GHOST
Two weeks after Precious Auntie killed herself, a figure ran through our gate, looking like a beggar chased by the devil. It was Little Uncle from Peking. His clothes and the hollows of his eyes were full of soot. When he opened his mouth, choking cries came out. "Whats wrong? Whats wrong?" I heard Mother shout as I climbed out of the root cellar. The others stumbled out of the ink-making studio. Some of the tenants rushed over as well, trailed by crawling babies and noisy dogs.
And I remember exactly what I said to her: "Even if the whole Chang family were murderers and thieves, I would join them just to get away from you."
Some passing boys laughed, most other people turned away their eyes, and a few old grannies, soon bound for the next world, threw down coins. GaoLing clawed at my arm and whispered: "Is that what were destined to become?" As we turned to leave, we bumped into a wretch. She was a girl, no older than we were, dressed in shredded rags, strips tied onto strips, so that she looked as if she were wearing an ancient warriors costume. Where the orbs of her eyes should have been, there were two sunken puckers. She began to chant: "My eyes saw too much, so I plucked them out. Now that I cant see, the unseen come to me."
The priest gave a small grunt. "Dont worry. Ive had other cases just as bad." Then he said to me: "Fetch me the comb she used for your hair."
A few days before I was supposed to leave to join the Changs, I awoke to find Precious Auntie sitting up, staring at me. She raised her hands and began to talk. Now I will show you the truth. She went to the small wooden cupboard and removed a package wrapped in blue cloth. She put this in my lap. Inside was a thick wad of pages, threaded together with string. She stared at me with an odd expression, then left the room.
"Show us what you can do first," GaoLing said.
"Make another banquet," he shouted.
The buildings next to our familys ink shop also began to burn, he said. The one on the east sold old scholar books, the one on the west was filled to the rafters with the works of master painters. In the middle of the orange-colored night, the shopkeepers dumped their goods into the ashy lane. Then the fire brigade arrived. Everyone joined in and tossed so many buckets of water into the air it looked like it was raining. And then it really did rain, shattering down hard, ruining the saved goods, but saving the rest of the district from being burned.
In darkness, the stars pierce forever.
Just as expected, the Changs asked our family if I could join theirs as a daughter-in-law. If I went there right away, Old Widow Lau added, my family would receive a money gift and I would immediately be known as a daughter-in-law during all the family and town ceremonies, including the special one that would happen during the Moon Festival, honoring Mr. Chang for his scientific achievements.
That evening everyone ate well, except me. The others laughed and chatted, all worries gone. They seemed to forget that our inksticks had returned to charcoal, that the ink shop was just floating ash. They were saying their luck had changed because Precious Auntie was now knocking her head on the inside of a stinky vinegar jar.
The young man standing next to the priest then asked Father if he had heard of the Famous Catcher of Ghosts. "No? Well, this is he, the wandering priest right before you. Hes newly arrived in your town, so hes not yet as well known as he is in places far to the north and south. Do you have relatives in Harbin? No? Well, then! If you had, youd know who he is." The young man, who claimed to be the priests acolyte, added, "In that city alone, he is celebrated for having already caught one hundred ghosts in disturbed households. When he was done, the gods told him to start wandering again."
"The Catcher of Ghosts was right," Father concluded. "The ghost is gone."
I watched hungrily as Mother offered him special cold dishes. It was late afternoon, and we were sitting on low stools in the courtyard. The monk helped himself to everything—glass noodles with spinach, bamboo shoots with pickled mustard, tofu seasoned with sesame seed oil and coriander. Mother kept apologizing about the quality of the food, saying she was both ashamed and honored to have him in our shabby home. Father was drinking tea. "Tell us how its done," he said to the priest, "this catching of ghosts. Do you seize them in your fists? Is the struggle fierce or dangerous?"
"Do we really have to run away?"
My feet were locked to the ground until Mother gave me a little knock on the head to hurry. So I went to the room Precious Auntie and I had shared not so long before. I picked up the comb she used to run through my hair. It was the ivory comb she never wore, its ends carved with roost ers, its teeth long and straight. I remembered how Precious Auntie used to scold me for my tangles, worrying over every hair on my head.
Mother gave all of us more pocket money than we had held in our entire lives. She said we should each buy good things to eat, fruits and sweets, delicacies and fatty meats, whatever we had always denied ourselves but longed for. The Moon Festival was coming up, and so it was not unusual that we would be shopping like the rest of the crowd for the harvest meal.
"Burnt?" Mother cried. "What are you saying?"
When I returned, I saw the assistant had placed the vinegar jar in the middle of the courtyard. "Run the comb through your hair nine times," he said. So I did.
By the time Little Uncle finished telling us this, Mother, my aunts, and GaoLing had stopped wailing. They looked as though their bones and九_九_藏_书_网 blood had drained out of the bottoms of their feet. I think they felt as I did when I finally understood that Precious Auntie was dead.
The next day, our family held its banquet, the best dishes, food we would never again enjoy in this lifetime. But no one except the youngest children had any appetite. Mother had also hired a man to take photographs, so we could remember the days when we had plenty. In one, she wanted a picture of just her and GaoLing. At the last moment, GaoLing insisted I come and stand near Mother as well, and Mother was not pleased but did not say anything. The following day, Father and my two uncles went to Peking to hear what the damages would be against our family.
"Not possible," said the Catcher of Ghosts. "This jar is guaranteed to last more than several lifetimes."
"There," Mother said, and pointed to me. "The ghost was her nursemaid."
"In other cases," the monk continued, "a small offering of pure silver can be enough and will cover the sincerity of all members of the immediate family."
"Mother will punish you if I take it," I said.
"How do you prove sincerity?" Father asked.
"Will we lose the house?"
A dog howls, the moon rises, it said. "Doggie! That was her nickname for me," I told the girl. She smoothed the silt and wrote more: In darkness, the stars pierce forever. Shooting stars, that was in the poem Baby Uncle wrote for her. Another sweep, another line: A rooster crows, the sun rises, Precious Auntie had been a Rooster. And then the girl write the last line: In daylight, its as if the stars never existed. I felt sad, but did not know why.
After dinner, we all drifted to the courtyard as usual. Mother and my aunts were embroidering my bridal clothes. Precious Auntie was repairing a hole in my old trousers. She put down the needle and tugged my sleeve. Did you already read what I wrote?
We rushed toward them, children, aunts, tenants, and dogs.
When Precious Auntie was not working in the ink-making studio, she was writing, sheet after sheet after sheet. She sat at her table, grinding the inkstick into the inkstone, thinking what, I could not guess. She dipped her brush and wrote, paused and dipped again. The words flowed without blots or cross-outs or backward steps.
"A few calamities," Father answered.
I did not protest. But still she became angry. "What is that look on your face? Are you trying to shame me? Just remember, all these years I treated you like a daughter. Would any other family in this town have done the same? Maybe your going to the orphanage will teach you to appreciate us more. And now youd better get ready. Mr. Wei is already waiting to take you in his cart."
Father swung out his arm to chase her away and knocked over the oil lamp, which was not in his dream but on a table next to his cot. When Big Uncle heard the crash, he sat up and lit a match to see what had spilled onto the floor. Just then, Little Uncle said, Precious Auntie knocked the match out of his fingertips. Up burst a fountain of flames. Big Uncle shouted to Little Uncle to help him douse the fire. By Precious Aunties trickery, Little Uncle said, he poured out a jar of pai gar wine instead of the pot of cold tea. The fire jumped higher. Father and the two uncles rousted their sons from the next room; then all the men of our family stood in the courtyard, where they watched the flames eat up the bedding, the banners, the walls. The more the fire ate, the hungrier it became. It crept to the ink shop to hunt for more food. It devoured the scrolls of famous scholars who had used our ink. It licked the silk-wrapped boxes holding the most expensive inksticks. And when the resin of those sticks leaked out, it roared with joy, its appetite increased. Within the hour, our familys fortunes wafted up to the gods as incense, ashes, and poisonous smoke.
When the cart turned down Pigs Head Lane, Mr. Wei began to sing a cheerful tune about the harvest moon. And I thought about what Precious Auntie had told the beggar girl to write:
"Why do you say that?" Father asked.
"And bad luck followed."
Who was dead? In the next moment, I saw Precious Auntie, the top half of her face limestone white, her wild eyes staring at me. She was sitting crooked against the far wall. "Whos dead?" I called to Precious Auntie. "What happened?" I walked toward her. Her hair was unbound and matted, and then I saw that her neck was clotted with flies. She kept her eyes on me, but her hands were still. One held a knife used to carve the inkstones. Before I could reach her, a tenant pushed me aside so she could better gawk.
"Will we starve?"
In daylight, its as if the stars never existed.
"Place it in the jar." I dropped the comb inside, smelling the escape of cheap vinegar fumes. "Now stand there perfectly still." The Catcher of Ghosts beat his stick on the wooden bell. It made a deep kwak, kwak sound. He and the acolyte walked in rhythm, circling me, chanting, and drawing closer. Without warning, the Catcher of Ghosts gave a shout and leapt toward me. I thought he was going to squeeze me into the jar, so I closed my eyes and screamed, as did GaoLing.
The priest had a white beard, and his long hair was piled like a messy birds-nest. In one hand he carried a walking stick with a carved end that looked like a flayed dog stretched over a gateway. In the other, he held a short beating stick. Slung over his shoulders was a rope shawl from which hung a large wooden bell. His robe was not the sand-colored cotton of most wandering monks I had seen. His was a rich-looking blue silk, but the sleeves were grease-stained, as if he had often rea99ｌｉｂ•ｎeｔched across the table for more to eat.
I searched for her until dusk. By then, my eyes were swollen with dust and tears. I never found her. And as I climbed back up, I was a girl who had lost part of herself in the End of the World.
I looked at the sky, so clear, so bright, and in my heart I was howling.
While they were gone, we learned to eat watery rice porridge flavored with just a few bites of cold dishes. Want less, regret less, that was Mothers motto. About a week later, Father stood in the courtyard, bellowing like a madman.
"At least we are not selling you as a slave girl," she added.
The next day Father, Big Uncle, and their sons came home. They already looked like paupers with their unwashed faces, their smoky clothes. Big Aunt and Little Aunt went to them, jabbering:
"How much might be enough?" Father asked.
I had never heard this word said aloud, and I felt as if blood was going to pour out of my ears.
The evening wore on. The sun went down, the sounds of darkness came, the chirp, creak, and flap of unseen creatures. All too soon it was time for bed. I waited for Precious Auntie to go first. After a long while, when I thought she might already be asleep, I went into the dark room.
These were my very thoughts as my aunts, GaoLing, and I followed Mother to the ink-making studio to begin our work. As we entered the dim room, we all saw the mess. Stains on the walls. Stains on the bench. Long spills along the floor. Had a wild animal broken in? And what was that rotten sweet smell? Then Mother began to wail, "Shes dead! Shes dead!"
When we returned home, Mother and Father, as well as our aunts and uncles, were bunched in the courtyard, talking in excited voices. Father was relating how he had met an old Taoist priest at the market, a remarkable and strange man. As he passed by, the priest had called out to him: "Sir, you look as if a ghost is plaguing your house."
Without feeling, I said, "Thank you."
"What ghost?" I asked right away.
The blind girl held up her empty bowl again and shook it. GaoLing threw in a coin. The girl tipped the bowl and said, "Your generosity does not weigh much."
GaoLing gasped. "How did she know Precious Auntie was your mother?" she whispered to me. And then she said to the girl, "Tell us what she says."
No more mention was ever made of my going to live with the Changs. The marriage contract had been canceled, and Mother no longer pretended I was her daughter. I did not know where I belonged in that family anymore, and sometimes when Mother was displeased with me, she threatened to sell me as a slave girl to the tubercular old sheepherder. No one spoke of Precious Auntie, either once living or now dead. And though my aunts had always known I was her bastard daughter, they did not pity me as her grieving child. When I could not stop myself from crying, they turned their faces, suddenly busy with their eyes and hands.
Mother went on: "If you remain in the house, who can tell, the ghost might return. I know the Catcher of Ghosts guaranteed this would not happen, but thats like saying drought is never followed by drought, or flood by flood. Everyone knows that isnt true."
She followed me to Mr. Weis cart. As I left the courtyard and the house for the last time, she and the tenants were the only ones to see me off.
The priest said he would soon show us. "But first I need proof of your sincerity." Father gave his word that we were indeed sincere. "Words are not proof," the priest said.
After that, Mother rushed over to the body, GaoLing said. Precious Auntie was still leaning on the wall in the studio. "This is how you repay me?" Mother cried. "I treated you like a sister. I treated your daughter like my own." And she kicked the body, again and again, for not saying thank you, sorry, I beg your pardon a thousand times. "Mother was crazy with anger," GaoLing said. "She told Precious Aunties body, If you haunt us, Ill sell LuLing as a whore." After that, Mother ordered Old Cook to put the body in a pushcart and throw it over the cliff. "Shes down there," GaoLing said, "your Precious Auntie is lying in the End of the World." When GaoLing left, I still did not understand everything she had said, and yet I knew. I found the pages Precious Auntie had written for me. I finished reading them. At last, I read her words. Your mother, your mother, I am your mother.
Of that day, that was all I remembered. I didnt know how I came to be in my room, lying on the kang. When I awoke in the dark, I thought it was still the morning before. I sat up and shuddered, shaking off my nightmare.
GaoLing said, "That is one meaning. There are others."
I thanked her again and left the room. As I packed my bundle, Gao-Ling ran into the room with tears streaming down her cheeks. "Ill come find you," she promised, and gave me her favorite jacket.
"Its true, isnt it?" the old man insisted. "I feel youve had a lot of bad luck and theres no other reason for it. Am I right?"
Because of the holiday, it was a bigger market day, with a temple fair, jugglers and acrobats, vendors of lanterns and toys, and more than the usual numbers of tricksters and hucksters. As we pushed through the hordes, GaoLing and I clung to each others hands. We saw crying lost children and rough-looking men who stared at us openly. Precious Auntie had constantly warned me of hooligans from the big cities who stole stupid country girls and sold them as slaves. We stopped at a stall selling mooncakes. They were stale. We turned up our noses at pork that was gray. We looked into jars of fresh bean curd, but the squares were9９lｉb•neｔ gooey and stunk. We had money, we had permission to buy what we wanted, yet nothing looked good, everything seemed spoiled. We wandered about in the thick crowd, pressed one to the other like bricks.
"This is good," the priest said. "A little sincerity is better than none at all."
The girl crouched on the ground. From one tattered sleeve she pulled out a sack, then untied it and poured its contents on the ground. It was limestone silt. From her other sleeve she removed a long, slender stick. With the flat length of the stick, she smoothed the silt until its surface was as flat as a mirror. She pointed the sticks sharp end to the ground, and with her sightless eyes aimed toward heaven, she began to write. We crouched next to her. How did a beggar girl learn to do this? This was no ordinary trick. Her hand was steady, the writing was smooth, just like a skilled calligraphers. I read the first line.
"Thats it?" GaoLing complained. "Those words make no sense."
But I thanked the girl and put all the coins from my pocket into her bowl. As we walked home, GaoLing asked me why I had given the money for nonsense about a dog and a rooster. At first I could not answer her. I kept repeating the lines in my head so I would not forget them. Each time I did, I grew to understand what the message was and I became more miserable. "Precious Auntie said I was the dog who betrayed her," I told GaoLing at last. "The moon was the night I said I would leave her for the Changs. The stars piercing forever, that is her saying this is a lasting wound she can never forgive. By time the rooster crowed, she was gone. And until she was dead, I never knew she was my mother, as if she had never existed."
"We had a suicide," Father admitted, "a nursemaid whose daughter was about to be married."
Mother decided I would join the Chang family in a few weeks, before the town ceremony at the Moon Festival. She assured me that would give her and my aunts enough time to sew together quilts and clothes suitable for my new life. After Mother announced this news, she cried for joy. "Ive done well by you," she said proudly. "No one can complain." Gao-Ling cried as well. And though I shed some tears, not all of them were for joy. I would leave my family, my familiar house. I would change from a girl to a wife, a daughter to a daughter-in-law. And no matter how happy I was sure to be, I would still be sad to say good-bye to my old self.
"Wheres the girl that the ghost loved best?" asked the priest.
"It should be more," Mother grumbled. "Stuck in a jar forever wouldnt be too long, considering what shes done. Burned down our shop. Nearly killed our family. Put us in debt." I was crying, unable to speak on Precious Aunties behalf. I was her traitor.
"I dont care."
A rooster crows, the sun rises.
Bit by bit, Mother and the aunts pulled the story out of him. Last night, he said, Precious Auntie came to Father. Her hair was unbound, dripping tears and black blood, and Father instantly knew she was a ghost and not an ordinary dream.
"Someone who was like a mother to you," the girl answered just as fast.
When I opened my eyes, I saw the acolyte was pounding a tight-fitting wooden lid onto the jar. He wove rope from top to bottom, bottom to top, then all around the jar, until it resembled a hornets nest. When this was done, the Catcher of Ghosts tapped the jar with his beating stick and said, "Its over. Shes caught. Go ahead. Try to open it, you try. Cant be done."
I nodded, not wishing to argue in front of the others. My cousins, GaoLing, and I were playing weaving games with strings looped around our fingers. I was making lots of mistakes, which caused GaoLing to howl with glee that the Changs were getting a clumsy daughter-in-law. Upon hearing this, Precious Auntie threw me stern looks.
"Why?" GaoLing wanted to know.
Precious Auntie and I continued to share the same room, the same bed. But she no longer drew my bath or brought me sweet water from the well. She did not help me with my hair or worry over my daily health and the cleanliness of my fingernails. She gave no warnings, no advice. She did not talk to me with her hands.
After the official left, we waited to hear from Father what we should do. He sagged into his elmwood chair. Then Mother announced, "Were finished. Theres no changing fate. Today well go to the market and tomorrow well feast."
She slapped her palms against the wall. And then she finally blew out the lamp and left the room.
The girl smoothed the dirt once more and said, "The ghost has no more to say to you."
That day I went to the End of the World to look for her. As I slid down, branches and thorns tore at my skin. When I reached the bottom, I was feverish to find her. I heard the drumming of cicadas, the beating of vulture wings. I walked toward the thick brush, to where trees grew sideways just as they had fallen with the crumbling cliff. I saw moss, or was that her hair? I saw a nest high in the branches, or was that her body stuck on a limb? I came upon branches, or were those her bones, already scattered by wolves?
I grunted. And that little grunt was enough for her to clasp her hands, then bow and praise the Goddess of Mercy for saving me from the Changs. Before she could give too many thanks, I added: "Im still going."
Mother was the first to regain her senses. "Take the silver ingots out of the root cellar," she told us. "And whatever good jewelry you have, gather it up."
She shook an empty bowl in front of us. "A ghost is now waiting to speak to you."
The priest frowned. "Only you know if your sincer
九_九_藏_书_网
ity is little or great, fake or genuine.""I cant see what youre saying," I said. And when she went to light the kerosene lamp, I protested, "Dont bother, Im sleepy. I dont want to talk right now." She lit the lamp anyway. I went to the kang and lay down. She followed me and set the lamp on the ledge, crouched, and stared at me with a glowing face. Now that you have read my story, what do you feel toward me? Be honest.
"Dont be stupid. The other shopkeepers will make our family pay for the damages." And then Mother pushed her. "Get up. Hurry." She pulled a bracelet off GaoLings wrist. "Sew jewelry into the sleeves of your worst-looking jackets. Hollow out the hardest crab apples and put the gold inside those. Pile them in the cart and put more apples on top, rotten ones. Old Cook, see if the tenants have any wheelbarrows they can sell us, and dont bargain too hard. Everyone put a bundle together, but dont bother with trifles. . . ." I was amazed at how Mothers mind flowed, as if she were accustomed to running two paces ahead of a flood.
Immediately Precious Auntie sat up and was talking to me with her hands.
During our evening meal, Precious Auntie acted as if I were once again helpless. She pinched pieces of food with her chopsticks and added these to my bowl. Eat more, she ordered. Why arent you eating? Are you ill? You seem warm. You forehead is hot. Why are you so pale?
A dog howls, the moon rises.
The day before, Mrs. Chang had come over with a letter from Precious Auntie clutched in her hand. It had arrived in the middle of the night. "What is the meaning of this?" the Chang woman wanted to know. The letter said that if I joined the Chang household, Precious Auntie would come to stay as a live-in ghost, haunting them forever. "Where is the woman who sent this?" Mrs. Chang demanded, slapping the letter. And when Mother told her that the nursemaid had just killed herself, the Chang wife left, scared out of her wits.
Then our uncles followed: "Our bad luck has ended! No damages! That was the magistrates decision—no damages at all!"
The monk continued eating. Father and Mother went to another room to discuss the amount of their sincerity. When they returned, Father opened a pouch and pulled out a silver ingot and placed this in front of the Famous Catcher of Ghosts.
Mother then drew an ingot from the sleeve of her jacket. She slid this next to the first so that the two made a clinking sound. The monk nodded and put down his bowl. He clapped his hands, and the assistant took from his bundle an empty vinegar jar and wad of string.
"Her mother," Father corrected. "The girls her bastard."
A few hours later, the Catcher of Ghosts and his assistant stood in our courtyard.
"She should go now," Big Aunt and Little Aunt advised Mother. "Otherwise, they might later change their minds. What if they discover something wrong with her background and want to end the marriage contract?" I thought they were talking about my poor sewing skills or some naughtiness I had forgotten but they had not. But of course, they were talking about my birth. They knew whose daughter I really was. The Changs and I did not.
The smaller children began to cry. Father was like a deaf mute. He sat in his elmwood chair, rubbing its arm, declaring it the finest thing he had ever owned and lost. That night, nobody ate. We did not gather in the courtyard for the evening breezes. GaoLing and I spent the night together, talking and crying, swearing loyalty to die together as sisters. We exchanged hairpins to seal our pledge. If she felt that Precious Auntie was to blame for our disasters, she did not say so as the others had continued to do. She did not blame my birth for bringing Precious Auntie into their lives. Instead, GaoLing told me that I should feel lucky that Precious Auntie had already died and would therefore not suffer the slow death of starvation and shame that awaited the rest of us. I agreed yet wished she were with me. But she was at the End of the World. Or was she really wandering the earth, seeking revenge?
"What, then?" I asked. But she could not think of anything else to say.
The next morning, GaoLing told me Mother needed to talk to me right away. I had noticed that since Precious Auntie had died, Mother no longer called me Daughter. She did not criticize me. She almost seemed afraid I, too, would turn into a ghost. As I walked toward her room, I wondered if she had ever felt warmly toward me. And then I was standing in front of her. She seemed embarrassed to see me.
"In some cases, a family might walk from here to the top of Mount Tai and back, barefoot and carrying a load of rocks." Everyone, especially my aunts, looked doubtful that any of us could do that.
"Gone," Little Uncle said. His teeth chattered as if he were cold. "Everythings burnt up. Were finished."
"In times of family misfortune," she began in a sharp voice, "personal sadness is selfish. Still, I am sad to tell you we are sending you to an orphanage." I was stunned, but I did not cry. I said nothing.
Precious Auntie was not in the kang. Then I remembered she was an gry with me and had left to sleep elsewhere. I tried to fall back asleep, but now I could not lie still. I got up and stepped outside. The sky was thick with stars, no lamp burned in any room, and even the old rooster did not rustle in alarm. It was not morning but still night, and I wondered if I was dreamwalking. I made my way across the courtyard, toward the ink-making studio, thinking that Precious Auntie might be sleeping on a bench. And then I remembered more of the bad dream: black flies feasting on her neck, crawling a九九藏书long her shoulders like moving hair. I was scared to see what was inside the studio, but my shaking hands were already lighting the lamp.
For a long time, she did not move. Then she began to cry and beat her chest. Her hands moved fast: Dont you have feelings for who lam?
And then we found ourselves in Beggars Lane, a place I had never been. There we saw one pitiful sight after another: A shaved head and a limbless body that rocked on its back like a tortoise on its shell. A boneless boy whose legs were wrapped around his neck. A dwarf with long needles poked through his cheeks, belly, and thighs. The beggars had the same laments: "Please, little miss, I beg you, big brother, have pity on us. Give us money, and in your next life you wont have to suffer like us."
"Liu Jin Sen," Precious Auntie had called. "Did you value camphor wood more than my life? Then let the wood burn as I do now."
For five days I could not move. I could not eat. I could not even cry. I lay in the lonely kang and felt only the air leaving my chest. When I thought I had nothing left, my body still continued to be sucked of breath. At times I could not believe what had happened. I refused to believe it. I thought hard to make Precious Auntie appear, to hear her footsteps, see her face. And when I did see her face, it was in dreams and she was angry. She said that a curse now followed me and I would never find peace. I was doomed to be unhappy. On the sixth day, I began to cry and did not stop from morning until night. When I had no more feeling left, I rose from my bed and went back to my life.
Little Uncle collapsed onto a bench, his face bunched into knots. "The shop on the lane, the sleeping quarters in back, everything gone to cinders." GaoLing clasped my arm.
We slept at the farthest ends of the kang away from each other. And if I found myself huddled next to her familiar form, I quietly moved away before she awoke. Every morning she had red eyes, so I knew she had been crying. Sometimes my eyes were red, too.
Only GaoLing talked to me, shyly. "Are you hungry yet? If you dont want that dumpling, Ill eat it." And I remember this: Often, when I lay on my kang, she came to me and called me Big Sister. She stroked my hand.
When Father finished telling us how he had met these two men, he added, "This afternoon, the Famous Catcher of Ghosts is coming to our house."
When I woke up the next time, it was morning and GaoLing was on the edge of the kang. "No matter what," she said with a tearful face, "I promise to always treat you like a sister." Then she told me what had happened, and I listened as if I were still in a bad dream.
Mother, Big Aunt, and Little Aunt clapped their hands over their ears, as if this was the only way to keep their senses from dribbling out. "The fates have turned against us!" Mother cried. "Could there be anything worse?" Little Uncle then cried and laughed and said indeed there was.
In the morning, she was gone. But I was not worried. A few times in the past, when she had become angry with me, she left but always came back. She was not at the table for breakfast, either. So I knew her anger was greater than in the past. Let her be angry, then, I said to myself. She doesnt care about my future happiness. Only Mother does. That is the difference between a nursemaid and a mother.
Everyone looked, but no one would touch. Father asked, "Can she escape?"
I looked at the first page. "I was born the daughter of the Famous Bonesetter from the Mouth of the Mountain," it began. I glanced through the next few pages. They concerned the tradition of her family, the loss of her mother, the grief of her father, all the things she had already told me. And then I saw where it said: "Now I will tell how bad this man Chang really is." Right away, I threw those pages down. I did not want Precious Auntie poisoning my mind anymore. So I did not read to the end where she said she was my mother.
The next day, a man came to our gate and handed Father a letter with seals. A complaint had been made about the fire and our familys responsibility for the damages. The official said that as soon as the owners of the affected shops had tallied their losses, the figure would be given to the magistrate, and the magistrate would tell us how the debt should be settled. In the meantime, he said, our family should present the deed for our house and land. He warned us that he was posting a notice in the village about this matter, and thus people would know to report us if we tried to run away.
How could this be? And we listened as Father explained. When the other shop owners brought in their damaged goods for inspection, the magistrate discovered that one had rare books that had been stolen from the Hanlin Academy thirty years before. Another, who claimed he had works of master calligraphers and painters, was actually selling forgeries. The judges then decided the fire was fitting punishment to those two thieves.
I turned and went the other direction, following the turns of the cliffs wall. I glimpsed tatters of cloth—her clothes? I saw crows carrying shreds—pieces of her flesh? I came to a wasteland with rocky mounds, ten thousand pieces of her skull and bones. Everywhere I looked, it was as if I were seeing her, torn and smashed. I had done this. I was remembering the curse of her family, my family, the dragon bones that had not been returned to their burial place. Chang, that terrible man, he wanted me to marry his son only so I would tell him where to find more of those bones. How could I be so stupid not to have realized this before?
The walls were clean. So was the floor. Precious Auntie was not there. I was relieved, and returned to bed.