Where the Past Begins

by Amy Tan

  She can see only the back of her mother’s head, but when her mother turns to look out the window, the girl can see some of her mother’s face. She is frowning and her mouth is a straight line. Is something happening? Her throat grows tight. Maybe her mother is frowning because the sun is hitting her eyes. She hopes that’s the reason. But then she notices that, even though it is Sunday, her mother’s hair is messy, and it’s not just because the window is open. The hair at the back of her head is flat where she slept on it, and the girl can see the pink part of her mother’s scalp peeking through the cowlick. Her mother did not do anything this morning to make her hair look nice. For church, her mother would always roll up her hair in curlers the night before, and in the morning, she would tease up her hair and make it smooth all around. She would put on one of her best dresses, then draw in the curves of her eyebrows with a pencil and make her lips bigger with lipstick, and then she would smack her lips and look in the mirror, turning her head this way and that to see if all the shapes of her face were right. After she sprinkled perfume in her palm and patted her neck, she would pose and ask everyone, “What you think?” The girl and her brothers would answer in unison: “Pretty!” Their father would put his finger to his cheek to pretend he was trying to decide, and then he would say what he always says: “The most beautiful girl in the world,” and she would smile back and give him their secret happy look.

  The girl now thinks that her mother’s messy hair means that whatever is happening now actually started last night. She is also wearing a limp brown dress that is not fresh like the new ones. So that’s a sign, too. The girl didn’t notice any of the signs because of what her little brother did this morning as they were getting ready for church. He had taken her favorite handkerchief with the goggle-eyed owl, and when she got it back, she saw that the owl was missing one of the plastic bubble eyes. She yelled at him and he yelled back, and then her big brother yelled at both of them to yell somewhere else. Then their father yelled from the front door that it was time to go to church. The girl was still mad about the missing owl eye, and that was why she hadn’t noticed anything else, like her mother’s messy hair and ugly brown dress. She also did not notice anything at church, because she was looking at the hymnal and counting how many times the word death appeared. She always looked for signs that her mother was going to explode, so she could get ready for it, but this time she forgot.

  Her mother is looking away from her father. Her mouth is a tight straight line across, and her lips are sucked in. That’s what her mother does when she’s in pain from having cut her finger or hit her leg against a low table. The girl’s little brother is sitting next to her in the middle. He swings his legs and his left foot taps the back of their father’s seat. Then his right foot taps the back of their mother’s seat. He’s going to make things worse, the girl thinks, so she gives him a stern face and mouths, No. He frowns back before kicking harder on the back of their father’s seat. “Stop that,” their father says, and her brother looks down at his lap, chastened. The girl smirks at him.

  And then she hears her mother talking to herself in a loud voice: “Why he tell his son stop when he can’t stop himself?” She sounds strange, as if she were asking how rain is made. The girl looks over at her older brother and he shakes his head. His eyebrows are squeezed together and when he sighs, his chest rises high and stays there a long time before he lets the air out. He leans his head out the window, as if he is trying to blow off dirt on his face, and the wind pushes his short hair in one direction then another, making his hair look like velvet nap. The girl leans her head out the window, too. Her ponytails whip her face. She keeps her mouth and eyes closed tight. Her mother once told her that an ugly bug or a piece of garbage could fly into her mouth and give her a disease. Or a bee could pierce her eye and go all the way into her brain. She can feel her eyelids fluttering, as if the wind is trying to peel them open.

  They drive past the curve in the highway where the bread factory is. She loves the smell of baked bread. But all she can smell now is the grease her father squeezed in the joints of the front door where her mother is sitting. Her father turns to her mother and says something that gets lost because a big truck is slowly going by. After a few seconds, her mother answers: “What you care I think?” Her father frowns. He looks tired. No one moves, not even her little brother. She knows that whatever happens next will determine what happens before lunch, then after lunch, then before dinner and after dinner—who knows for how long this time. The girl looks at her big brother and he shrugs in a way that means he doesn’t know and he’s nervous, too. Her little brother’s eyes are big and his top teeth are biting his bottom lip. He always does that when he’s scared. He keeps turning his head to look at her. He starts to whisper to her but she shakes her head and turns her face to the window so he can’t ask her anything. She feels him tugging on her sleeve, and she wants to shout that he’s going to wreck everything if he doesn’t stop.

  Her mother turns to her father to say something, and right away, she knows it’s bad. Her voice is broken, squeaky then jagged as words scrape through her throat. “That what you want?”

  It’s happening. The girl makes her hands into fists, which is what she always does to stay strong and keep from crying. But this time her hands feel weak and floppy. She can’t squeeze them hard.

  “You want to go, then go,” the girl hears her mother say. “Or I go first.” The way she said “go” is so harsh it sounds like “ko,” like coughing. Her mother turns toward her father, and the girl can see a fine spray of spit as her mother speaks. “No one wants me here. So I just ko.”

  The girl’s legs feel like worms are crawling inside them. She wants to shake them. She wants to run. Her throat hurts. Something sharp is stuck down there and she needs to yell to get it out. She wants to yell at her mother, Go. No one’s stopping you. Right away, her mother screeches like a scared bird, as if she heard what the girl was thinking. Her father reaches for her mother’s hand, but she snatches it back, as if he was trying to steal it. He tells her she’s tired, and they can talk more at home. But she won’t look at him. She is mumbling to herself and breathes stronger and stronger like a monster. The girl’s stomach tightens and she says to herself, Hurry, please hurry, and she looks out the window for signs that they’re close to where they turn off to go home. But she sees only fields of dry yellow grass.

  Suddenly her mother goes quiet. It’s getting worse, and just as she thinks that, her mother grunts something that sounds like “mm-hum,” like she’s agreeing with herself, and it happens: “Maybe I kill myself right now. Then everybody happy.”

  The girl looks at her weak fists and tells herself: Don’t forget this day. Remember what she did to us. Don’t cry. If you do, she’ll win. Her body feels far away, and then it feels big and heavy. She can’t move it. It is just her mind that is working, and she sees everything, even though she does not want to anymore. She can’t take it anymore, the way her mother goes up and down, which makes them all go up and down, without anyone knowing what will happen. She hates her mother. She wishes she were dead. And just as she thinks this, she hears the car door creak. It’s cracked open and her mother is pushing against it with her shoulder. Her father yells, “Hey!” and grabs for her mother. The car swerves, cars honk, and she and her brothers scream and fall every which way. When she sits back up, she sees her mother is still shoving the door with both hands. But the door stays stuck. The girl remembers that the door is broken. Nothing bad will happen. But then she hears a scraping noise and the hammer bang, and the girl leans forward and can see the door is now stuck wide open. The road below is a dark river running fast. Her stomach feels like it turned upside down. When she screams, it comes out in a whisper because she doesn’t have enough air to shout. Her father is driving with his left and reaching for her mother with his right. The car swerves one way and then the other. Her little brother shrieks, “I’m scared!” Her older brother is calling, “Mom! Mom! Please! Mom.” The girl
is dizzy. Her chest is so tight she can hardly breathe. Her hands are so weak she can’t even hold on to the backseat of the car. All she can do is look at her mother and the moving road. Her mother’s hair is blowing like a crazy lady’s. She puts her right leg out the car door. The girl gets an awful feeling in her chest that she knows what is about to happen. But instead of her mother falling out, the road grabs her mother’s right shoe and it’s gone in an instant, which surprises her mother so much she pulls her leg back in. The girl thinks that maybe the worst is over. Two seconds later, her mother leans her whole body out, and again the girl knows what will happen—that the road will take her mother as fast as it took her shoe. It’ll tear her to pieces. Then the car swerves again and she feels the tires slip and go off the road, and her body grows tighter and smaller as she waits for the crashing sounds that mean they are dead. But the car keeps moving, now more slowly, and soon she hears the sound of crunching gravel, until they stop. When she sits up, she sees her mother is still in the car. Her father’s hand is gripping her mother’s wrist. She’s screaming and beating his hand. But her father’s hand is like metal. Every muscle on his face stands out, pulled hard. Finally, her mother gives up. She leans back and says in a howling kind of voice, “I want to die.” The car door is still stuck open, like the broken wing of a stupid bird. The girl is so angry she says to herself: I hate her. I hate this car. I hate the car door. I hate everything and everybody.

  Her father loosens his grip and shuts off the engine. The car is quiet. Everyone is quiet. The trucks rumble by, and the cars passing them sound like wind gusts, but it still feels quiet, so quiet the girl can hear what sounds like a singing insect in her ear. Her mother sits up. She pushes back her hair, as if she’s just waking up from a dream. Then she jumps out the door. Her big brother shouts, “Mom!” Her little brother screams. And the girl can’t think or move her mouth. She is watching her mother running for the highway. She’s going to throw herself in front of the cars. She tried that before. But this time, she’s stumbling with only one shoe on. Her father is already out his side of the car and grabs her and takes her back to the gravel. Her mother tries to yank away from him, so he lifts and carries her off like a bride and sets her down when they reach the shady part of the overpass, set back from the turnoff. The girl can see her mother flinging her arms up and down, like she’s trying to fly up. Her little brother is still crying, burbling drool as he chants, “I’m scared, I’m scared.” The girl puts her hand on his arm and he falls into her lap and cries into her skirt. She pats his head a few times with her tingling hand. Her big brother is staring ahead. He doesn’t blink. He doesn’t move. His lips are moving, like he’s praying. And then the girl feels her cheeks. She’s crying and doesn’t know when it started. She wasn’t strong enough. Her stomach hurts and she needs to lie down, but she can’t because her little brother is lying in her lap and he’s a baby.

  She watches her father hug her mother. Her mother’s arms are limp, like hers. Only her mother is there in the cool shade and she is still here in the car, where it’s getting hotter by the second. And now she’s angry at her father. What about us? He should worry about us, not her. She caused this. The girl’s throat hurts so much. She needs water. How long will they have to wait? When they come back, where will he put her in the car? Up front? What if the door won’t close? What’s going to happen when they get home? Will they have cereal for dinner like the last time? How long before her mother comes out of the bedroom? How long before she talks again in a normal voice?

  But now she doesn’t want to know anything anymore. She’s dizzy and her nose is clogged from crying and she can hardly breathe. She leans her head back against the soft plastic seat. She smells the cars going by, the oil in the door, the dry grass. The tires are going to melt and she doesn’t care anymore. She just wants everything to be over. She just wants to stop shaking.

  I just wanted to stop shaking, and I could not for more than an hour after writing this.

  One of my close friends, a psychiatrist who knew my mother well, said that I had remarkable resilience as a child, and that it was a wonder that I didn’t suffer from a disabling psychiatric disorder as an adult. While I don’t have suicidal tendencies, my childhood experiences did leave their mark on me. I am intolerant of emotional manipulation. I bolt from people who dangle threats and uncertainty as power, and there is no forgiveness for those who try. The body does not like what it once felt.

  And yet much of my writing, I realize, is about uncertainty—the heartbreaking moments when something is not clear, when the situation is changing, when a truth turns into a half-truth and then a lie. My childhood with its topsy-turvy emotions has, in fact, been a reason to write. I can lay it squarely on the page and see what it was. I can understand it and see the patterns. My characters are witness to what I went through. In each story, we are untangling a knot in a huge matted mess. The work of undoing them one at a time is the most gratifying part of writing, but the mess will always be there.

  [ QUIRK ]

  A Mere Mortal at Age Twenty-Five

  [From the journal]

  SAN FRANCISCO, 1977. I recall a scene in a D. H. Lawrence novel—I don’t remember which book—but it was about a young man traveling in a train and seeing glimpses of people in landscape as the train went whizzing by. The young man wondered how he could be capturing only a fraction of many people’s existences, people whose lives have cast as intricate a web around others as his own. Yet the transitory glimpse was as much as those people would ever imprint in his memory, in his existence. I have a God-like feeling, a feeling of omnipotence that makes me think that all that goes on is a perception of moments I can then embellish on. I see a woman with brightly colored clothes talking to a man in a restaurant and immediately I have sorted out this woman’s life history. It’s a curious thought to imagine that others who have seen me would imagine the same thing, and would never realize the terrors I’ve had, the ecstasies I’ve enjoyed, the feelings I’ve embraced. It scares me that perhaps even I would never know those things about myself as I look back and try to remember what I saw, what I felt. With a flick of whimsy, I can blot out a bad memory, recall an experience and make more of it than was actually there, and then never know what was.

  A Mere Mortal at Age Twenty-Six

  [From the journal]

  SAN FRANCISCO, 1978. The me that was six years old is the same me that is now twenty-six. There has been no break in times. It’s sneaked on by, and before I realize it, those six-year-old’s thoughts are now a twenty-six-year-old’s thoughts. I’ve always had this game: as I walk along, passing some inconsequential moment in my life I think, “You’ll remember this moment when you are old because right now you feel lonely and the only one who can share this moment is the you when you were eighteen.” Eighteen for some reason seemed like the age of becoming.

  Today I wonder what inconsequential experience will be deemed worthy of recall. Of course, there are those experiences which one can’t possibly forget, such as feelings of grief, hatred, of love, all extremes on a continuum of feelings.

  [ QUIRK ]

  How to Change Fate: Step 1

  [From the journal]

  To change fate, you do not choose small steps. It is not about your will. It is allowing what comes to you. It is like seeing a ship turn in the Eastern Sea, slowly but surely, against the natural stream. And when it arrives, you step aboard and go to where it will take you. And somehow you know its course.

  Interlude

  * * *

  THE UNFURLING OF LEAVES

  On a spring day along a sidewalk in Shanghai, I stopped to watch a man rolling his hands over tea leaves in a dry wok warmed by the sun. He did this with a touch so light it reminded me of magicians who coax spoons to bend. He was brushing the flattened tea leaves—those choice top two or three leaves recently plucked from the bush—to roll them into cylinders as fine as needles. I had learned at a tea-tasting class that connoisseurs prize the unbroken needles,
made possible only by hand rolling, as opposed to the mindless ease of machine rolling. The best of teas required hard labor to become both aesthetically and aromatically pleasing. The best of teas did not need the perfume of flowers, unlike teas with inferior qualities.