by Amy Tan
“I feel a great burden of guilt and responsibility.”
When I finished reading GaoLing’s letter, I felt as if an ax were chopping my neck when I was already dead. I had waited in Hong Kong for nothing. I could wait a year, ten years, or the rest of my life, in this crowded city among desperate people with stories sadder than mine. I knew no one and I was lonely for my friends. There was no America for me. I had lost my chance.
The next day, I gathered my things and went to the train station to return to Peking. I put down my remaining money at the ticket booth. “The fare is higher now, miss,” said the ticket man. How could this be? “Money is worth less now,” he told me, “everything costs more.” I then asked for a lower-class ticket. That’s the lowest, he said, and pointed to a wall with fares written on a blackboard.
Now I was stuck. I wondered if I should write to Teacher Pan or perhaps Sister Yu. But then I thought, Oh, to give so much trouble to someone. No, you fix this problem yourself. I would pawn my valuables. But when I looked at them, I saw that these were treasures only to me: a notebook of Kai Jing’s, the jacket GaoLing gave me before I went to the orphanage, the pages of Precious Auntie’s and her photograph.
And there was also the oracle bone.
I unwrapped it from its soft cloth and looked at the characters scratched on one side. Unknown words, what should have been remembered. At one time, an oracle bone was worth twice as much as a dragon bone. I took my treasure to three shops. The first belonged to a bone-setter. He said the bone was no longer used as medicine, but as a strange curiosity it was worth a little money. He then offered me a price that surprised me, for it was almost enough to buy a second-class ticket to Peking. The next shop sold jewelry and curios. That shopkeeper took out a magnifying glass. He examined the oracle bone very carefully, turning it several times. He said it was genuine, but not a good example of an oracle bone. He offered me the price of a first-class ticket to Peking. The third place was an antique shop for tourists. Like the jeweler, this man examined the oracle bone with a special glass. He called another man over to take a look. Then he asked me many questions. “Where did you find this? . . . What? How did a girl like you find such a treasure? . . . Oh, you are the granddaughter of a bonesetter? How long have you been in Hong Kong? . . . Ah, waiting to go to America? Did someone else leave for America without this? Did you take it from him? There are plenty of thieves in Hong Kong these days. Are you one? Miss, you come back, come back, or I’ll call the police.”
I left that store, angry and insulted. But my heart was going poom-poom-poom, because now I knew that what was in my hand was worth a lot of money. Yet how could I sell it? It had belonged to my mother, my grandfather. It was my connection to them. How could I hand it over to a stranger so I could abandon my homeland, the graves of my ancestors? The more I thought these things, the stronger I became. Kai Jing had been right. This was my character.
I made a plan. I would find a cheaper place to live—yes, even cheaper than the stinky-fish house—and find a job. I would save my money for a few months, and if the visa still had not come through, I would return to Peking. There at least I could get a job at another orphanage school. I could wait there in comfort and companionship. If GaoLing got me the visa, fine, I would make my way back to Hong Kong. If she did not, fine, I would stay and be a teacher.
That day, I moved to a cheaper place to live, a room I shared with two women, one snoring, one sick. We took turns sleeping on the cot, the snoring girl in the morning, me in the afternoon, the sick one after me. Whichever two were not sleeping wandered outside, looking for take-home work: mending shoes, hemming scarves, weaving baskets, embroidering collars, painting bowls, anything to make a dollar. That’s how I lived for a month. And when the sick girl didn’t stop coughing, I moved away. “Lucky you didn’t get TB like the other girl did,” a melon vendor later told me. “Now they’re both coughing blood.” And I thought: TB! I had pretended to have this same sickness to escape from the Japanese. And would I now escape from getting sick?
Next I lived with a Shanghai lady who had been very, very rich but was no longer. We shared a hot little room above a place where we worked boiling laundry, dipping the clothes and plucking them out with long sticks. If she got splashed she yelled at me, even if it was not my fault. Her husband had been a top officer with the Kuomintang. A girl in the laundry told me he had been jailed for collaborating with the Japanese during the war. “So why does she act so uppity,” the girl said, “when everyone looks down on her?” The uppity lady made a rule that I could not make any sounds at night—not a cough or a sneeze or a burst of gas. I had to walk softly, pretend my shoes were made of clouds. Often she would cry, then wail to the Goddess of Mercy what a terrible punishment it was that she had to be with such a person, meaning me. I told myself, Wait and see, maybe your opinion of her will change, as it did with Sister Yu. But it did not.
After that awful woman, I was glad to move in with an old lady who was deaf. For extra money, I helped her boil and shell peanuts all night long. In the morning, we sold the peanuts to people who would eat them with their breakfast rice porridge. During the heat of the afternoon, we slept. This was a comfortable life: peanuts and sleep. But one day a couple arrived, claiming to be relatives of the deaf lady’s: “Here we are, take us in.” She didn’t know who they were, so they traced a zigzag relationship, and sure enough, she had to admit, maybe they were related: Before I left, I counted my money and saw I had enough for the train ticket to Peking at the lowest, lowest price.
Again I went to the railway station. Again I found out that the money value had gone down, down and the price of the ticket had gone up and up, to twice as much as before. I was like a little insect scurrying up a wall with the water rising faster.
This time I needed a better plan to change my situation, my siqing. In English and in Chinese, the words sound almost the same. On every street corner, you could hear people from everywhere talking about this: “My situation is this. This is how I can improve my situation.” I realized that in Hong Kong, I had come to a place where everyone believed he could change his situation, his fate, no more staying stuck with your circumstances. And there were many ways to change. You could be clever, you could be greedy, you could have connections.
I was clever, of course, and if I had been greedy, I would have sold the oracle bone. But I decided once again I could not do that. I was not that poor in body and respect for my family.
As for connections, I had only GaoLing, now that Miss Grutoff was dead. And GaoLing was of no use. She did not know how to be resourceful. If I had been the one to go first to America, I would have used my strength, my character, to find a way to get a visa within a few weeks at the most. Then I wouldn’t be facing the troubles I had simply because GaoLing didn’t know what to do. That was the problem: GaoLing was strong, but not always in the right ways. She had forever been Mother’s favorite, spoiled by pampering. And all those years in the orphanage, she had forever lived the easy life. I had helped her so much, as had Sister Yu, that she never had to think for herself. If the river turned downstream, she would never think to swim upstream. She knew how to get her way, but only if others helped her.
By the next morning, I had devised a new plan. I took my little bit of money and bought the white smock and trousers of a majie. British people were crazy for that kind of maid—pious, refined, and clean. That was how I found a job with an English lady and her ancient mum. Their last name was Flowers.
They had a house in the Victoria Peak area. It was smaller than the others nearby, more like a cottage, with a twisty narrow path and green ferns that led to the front door. The two old English ladies lived on top, and I lived in a room on the basement floor of the cottage.
Miss Patsy was the daughter, seventy years old, born in Hong Kong. Her mother must have been at least ninety, and her name was Lady Ina. Her husband had been a big success in shipping goods from India to China to England. Sir Flowers was how Miss Patsy called hi
m in memory, even though he was her father. If you ask me, the Flowers part of their name stood for the flowers that made opium. That was what the shipping business was a long time ago between India and Hong Kong, and that was how lots of Chinese people found the habit.
Because Miss Patsy had always lived in Hong Kong, she could speak Cantonese just like the local people. It was a special dialect. When I first went to live there, she spoke to me in the local talk, which I could not understand except for the words that sounded a little like Mandarin. Later she mixed in a bit of English, some of which I knew from living at the orphanage school. But Miss Patsy spoke English like a British person, and at first it was very hard for me to understand.
Lady Ina’s words were also hard to understand. The sounds spilled out as soft and lumpy as the porridge she ate every day. She was so old she was like a baby. She made messes in her panties, both kinds, stinky and wet. I know, because I had to clean her. Miss Patsy would say to me, “Lady Ina needs to wash her hands.” And then I would lift Lady Ina from the sofa or bed or dining room chair. Lucky for me she was tiny like a child. She also had a temper like one. She would shout, “No, no, no, no, no,” as I walked her to the bathroom, inch by inch, so slow we were like two turtles glued at the shells. She kept shouting this while I washed her, “No, no, no, no, no,” because she did not like any water to touch her body and especially not her head. Three or four times a day, I changed and cleaned her and her panties, her other clothes, too. Miss Patsy did not want her mummy to wear diapers because that would be a big insult. So I had to wash, wash, wash, so many clothes, every day. At least Miss Patsy was a nice lady, very polite. If Lady Ina threw her temper, Miss Patsy had to say only three words in a happy voice, “Visitors are here!” and Lady Ina suddenly stopped what she was doing. She would sit down, her crooked back now very straight, her hands folded in her lap. That was how she had been taught from the time she was a young girl. In front of visitors, she had to be a lady, even if it was just pretend.
In that house, there was also a parrot, a big gray bird named Cuckoo—Cuckoo like the clock bird. At first I thought Miss Patsy was calling him ku-ku, like the Chinese word for crying, which is what he sometimes did, ku! ku! ku! as if he were wounded to near-death. And sometimes he laughed like a crazy woman, long and loud. He could copy any kind of sound—man, woman, monkey, baby. One day I heard a teakettle whistle. I went running, and the teakettle was Cuckoo rocking on his branch, stretching his neck, so delighted that he had fooled me. Another time I heard a Chinese girl cry, “Baba! Baba! Don’t beat me! Please don’t beat me!” and then she screamed and screamed, until I thought my skin would peel off.
Miss Patsy said, “Cuckoo was already bad when Sir Flowers bought him for my tenth birthday. And for sixty years, he has learned only what he wants, like so many men.” Miss Patsy loved that parrot like a son, but Lady Ina always called him the devil. Whenever she heard that bird laugh she would waddle to his cage, shake her finger, and say something like, “Ooh shh-duh, you shut up.” Sometimes she would raise her finger, but before any sounds could come out of her mouth, the bird would say, “Ooh shh-duh,” exactly like Lady Ina. Then Lady Ina would get confused. Wah! Had she already spoken? I could see these thoughts on her face, her head twisting this way, then that, as if two sides of her mind were having a fight. Sometimes she would go all the way to the end of the room, inch by inch, then turn around and walk back, inch by inch, raise her finger, and say, “Ooh shh-duh!” And then the bird would say the same. Back and forth they went: “You shut up! You shut up!” One day Lady Ina went up to the bird, and before she could say anything, Cuckoo said in Miss Patsy’s singsong happy voice, “Visitors are here!” Right away, Lady Ina went to a nearby chair, sat down, took out a lacy handkerchief from her sleeve, crossed her hands in her lap, closed her lips, and waited, her blue eyes turned toward the door.
So that’s how I learned to speak English. To my way of thinking, if a bird could speak good English, I could, too. I had to pronounce the words exactly right, otherwise Lady Ina would not follow my directions. And because Miss Patsy talked to her mother in simple words, it was easy for me to learn other new things to say: Stand up, Sit down, Lunch is served, Time for tea, Horrid weather, isn’t it.
For the next two years or so, I thought my situation would never change. Every month, I went to the train station, only to find the fares had gone up again. Every month, I received a letter from GaoLing. She told me of her new life in San Francisco, how hard it was to be a burden on strangers. The church that sponsored her had found her a room with an old grandmother named Mrs. Wu who spoke Mandarin. “She is very rich but acts very cheap,” GaoLing wrote. “She saves everything that she thinks is too good to eat right away—fruit, chocolates, cashews. So she puts them on top of her refrigerator, and when they are finally too rotten to eat, that’s when she puts them in her mouth and says, ‘Why does everyone say this tastes so good? What’s so good about it?’” This was GaoLing’s way of telling me how hard her life was.
One month, though, I received a letter from GaoLing that did not start with her complaints. “Good news,” she wrote. “I have met two bachelors and I think I should marry one of them. They are both American citizens, born in this country. According to my passport with the new birth year, one is a year older than I am, the other is three years older. So you know what that means. The older one is studying to be a doctor, the younger a dentist. The older is more serious, very smart. The younger is more handsome, full of jokes. It is very hard for me to decide which one I should put all my attentions on. What do you think?”
When I read that letter, I had just finished cleaning up Lady Ina’s bottom twice in one hour. I wanted to reach across the ocean and shake GaoLing by the shoulders and shout, “Marry the one who takes you the fastest. How can you ask which one, when I am wondering how I can live from day to day?”
I did not answer GaoLing at once. I had to go to the bird market that afternoon. Miss Patsy said that Cuckoo needed a new cage. So I went down the hill and crossed over the harbor in the ferry to the Kowloon side. Every day it was becoming more crowded there as people came in from China. “The civil war is growing worse,” Sister Yu had written me, “with battles as fierce as those during the war with Japan. Even if you had enough money to return to Peking right now, you should not. The Nationalists would say you are a Communist because Kai Jing is now called one of their martyrs, and the Communists would say you are a Nationalist because you lived in an American orphanage. And whichever is worse changes with each town you pass through.”
When I read this, I no longer had the worry of how to get back to Peking. I exchanged that for a worry over Sister Yu and Teacher Pan and his new wife. They, too, could be counted as enemies on either side. As I walked toward the bird market, these were the only thoughts I had. And then I felt a cold breeze run down my back, though it was a warm day. Like a ghost is right behind me, I thought. I kept walking, turning one corner, then another, and this feeling that someone was following me grew stronger. Suddenly I stopped and turned around, and a man said to me, “So it really is you.”
There stood Fu Nan, GaoLing’s husband, and now he was missing not only two fingers but his entire left hand. His face had a bad color, and his eyes were yellow and red. “Where’s my wife?” he asked.
I stirred the question in my head. What was the danger in answering him one way or another? “Gone,” I finally told him, and I was glad to be able to say these words: “Gone to America.”
“America?” He looked astonished at first, and then he smiled. “I knew that. I just wanted to see if you would tell me the truth.”
“I have nothing to hide.”
“Then you aren’t hiding the fact that you are trying to go to America, too?”
“Who says that?”
“The entire Liu family. They’re panting like dogs for an opportunity to follow their daughter. Why should you go first, they say, when you aren’t even really her sister? Only true relatives can be
sponsored, not bastards.” He gave me a smile of false apology, then added: “Husbands, of course, should be number one.”
I began to walk away and he grabbed me. “You help me, I help you,” he said. “Give me her address, that’s all I want. If she doesn’t want me to come, that’s that, and you can be next in line. I won’t tell the Liu family.”
“I already know she doesn’t want you to come. She went to America to run away from you.”
“Give me her address, or I’ll go to the authorities and tell them you aren’t really sisters. Then you’ll lose your chance to go to America as well, same as me.”
I stared at that terrible man. What was he saying? What would he really do? I hurried away, weaving in and out of the busy crowds, until I was certain I had lost him. At the bird market, I watched from the corner of my eye. I did not spend too much time bargaining, and when I had bought the cage, I quickly made my way back to the Hong Kong side, holding on tight to my documents that showed where I lived. What would Fu Nan do? Would he really tell the authorities? How smart was he? Which authorities would he tell?
That night, I wrote GaoLing a letter, telling her of Fu Nan’s threats. “Only you know how tricky he is,” I said. “He might also tell the authorities you are already married, and then you’ll be in trouble, especially if you marry an American.”
The next day, I left the house to post the letter. As soon as I stepped into the street, I felt the sudden chill again. I stuffed the letter in my blouse. Around the next corner, there he was, waiting for me.
“Give me some money,” he said. “You can do this for your brother-in-law, can’t you? Or aren’t you really my wife’s sister?”