The Bonesetter's Daughter

by Amy Tan

  At night, as Ruth lay in her old bed, she felt she had come back to her adolescence in the guise of an adult. She was the same person and yet she was not. Or perhaps she was two versions of herself, Ruth1969 and Ruth1999, one more innocent and the other more perceptive, one needier, the other more self-sufficient, both of them fearful. She was her mother's child, and mother to the child her mother had become. So many combinations, like Chinese names and characters, the same elements, seemingly simple, reconfigured in different ways. This was the bed from her childhood, and still within were those youthful moments before dreams, when she ached and wondered alone: What's going to happen? And just as in childhood, she listened to her breathing and was frightened by the idea that her mother's might one day stop. When she was conscious of it, each inhalation was an effort. Expiration was simply a release. Ruth was afraid to let go.

  Several times a week, LuLing and Ruth would talk to ghosts. Ruth pulled out the old sand tray stored on top of the refrigerator and offered to write to Precious Auntie. Her mother reacted politely, the way people do when offered a box of chocolates: "Oh! . . . Well, maybe just little." LuLing wanted to know if the children's book was going to make Ruth famous. Ruth had Precious Auntie say that LuLing would be.

  LuLing also asked for updates on the stock market. "Dow Jones go up or down?" she asked one day.

  Ruth drew an upward arrow.

  "Sell Intel, buy Intel?"

  Ruth knew her mother watched the stock market mostly just for fun. She had not found any letters, junk mail or otherwise, from brokerage firms. Buy on sale, she decided to write.

  LuLing nodded. "Oh, wait till down. Precious Auntie very smart."

  One night, as Ruth held the chopstick in her hand, ready to divine more answers, she heard LuLing say: "Why you and Artie argue?"

  "We're not arguing."

  "Then why you not live together? This because me? My fault?"

  "Of course not." Ruth said this a bit too loudly.

  "I think maybe so." She gave Ruth her all-knowing look. "Long time 'go, you first meet him, I tell you, Why you live together first? You do this, he never marry you. You remember? Oh, now you thinking, Ah, Mother right. Live together, now I just leftover, easy throw away. Don't be embarrass. You be honest."

  Her mother had said those things, Ruth recalled with chagrin. She busied her hands, brushing off stray grains of sand from the edges of the tray. She was both surprised by the things her mother remembered and touched by her concern. What LuLing had said about Art was not exactly right, yet she had pierced the heart of it, the fact that Ruth felt like a leftover, last in line to get a helping of whatever was being served.

  Something was terribly wrong between Art and her. She had sensed that more strongly during their trial separation—wasn't that what this was? She saw more clearly the habits of emotion, her trying to accommodate herself to him even when he didn't need her to. At one time she had thought that adjustment was what every couple, married or not, did, willingly or out of grudging necessity. But had Art also accommodated to her? If so, she didn't know how. And now that they had been apart, she felt unweighted, untethered. This was what she had predicted she might feel when she lost her mother. Now she wanted to hang on to her mother as if she were her life preserver.

  "What bothers me is that I don't feel lonelier without Art," she told Wendy over the phone. "I feel more myself."

  "Do you miss the girls?"

  "Not that much, at least not their noise and energy. Do you think my feelings are deadened or something?"

  "I think you're worn out."

  Twice a week, Ruth and her mother went to Vallejo Street for dinner. On those days, Ruth had to finish her work early and shop for groceries. Since she did not want to leave her mother alone, she took her along to the store. While they shopped, LuLing commented on the cost of every item, questioning whether Ruth should wait until it was cheaper. Once Ruth arrived home—and yes, she reminded herself, the flat on Vallejo Street was still her home—she seated LuLing in front of the television, then sorted through mail addressed to her and Art as a couple. She saw how little of that there was, while most of the repair bills were in her name. At the end of the night, she was frazzled, saddened, and relieved to go back to her mother's house, to her little bed.

  One night, while she was in the kitchen cutting vegetables, Art sidled up to her and patted her bottom. "Why don't you get GaoLing to babysit your mom? Then you can stay over for a conjugal visit."

  She flushed. She wanted to lean against him, wrap her arms around him, and yet the act of doing so was as scary as leaping off a cliff.

  He kissed her neck. "Or you can take a break right now and we can sneak into the bathroom for a quickie."

  She laughed nervously. "They'll all know what we're doing."

  "No they won't." Art was breathing in her ear.

  "My mother knows everything, she sees everything."

  With that, Art stopped, and Ruth was disappointed.

  During the second month of their living apart, Ruth told Art, "If you really want to have dinner together, maybe you should come over to my mother's for a change, instead of my schlepping over here all the time for dinner. It's exhausting to do that all the time."

  So Art and the girls started to go twice a week to LuLing's house. "Ruth," Dory whined one night as she watched her making a salad, "when are you coming home? Dad is like really boring and Fia is all the time like, 'Dad, there's nothing to do, there's nothing good to eat.'"

  Ruth was pleased that they missed her. "I don't know, honey. Waipo needs me."

  "We need you too."

  Ruth felt her heart squeeze. "I know, but Waipo's sick. I have to stay with her."

  "Then can I come and stay here with you?"

  Ruth laughed. "I'd like that, but you'll have to ask your dad."

  Two weekends later, Fia and Dory came with an inflatable mattress. They stayed in Ruth's room. "Girls only," Dory insisted, so Art had to go home. In the evening, Ruth and the girls watched television and drew mehndi tattoos on each other's hands. The next weekend, Art asked if it was boys' night yet.

  "I think that can be arranged," Ruth said coyly.

  Art brought his toothbrush, a change of clothes, and a portable boom-box with a Michael Feinstein CD, Gershwin music. At night, he squeezed into the twin bed with Ruth. But she did not feel amorous with LuLing in the next room. That was the explanation she gave Art.

  "Let's just cuddle, then," he suggested. Ruth was glad he did not press her for further explanations. She nestled against his chest. Deep into the night, she listened to his sonorous breathing and the foghorns. For the first time in a long while, she felt safe.

  Mr. Tang called Ruth at the end of two months. "Are you sure there aren't any more pages?"

  "Afraid not. I've been cleaning out my mother's house, drawer by drawer, room by room. I even discovered she put a thousand dollars under a floorboard. If there was anything else, I'm sure I would have found it."

  "Then I've finished." Mr. Tang sounded sad. "There were a few pages with some writing on them, the same sentences over and over, saying she was worried that she was already forgetting too many things. The script on those was pretty shaky. I think they were more recent. It may upset you. I'm just telling you now, so you know."

  Ruth thanked him.

  "May I come over now to deliver my work to you?" he asked formally. "Would that be all right?"

  "Is it too much trouble?"

  "It would be an honor. To be honest, I would dearly like to meet your mother. After all this time of reading her words, day and night, I feel I know her like an old friend and miss her already."

  Ruth warned him: "She won't be the same woman who wrote those pages."

  "Perhaps . . . but somehow I think she will be."

  "Would you like to come for dinner tonight?"

  Ruth joked with her mother that an admirer was coming to see her and she should put on her pretty clothes.

  "No! No one coming." />
  Ruth nodded and smiled.

  "Who?"

  Ruth answered vaguely. "An old friend of an old friend of yours in China."

  LuLing pondered hard. "Ah, yes. I remember now."

  Ruth helped her bathe and dress. She tied a scarf around her neck, combed her hair, added a touch of lipstick. "You're beautiful," Ruth said, and it was true.

  LuLing looked at herself in the mirror. "Buddha-full. Too bad GaoLing not pretty like me." Ruth laughed. Her mother had never expressed vanity about her looks, but with the dementia, the modesty censors must not have been working. Dementia was like a truth serum.

  At seven exactly, Mr. Tang arrived with LuLing's pages and his translation. He was a slender man with white hair, deep smile lines, a very kind face. He brought LuLing a bag of oranges.

  "No need to be so polite," she said automatically as she inspected the fruit for soft spots. She scolded Ruth in Chinese: "Take his coat. Ask him to sit down. Give him something to drink."

  "No need to trouble yourself," Mr. Tang said.

  "Oh, your Chinese is the Beijing dialect, very elegant," LuLing said. She became girlish and shy, which amused Ruth. And Mr. Tang in turn poured on the charm, pulling out LuLing's chair to seat her, serving her tea first, filling her cup when it was half empty. She and Mr. Tang continued to speak in Chinese, and to Ruth's ear, her mother began to sound more logical, less confused.

  "Where in China are you from?" LuLing asked.

  "Tianjin. Later I went to school at Yenching University."

  "Oh, my first husband went there, a very smart boy. Pan Kai Jing. Did you know him?"

  "I've heard of him," Ruth heard Mr. Tang answer. "He studied geology, didn't he?"

  "That's right! He worked on many important things. Have you ever heard of Peking Man?"

  "Of course, Peking Man is world-famous."

  LuLing looked wistful. "He died watching over those old bones."

  "He was a great hero. Others admired his bravery, but you must have suffered."

  Ruth listened with fascination. It was as if Mr. Tang had known her mother years before. He easily guided her to the old memories, to those that were still safeguarded from destruction. And then she heard her mother say, "My daughter Luyi also worked with us. She was at the same school where I lived after Precious Auntie died."

  Ruth turned, startled then touched that her mother included her in the past.

  "Yes, I was sorry to hear about your mother. She was a great lady. Very smart."

  LuLing tilted her head and seemed to be struggling with sadness. "She was the daughter of a bonesetter."

  Mr. Tang nodded. "A very famous doctor."

  At the end of the evening, Mr. Tang thanked LuLing elaborately for some delightful hours of remembering the old times. "May I have the honor of visiting you again soon?"

  LuLing tittered. She raised her eyebrows and looked at Ruth.

  "You're welcome to come anytime," Ruth said.

  "Tomorrow!" LuLing blurted. "Come tomorrow."

  Ruth stayed up all night to read the pages Mr. Tang had translated. "Truth," the account began. She started to enumerate all the true things she was learning, but soon lost count, as each fact led to more questions. Her mother was really five years older than Ruth had always thought. So that meant she had told Dr. Huey the truth about her age! And the part about not being GaoLing's sister, that was true as well. Yet her mother and GaoLing were sisters, more so than Ruth had ever thought. They had had more reason than most sisters to disavow their relationship, yet they had been fiercely loyal, had remained irrevocably bound to each other by grudges, debt, and love. She was elated to know this.

  Parts of her mother's story saddened her. Why did she feel she could never tell Ruth that Precious Auntie was her mother? Did she fear that her own daughter would be ashamed that LuLing was illegitimate? Ruth would have assured her that there was no shame, that it was practically fashionable these days to be born a love child. But then Ruth remembered that as a girl she had been terrified of Precious Auntie. She had resented her presence in their lives, had blamed her for her mother's quirkiness, her feelings of doom. How misunderstood Precious Auntie had been—by both her daughter and her granddaughter. Yet there were moments when Ruth sensed that Precious Auntie had been watching her, that she knew when Ruth was suffering.

  Ruth mused over this, lying in her childhood bed. She understood more clearly why her mother had always wanted to find Precious Auntie's bones and bury them in the proper place. She wanted to walk through the End of the World and make amends. She wanted to tell her mother, "I'm sorry and I forgive you, too."

  The next day, Ruth telephoned Art to tell him what she had read. "It feels like I've found the magic thread to mend a torn-up quilt. It's wonderful and sad at the same time."

  "I'd like to read it. Would you let me?"

  "I want you to." Ruth sighed. "She should have told me these things years ago. It would have made such a difference—"

  Art interrupted: "There are things I should have said years ago too."

  Ruth fell silent, waiting.

  "I've been thinking about your mother, and I've also been thinking about us."

  Ruth's heart started to race.

  "Remember what you said when we first met, about not wanting to have assumptions about love?"

  "I didn't say that, you did."

  "I did?"

  "Absolutely. I remember."

  "Funny, I thought you did."

  "Ah, you assumed!"

  He laughed. "Your mother isn't the only one with memory problems. Well, if I said it, then I was wrong, because I do think it's important to have certain assumptions—for one thing, that the person who's with you is there for the long haul, that he'll take care of you and what comes with you, the whole package, mother and everything. For whatever reason—my having said that about assumptions, and your going along with it—well, I guess I thought it was great at the time, that I had love on a free ride. I didn't know what I was going to lose until you moved out."

  Art paused. Ruth knew he was waiting for her to respond. In part, she wanted to shout with gratitude that he had said what she had been feeling and could not express. Yet she was scared that he was saying this too late. She felt no joy in hearing his admission. She felt sad.

  "I don't know what to say," she finally admitted.

  "You don't have to say anything. I just wanted you to know. . . . The other thing is, I really am worried about your taking care of your mother over the long term. I know you want to do this, that it's important, and she needs someone around. But you and I know she's going to get worse. She'll require more and more care, and she can't do it alone, and neither can you. You have your work and a life too, and your mother would be the last person to see you give that up for her sake."

  "I can't keep hiring new housekeepers."

  "I know. . . . That's why I've been reading up on Alzheimer's, stages of the disease, medical needs, support groups. And I've thought of an idea, a possible solution . . . an assisted-living residence."

  "That's not a solution." Ruth felt as she had when her mother showed her the ten-million-dollar check from the magazine sweepstakes.

  "Why not?"

  "Because my mother would never go for it. I wouldn't go for it. She'd think I was sending her to the dog pound. She'd threaten to kill herself every single day—"

  "I'm not talking about a nursing home and bedpans. This is assisted living. They're the latest concept, the wave of the baby-boomer future, like senior Club Meds—meals, maid service, laundry, transportation, organized outings, exercise, even dancing. And it's supervised, twenty-four hours. It's upscale, not depressing at all. I've already looked at a bunch of residences, and I've found a great one, not far from where your mother lives now—"

  "Forget it. Upscale or not, she would never live in a place like that."

  "All she has to do is try it."

  "I'm telling you, forget it. She won't do it."

  "Whoa, whoa
. Before you dismiss the idea outright, tell me the specific objections. Let's see if we can move forward from there."

  "There's nothing to move forward. But if you must know, for one thing, she'd never leave her own home. And second, there's the cost. I assume these places aren't free, which is what it would have to be for her to even consider it. And if it were free, she'd think it was welfare, so she'd refuse on those grounds."

  "All right. I can deal with those factors. What else?"

  Ruth took a deep breath. "She'd have to love it. She would have to want to live there as her choice, not yours or mine."

  "Done. And she can come stay with you and me anytime she wants."

  Ruth noted that he said "you and me." She let down her guard. Art was trying. He was telling her he loved her in the best way he knew possible.

  Two days later, LuLing showed Ruth an official-looking notice from the California Department of Public Safety, on letterhead generated from Art's computer.

  "Radon leak!" LuLing exclaimed. "What this mean, radon leak?"

  "Let me see," Ruth said, and scanned the letter. Art had been very clever. Ruth played along. "Mm. It's a heavy gas, it says, radioactive, dangerous to your lungs. The gas company detected it when they did a routine inspection for earthquake dangers. The leakage isn't from a pipe. It comes from the soil and rocks under the house, and they need to have you move out for three months while they do an environmental assessment and hazard removal via intensive ventilation."

  "Ai-ya! How much cost?"

  "Hm. Nothing, it says. The city does it for free. Look, they even pay for the place where you stay while they do the ventilation. Three months' free rent . . . including food. The Mira Mar Manor—'located near your current residence,' it says, 'with amenities typical of a five-star hotel.' That's the highest rating, five stars. They're asking you to go there as soon as possible."

  "Free five-star? For two people?"