by Amy Tan
“You mean that Precious Auntie was her mother.”
GaoLing clucked her tongue. “Ah, so she told you. Good, I’m glad. Better to tell the truth.”
“I also know both you and Mom are five years older than what we always thought. And that your real birthday is what, four months earlier?”
GaoLing tried to laugh, but she also looked evasive. “I always wanted to be honest. But your mommy was afraid of so many things—oh, she said the authorities would send her back to China if they knew she wasn’t my real sister. And maybe Edwin wouldn’t marry her, because she was too old. Then later you might be ashamed if you knew who your real grandmother was, unmarried, her face ruined, treated like a servant. Me? Over the years, I’ve become more modern-thinking. Old secrets? Here nobody cares! Mother not married? Oh, just like Madonna. But still your mommy said, No, don’t tell, promise.”
“Does anyone else know? Uncle Edmund, Sally, Billy?”
“No, no, no one at all. I promised your mother… . Of course Uncle Edmund knows. We don’t keep secrets. I tell him everything… . Well, the age part, he doesn’t know. But I wasn’t lying. I forgot. It’s true! I don’t even feel like I’m seventy-seven. In my mind, the most is sixty. But now you remind me, I’m even older—how old?”
“Eighty-two.”
“Wah.” Her shoulders slumped as she pondered this fact. “Eighty-two. It’s like less money in the bank than I thought.”
“You still look twenty years younger. Mom does too. And don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone, not even Uncle Edmund. Funny thing is, last year when she told the doctor she was eighty-two, I thought that was a sure sign something was wrong with her mind. And then it turned out she did have Alzheimer’s, but she was right all along about her age. She just forgot to lie—”
“Not lying,” GaoLing corrected. “It was a secret.”
“That’s what I meant. And I wouldn’t have known her age until I read what she wrote.”
“She wrote this down—about her age?”
“About a lot of things, a stack of pages this thick. It’s like her life story, all the things she didn’t want to forget. The things she couldn’t talk about. Her mother, the orphanage, her first husband, yours.”
Auntie Gal looked increasingly uncomfortable. “When did she write this?”
“Oh, it must have been seven, eight years ago, probably when she first started worrying that something was wrong with her memory. She gave me some of the pages a while back. But it was all in Chinese, so I never got around to reading them. A few months ago, I found someone to translate.”
“Why didn’t you ask me?” GaoLing pretended to be insulted. “I’m your auntie, she’s my sister. We are still blood-related, even though we don’t have the same mother.”
The truth was, Ruth had feared her mother might have written unflattering remarks about GaoLing. And it occurred to her now that GaoLing might have also censored the parts that dealt with her own secrets, her marriage to the opium addict, for instance. “I didn’t want to bother you,” Ruth said.
Her aunt sniffed. “What are relatives for if you can’t bother them?”
“That’s true.”
“You call me anytime, you know this. You want Chinese food, I cook for you. Translate Chinese writing, I can do this too. You need me to watch your mommy, no need to ask, just drop her off.”
“Actually, remember how we talked about Mom’s future needs? Well, Art and I looked at a place, Mira Mar Manor, it’s assisted living, really nice. They have staff twenty-four hours a day, activities, a nurse who helps with medication—”
GaoLing frowned. “How can you put your mommy in a nursing home? No, this is not right.” She clamped her mouth shut and shook her head.
“It’s not what you think—”
“Don’t do this! If you can’t take care of your mommy, let her come live here with me.”
Ruth knew that GaoLing was barely able to handle LuLing for a couple of days at a time. “Nearly gave me a heart attack,” was how she had described LuLing’s last visit. Still, Ruth was ashamed that her aunt saw her as neglectful, uncaring. All the doubts she had about the Mira Mar bobbed to the surface, and she felt unsteady about her intentions. Was this really the best solution for her mother’s safety and health? Or was she abandoning her mother for convenience’ sake? She wondered whether she was simply going along with Art’s rationale, as she had with so many aspects of their relationship. It seemed she was always living her life through others, for others.
“I just don’t know what else to do,” Ruth said, her voice full of the despair she had kept pent up. “This disease, it’s awful, it’s progressing more quickly than I thought. She can’t be left alone. She wanders away. And she doesn’t know if she’s eaten ten minutes ago or ten hours ago. She won’t bathe by herself. She’s afraid of the faucets—”
“I know, I know. Very hard, very sad. That’s why I’m saying, you can’t take it anymore, you just bring her here. Part-time my place, part-time your place. Easier that way.”
Ruth ducked her head. “Mom already went for a tour of the Mira Mar. She thought it was nice, like a cruise ship.”
GaoLing gave a doubting sniff.
Ruth wanted her aunt’s approval. She also sensed that GaoLing wanted her to ask for it. She and her mother had taken turns protecting each other. Ruth met GaoLing’s eyes. “I won’t make any decision until you think it’s the right thing. But I would like you to look at the place. And when you do, I can give you a copy of what Mom wrote.”
That got GaoLing’s interest.
“Speaking of which,” Ruth went on, “I was wondering whatever happened to those people you and Mom knew in China. Mom didn’t say anything about her life after she left Hong Kong. What happened to that guy you were married to, Fu Nan, and his father? Did they keep the ink shop?”
GaoLing looked to the side to make sure no one was close enough to hear. “Those people were awful.” She made a face. “So bad you can’t even imagine how bad. The son had many problems. Did your mother write about this?”
Ruth nodded. “He was hooked on opium.”
GaoLing looked momentarily taken aback, realizing that LuLing had been thorough in her account. “This is true,” she conceded. “Later he died, maybe in 1960, though no one is sure-for-sure. But that was when he stopped writing and calling different people, threatening this and that to get them to send money.”
“Uncle Edmund knows about him?”
GaoLing huffed. “How could I tell him that I was still married? Your uncle would then question if we are really married, if I am a bigamist, if our children are—well, like your mother. Later, I forgot to tell him, and when I heard my first husband was probably dead, it was too late to go back and explain what should be forgotten anyway. You understand.”
“Like your age.”
“Exactly. As for the Chang father, well, in 1950, the Communists cracked down on all the landlords. They put the Chang father in jail and beat a confession from him for owning many businesses, cheating people, and trading in opium. Guilty, they said, and shot him, public execution.”
Ruth pictured this. She was against the death penalty in principle, but felt a secret satisfaction that the man who had caused her grandmother and mother so much misery had met a fitting end.
“The people also confiscated his house, made his wife sweep the streets, and all his sons were sent to work outdoors in Wuhan, where it’s so hot most people would rather bathe in a vat of boiling oil than go there. My father and mother were glad they were already poor and didn’t have to suffer that kind of punishment.”
“And Sister Yu, Teacher Pan. Did you hear from them?”
“My brother did—you know, Jiu Jiu in Beijing. He said Sister Yu was promoted many times, until she was a high-position Communist Party leader. I don’t know her title, something to do with good attitude and reforms. But during the Cultural Revolution, everything got turned around, and she became an example of bad attitude because of he
r background with the missionaries. The revolutionaries put her in jail for a long time and treated her pretty hard. But when she came out, she was still happy to be a Communist. Later, I think she died of old age.”
“And Teacher Pan?”
“Jiu Jiu said the country one year held a big ceremony for the Chinese workers who helped discover Peking Man. The newspaper article he sent me said Pan Kai Jing—the one your mother married—died as a martyr protecting the whereabouts of the Communist Party, and his father, Teacher Pan, was present to receive his honorable-mention award. After that, I don’t know what happened to Teacher Pan. By now, he must be dead. So sad. We once were like family. We sacrificed for each other. Sister Yu could have come to America, but she let your mommy and me have this chance. That’s why your mommy named you after Sister Yu.”
“I thought I was named after Ruth Grutoff.”
“Her too. But your Chinese name comes from Sister Yu. Yu Luyi. Luyi, it means ‘all that you wish.”’
Ruth was amazed and gratified that her mother had put so much heart into naming her. For most of her childhood, she had hated both her American and her Chinese names, the old-fashioned sound of “Ruth,” which her mother could not even pronounce, and the way “Luyi” sounded like the name of a boy, a boxer, or a bully.
“Did you know your mommy also gave up her chance to come to America so I could come first?”
“Sort of.” She dreaded the day GaoLing would read the pages describing how she had wangled her way to the States.
“Many times I’ve thanked her, and always she said, ‘No, don’t talk about this or I’ll be mad at you.’ I’ve tried to repay her many times, but she always refused. Each year we invite her to go to Hawaii. Each year she tells me she doesn’t have the money.”
Ruth nodded. How many times she had had to suffer listening to her mother complain about that.
“Each time I tell her, I’m inviting you, what money do you need? Then she says she can’t let me pay. Forget it! So I tell her, ‘Use the money in the Charles Schwab account.’ No, she doesn’t want that money. She still won’t use it.”
“What Charles Schwab account?”
“This she didn’t tell you? Her half of the money from your grandparents when they died.”
“I thought they just left her a little bit.”
“Yes, that was wrong of them to do. Very old-fashioned. Made your mommy so angry. That’s why she wouldn’t take the money, even after your Uncle Edmund and I said we could divide it in half anyway. Long time ago, we put her half in T-bills. Your mommy always pretended she didn’t know about it. But then she’d say something like, ‘I hear you can make more money investing in the stock market.’ So we opened a stock market account. Then she said, ‘I hear this stock is good, this one is bad.’ So we knew to tell the stockbroker what to buy and sell. Then she said, ‘I hear it’s better to invest yourself, low fees.’ So we opened a Charles Schwab account.”
A chill ran down Ruth’s arms. “Did some of those stocks she mentioned include IBM, U.S. Steel, AT T, Intel?”
GaoLing nodded. “Too bad Uncle Edmund didn’t listen to her advice. He was always running after this IPO, that IPO.”
Ruth now recalled the many times her mother had asked Precious Auntie for stock tips via the sand tray. It never occurred to her that the answers mattered that much, since her mother didn’t have any real money to gamble with. She thought LuLing followed the stock market the way some people followed soap operas. And so when her mother presented her with a choice of stocks, Ruth chose whichever was the shortest to spell out. That was how she decided. Or had she? Had she also received nudges and notions from someone else?
“So the stocks did well?” Ruth asked with a pounding heart.
“Better than S and P, better than Uncle Edmund—she’s like a Wall Street genius! Every year it’s grown and grown. She hasn’t touched one penny. She could have gone on lots of cruises, bought a fancy house, nice furniture, big car. But no. I think she has been saving it all for you… . Don’t you want to know how much?”
Ruth shook her head. This was already too much. “Tell me later.” Instead of feeling excited about the money, Ruth was hurt to know that her mother had denied herself pleasure and happiness. Out of love, she had stayed behind in Hong Kong, so GaoLing could have a chance at freedom first. Yet she would not take love back from people. How did she become that way? Was it because of Precious Auntie’s suicide?
“By the way,” Ruth now thought to ask, “what was Precious Auntie’s real name?”
“Precious Auntie?”
“Bao Bomu.”
“Oh, oh, oh, Bao Bomu! You know, only your mother called her that. Everyone else called her Bao Mu.”
“What’s the difference, ‘Bao Bomu’ and ‘Bao Mu’?”
“Bao can mean ‘precious,’ or it can mean ‘protect.’ Both are third tone, baaaaooo. And the mu part, that stands for ‘mother,’ but when it’s written in bao mu, the mu has an extra piece in front, so that the meaning is more of a female servant. Bao mu is like saying ‘baby-sitter,’ ‘nursemaid.’ And bomu, that’s ‘auntie.’ I think her mother taught her to say and write it this way. More special.”
“So what was her real name? Mom can’t remember, and it really bothers her.”
“I don’t remember either… . I don’t know.”
Ruth’s heart sank. Now she would never know. No one would ever know the name of her grandmother. She had existed, and yet without a name, a large part of her existence was missing, could not be attached to a face, anchored to a family.
“We all called her Bao Mu,” GaoLing went on, “also lots of bad nicknames because of her face. Burnt Wood, Fried Mouth, that sort of thing. People weren’t being mean, the nicknames were a joke… . Well, now that I think of this, they were mean, very mean. That was wrong.”
It pained Ruth to hear this. She felt a lump growing in her throat. She wished she could tell this woman from the past, her grandmother, that her granddaughter cared, that she, like her mother, wanted to know where her bones were. “The house in Immortal Heart,” Ruth asked, “is it still there?”
“Immortal Heart? . . . Oh, you mean our village—I only know the Chinese name.” She sounded out the syllables. “Xian Xin. Yes, I guess that’s how it might translate. The immortal’s heart, something like that. Anyway, the house is gone. My brother told me. After a few drought years, a big rainstorm came. Dirt washed down the mountain, flooded the ravine, and crumbled the sides. The earth holding up our house broke apart and fell, bit by bit. It took with it the back rooms, then the well, until only half the house was left. It stood like that for several more years, then in 1972, all at once, it sank and the earth folded on top of it. My brother said that’s what killed our mother, even though she had not lived in that house for many years.”
“So the house is now lying in the End of the World?”
“What’s that—end of what?”
“The ravine.”
She sounded out more Chinese syllables to herself, and laughed. “That’s right, we called it that when we were kids. End of the World. That’s because we heard our parents saying that the closer the edge came to our house, the faster we ‘d reach the end of this world. Meaning, our luck would be gone, that was it. And they were right! Anyway, we had many nicknames for that place. Some people called it ‘End of the Land,’ just like where your mommy lives in San Francisco, Land’s End. And sometimes my uncles joked and called that cliff edge momo meiyou, meaning ‘rub sink gone.’ But most people in the village just called it the garbage dump. In those days, no one came by once a week to take away your garbage, your recycling, no such thing. Course, people then didn’t throw away too much. Bones and rotten food, the pigs and dogs ate that. Old clothes we mended and gave to younger children. Even when the clothes were so bad they couldn’t be repaired, we tore them into strips and weaved them into liners for winter jackets. Shoes, the same thing. You fixed the holes, patched up the bottoms. So you see, only the w
orst things were thrown away, the most useless. And when we were little and bad, our parents made us behave by threatening to throw us in the ravine—as if we too were the most useless things! When we were older and wanted to play down there, then it was a different story. Down there, they said, was everything we were afraid of—”
“Bodies?”
“Bodies, ghosts, demons, animal spirits, Japanese soldiers, whatever scared us.”
“Were bodies really thrown in there?”
GaoLing paused before she answered. Ruth was sure she was editing a bad memory. “Things were different then… . You see, not everyone could afford a cemetery or funeral. Funerals, those cost ten times more than weddings. But it wasn’t just cost. Sometimes you couldn’t bury someone for other reasons. So to put a body down there, well, this was bad, but not the same way you think, not as though we didn’t care about who died.”
“What about Precious Auntie’s body?”
“Ai-ya. Your mommy wrote everything! Yes, that was very bad what my mother did. She was crazy when she did that, afraid that Bao Mu put a curse on our whole family. After she threw the body in there, a cloud of black birds came. Their wings were big, like umbrellas. They nearly blocked out the sun, there were so many. They flapped above, waiting for the wild dogs to finish with the body. And one of our servants—”
“Old Cook.”
“Yes, Old Cook, he was the one who put the body there. He thought that the birds were Bao Mu’s spirit and her army of ghosts and that she was going to pick him up with her claws and snatch him up if he did not bury her properly. So he took a large stick and chased the wild dogs away, and the birds stayed there above him, watching as he piled rocks on top of her body. But even after he did all that, our household was still cursed.”
“You believed that?”
GaoLing stopped to think. “I must have. Back then I believed whatever my family believed. I didn’t question it. Also, Old Cook died only two years later.”