was your loyal friend.” She turns away, gathers herself, then squeezes my hand and smiles. “Okay, okay. Now this is a secret. Don’t tell anyone. Promise, Libby-ah. . . . Ah yes, I remember the sky was dark, hiding us. Between those two mountains over there, it was growing brighter and brighter. A big orange fire was burning. . . .”
And I listen, no longer afraid of Kwan’s secrets. She’s offered me her hand. I’m taking it freely. Together we’re flying to the World of Yin.