by Amy Tan
When Ruth went back into the house, she was still shaking. She had not expected everything to be so crazy and ugly. Being careless could cause terrible trouble. You could be bad without even meaning to be.
“Those people huli-hudu” her mother muttered. She set the steaming food on the table. “Crazy, argue over nothing.” And then she closed the windows.
Hours later, as Ruth lay wide awake in bed, the muffled shouts and screams suddenly stopped. She listened for them to begin again, but all she detected were her mother’s snores. She arose in the pitch dark and went into the bathroom. She climbed on the toilet seat and looked out the window across the yard. The cottage lights were burning. What was going on? And then she saw Lance walk out with a duffel bag and hurl it into the trunk of his car. A moment later, he spun the tires on the gravel and took off with a roar. What did that mean? Had he told Dottie he was going to marry Ruth?
The next morning, Saturday, Ruth barely touched the rice porridge her mother had heated up. She waited anxiously for the Pontiac to return, but everything remained quiet. She slumped onto the sofa with her book. Her mother was putting dirty clothes, towels, and sheets into a bag draped over a cart. She counted out the quarters and dimes needed for the laundromat, then said to Ruth, “Let’s go. Wash-clothes time.”
“I don’t feel so good.”
“Ai-ya, sick?”
“I think I’m going to throw up.”
Her mother fussed over her, taking her temperature, asking her what she had eaten, what her stools looked like. She made Ruth lie down on the sofa and placed a bucket nearby, in case she really did get sick. At last her mother departed for the laundromat; she would be gone for at least three hours. She always pushed the cart to a place twenty minutes away, because the washers there were a nickel cheaper than those at the closer places and the dryers didn’t burn the clothes.
Ruth put on a jacket and strayed outside. She slid into the chair on the porch, opened her book, and waited. Ten minutes later, Dottie opened the back door of the cottage, climbed down the four steps, and strode across the yard. Her eyes were puffy like a toad’s, and when she smiled at Ruth, the upper half of her face looked tragic.
“How ya doin’, kiddo?”
“Okay, I guess.”
Dottie sighed, sat down on the porch, and dropped her chin onto her knees. “He’s gone,” she said. “But he’s going to pay, don’t you worry.”
“I don’t want any money,” Ruth protested.
Dottie laughed once, then sniffed. “I mean he’s going to jail.”
Ruth was frightened. “Why?”
“Because of what he did to you, of course.”
“But he didn’t mean to. He just forgot—”
“Forgot you were only eleven? Jeez!”
“It was my fault too. I should have been more careful.”
“Honey, no, no, no! You don’t have to protect him. Really. It’s not your fault or the baby’s… . Now listen, you’re going to have to talk to the police—”
“No! No! I don’t want to!”
“I know you’re scared, but what he did was wrong. It’s called statutory rape, and he has to be punished for it… . Anyway, the police will probably ask you a lot of questions, and you just tell them the truth, what he did, where it happened… . Was it in the bedroom?”
“The bathroom.”
“Jeez!” Dottie nodded bitterly. “Yeah, he always did like it in there… . So he took you to the bathroom—”
“I went by myself.”
“All right, and then he followed you, and then what? Did he have his clothes on?”
Ruth was aghast. “He stayed in the living room, watching TV,” she said in a tiny voice. “I was in the bathroom by myself.”
“Then when did he do it?”
“Before me. He peed first, then I did.”
“Wait a second… . He what?”
“He peed.”
“On you?”
“On the toilet seat. Then I went in and sat on it.”
Dottie stood up, her face twisted with horror. “Oh no, oh my God!” She grabbed Ruth by the shoulders and shook her. “That’s not how babies are made. Pee on the toilet seat. How could you be so stupid? He has to stick his cock in you. He squirts sperm, not piss. Do you realize what you’ve done? You accused an innocent man of raping you.”
“I didn’t—” Ruth whispered.
“Yes, you did, and I believed you.” Dottie stomped off, cursing.
“I’m sorry,” Ruth cried after her. “I said I’m sorry.” She was still not certain what she had done.
Dottie turned around and sneered. “You have no idea what sorry really is.” Then she went inside and banged the door shut.
Though she was no longer pregnant, Ruth felt no relief. Everything was still awful, maybe even worse. When her mother returned from the laundromat, Ruth was lying under the covers in bed, pretending to be asleep. She felt stupid and scared. Would she go to jail? And though she knew now that she was not pregnant, she wanted to die more than ever. But how? She pictured herself lying under the wheels of the Pontiac, Lance starting the car and taking off, crushing her without even knowing it. If she died like her father, he would meet her in heaven. Or would he too think she was bad?
“Ah, good girl,” her mother murmured. “You sleep, feel better soon.”
Later that afternoon, Ruth heard the sounds of the Pontiac pulling into the driveway. She peeked out the window. Lance, grim-faced, carried out some boxes, two suitcases, and a cat from the cottage. Then Dottie came out, dabbing her nose with a tissue. She and Lance never looked at each other. And then they were gone. An hour later, the Pontiac returned, but only Lance got out. What had Dottie told Lance? Why did Dottie have to move out? Would Lance now march up to their door and tell her mother what Ruth had done and demand that they move out that same day as well? Lance hated her, Ruth was sure of that. She had thought being pregnant was the worst thing that could have happened to her. But this was far worse.
She stayed home from school on Monday. LuLing became increasingly fearful that a ghost was trying to take her daughter away. Why else was Ruth still sick? LuLing rambled about bony teeth from a monkey’s jaw. Precious Auntie would know, she kept saying. She knew about the curse. This was punishment for something the family had done a long time ago. She put the sand tray on a chair by Ruth’s twin bed, waiting. “Both us die,” she asked, “or only me?”
“No,” Ruth wrote, “all O.K.”
“What okay-okay? Then why she sick, no reason?”
On Tuesday, Ruth could not stand her mother’s fussing over her any longer. She said she was well enough to go to school. Before opening the door, she looked out the window, then down the driveway. Oh no, the Pontiac was still there. She was trembling so hard she feared her bones might break. After taking a deep breath, she darted out the door, scooted down the side of the driveway farther from the cottage, then edged past the Pontiac. She turned left, even though school was to the right.
“Hey, squirt! I’ve been waiting for you.” Lance was on the porch, smoking a cigarette. “We need to talk.” Ruth stood rooted to the sidewalk, unable to move. “I said we need to talk. Don’t you think you owe me that? . . . Come here.” He threw the burning cigarette onto the lawn.
Ruth’s legs moved shakily forward. The top half of her was still running away. When she reached the top of the porch, she was numb. She looked up. “I’m sorry,” she squeaked. The quiver in her chin shook open her mouth, and sobs burbled out.
“Hey, hey,” Lance said. He looked nervously down the street. “Come on, you don’t have to do that. I wanted to talk so we could have an understanding. I just don’t want this to ever happen again. Okay?”
Ruth sniffed and nodded.
“All right, then. So settle down. Don’t get all spooky on me.”
Ruth wiped at her teary face with her sweater sleeve. The worst was over. She started to go down the stairs.
“Hey, where you going?”
“We still have to talk. Turn around.” His voice was not quite so gentle. Ruth saw he had opened the door. She stopped breathing. “Inside,” he ordered. She bit her lip and slowly climbed back up, then glided past him. She heard the door close and saw the room go dim.
The living room smelled like booze and cigarettes. The curtains were closed and there were empty TV-dinner trays on the coffee table.
“Sit down.” Lance gestured toward the scratchy couch. “Want a soda?” She shook her head. The only light came from the TV, which was tuned to an old movie. Ruth was glad for the noise. And then she saw a commercial, a man selling cars. In his hand was a fake saber. “We’ve slashed our prices—so come on down to Rudy’s Chevrolet and ask to see the slasher!”
Lance sat on the sofa, not as close as he had been that night. He took her books from her arms and she felt unprotected. Tears blurred her eyes, and she tried hard not to make any sounds as she cried.
“She left me, you know.”
A sob burst out of Ruth’s chest. She tried to say she was sorry, but she could make only mouselike sniffles.
Lance laughed. “Actually, I kicked her out. Yeah, in a way, you did me a favor. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have found out she was screwing around. Oh sure, I kind of suspected it for a while. But I told myself, Man, you got to have trust. And you know what, she didn’t trust me. Can you believe it? Me? Let me tell you something, you can’t have a marriage if you don’t have trust. You know what I mean?” He looked at her.
Ruth desperately nodded.
“Nah, you won’t know for another ten years.” He lit another cigarette. “You know, in ten years, you’ll look back and say, ‘Boy, I sure was dumb about how babies are made!’” He snorted, then cocked his head to get her reaction. “Aren’t you going to laugh? I think it’s kind of funny myself. Don’t you?” He started to pat her arm and she flinched without intending to. “Hey, what’s the matter? Uh-oh, don’t tell me… . You don’t trust me. What are you, like her? After what you did and what I certainly did not do, do you think I now deserve this kind of treatment from you?”
Ruth was quiet for a long time, trying to make her lips move right. Finally she said, in a cracked voice, “I trust you.”
“Yeah?” He patted her arm again, and this time she didn’t jerk stupidly. He continued talking in a weary but reassuring voice. “Listen, I’m not going to yell at you or nothing, okay? So just relax. Okay? Hey, I said ‘Okay?’”
“Okay.”
“Give me my smile.”
She forced her lips to pull upward.
“There it is! Oops. Gone again!” He stubbed out his cigarette. “All right, are we friends again?” He stuck out his hand for her to shake. “Good. It’d be terrible if we couldn’t be friends, since we live next to each other.”
She smiled at him and this time it came naturally. She tried to breathe through her clogged nose.
“And being neighbors, we gotta help each other, not go around accusing someone innocent of doing wrong… .”
Ruth nodded and realized she was still gripping her toes. She relaxed. Soon this would be over. She saw that he had dark circles under his eyes, lines running from his nose to his jaw. Funny. He looked much older than she remembered, no longer as handsome. And then she realized it was because she was no longer in love with him. How strange. She had believed it was love, and it never was. Love was forever.
“So now you know the real way babies are made, don’cha?”
Ruth stopped breathing. She ducked her head.
“Well, do you or don’t you?”
She nodded quickly.
“How? Tell me.”
She squirmed, her mind turning around and around. She saw terrible pictures. A brown hot dog squirting yellow mustard. She knew the words: penis, sperm, vagina. But how could she say them? Then the nasty picture would be there in front of both of them. “You know,” she whimpered.
He looked at her sternly. It was as if he had X-ray eyes. “Yeah,” he finally said. “I know.” He was silent for a few seconds, and then added in a friendlier voice. “Boy, were you dumb. Babies and toilet seats, Jeez.” Ruth kept her head down, but her eyes glanced up at him. He was smiling. “I hope you one day do a better job teaching your kids about the facts of life. Toilet seat! Pee? Pee-you!”
Ruth giggled.
“Ha! I knew you could laugh.” He poked his finger under her armpit and tickled her. She squealed politely. He tickled her again, lower along her ribs, and she spasmed as a reflex. Then suddenly, his other hand reached for her other armpit and she groaned with laughter, helpless, too scared to tell him to stop. He twirled his fingers around her back, along her stomach. She balled herself up like a sow bug and fell to the rug below with terrible gasping giggles.
“You think a lot of things are funny, don’t you?” He twiddled his fingers up and down her ribs as if they were harp strings. “Yeah, I can see that now. Did you tell all your little girlfriends? Ha! Ha! I almost put that guy in jail.”
She tried to cry no, stop, don’t, but she was laughing too hard, unable to take a breath on her own, unable to control her arms or legs. Her skirt was tangled, but she couldn’t pull it down. Her hands were like that of a marionette, twitching toward wherever he touched as she tried to keep his fingers away from her stomach, her breasts, her bottom. Tears poured out. He was pinching her nipples.
“You’re just a little girl,” he panted. “You don’t even have any titties yet. Why would I want to mess around with you? Shit, I bet you don’t even have any tushy hairs—” And when both of his hands shot down to pull off her flowered panties, her voice broke free and blasted out as screeches. Over and over, she made a fierce, sharp sound that came from an unknown place. It was as though another person had burst out of her.
“Whoa! Whoa!” he said, holding up his hands like someone being robbed. “What are you doing? Get a hold of yourself… . Would you just calm down, for chrissake!”
She continued the sirenlike wail, scuttling on her bottom away from him, pulling up her panties, pushing down her dress.
“I’m not hurting you. I am not hurting you.” He repeated this until she settled into whimpers and wheezes. And then there came just fast breathing in the space between them.
He shook his head in disbelief. “Am I imagining things, or weren’t you just laughing a moment ago? One second we ‘re having fun, the next second you’re acting like—well, I don’t know, you tell me.” He squinted hard at her. “You know, maybe you have a big problem. You start to get this funny idea in your head that people are doing something wrong to you, and before you can see what’s true, you accuse them and go crazy and wreck everything. Is that what you’re doing?”
Ruth got up. Her legs were shaky. “I’m going to go,” she whispered. She could hardly walk to the door.
“You’re not going anywhere until you promise you’re not going to spread any more of your goddamn lies. You got that straight!” He walked toward her. “You better not say I did something to you when I didn’t. ‘Cause if you do, I’m going to get really mad and do something that’ll make you sorrier than hell, you hear?”
She nodded dumbly.
He blew air out of his nose, disgusted. “Get out of here. Scram.”
That night, Ruth tried to tell her mother what had happened. “Ma? I’m scared.”
“Why scare?” LuLing was ironing. The room had the smell of fried water.
“That man Lance, he was mean to me—”
Her mother scowled, then said in Chinese: “This is because you’re always bothering him. You think he wants to play with you—he doesn’t! Why do you always make trouble? . . .”
Ruth felt sick to her stomach. Her mother saw danger where there wasn’t. And now that something was truly really awful, she was blind. If Ruth told her the actual truth, she would probably go crazy. She’d say she didn’t want to live anymore. So what difference did it make? She was alone. No one could save her.
An hour later, while LuLing was knitting and watching television, Ruth took down the sand tray by herself. “Precious Auntie wants to tell you something,” she told her mother.
“Ah? ” LuLing said. She immediately stood up and turned off the TV, and eagerly sat down at the kitchen table. Ruth smoothed the sand with the chopstick. She closed her eyes, then opened them, and began.
You must move, Ruth wrote. Now.
“Move?” her mother cried. “Ai-ya! Where we should move?”
Ruth had not considered this. Far away, she finally decided.
“Where far?”
Ruth imagined a distance as big as an ocean. She pictured the bay, the bridge, the long bus rides she had taken with her mother that made her fall asleep. San Francisco, she wrote at last.
Her mother still looked worried. “What part? Where good?”
Ruth hesitated. She did not know San Francisco that well, except for Chinatown and a few other places, Golden Gate Park, the Fun House at Land’s End. And that was how it came to her, an inspiration that moved quickly into her hand: Land’s End.
Ruth recalled the first day she had walked by herself along this stretch of beach. It had been nearly empty, and the sand in front of her had been clean, untrampled. She had escaped and reached this place. She had felt the waves, cold and shocking, grab at her ankles, wanting to pull her in. She remembered how she had cried with relief as the waves roared around her.
Now, thirty-five years later, she was that eleven-year-old child again. She had chosen to live. Why? As she now kept walking, she felt comforted by the water, its constancy, its predictability. Each time it withdrew, it carried with it whatever had marked the shore. She recalled that when her younger self stood on this same beach for the first time, she had thought the sand looked like a gigantic writing surface. The slate was clean, inviting, open to possibilities. And at that moment of her life, she had a new determination, a fierce hope. She didn’t have to make up the answers anymore. She could ask.
Just as she had so long before, Ruth now stooped and picked up a broken shell. She scratched in the sand: Help. And she watched as the waves carried her plea to another world.