Where the Past Begins

by Amy Tan

  Can you believe my mother actually let some stranger wrap a cobra around my neck? She trusted that guy because he was standing on sand, which meant he was authentic and knew what he was doing. I could have died. Besides that, I could have fallen off that camel and been paralyzed for life. I could have been dictating like Stephen Hawking my theory of everything, which would have been about misery as a state of consciousness.

  What’s more, the donkey could have done a field goal kick using my face as a soccer ball. And then I would have been writing about being paralyzed and having a face that people could not bear to look at. I never would have left the psychiatric unit, which, given all the spare time, would have allowed me to churn out 100 horror books all about me. None of those books would have been any you would have wanted to publish—no one wants to read about continual self-pity. And I would have indeed pitied myself every waking minute because I would not have had any semblance of a happy life, given that at age 17 I would have been committed to a psychiatric unit for the rest of my life, and not starting college, where I would have met Lou at a sorority barn dance. All this, because my mother and I believed Tangier was a desert, when the desert was really a few buckets of sand, a bunch of snakes, and a man playing a flute that mesmerized my mother.

  * * *

  1/17/13

  TO: Amy

  FROM: Dan

  THE SAND OF TANGIER sounds like a Bowles story … No deserts in Tangier, however.

  * * *

  2/13/13

  TO: Dan

  FROM: Amy

  About Flora’s character: I talked to a psychiatrist (distinction: not my psychiatrist—I don’t have one I pay for by the hour)—okay, so I talked to one of my many psychiatrist friends, concerning a 3-1/2 yo child separated from her mother in a traumatic way. What would the psychological manifestations of that be in the long term? Answer: Bad. Very bad. Even if mom simply goes away for a week to Hawaii, the child would show for some period of time anxiety, distrust, and regression in potty training progress A week??? But here it’s not a week. A very violent abandonment! In the case of forced and sudden permanent separation and with horrible people, what would the aftermath be? Flora, poor girl. They did not have suicide hotlines then, did they? Priests, rabbis, village elders and shamans.

  I have not yet decided on her actual crisis, whether she is suicidal, has an abortion, or is destructive in another way. Why did I not realize that the first time? Slapping my forehead. I knew it at some level yet forgot that big chunk of my psyche: my mother losing her mother at age 9, watching her die after a deliberate overdose. The permanent effects were obsessions and constant anxiety, regret, anger, and unreasonable expectations, which were also inflicted on me. My mother was not a carefree spirit. She was suicidal all the way to her last year of life, which was when she was demented and suddenly became happy and worry-free. Flora, not a happy child.

  Another concern I have: There are so many new pages I wonder if you will go through them and think that much more revision is needed. Can’t worry about that. It’s more of a question of your timing than mine. You may think the new pages are boring or elliptical. At the very least, I think it will be more than your looking for line edits. I am a whole lot happier with the pages than what was there. But you?

  * * *

  2/13/13

  TO: Dan

  FROM: Amy

  Dan—your mom and dad did damage to you by going off to Vegas. You became an editor and a poet. How could you not see that cause and effect? The effect on a very young child whose parent goes away to Vegas once would probably be nothing most would notice. More a temporary need to be cuddled more (anxious). Second time in a month: bed wetting. Not lifetime. Third time: Poet with angst about dying one day, and in an elevator no less. I do think you would have been a happy car mechanic if your parents simply stayed home and watched the Ed Sullivan show with you. Lennon Sisters, yeah! You would have been practical about buying a coffin you happened to see at a clearance sale. Save for the future!

  I should have explained that those questions I threw out were examples only of my pinball mind—that is the kind of stuff that flies through my mind. I hit a pinball, it goes off in angles, then I hit it again. It is endless. So in the version you read, there is nothing from Violet to Minerva in 1926, and there is now. And Forthright has a role in that. But I am glad that you think that is good, and also that the dramatic aspect can be an abortion, and that Flora remembers and also finds the letter.

  Other thoughts: I have this feeling that, unlike the desired novel endings some readers want, real people don’t learn how to be unselfish, but maybe they can be more self-aware for a second that they are or perhaps they are pathetically more unaware. How do you cure someone of selfishness? Send them to Mother Teresa school? There is something deep-seated about selfishness. It is not like cleanliness. So Minerva is helpless to know how to not be who she is. And there is Lu Shing, who seems to be doing the right thing and never is. But this leaves me with the question of how much change in awareness and behavior and action forward does Flora have upon/after being with Violet.

  I am so happy you like Whitman’s Quicksand Years being there. It is everything about this book in terms of who one is.

  Quicksand years that whirl me I know not whither

  Your schemes, politics, fail, lines give way, substances mock and elude me,

  Only the theme I sing, the great and strong-possess’d soul, eludes not,

  One’s-self must never give way—that is the final substance—that out of all is sure,

  Out of politics, triumphs, battles, life, what at last finally remains?

  When shows break up what but One’s-Self is sure?

  Violet has a “theory” she develops as a child. I don’t know if you will think it is corny, but she calls it “My Pure Self-Being,” her resolve not to be changed into what someone thinks is better, promulgated timing wise with her learning her extra fingers were amputated, and that everyone discussed this and chose the best answer based on playing the piano. She alternates between thinking that others would make her ordinary or—perhaps worse, that she is already ordinary and that is why they want to improve her. Regardless, she wants to “be my pure self-being.”

  At what age do you think children feel that? Did you feel that? Am I weird that I thought that? Or were your parents more—“whatever you want, Danny! Just be yourself!” No one told me to be who I wanted to be.

  So what do we alter?

  * * *

  2/13/13

  TO: Dan

  FROM: Amy

  What did you mean by Lawrentian? Bad? Cheesy? Over the top? Or, oh, pu-leeze? Too much psychological self-absorption? What’s that scene from Sons and Lovers I read when I was 16—with Miriam—was that her name? I remember the couple standing by the fence, simmering with sexual tension. That’s it. Did I absorb more that has now become too Lawrentian? Is it too much introspective sex and ecstatic renewal and “fuck you, Mom”? For the last 25 years, I have been told by writers group members and Molly that I cannot write a decent sex scene—so I never did. Or maybe I wrote one and I was then told it was bad. Now I am really trying to figure out how to not write a bad one. I think that an honest sex scene would have the same two sentences repeatedly: “That feels good” and “Don’t stop,” plus some obscene interjections, and possibly a narrative remark that he or she is not really thinking about much of anything existentially remarkable or spiritually transcendent. Actually, introspection happens only when the sex is bad and the internal thoughts might include: “This is a big mistake,” or “This guy has no idea what he’s doing,” or “Why is the dog barking?” There might be color commentary/epistolatory dissection later with a BFF: “That sucked, and not in a good way,” or “He’s definitely a keeper.”

  * * *

  2/13/13

  TO: Dan

  FROM: Amy

  Never mind. I deleted. It was bad.

  * * *

  2/13/13

  TO:A
my

  FROM: Dan

  I love Whitman and was talking about him today on the way home. There’s Whitman and there’s Dickinson—and all other poetry falls in between, except for Stevens, Yeats, and Eliot.

  The smallest sprout shows there is really no death.

  And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not

  wait at the end to arrest it,

  And ceas’d the moment life appear’d.

  All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,

  And to die is different from what any one supposed,

  and luckier.

  * * *

  2/13/13

  TO: Amy

  FROM: Dan

  I was just reading this, which made me sad it was so true.

  “ONE OF THE BUTTERFLIES”

  W. S. Merwin

  The trouble with pleasure is the timing

  it can overtake me without warning

  and be gone before I know it is here

  it can stand facing me unrecognized

  while I am remembering somewhere else

  in another age or someone not seen

  for years and never to be seen again

  in this world and it seems that I cherish

  only now a joy I was not aware of

  when it was here although it remains

  out of reach and will not be caught or named

  or called back and if I could make it stay

  as I want to it would turn to pain.

  * * *

  3/3/13

  TO: Amy

  FROM: Dan

  That night he memorized the geography of me: the changing circumference of my limbs, the distance between two beloved points, the hollows, dimples, and curves, the depth of our hearts pressed together. We conjoined and separated, conjoined and separated, so that we could have the joy of looking into each other’s eyes, before falling into each other again. I slept tucked into him and he wrapped his arms around me and for the first time in my life, I felt I was truly loved.

  In the middle of the night, I felt a shudder followed by three smaller ones. I turned around. He was weeping.

  “I’m terrified of losing you,” he said.

  “Why would you fear that now?” I stroked his brow and kissed it.

  “I want us to love each other so deeply we ache with the fullness of it.”

  * * *

  3/3/13

  TO: Amy

  FROM: Dan

  Who wrote that?

  * * *

  3/3/13

  TO: Dan

  FROM: Amy

  And not a censorable word.

  * * *

  3/3/13

  TO: Amy

  FROM: Dan

  Right.

  * * *

  3/3/13

  TO: Dan

  FROM: Amy

  Ha.ha. Yes, I wrote it. I had considered taking it out at one point. Glad you like it.

  * * *

  3/3/13

  TO: Amy

  FROM: Dan

  It’s beautiful. Why would you take it out? Of course I knew you wrote it—it’s in your book, the book by the other Amy Tan.

  * * *

  3/3/13

  TO: Dan

  FROM: Amy

  I read things I write and after a while I cannot tell what is bad and what is good. At one time that passage seemed corny to me. I leave in other stuff that truly is corny. I don’t recognize it until I let it sit. And then I am aghast at what I left in.

  * * *

  4/30/13

  TO: Amy

  FROM: Dan

  I would have liked your mother, I know that.

  Books are never done, they’re merely abandoned. Can’t wait to celebrate!!!

  * * *

  4/30/13

  TO: Dan

  FROM: Amy

  Books are never done. They’re merely jerked out of your hands by your publisher.

  * * *

  6/20/13

  TO: Dan

  FROM: Amy

  What can I say beyond thanks? I am kneeling to the Ecco gods. Me, a writer, without appropriate words that are not clichés. I’m beyond happy—beyond grateful, beyond excited. I feel so good, so supported. It gives me confidence to be with the right team. And I love everyone at Ecco. They’re so enthusiastic and smart. So—two more books. We’re going to have fun this time. As for the press release. If you want, we can indicate that the title for the novel is “The Memory of Desire.” The non-fiction book? How about “The Story Behind the Story.”

  Or how about, “Dear Dan.”

  * * *

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  * * *

  LETTERS IN ENGLISH

  My mother’s skill in writing English was similar to her skill in speaking it. But that wasn’t much of a problem when I was growing up, since my father handled anything that required writing in English, from letters to the Department of Justice regarding their immigration status to the annual Christmas brag letter.

  But when my father’s brain tumor left him unable to write, I became my mother’s secretary and my first job was to write thank-you letters to those who sent flowers or condolence letters. I was fifteen, both angry and scared about what had happened to our family, and the last thing I wanted to do was thank someone for their condolences. To do so, I had to simultaneously take dictation from my mother and do drastic editing in my head before committing to paper the words that approximated what she wanted to express. Fortunately for her, and unfortunately for me, our handwriting styles were almost identical. It was as if I inherited the slant of the words, the way she capitalized letters, crossed her t’s and made bumps in her n’s and m’s. I had to practice only a little to write her name exactly as she did. For the thank-you notes, I used the stationery provided by the funeral home. The front said, “We sincerely appreciate your sympathy”—a preprinted form of sincerity that was as insincere as could be—that was my cynical view as a teenager. We sat at the dining table, with a pile of letters on the table. We opened them one at a time and I read them aloud. My mother would cry when a letter included a fond memory of my father or brother. That was torture to me and I had to struggle to not show emotion. My mother, however, welcomed fresh reasons for grief. I would then write the response, beginning with the pro forma: We are grateful for your sympathy and presence at the funeral. I then appended whatever my mother thought would give each note a personal touch: I will always be grateful for your thoughtfulness in counseling Amy on ways to support me in this time of trouble. Or, We appreciated the delicious casserole. Or, It warms my heart to hear how fondly you remember my son. I found it excruciating to write these formal, unfeeling words. It was like whacking a bruise to keep it discolored. Later, I had to write lengthy letters to the bank and umpteen other places that needed to be notified of my father’s death. Shortly after my father died, my mother espied a Ouija board, which a friend from school had brought over for the important task of learning whom we would marry—mine being an unknown man named Garfolk who lived in West Virginia. My father had looked upon the Ouija board as a form of blasphemy, tantamount to speaking to the devil. My mother, however, seized upon it as a stenographic tool of sorts to record and transmit messages to and from heaven. She had long felt that I had a secret ability to talk to ghosts and that I should now use my talent and the Ouija board to communicate with my father and brother Peter. I recall a sick feeling in my stomach when she said that. Asking for the name of your husband was a joke. For my mother, this would be a reunion. There had been other times when she had called upon the divine in hopes of curing my brother and father—a feng shui master who went through the house and backyard to determine what was out of alignment with nature; two women who sat on the sofa with my mother, the three of them babbling with tongues flapping out of their mouths. Now, as with those other occasions, I could not say what I actually felt: a hybrid of helplessness and anger added to her growing pile of wacky ideas. She had lost pieces of her mind, and now she was losing
more. Protesting any of her ideas had always led to either prolonged weeping or outrage that I was implying she was stupid. And maybe she was stupid, she would say, to not recognize the signs of a curse so that she could have protected my father, Peter, and even her mother who had died when my mother was nine. Each missed opportunity was a regret, and she could tally many. That was the beginning of my vow to myself to never have regrets.

  We put the Ouija board on the dining-room table that night and placed our fingers on opposite sides of a heart-shaped plastic planchette, whose clear round eye glided over letters of the alphabet. When the planchette abruptly stopped and the metal pin in the planchette’s eye was directly over a letter, we recorded it. The first few answers came quickly. She began by asking, “Do you miss me? Do you still love me?” I knew the only answer I could give her. I pushed the planchette firmly to the word “Yes.” She responded with copious tears and declarations of love. Eventually, she asked my father and brother for advice on what she should do next with her life. Open a Chinese restaurant? I answered on behalf of my mute father with a resounding “No.” Open a souvenir shop in Portland? No. Move to Taiwan where John and Amy could learn to become more Chinese? I answered: No. After we had gone through a number of other ideas—each of them undesirable from my point of view—she asked if she should invest in IBM or U.S. Steel stock? By then I had become reckless with power. I can no longer recall my answer, but whatever it was, she followed it, and I am happy to report that we did not suffer financial ruin. In fact, by the end of her life, she had accumulated an impressive portfolio for a widow.