The Bonesetter's Daughter

–

HEART

These are the things I must not forget.

I was raised with the Liu clan in the rocky Western Hills south of Peking. The oldest recorded name of our village was Immortal Heart. Precious Auntie taught me how to write this down on my chalkboard. Watch now, Doggie, she ordered, and drew the character for "heart": See this curving stroke? That's the bottom of the heart, where blood gathers and flows. And the dots, those are the two veins and the artery that carry the blood in and out. As I traced over the character, she asked: Whose dead heart gave shape to this word? How did it begin, Doggie? Did it belong to a woman? Was it drawn in sadness?

I once saw the heart of a fresh-killed pig. It was red and glistening. And I had already seen plenty of chicken hearts in a bowl, waiting to be cooked. They looked like tiny lips and were the same color as Precious Auntie's scars. But what did a woman heart look like? "Why do we have to know whose heart it was?" I asked as I wrote the character.

And Precious Auntie flapped her hands fast: A person should consider how things begin. A particular beginning results in a particular end.

I remember her often talking about this, how things begin. Since then I have wondered about the beginning and end of many things. Like Immortal Heart village. And the people who lived there, myself included. By the time I was born, Immortal Heart was no longer lucky. The village lay between hills in a valley that dropped into a deep limestone ravine. The ravine was shaped like the curved chamber of a heart, and the heart's artery and veins were the three streams that once fed and drained the ravine. But they had gone dry. So had the divine springs. Nothing was left of the waterways but cracked gullies and the stench of a fart.

Yet the village began as a sacred place. According to legend, a visiting emperor himself had planted a pine tree in the middle of the valley. The tree was to honor his dead mother, and his respect for his mother was so great he vowed that the tree would live forever. When Precious Auntie first saw the tree, it was already more than three thousand years old.

Rich and poor alike made a pilgrimage to Immortal Heart. They hoped that the tree's vital energy would rub off on them. They stroked the trunk, patted the leaves, then prayed for baby sons or big fortunes, a cure for dying, an end to curses. Before leaving, they chipped off some bark, snapped off some twigs. They took them away as souvenirs. Precious Auntie said this was what killed the tree, too much admiration. When the tree died, the souvenirs lost their strength. And because the dead tree was no longer immortal, it was no longer famous, nor was our village. That tree was not even ancient, people said afterward, maybe only two or three hundred years old. As for the story about the emperor honoring his mother? That was a fake feudal legend to make us think the corrupt were sincere. Those complaints came out the same year that the old Ching Dynasty fell down and the new Republic sprang up.

The nickname of our village is easy for me to remember: Forty-six Kilometers from Reed Moat Bridge. Reed Moat Bridge is the same as Marco Polo Bridge, what people now call the turnoff point to and from Peking. GaoLing's probably forgotten the old name, but I have not. During my girlhood, the directions to get to Immortal Heart went like this: "First find the Reed Moat Bridge, then walk backward forty-six kilometers."

That joke made it sound as if we lived in a pitiful little hamlet of twenty or thirty people. Not so. When I was growing up, nearly two thousand people lived there. It was crowded, packed from one edge of the valley to the other. We had a brick maker, a sack weaver, and a dye mill. We had twenty-four market days, six temple fairs, and a primary school that GaoLing and I went to when we were not helping our family at home. We had all kinds of peddlers who went from house to house, selling fresh bean curd and steamed buns, twisted dough and colorful candies. And we had lots of people to buy those goods. A few coppers, that was all you needed to make your stomach as happy as a rich man's.

The Liu clan had lived in Immortal Heart for six centuries. For that amount of time, the sons had been inkstick makers who sold their goods to travelers. They had lived in the same courtyard house that had added rooms, and later wings, when one mother four hundred years ago gave birth to eight sons, one a year. The family home grew from a simple three-pillar house to a compound with wings stretching five pillars each. In later generations, the number of sons was less, and the extra rooms became run-down and were rented to squabbling tenants. Whether those people laughed at coarse jokes or screamed in pain, it did not matter, the sounds were the same, ugly to hear.

All in all, our family was successful but not so much that we caused great envy. We ate meat or bean curd at almost every meal. We had new padded jackets every winter, no holes. We had money to give for the temple, the opera, the fair. But the men of our family also had ambitions. They were always looking for more. They said that in Peking, more people wrote important documents. Those important documents required more good ink. Peking was where more of the big money was. Around 1920, Father, my uncles, and their sons went there to sell the ink. From then on, that was where they lived most of the time, in the back room of a shop in the old Pottery-Glazing District.

In our family, the women made the ink. We stayed home. We all worked-me, GaoLing, my aunts and girl cousins, everybody. Even the babies and Great-Granny had a job of picking out stones from the dried millet we boiled for breakfast. We gathered each day in the ink-making studio. According to Great-Granny, the studio began as a grain shed that sat along the front wall of the courtyard house. Over the years, one generation of sons added brick walls and a tile roof. Another strengthened the beams and lengthened it by two pillars. The next tiled the floors and dug pits for storing the ingredients. Then other descendants made a cellar for keeping the inksticks away from the heat and cold. "And now look," Great-Granny often bragged. "Our studio is an ink palace."

Because our ink was the best quality, we had to keep the tables and the floors clean year-round. With the dusty yellow winds from the Gobi, this was not easy to do. The window openings had to be covered with both glass and thick paper. In the summer, we hung netting over the doorways to keep out the insects. In the winter, it was sheep hides to keep out the snow.

Summer was the worst season for ink-making. Heat upon heat. The fumes burned our eyes and nostrils and lungs. From watching Precious Auntie tie her scarf over her marred face, we got the idea of putting a wet cloth over our mouths. I can still smell the ingredients of our ink. There were several kinds of fragrant soot: pine, cassia, camphor, and the wood of the chopped-down Immortal Tree. Father hauled home several big logs of it after lightning cracked the dead tree right down the middle, exposing its heart, which was nearly hollow because of beetles eating it inside out. There was also a glue of sticky paste mixed with many oils- serpentine, camphor, turpentine, and tung wood. Then we added a sweet poisonous flower that helped resist insects and rats. That was how special our ink was, all those lasting smells.

We made the ink a little at a time. If a fire broke out, as it had a couple of hundred years before, all the supplies and stock would not be lost at once. And if a batch was too sticky or too wet, too soft or not black enough, it was easier to find out who was to blame. Each of us had at least one part in a long list of things to do. First there was burning and grinding, measuring and pouring. Then came stirring and molding, drying and carving. And finally, wrapping and counting, storing and stacking. One season I had to wrap, only that. My mind could wander but my fingers still moved like small machines. Another season I had to use very fine tweezers to pluck bugs that had fallen onto the sticks. Whenever GaoLing did this, she left too many dents. Precious Auntie's job was to sit at a long table and press the sooty mixture into the stone molds. As a result, the tips of her fingers were always black. When the ink was dry, she used a long, sharp tool to carve the good-luck words and drawings into the sticks. Her calligraphy was even better than Father's.

It was boring work, but we were proud of our secret family recipe. It yielded just the right color and hardness. An inkstick of ours could last ten years or more. It did not dry out and crumble, or grow soggy with moisture. And if the sticks were stored in the coolness of a root cellar, as ours were, they could last from one great period of history to another. Those who used our ink said the same. It didn't matter how much heat or moisture or dirt from fingers soaked into the page, their words lasted, black and strong.

Mother claimed the ink was why our hair remained the blackest black. It was better for the hair than drinking black-sesame-seed soup. "Work hard all day making ink, look young at night while you sleep." That was our joke, and Great-Granny often boasted: "My hair is as black as the burnt shell of a horse chestnut and my face as wrinkly white as the meat inside." Great-Granny had a clever tongue. One time she added, "Better than having white hair and a burnt face," and everyone laughed, even though Precious Auntie was in the room.

In later years, however, Great-Granny's tongue was not so sharp or fast. Often she said with a worried brow, "Have you seen Hu Sen?" You could say yes, you could say no, and a moment later, she chirped like a bird, "Hu Sen? Hu Sen?" always requesting her dead grandson, very sad to hear.

Toward the end of her life, Great-Granny had thoughts that were like crumbling walls, stones without mortar. A doctor said her inner wind was cold and her pulse was slow, a shallow stream about to freeze. He advised foods with more heat. But Great-Granny only grew worse. Precious Auntie suspected that a tiny flea had crawled into her ear and was feasting on her brain. Confusion Itch was the name of the malady, Precious Auntie said. It is the reason people often scratch their heads when they cannot remember. Her father had been a doctor, and she had seen other patients with the same problem. Yesterday, when I could not remember Precious Auntie's name, I wondered if a flea had run in my ear! But now that I am writing down so many things, I know I don't have Great-Granny's disease. I can recall the smallest details even though they were long ago and far away.

The compound where we lived and worked-that comes back to me as if I were now standing before the gate. It was on Pig's Head Lane. The road started at the east, near the market square where pigs heads were sold. From the square, it hooked to the north and ran past the former location of the once famous Immortal Tree. Then it tightened into the little crooked alley where one compound bumped into another. The end of Pig's Head Lane was a narrow perch of earth above the deepest part of the ravine. Precious Auntie told me that the perch was originally made by a warlord thousands of years before. He dreamed that the insides of the mountain were made of jade. So he ordered everyone to dig, dig, don't stop. Men, women, and children dredged for his dream. By the time the warlord died, the children were old, with crooked backs, and half the mountain lay on its side.

Behind our compound, the perch became a cliff. And way down, if you fell head over toes, was the bottom of the ravine. The Liu family had once owned twenty mu of land behind the compound. But over the centuries, with each heavy rainfall, the walls of the ravine had collapsed and widened, rumbled and deepened. Each decade, those twenty mu of land grew smaller and smaller and the cliff crept closer to the back of our house.

The moving cliff gave us the feeling we had to look behind us to know what lay ahead. We called it the End of the World. Sometimes the men of our family argued among themselves whether we still owned the land that had crashed down into the ravine. One uncle said, "What you own is the spit that travels from your own mouth to the bottom of that wasteland." And his wife said, "Don't talk about this anymore. You're only inviting disaster." For what lay beyond and below was too unlucky to say out loud: unwanted babies, suicide maidens, and beggar ghosts. Everyone knew this.

I went to the cliff many times with my brothers and GaoLing when we were younger. We liked to roll spoiled melons and rotten cabbages over the edge. We watched them fall and splat, hitting skulls and bones. At least that was what we thought they had hit. But one time we climbed down, sliding on our bottoms, grabbing onto roots, descending into the underworld. And when we heard rustling sounds in the brush, we screamed so loud our ears hurt. The ghost turned out to be a scavenger dog. And the skulls and bones, they were just boulders and broken branches. But though we saw no bodies, all around were bright pieces of clothing: a sleeve, a collar, a shoe, and we were sure they belonged to the dead. And then we smelled it: the stink of ghosts. A person needs to smell that only once to know what it is. It rose from the earth. It wafted toward us on the wings of a thousand flies. The flies chased us like a storm cloud, and as we scrambled back up, First Brother kicked loose a stone that gouged out a piece of Second Brother's scalp. We could not hide this wound from Mother, and when she saw it, she beat us all, then told us that if we ever went down to the End of the World again, we might as well stand outside the walls of the compound forever and not bother to come in.

The walls of the Liu home were made of rocks exposed from the washed-down earth. The rocks were stacked and held together with a mud, mortar, and millet paste, then plastered over with lime. They were sweaty damp in summer, moldy damp in winter. And in the many rooms of that house, here and there was always another roof leak or drafty hole in the wall. And yet when I remember that house, I have a strange homesickness for it. Only there do I have a memory of secret places, warm or cool, of darkness where I hid and pretended I could escape to somewhere else.

Within those walls, many families of different positions and generations lived together at the same time, from landlord to tenants, Great-Granny to smallest niece. I guess we were thirty or more people, half of which was the Liu clan. Liu Jin Sen was the eldest of four sons. He was the one I called Father. My uncles and their wives called him Eldest Brother. My cousins called him Eldest Uncle. And by position my uncles were Big Uncle and Little Uncle, and their wives were Big Aunt and Little Aunt. When I was very small, I used to think Father and Mother were called Eldest because they were much taller than my uncles and aunts. First Brother and Second Brother were also large-boned, as was Gao-Ling, and for a long time I did not know why I was so short.

Baby Uncle was the fourth son, the youngest, the favorite. His name was Liu Hu Sen. He was my real father, and he would have married Precious Auntie, if only he had not died on their wedding day.

Precious Auntie was born in a bigger town down in the foothills, a place called Zhou's Mouth of the Mountain, named in honor of Emperor Zhou of the Shang Dynasty, whom everyone now remembers as a tyrant.

Our family sometimes went to the Mouth of the Mountain for temple fairs and operas. If we traveled by road, it was only about ten kilometers from Immortal Heart. If we walked through the End of the World, it was half that distance but a more dangerous way to go, especially in the summertime. That was when the big rains came. The dry ravine filled, and before you could run to the cliffs, climb up, and cry out, "Goddess of Mercy," the gullies ran by like thieves, grabbing you and whatever else was not deeply rooted in the soil. Once the rain stopped, the floodwaters drained fast and the mouths of the caves swallowed the dirt and the trees, the bodies and the bones. They went down the mountain's throat, into its stomach, intestines, and finally the bowels, where everything got stuck. Constipated, Precious Auntie once explained to me. Now you see why there are so many bones and hills: Chicken Bone Hill, Old Cow Hill, Dragon Bone Hill. Of course, it's not just dragon bones in Dragon Bone Hill. Some are from ordinary creatures, bear, elephant, hippopotamus. Precious Auntie drew a picture of each of these animals on my chalkboard, because we had never talked about them before.

I have a bone, probably from a turtle, she told me. She fished it from a tuck in her sleeve. It looked like a dried turnip with pockmarks. My father almost ground this up for medicine. Then he saw there was writing on it. She turned the bone over, and I saw strange characters running up and down. Until recently, these kinds of bones weren't so valuable, because of the scratches. Bone diggers used to smooth them with a file before selling them to medicine shops. Now the scholars call these oracle bones, and they sell for twice as much. And the words on here? They're questions to the gods.

"What does it say?" I asked.

Who knows? The words were different then. But it must be something that should have been remembered. Otherwise, why did the gods say it, why did a person write it down?

"Where are the answers?"

Those are the cracks. The diviner put a hot nail to the bone, and it cracked like a tree hit by lightning. Then he interpreted what the cracks meant.

She took back the divining bone. Someday, when you know how to remember, I'll give this to you to keep. But for now you'll only forget where you put it. Later we can go looking for more dragon bones, and if you find one with writing on it, you can keep it for yourself.

In the Mouth of the Mountain, every poor man collected dragon bones when he had a chance. So did the women, but if they found one, they had to say a man found it instead, because otherwise the bone was not worth as much. Later, middlemen went around the village buying the dragon bones, and then they took them to Peking and sold them to medicine shops for high prices, and the shops sold them to sick people for higher prices yet. The bones were well known for curing anything, from wasting diseases to stupidity. Plenty of doctors sold them. And so did Precious Auntie's father. He used bones to heal bones.

For nine hundred years, Precious Auntie's family had been bone-setters. That was the tradition. Her father's customers were mostly men and boys who were crushed in the coal mines and limestone quarries. He treated other maladies when necessary, but bonesetting was his specialty. He did not have to go to a special school to be a bone doctor. He learned from watching his father, and his father learned from his father before him. That was their inheritance. They also passed along the secret location for finding the best dragon bones, a place called the Monkey's Jaw. An ancestor from the time of the Sung Dynasty had found the cave in the deepest ravines of the dry riverbed. Each generation dug deeper and deeper, with one soft crack in the cave leading to another farther in. And the secret of the exact location was also a family heirloom, passed from generation to generation, father to son, and in Precious Auntie's time, father to daughter to me.

I still remember the directions to our cave. It was between the Mouth of the Mountain and Immortal Heart, far from the other caves in the foothills, where everyone else went to dig up dragon bones. Precious Auntie took me there several times, always in the spring or the autumn, never summer or winter. To get there, we went down into the End of the World and walked along the middle of the ravine, away from the walls, where the grown-ups said there were things that were too bad to see. Sometimes we passed by a skein of weeds, shards of a bowl, a quagmire of twigs. In my childish mind, those sights became parched flesh, a baby's skullcap, a soup of maiden bones. And maybe they were, because sometimes Precious Auntie put her hands over my eyes.

Of the three dry streambeds, we took the one that was the artery of the heart. And then we stood in front of the cave itself, a split in the mountain only as tall as a broom. Precious Auntie pulled aside the dead bushes that hid the cave. And the two of us took big breaths and went in. In words, it is hard to say how we made our way in, like trying to describe how to get inside an ear. I had to twist my body in an unnatural way far to the left, then rest a foot on a little ledge that I could reach only by crooking my leg close to my chest. By then I was crying and Precious Auntie was grunting to me, because I could not see her black fingers to know what she was saying. I had to follow her huffs and handclaps, crawling like a dog so I would not hit my head or fall down. When we finally reached the larger part of the cave, Precious Auntie lighted the candle lamp and hung it on a long pole with footrests, which had been left by one of her clan from long ago.

On the floor of the cave were digging tools, iron wedges of different sizes, hammers and claws, as well as sacks for dragging out the dirt. The walls of the cave were many layers, like an eight-treasure rice pudding cut in half, with lighter, crumbly things on top, then a thicker muddy part like bean paste below, and growing heavier toward the bottom. The highest layer was easiest to chip. The lowest was like rock. But that was where the best bones were found. And after centuries of people's digging through the bottom there was now an overhang waiting to crash down. The inside of the cave looked like the molars of a monkey that could bite you in two, which was why it was called the Monkey's Jaw.

While we rested, Precious Auntie talked with her inky hands. Stay away from that side of the monkey's teeth. Once they chomped down on an ancestor, and he was ground up and gobbled with stone. My father found his skull over there. We put it back right away. Bad luck to separate a man's head from his body.

Hours later, we would climb back out of the Monkey's Jaw with a sack of dirt and, if we had been lucky, one or two dragon bones. Precious Auntie held them up to the sky and bowed, thanking the gods. She believed the bones from this cave were the reason her family had become famous as bonesetters.

When I was a girl, she said once as we walked home, I remember lots of desperate people coming to see my father. He was their last chance. If a man could not walk, he could not work. And if he could not work, his family could not eat. Then he would die, and that would be the end of his family line and all that his ancestors had worked for.

For those desperate customers, Precious Auntie's father had remedies of three kinds: modern, try-anything, and traditional. The modern was the Western medicine of missionaries. The try-anything was the spells and chants of rogue monks. As for the traditional, that included the dragon bones, as well as seahorses and seaweed, insect shells and rare seeds, tree bark and bat dung, all of the highest quality. Precious Auntie's father was so talented that patients from the five surrounding mountain villages traveled to the Famous Bonesetter from the Mouth of the Mountain (whose name I will write down, once I remember it).

Skilled and famous though he was, he could not prevent all tragedies. When Precious Auntie was four, her mother and older brothers died of an intestine-draining disease. So did most of the other relatives from both sides of the family, dead just three days after they attended a red-egg cer emony and drank from a well infected with the body of a suicide maiden. The bonesetter was so ashamed he could not save his own family members that he spent his entire fortune and went into a lifetime of debt to hold their funerals.

Because of grief, Precious Auntie said with her hands, he spoiled me, let me do whatever a son might do. I learned to read and write, to ask questions, to play riddles, to write eight-legged poems, to walk alone and admire nature. The old biddies used to warn him that it was dangerous that I was so boldly happy, instead of shy and cowering around strangers. And why didn't he bind my feet, they asked. My father was used to seeing pain of the worst kinds. But with me, he was helpless. He couldn't bear to see me cry.

So Precious Auntie freely followed her father around in his study and shop. She soaked the splints and plucked the moss. She polished the scales and tallied the accounts. A customer could point to any jar in the shop and she could read the name of its contents, even the scientific words for animal organs. As she grew older, she learned to bleed a wound with a square nail, to use her own saliva for cleansing sores, to apply a layer of maggots for eating pus, and to wrap torn flaps with woven paper. By the time she passed from childhood to maidenhood, she had heard every kind of scream and curse. She had touched so many bodies, living, dying, and dead, that few families considered her for a bride. And while she had never been possessed by romantic love, she recognized the throes of death. When the ears grow soft and flatten against the head, she once told me, then it's too late. A few seconds later, the last breath hisses out. The body turns cold. She taught me many facts like that.

For the most difficult cases, she helped her father put the injured man on a light latticework pallet of rattan. Her father lifted and lowered this by pulleys and rope, and she guided the pallet into a tub filled with salt water. There the man's crushed bones floated and were fitted into place. Afterward, Precious Auntie brought her father rattan strips that had been soaked soft. He bent them into a splint so the limb could breathe but remain still. Toward the end of the visit, the bonesetter opened his jar of dragon bones and used a narrow chisel to chip off a sliver tiny as a fingernail clipping. Precious Auntie ground this into a powder with a silver ball. The powder went into a paste for rubbing or a potion for drinking. Then the lucky patient went home. Soon he was back in the quarries all day long.

One day, at dinnertime, Precious Auntie told me a story with her hands that only I could understand. A rich lady came to my father and told him to unbind her feet and mold them into more modern ones. She said she wanted to wear high-heeled shoes. "But don't make the new feet too big, " she said, "not like a slave girl's or a foreigner's. Make them naturally small like hers." And she pointed to my feet.

I forgot that Mother and my other aunts were at the dinner table, and I said aloud, "Do bound feet look like the white lilies that the romantic books describe?" Mother and my aunts, who still had bound feet, gave me a frowning look. How could I talk so openly about a woman's most private parts? So Precious Auntie pretended to scold me with her hands for asking such a question, but what she really said was this: They're usually crimped like flower-twist bread. But if they're dirty and knotty with calluses, they look like rotten ginger roots and smell like pig snouts three days dead.

In this way, Precious Auntie taught me to be naughty, just like her. She taught me to be curious, just like her. She taught me to be spoiled. And because I was all these things, she could not teach me to be a better daughter, though in the end, she tried to change my faults.

I remember how she tried. It was the last week we were together. She did not speak to me for days. Instead she wrote and wrote and wrote. Finally she handed me a bundle of pages laced together with cord. This is my true story, she told me, and yours as well. Out of spite, I did not read most of those pages. But when I did, this is what I learned.

One late-autumn day, when Precious Auntie was nineteen by her Chinese age, the bonesetter had two new patients. The first was a screaming baby from a family who lived in Immortal Heart. The second was Baby Uncle. They would both cause Precious Auntie everlasting sorrow, but in two entirely different ways.

The bawling baby was the youngest son of a big-chested man named Chang, a coffinmaker who had grown rich in times of plagues. The carvings on the outside of his coffins were of camphor wood. But the insides were cheap pine, painted and lacquered to look and smell like the better golden wood.

Some of that same golden wood had fallen from a stack and knocked the baby's shoulder out of its socket. That's why the baby was howling, Chang's wife reported with a frightened face. Precious Auntie recognized this nervous woman. Two years before, she had sat in the bonesetter's shop because her eye and jaw had been broken by a stone that must have fallen out of the open sky. Now she was back with her husband, who was slapping the baby's leg, telling him to stop his racket. Precious Auntie shouted at Chang: "First the shoulder, now you want to break his leg as well." Chang scowled at her. Precious Auntie picked up the baby. She rubbed a little bit of medicine inside his cheeks. Soon the baby quieted, yawned once, and fell asleep. Then the bonesetter snapped the small shoulder into place.

"What's the medicine?" the coffinmaker asked Precious Auntie. She didn't answer.

"Traditional things," the bonesetter said. "A little opium, a little herbs, and a special kind of dragon bone we dig out from a secret place only our family knows."

"Special dragon bone, eh?" Chang dipped his finger in the medicine bowl, then dabbed inside his cheek. He offered some to Precious Auntie, who sniffed in disgust, and then he laughed and gave Precious Auntie a bold look, as if he already owned her and could do whatever he pleased.

Right after the Changs and their baby left, Baby Uncle limped in.

He had been injured by his nervous horse, he explained to the bone-setter. He had been traveling from Peking to Immortal Heart, and during a rest, the horse startled a rabbit, then the rabbit startled the horse, and the horse stepped on Baby Uncle's foot. Three broken toes resulted, and Baby Uncle rode his bad horse to the Mouth of the Mountain, straight to the Famous Bonesetter's shop.

Baby Uncle sat in the blackwood examination chair. Precious Auntie was in the back room and could see him through the parted curtain. He was a thin young man of twenty-two. His face was refined but he did not act pompous or overly formal, and while his gown was not that of a rich gentleman, he was well groomed. She heard him joke about his accident: "My mare was so crazy with fright I thought she was going to gallop straight to the underworld with me stuck astride." When Precious Auntie stepped into the room, she said, "But fate brought you here instead." Baby Uncle fell quiet. When she smiled, he forgot his pain. When she put a dragon bone poultice on his naked foot, he decided to marry her. That was Precious Auntie's version of how they fell in love.

I have never seen a picture of my real father, but Precious Auntie told me that he was very handsome and smart, yet also shy enough to make a girl feel tender. He looked like a poor scholar who could rise above his circumstances, and surely he would have qualified for the imperial examinations if they had not been canceled several years before by the new Republic.

The next morning, Baby Uncle came back with three stemfuls of lychees for Precious Auntie as a gift of appreciation. He peeled off the shell of one, and she ate the white-fleshed fruit in front of him. The morning was warm for late autumn, they both remarked. He asked if he could re cite a poem he had written that morning: "You speak," he said, "the language of shooting stars, more surprising than sunrise, more brilliant than the sun, as brief as sunset. I want to follow its trail to eternity."

In the afternoon, the coffinmaker Chang brought a watermelon to the bonesetter. "To show my highest appreciation," he said. "My baby son is already well, able to pick up bowls and smash them with the strength of three boys."

Later that week, unbeknownst one to the other, each man went to a different fortune-teller. The two men wanted to know if their combination of birthdates with Precious Auntie's was lucky. They asked if there were any bad omens for a marriage.

The coffinmaker went to a fortune-teller in Immortal Heart, a man who walked about the village with a divining stick. The marriage signs were excellent, the fortune-teller said. See here, Precious Auntie was born in a Rooster year, and because Chang was a Snake, that was nearly the best match possible. The old man said that Precious Auntie also had a lucky number of strokes in her name (I will write the number down here when I remember her name). And as a bonus, she had a mole in position eleven, near the fatty part of her cheek, indicating that only sweet words fell from her obedient mouth. The coffinmaker was so happy to hear this that he gave the fortune-teller a big tip.

Baby Uncle went to a fortune-teller in the Mouth of the Mountain, an old lady with a face more wrinkled than her palm. She saw nothing but calamity. The first sign was the mole on Precious Auntie's face. It was in position twelve, she told Baby Uncle, and it dragged down her mouth, meaning that her life would always bring her sadness. Their combination of birth years was also inharmonious, she a fire Rooster and he a wood Horse. The girl would ride his back and peck him apart piece by piece. She would consume him with her insatiable demands. And here was the worst part. The girl's father and mother had reported the date of her birth was the sixteenth day of the seventh moon. But the fortune-teller had a sister-in-law who lived near the bonesetter, and she knew better. She had heard the newborn's wails, not on the sixteenth day, but on the fifteenth, the only day when unhappy ghosts are allowed to roam the earth. The sister-in-law said the baby sounded like this: "Wu-wu, wu-wu, " not like a human but like a haunted one. The fortune-teller confided to Baby Uncle that she knew the girl quite well. She often saw her on market days, walking by herself. That strange girl did fast calculations in her head and argued with merchants. She was arrogant and headstrong. She was also educated, taught by her father to know the mysteries of the body. The girl was too curious, too questioning, too determined to follow her own mind. Maybe she was possessed. Better find another marriage match, the fortuneteller said. This one would lead to disaster.

Baby Uncle gave the fortune-teller more money, not as a tip, but to make her think harder. The fortune-teller kept shaking her head. But after Baby Uncle had given a total of a thousand coppers, the old lady finally had another thought. When the girl smiled, which was often, her mole was in a luckier position, number eleven. The fortune-teller consulted an almanac, matched it to the hour of the girl's birth. Good news. The Hour of the Rabbit was peace-loving. Her inflexibility was just a bluff. And any leftover righteousness could be beaten down with a strong stick. It was further revealed that the fortune-teller's sister-in-law was a gossip known for exaggeration. But just to make sure the marriage went well, the fortune-teller sold Baby Uncle a Hundred Different Things charm that covered bad dates, bad spirits, bad luck, and hair loss. "But even with this, don't marry in the Dragon Year. Bad year for a Horse."

The first marriage proposal came from Chang's matchmaker, who went to the bonesetter and related the good omens. She boasted of the coffinmaker's respect, as an artisan descended from noted artisans. She described his house, his rock gardens, his fish ponds, the furniture in his many rooms, how the wood was of the best color, purple like a fresh bruise. As to the matter of a dowry, the coffinmaker was willing to be more than generous. Since the girl was to be a second wife and not a first, couldn't her dowry be a jar of opium and a jar of dragon bones? This was not much, yet it was priceless, and therefore not insulting to the girl's worth.

The bonesetter considered the offer. He was growing old. Where would his daughter go when he died? And what other man would want her in his household? She was too spirited, too set in her ways. She had no mother to teach her the manners of a wife. True, the coffinmaker would not have been his first choice of son-in-law, if he had had another, but he did not want to stand in the way of his daughter's future happiness. He told Precious Auntie about the generous offer from the coffinmaker.

To this, Precious Auntie huffed. "The man's a brute," she said. "I'd rather eat worms than be his wife."

The bonesetter had to give Chang's matchmaker an awkward answer: "I'm sorry," he said, "but my daughter cried herself sick, unable to bear the thought of leaving her worthless father." The lie would have been swallowed without disgrace, if only the offer from Baby Uncle's matchmaker had not been accepted the following week.

A few days after the future marriage was announced, the coffinmaker went back to the Mouth of the Mountain and surprised Precious Auntie as she was returning from the well. "You think you can insult me, then walk away laughing? "

"Who insulted whom? You asked me to be your concubine, a servant to your wife. I'm not interested in being a slave in a feudal marriage."

As she tried to leave, Chang pinched her neck, saying he should break it, then shook her as if he truly might snap off her head like a winter twig. But instead he threw her to the ground, cursing her and her dead mother's private parts.

When Precious Auntie recovered her breath, she sneered, "Big words, big fists. You think you can scare a person into being sorry? "

And he said these words, which she never forgot: "You'll soon be sorry every day of your miserable life."

Precious Auntie did not tell her father or Hu Sen what had happened. No sense in worrying them. And why lead her future husband to wonder if Chang had a reason to feel insulted? Too many people had already said she was too strong, accustomed to having her own way. And perhaps this was true. She had no fear of punishment or disgrace. She was afraid of almost nothing.

A month before the wedding, Baby Uncle came to her room late at night. "I want to hear your voice in the dark," he whispered. "I want to hear the language of shooting stars." She let him into her k'ang and he eagerly began the nuptials. But as Baby Uncle caressed her, a wind blew over her skin and she began to tremble and shake. For the first time, she was afraid, she realized, frightened by unknown joy.

The wedding was supposed to take place in Immortal Heart village, right after the start of the new Dragon Year. It was a bare spring day. Slippery pockets of ice lay on the ground. In the morning, a traveling photographer came to the bonesetter's shop in the Mouth of the Mountain. He had broken his arm the month before, and his payment was a photograph of Precious Auntie on her wedding day. She wore her best winter jacket, one with a high fur-lined collar, and an embroidered cap. She had to stare a long time into the camera, and as she did so, she thought of how her life would soon change forever. Though she was happy, she was also worried. She sensed danger, but she could not name what it was. She tried to look far into the future, but she could see nothing.

For the journey to the wedding, she changed her clothes to her bridal costume, a red jacket and skirt, the fancy headdress with a scarf that she had to drape over her head once she left her father's home. The bonesetter had borrowed money to rent two mule carts, one to carry gifts for the groom's family, the other for the bride's trunks of blankets and clothes. There was an enclosed sedan chair for the bride herself, and the bone-setter also had to hire four sedan carriers, two carters, a flute player, and two bodyguards to watch out for bandits. For his daughter, he had procured only the best: the fanciest sedan chair, the cleanest carts, the strongest guards with real pistols and gunpowder. In one of the carts was the dowry, the jar of opium and the jar of dragon bones, the last of his supply. He assured his daughter many times not to worry about the cost. After her wedding, he could go to the Monkey's Jaw and gather more bones.

Halfway between the villages, two bandits wearing hoods sprang out of the bushes. "I'm the famous Mongol Bandit!" the larger one bellowed. Right away, Precious Auntie recognized the voice of Chang the coffinmaker. What kind of ridiculous joke was this? But before she could say anything, the guards threw down their pistols, the carriers dropped their poles, and Precious Auntie was thrown to the floor of the sedan and knocked out.

When she came to, she saw Baby Uncle's face in a haze. He had lifted her out of the sedan. She looked around and saw that the wedding trunks had been ransacked and the guards and carriers had fled. And then she noticed her father lying in a ditch, his head and neck at an odd angle, the life gone from his face. Was she in a dream? "My father," she moaned. "I want to go to him." As she bent over the body, unable to make sense of what had happened, Baby Uncle picked up a pistol that one of the guards had dropped.

"I swear I'll find the demons who caused my bride so much grief," he shouted, and then he fired the pistol toward heaven, startling his horse.

Precious Auntie did not see the kick that killed Baby Uncle, but she heard it, a terrible crack, like the opening of the earth when it was born. For the rest of her life she was to hear it in the breaking of twigs, the crackling of fire, whenever a melon was cleaved in the summer.

That was how Precious Auntie became a widow and an orphan in the same day. "This is a curse," she murmured, as she stared down at the bodies of the men she loved. For three sleepless days after their deaths, Precious Auntie apologized to the corpses of her father and Baby Uncle. She talked to their still faces. She touched their mouths, though this was forbidden and caused the women of the house to fear that the wronged ghosts might either possess her or decide to stay.

On the third day, Chang arrived with two coffins. "He killed them!" Precious Auntie cried. She picked up a fire poker and tried to strike him. She beat at the coffins. Baby Uncle's brothers had to wrestle her away. They apologized to Chang for the girl's lunacy, and Chang replied that grief of this magnitude was admirable. Because Precious Auntie continued to be wild with admirable grief, the women of the house had to bind her from elbows to knees with strips of cloth. Then they laid her on Baby Uncle's k'ang, where she wiggled and twisted like a butterfly stuck in its cocoon until Great-Granny forced her to drink a bowl of medicine that made her body grow limp. For two days and nights, she dreamed she was with Baby Uncle, lying on the k'ang as his bride.

When she revived, she was alone in the dark. Her arms and legs had been unbound, but they were weak. The house was quiet. She went searching for her father and Baby Uncle. When she reached the main hall, the bodies were gone, already buried in Chang's wooden handiwork. Weeping, she wandered about the house and vowed to join them in the yellow earth. In the ink-making studio, she went looking for a length of rope, a sharp knife, matches she could swallow, anything to cause pain greater than she felt. And then she saw a pot of black resin. She lowered a dipper into the liquid and put it in the maw of the stove. The oily ink became a soup of blue flames. She tipped the ladle and swallowed.

Great-Granny was the first to hear the thump-bumping sounds in the studio. Soon the other women of the household were there as well. They found Precious Auntie thrashing on the floor, hissing air out of a mouth blackened with blood and ink. "Like eels are swimming in the bowl of her mouth," Mother said. "Better if she dies."

But Great-Granny did not let this happen. Baby Uncle's ghost had come to her in a dream and warned that if Precious Auntie died, he and his ghost bride would roam the house and seek revenge on those who had not pitied her. Everyone knew there was nothing worse than a vengeful ghost. They caused rooms to stink like corpses. They turned bean curd rancid in a moment's breath. They let wild creatures climb over the walls and gates. With a ghost in the house, you could never get a good night's sleep.

Day in and day out, Great-Granny dipped cloths into ointments and laid these over Precious Auntie's wounds. She bought dragon bones, crushed them, and sprinkled them into her swollen mouth. And then she noticed that another part of Precious Auntie had become swollen: her womb.

Over the next few months, Precious Auntie wounds changed from pus to scars, and her womb grew like a gourd. She had once been a fine-looking girl. Now all except blind beggars shuddered at the sight of her. One day, when it was clear she was going to survive, Great-Granny said to her speechless patient: "Now that I've saved your life, where will you and your baby go? What will you do?"

That night, the ghost of Baby Uncle came once again to Great-Granny, and the next morning, Great-Granny told Precious Auntie: "You are to stay and be nursemaid to this baby. First Sister will claim it as hers and raise it as a Liu. To those you meet, we '11 say you're a distant relation from Peking, a cousin who lived in a nunnery until it burned down and nearly took you with it. With that face, no one will recognize you."

And that's what happened. Precious Auntie stayed. I was the reason she stayed, her only reason to live. Five months after my birth in 1916, GaoLing was born to Mother, who had been forced by Great-Granny to claim me as her own. How could Mother say she had two babies five months apart? That was impossible. So Mother decided to wait. Exactly nine months after my birth, and on a very lucky date in 1917, GaoLing was born for sure.

The grown-ups knew the truth of our births. The children knew only what they were supposed to pretend. And though I was smart I was stupid. I did not ever question the truth. I did not wonder why Precious Auntie had no name. To others she was Nursemaid. To me, she was Precious Auntie. And I did not know who she really was until I read what she wrote.

"I am your mother," the words said.

I read that only after she died. Yet I have a memory of her telling me with her hands, I can see her saying this with her eyes. When it is dark, she says this to me in a clear voice I have never heard. She speaks in the language of shooting stars.

CHANGE

In the year 1929, my fourteenth year, I became an evil person.

That was also the year the scientists, both Chinese and foreign, came to Dragon Bone Hill at the Mouth of the Mountain. They wore sun hats and Wellington boots. They brought shovels and poking sticks, sorting pans and fizzing liquids. They dug in the quarries, they burrowed in the caves. They went from medicine shop to medicine shop, buying up all the old bones. We heard rumors that the foreigners wanted to start their own dragon bone factories, and a dozen villagers went to the quarries with axes to chase them away.

But then some of the Chinese workers who dug for the scientists passed along the rumor that two of the dragon bones might have been teeth from a human head. And everyone thought they meant a recently dead one. From whose grave? Whose grandfather? Whose grandmother? Some people stopped buying dragon bones. Big signs in the medicine shops declared: "None of our remedies contains human parts."

At the time, Precious Auntie still had four or five dragon bones left from our visits to the family cave, not counting the oracle bone her father had given her long ago. The others she had used as medicine for me over the years, and those, she assured me, were not human. Soon after she said this, her father, the Famous Bonesetter, came to her in a dream. "The bones you have are not from dragons," he said. "They are from our own clan, the ancestor who was crushed in the Monkey's Jaw. And because we stole them, he's cursed us. That's why nearly everyone in our family has died, your mother, your brother, myself, your future husband-because of this curse. And it doesn't stop with death. Ever since I arrived in the World of Yin, his shadow has been jumping on me from every turn. If I were not already dead, I would have died of fright a thousand times."

"What should we do?" Precious Auntie asked in her dream.

"Return the bones. Until they're reunited with the rest of his body, he'll continue to plague us. You'll be next, and any future generations of our family will be cursed, too. Believe me, daughter, there is nothing worse than having your own relative out for revenge."

The next morning, Precious Auntie rose early, and she was gone almost the entire day. When she returned, she seemed more at ease. But then the workmen from Dragon Bone Hill passed along this news: "The teeth," they said, "are not only human but belong to a piece of skullcap from our oldest ancestors, one million years old!" "Peking Man" was what the scientists decided to call the skullcap. They just needed to find more pieces to make a whole skullcap, and a few more after that to connect his skull to his jaw, his jaw to his neck, his neck to his shoulders, and so on, until he was a complete man. That meant a lot of pieces had to be found, and that was why the scientists were asking the villagers to bring all the dragon bones they had lying around their houses and medicine shops. If the dragon bones proved to be from ancient humans, the owner would receive a reward.

One million years! Everyone kept saying this. One day they had no need to say this number, the next day they could not say it enough. Little Uncle guessed that a person might earn a million coppers for a single piece of dragon bone. And Father said, "Coppers are worth nothing these days. A million silver taels are more likely." By guesses and arguments, the amount grew to be a million gold ingots. The whole town was talking about this. "Old bones grow new fat," became the saying people had on their lips. And because dragon bones were now worth so much, at least in people's wild imaginations, no one could buy them for medicine anymore. Those folks with life-draining ailments could no longer be cured. But what did that matter? They were the descendants of Peking Man. And he was famous.

Naturally, I thought about the dragon bones that Precious Auntie had put back in the cave. They were human, too-her father had said so in her dream. "We could sell them for a million ingots," I told her. I reasoned I was not just thinking selfishly. If Precious Auntie made us rich, my family might respect her more.

A million or ten million, she scolded with her moving hands, if we sell them, the curse will return. A ghost will then come and take us and our miserable bones with it. Then we'll have to wear the weight of those million ingots around our dead necks to bribe our way through hell. She poked my forehead. I tell you, the ghosts won't rest until all of our family is dead. The entire family, gone. She knocked her fist against her chest. Sometimes I wish I were already dead. I wanted to die, really I did, but I came back for you.

"Well, I'm not afraid," I answered. "And since the curse is on you and not me, I can go get the bones."

Suddenly Precious Auntie slapped the side of my head. Stop this talk! Her hands sliced the air. You want to add to my curse? Never go back. Never touch them. Say you won't, say it now! She grabbed my shoulders and rattled me until a promise fell out of my clacking mouth.

Later I daydreamed of sneaking to the cave. How could I sit by while everyone in the Mouth of the Mountain and the surrounding villages went looking for immortal relics? I knew where the human bones were, and yet I could say nothing. I had to watch as others gouged where their sheep chewed grass, gutted where their pigs wallowed in the mud. Even First Brother and Second Brother, along with their wives, dredged the remaining land between our compound and the cliff. From the muck they yanked out roots and worms. They guessed that these might be ancient men's finger and toes, or even the fossilized tongue that spoke the first words of our ancestors. The streets filled with people trying to sell all kinds of dried-up relics, from chicken beaks to pig turds. In a short while, our village looked worse than a burial ground dug up by grave robbers.

Day and night the family talked of Peking Man and almost nothing else. "Million years?" Mother wondered aloud. "How can anyone know the age of someone who has been dead that long? Hnh, when my grandfather died, no one knew if he was sixty-eight or sixty-nine. Eighty was how long he should have lived, if only he had had better luck. So eighty was what our family decided he was-luckier, yes, but still dead."

I, too, had something to say on the new discovery: "Why are they calling him Peking Man? The teeth came from the Mouth of the Mountain. And now the scientists are saying that skullcap was a woman's. So it should be called Woman from the Mouth of the Mountain." My aunts and uncles looked at me, and one of them said: "Wisdom from a child's lips, simple yet true." I was embarrassed to hear such high words. Then Gao-Ling added, "I think he should be called Immortal Heart Man. Then our town would be famous and so would we." Mother praised her suggestion to the skies, and the others did as well. To my mind, however, her idea made no sense, but I could not say this.

I was often jealous when GaoLing received more attention from the mother we shared. I still believed I was the eldest daughter. I was smarter. I had done better in school. Yet GaoLing always had the honor of sitting next to Mother, of sleeping in her k'ang, while I had Precious Auntie.

When I was younger, that did not bother me. I felt I was lucky to have her by my side. I thought the words "Precious Auntie" were the same as what others meant by "Ma." I could not bear to be separated from my nursemaid for even one moment. I had admired her and was proud that she could write the names of every flower, seed, and bush, as well as say their medicinal uses. But the bigger I grew, the more she shrank in impor tance. The smarter I thought I had become, the more I was able to reason that Precious Auntie was only a servant, a woman who held no great position in our household, a person no one liked. She could have made our family rich, if only she did not have crazy thoughts about curses.

I began to increase my respect for Mother. I sought her favor. I believed favor was the same as love. Favor made me feel more important, more content. After all, Mother was the number-one-ranking lady of the house. She decided what we ate, what colors we should wear, how much pocket money we received for those times she allowed us to go to the market. Everyone both feared her and wanted to please her, all except Great-Granny, who was now so feeble-minded she could not tell ink from mud.

But in Mother's eyes, I had no charms. To her ears, my words had no music. It did not matter how obedient I was, how humble or clean. Nothing I did satisfied her. I became confused as to what I must do to please her. I was like a turtle lying on its back, struggling to know why the world was upside down.

Often I complained to Precious Auntie that Mother did not love me. Stop your nonsense, Precious Auntie would answer. Didn't you hear her today? She said your sewing stitches were sloppy. And she mentioned your skin was getting too dark. If she didn't love you, why did she bother to criticise you for your own good? And then Precious Auntie went on to say how selfish I was, always thinking about myself. She said my face looked ugly when I pouted. She criticized me so much I did not consider until now that she was saying she loved me even more.

One day-I remember this was sometime before Spring Festival-Old Cook came back from the market and said big news was flying through Immortal Heart. Chang the coffinmaker had become famous and was soon to be very rich. Those dragon bones he had given to the scientists? The results had come back: They were human. How old was not certain yet, but everyone guessed they were at least a million years, maybe even two.

We were in the ink-making studio, all the women, girls, and babies, except for Precious Auntie, who was in the root cellar, counting the ink-sticks she had already carved. I was glad she wasn't in the studio, because whenever anyone mentioned Chang's name, she spat. So when he delivered wood, she was sent to her room, where she cursed him by banging on a pail so long and loud that even the tenants yelled back.

"What a peculiar coincidence," Big Aunt now said. "The same Mr. Chang who sells us wood. His luck could have been ours just as easily."

"The association goes back even farther than that," Mother boasted. "He was the man who stopped his cart to help after Baby Brother was killed by the Mongol bandits. A man of good deeds, that Mr. Chang."

It seemed there was no end to the many ways we were connected to the now famous Mr. Chang. Since Mr. Chang would soon be even richer than before, Mother thought he would surely reduce the price of his leftover wood. "He should share his luck," Mother agreed with herself. "The gods expect him to do no less."

Precious Auntie came back to the ink studio, and in a short while she realized who it was everyone was talking about. She stamped her feet and punched the air with her fists. Chang is evil, she said, her arms flailing. He killed my father. He is the reason Hu Sen is dead. She made a rasping sound as if the whole of her throat would slough off.

That was not true, I thought. Her father had fallen off a wagon when he was drunk, and Baby Uncle had been kicked by his own horse. Mother and my aunts had told me so.

Precious Auntie grabbed my arm. She looked into my eyes, then talked fast with her hands, Tell them, Doggie, tell them what I'm saying is true. And the dragon bones Chang has, and she poured imaginary ones into her palm, I realise now that they probably are the ones that belonged to my father, my family. Chang stole them from us on my wedding day. They were my dowry. They are bones from the Monkey's Jaw. We need to get them back from Chang, return them to the cave or the curse will go on and on. Hurry, tell them.

Before I could, Mother warned: "I don't want to hear any more of her crazy stories. Do you hear me, Daughter?"

Everyone stared at me, including Precious Auntie. Tell them, she signaled. But I turned to Mother, nodded, and said, "I heard." Precious Auntie ran out of the ink studio with a choking sound that twisted my heart and made me feel evil.

For a while, it was very quiet in the studio. Then Great-Granny went up to Mother and said with a worried face: "Eh, have you seen Hu Sen?"

"He's in the courtyard," Mother answered. And Great-Granny shuffled out.

My uncles' wives began to cluck their tongues. "Still crazy from what happened," Little Aunt muttered, "and that was almost fifteen years ago." For a moment, I did not know if they were talking about Great-Granny or Precious Auntie.

Big Aunt added, "Good thing she can't talk. It would be a terrible embarrassment to our family if anyone knew what she was trying to say."

"You should turn her out of the house," Little Aunt said to Mother. And then Mother nodded toward Great-Granny, who was now wandering about, scratching at a bloody spot on the back of her ear. "It's because of old Granny," she said, "that the lunatic nursemaid has stayed all these years." And I knew then what Mother really meant but could not say. When Great-Granny died, she could finally tell Precious Auntie to go. All at once, I felt tender toward my nursemaid. I wanted to protest that Mother must not do this. But how could I argue against something that had not yet been said?

A month later, Great-Granny fell and hit her head on the brick edge of her k'ang. Before the Hour of the Rooster she was dead. Father, Big Uncle, and Little Uncle returned home from Peking, though the roads had become dangerous. A lot of shooting among warlords was going on between Peking and the Mouth of the Mountain. Lucky for us, the only fighting we saw was among the tenants. We had to ask them several times not to scream and shout while we were paying respects to Great-Granny as she lay in the common hall.

When Mr. Chang delivered the coffin, Precious Auntie stayed in her room and cursed him with her banging pail. I was sitting on a bench in the front courtyard, watching as Father and Mr. Chang unloaded the cart.

I thought to myself, Precious Auntie is wrong. Mr. Chang didn't look like a thief. He was a large man with friendly manners and an open face. Father was eagerly discussing with him his "important contribution to science, history, and all of China." To this, Mr. Chang acted both modest and pleased. Then Father left to get Mr. Chang's money for the coffin.

Though it was a cold day, Mr. Chang was sweating. He wiped his brow with his sleeve. After a while, he noticed I was staring at him. "You've certainly grown big," he called to me. I blushed. A famous man was talking to me.

"My sister is bigger," I thought to say. "And she's a year younger."

"Ah, that's good," he said.

I had not intended for him to praise GaoLing. "I heard that you had pieces of Peking Man," I then said. "What parts?"

"Oh, only the most important."

And I, too, wanted to seem important, so I blurted without thinking, "I once had some bones myself," before I slapped my hand over my mouth.

Mr. Chang smiled, waiting for me to continue. "Where are they?" he said after a while.

I could not be impolite. "We took them back to the cave," I answered.

"Where's that?"

"I can't say where. My nursemaid made me promise. It's a secret."

"Ah, your nursemaid. She's the one with the ugly face." Mr. Chang stiffened his fingers like a crab and held them over his mouth.

I nodded.

"The crazy person." He looked toward the sounds of the banging pail. I said nothing.

"And she found bones from this place you can't talk about?"

"We found them together, she took them back," I answered quickly. "But I can't say where."

"Of course. You shouldn't tell a stranger."

"Oh, you're not a stranger! Our family knows you very well. We all say so."

"Still, you shouldn't tell me. But surely you've told your own father and mother."

I shook my head. "No one. If I did, they would want to dig them out. Precious Auntie said so. She said the bones have to stay in the cave or she would suffer the consequences."

"What consequences?"

"A curse. She'll die if I say."

"But she is already quite old, is she not?"

"I don't know. I don't think so."

"Often women die at all sorts of ages and it's not because of a curse. Illness or accident, that's often the cause. My first wife died ten years ago. She was always clumsy and one day she fell off a roof. Now I have a new wife and she's even better than the last. If your nursemaid dies, you can get a new one, too."

"I'm too old for another," I said. I did not like our conversation anymore. Soon Father returned with Mr. Chang's money. They chatted a few more minutes in a friendly manner, and then Mr. Chang called to me, "Next time I see you, we'll talk again," and he left with his empty cart. Father seemed pleased that Mr. Chang, who was now such a well-known man in our town, had found me worthy of attention.

A few days later, we had a proper funeral for Great-Granny. Everyone wailed loudly, but Mother was the loudest, as was the custom, she being the number-one-ranking lady of the house. She did a very good job sounding sad beyond hope. And I, too, cried, sad but also afraid. And when the funeral was over, I became nervous of what would happen next: Mother would make Precious Auntie leave.

But she did not, and this was why.

Mother believed Great-Granny was still around, haunting the outhouse and making sure everyone still followed her rules. Every time Mother squatted over the hole, she heard a voice asking, "Have you seen Hu Sen?" When she told us this, Third Aunt said, "The sight of your bare bottom should have scared away any ghost." And we all laughed, but Mother became angry and announced she was cutting off everyone's allowance for the next month. "To teach you to have more respect for Great-Granny," she said. For the ghost in the outhouse, Mother went to the village temple every day and gave special offerings. She went to Great-Granny's grave and burned silver paper, so Great-Granny could buy her way to a better level. After ninety days of constipation, Mother went back to the funerary ship and bought a paper automobile large as life, complete with chauffeur. Great-Granny had seen a real one once at a temple fair in the Mouth of the Mountain. It was in the parking lot where carts and donkeys were kept, and when the automobile roared away, she said, it was loud enough to scare the devil and fast enough to fly to heaven.

So the paper auto went up in flames, and Great-Granny's ghost traveled from the latrine to the World of Yin. And then our household went back to its normal, noisy ways. For the rest of the family, the concerns were on little daily matters: mold in the millet, a crack in the glass, nothing at all of lasting importance.

And only I worried about what would happen to Precious Auntie.

I remember the day Mother received a surprise letter from Peking. It was the period of Great Heat, when mosquitoes were their happiest and fruit left outside rotted in less than an hour under the sun. Great-Granny had been dead for more than ninety days. We sat in the shade of the big tree in the courtyard, waiting to hear the news.

We all knew the letter writer, Old Widow Lau. She was a cousin, within eight degrees of kinship on Father's side and five degrees on Mother's side, close enough to follow the mourning rituals of family. She had come to Great-Granny's funeral and had wailed as loudly as the rest of us.

Since Mother could not read, she asked GaoLing, and I had to hide my disappointment that she had been chosen for this important task. GaoLing smoothed her hair, cleared her throat, licked her lips, then read: " 'Dear Cousin, I send greetings from all those who have asked after you with deep feeling.'" GaoLing then stumbled through a long list of names, from those of brand-new babies to people Mother was sure were already dead. On the next page, our old cousin wrote something like this: "I know you are still in mourning and barely able to eat because of grief. So it is not a good time to invite everyone to come visit in Peking. But I have been thinking about what you and I discussed when we last saw each other at the funeral."

GaoLing broke off reading and turned to Mother. "What did you discuss?" I, too, was wondering this.

Mother slapped GaoLing's hand. "Don't be nosy. You just read, and I'll tell you what you should know."

The letter continued: "'I wish to humbly suggest that your number-one daughter'"-she was speaking of me, and my heart swelled- "'come to Peking and accidentally meet a distant relation of mine.'" GaoLing threw me a scowl, and I was pleased she was jealous. " 'This relation,' " GaoLing went on reading in a less enthusiastic voice, " 'has four sons, who are seventh cousins of mine, three times removed, with a different surname. They live in your same village, but are barely related to you, if at all.'"

When I heard the words "barely related," I knew this accidental meeting meant she wanted to see whether I might be a marriage match for a certain family. I was fourteen (this was by my Chinese age), and most of the girls my age were already married. As to which family, Old Widow Lau did not want to say, unless she knew for certain that our family believed such an accident could be beneficial. "To be honest," she wrote, "I would not have thought of this family on my own. But the father came to me and asked about LuLing. They have apparently seen the girl and are impressed with her beauty and sweet nature."

My face flushed. At last Mother knew what others were saying about me. Perhaps she might see these good qualities in me as well.

"I want to go to Peking, too," GaoLing said like a complaining cat.

Mother scolded her: "Did anyone invite you? No? Well, then, you only look stupid for saying you want to go." When she whined again, Mother yanked her braid and said, "Shut your mouth," before handing me the letter to finish reading.

I sat up straight, facing Mother, and read with much expression: '"The family suggests a meeting at your family's ink shop in Peking.'" I stopped a moment and smiled at GaoLing. I had never seen the shop, nor had she. " 'In this way,'" I continued, " 'if there is any disharmony of interest, there will be no public embarrassment to either family. If both families are in agreement about the match, then this will be a blessing from the gods for which I can take no credit.'"

"No credit," Mother said with a snort, "just a lot of gifts."

The next part of the letter went like this: "A good daughter-in-law is hard to find, I'm sure you will agree. Perhaps you remember my second daughter-in-law? I am ashamed to admit that she has turned out to be coldhearted. Today she suggested that your daughter's nursemaid should not accompany her to Peking. She said that if a person were to see the two together, he would remember only the shocking ugliness of the nursemaid and not the emerging beauty of the maiden. I told her that was nonsense. But as I write this letter, I realize now that it would be inconvenient to accommodate another servant, since mine already complain that there is not enough room for them to sleep in one bed. So perhaps it would be better if the nursemaid does not come after all. I apologize that nothing can be done about the poverty of our household…"

Only when I was done reading did I look up at Precious Auntie, embarrassed. Never mind, she signed to me quietly. I'll tell her later that I can sleep on the floor. I turned to Mother, waiting to hear what more she had to say.

"Write a letter back. Tell Old Widow Lau that I will have you go in a week. I'd take you myself, but it's the ink season and we have too much to do. I'll ask Mr. Wei to take you in his cart. He always makes a medical delivery to Peking on the first and won't mind an extra passenger in exchange for a little cash."

Precious Auntie napped her hands for my attention. Now is the time to tell her you can't go alone. Who will make sure it's a good marriage? What if that busybody idiot cousin tries to barter you off as a second wife to a poor family? Ask her to consider that.

I shook my head. I was afraid to anger Mother with a lot of unnecessary questions and ruin my chances to visit Peking. Precious Auntie tugged my sleeve. I ignored her. Lately I had done this a few times, and it infuriated Precious Auntie. Since she could not speak and Mother could not read, when I refused to talk for her, she was left wordless, powerless.

Back in our room, Precious Auntie beseeched me. You are too young to go to Peking by yourself. This is more dangerous than you can imagine. You could be killed by bandits, your head chopped off and put on a stake.… I did not answer her, I did not argue, I gave her no ground on which to keep her footing. On and on she went that day, the next, and the day after that. At times, she expressed anger at what Old Widow Lau had written. That woman does not care about what's best for you. She sticks her nose in other people's business for money. Soon she'll stink like the bottoms she's been smelling.

Later Precious Auntie handed me a letter, which I was supposed to give to GaoLing so she could read it to Mother. I nodded, and as soon as I was out of the room and around the corner, I read it: "Besides all the shooting and unrest, the summer air there is full of diseases. And in Peking, there are strange ailments we have never even experienced here, maladies that could make the tips of LuLing's nose and fingers fall off. Luckily, I know the remedies to treat such problems so that LuLing does not return home bringing with her an epidemic…"

When Precious Auntie asked me if I had given Mother the letter, I made my face and heart a stone wall. "Yes," I lied. Precious Auntie sighed, relieved. This was the first time she had believed a lie of mine. I wondered what had changed within her that she could no longer sense if I was telling the truth. Or was it I who had changed?

The night before I was to leave, Precious Auntie stood before me with the letter, which I had wadded into a little ball and stuffed in a pocket of my trousers. What is the meaning of this? She grabbed my arm.

"Leave me alone," I protested. "You can't tell me what to do anymore."

You think you 're so smart? You 're still a silly baby.

"I'm not. I don't need you anymore."

If you had a brain then you wouldn't need me.

"You want to keep me here only so you won't lose your position as nursemaid."

Her face turned dark, as if she were choking. Position? You think I am here only for a lowly position as your nursemaid? Ai-ya! Why am I still alive to hear this child say such things?

Our chests were heaving. And I shouted back what I had often heard Mother and my aunts say: "You're alive because our family was good and took pity on you and saved your life. We didn't have to. And Baby Uncle never should have tried to marry you. It was bad luck that he tried. That's why he was killed by his own horse. Everyone knows it."

Her whole body slumped, and I thought she was acknowledging that I was right. At that moment, I pitied her in the same way I pitied beggars I could not look in the eye. I felt I had grown up at last and she had lost her power over me. It was as if the old me was looking at the new me, admiring how much I had changed.

The next morning, Precious Auntie did not help me with my bundle of clothes. She did not prepare a lunch I could take along. Instead, she sat on the edge of the k'ang, refusing to look at me. The sun was not up yet, but I could see that her eyes were red and puffy. My heart wobbled, but my mind was firm.

Two hours before daybreak, Mr. Wei came by with his donkey loaded with cages of snakes for medicine shops. I tied on a scarf to keep the sun off my face. As I climbed into the cart next to him, everyone except Precious Auntie was standing at the gate to see me off. Even GaoLing was there with her unwashed face. "Bring me back a doll," she shouted. At thirteen, she was still such a baby.

The day was a long ride of never-ending dust. Whenever the donkey stopped to drink water, Mr. Wei dipped a large rag into the stream and wrapped it around his head to keep himself cool. Soon I was doing the same with my scarf. At lunchtime, Mr. Wei pulled out a tin with dumplings inside. I had nothing. I had not wanted to ask Old Cook to fix me a tin. tor tear he would tell Mother that it was too much of a nuisance to send me to Peking. Of course. Mr. Wei ottered me some of his food. And naturally, I pretended that I was not hungry. And then he ottered only twice more; the last offer never came. So I had to ride the rest of the way with an empty stomach and eight cages of ugly snakes.

In the late afternoon, we approached Peking. I instantly revived from the listlessness of the heat and my hunger. When we entered the inspection station, I worried that we would be refused permission to go on. A policeman with a cap poked through my small bundle and looked inside the cages with Mr. Wei's snakes.

"What is your reason for being in Peking?" the policeman asked.

"Delivery of medicine." Mr. Wei nodded to the snake cages.

"Marriage," I answered truthfully, and the policeman turned to another and called out my answer and they both laughed. After that, they let us go in. Soon I saw a tall memorial archway in the distance, its gold letters glinting like the sun. We passed through this and entered a roadway as wide as the greatest of rivers. Rickshaws raced by, more in one glance than I had seen in a lifetime. And over there, an automobile, like the paper one Mother had burned tor Great-Granny. I began to measure all the sights in comparison with my life before. The markets were larger and louder. The streets were filled with busier crowds. I saw men in loose-weave long jackets, others in Western suits. Those men looked more impatient, more important. And there were many girls in floating dresses, wearing hairstyles exactly like those of famous actresses, the fringe in front crimped like dried noodles. I thought they were prettier than any of the girls in Immortal Heart. We passed walkways lined with peddlers selling every kind of bird, insect, and lizard on a stick, and they were ten times more expensive than the best snack we could buy in our own town. Farther on, I saw persimmons that were more golden, peanuts that were fatter, and sugar-coated haws that were a shinier red. I heard a crisp crack, saw the freshly opened gut of a more delicious-looking melon. And those who could not resist a slice looked more satisfied than any other melon-eaters I had ever seen.

"If you gawk any more, your head will twist right off," Mr. Wei said. I kept tallying the sights in my head so I could tell everyone all that I had seen. I was imagining their awe, Mother's admiration, GaoLing's envy. I could also see the disappointment in Precious Auntie's face. She would not want me to have a good time. So I pushed her out of my mind.

Mr. Wei stopped several times to ask for directions to a certain shop near Lantern Market Street, then went looking for a particular alleyway, and finally we stood in front of the gate that led into the cramped courtyard of Old Widow Lau's house. Two dogs ran toward me, barking.

"Ai! Are you a girl or a yellow mud statue!" Old Widow Lau said in greeting. Dirt ringed my neck, my hands, every place where my body had a crease or a bend. I stood in a four-walled courtyard compound that was so chaotic my arrival raised almost no notice. Right away, Old Widow Lau told me dinner was almost ready so I'd better hurry and wash up. She handed me a beaten bucket and told me where the well pump was. As I filled the bucket, I recalled that Mother had said Peking water was sweet. I took a sip, but it was brackish, terrible-tasting. No wonder Precious Auntie had told me that Peking was once the wasteland of the bitter sea. Just then, I realized this was the first time she was not there to help me with my bath. Where was the tub? Where was the stove for warming the water? I was too scared to touch anything. I squatted behind a mat shed and poured cold water over my neck, angry with Precious Auntie for turning me into such a stupid girl, one now afraid to show everyone how stupid I really was.

After I finished, I realized I had not thought to bring a comb for my hair or wooden sticks for cleaning under my nails. Precious Auntie always remembered those things for me. She was the reason I forgot! At least I had brought a clean shirt-jacket and trousers. But of course, these were wrinkled and dusty when I pulled them out from my bundle.

During the evening meal, another thought came to me. This was the first time I did not have Precious Auntie telling me which things I should and should not eat. For that I was glad. "Not too many greasy-spicy things," she would have warned, "or you'll break out in boils and other dampness diseases." So I ate several helpings of spicy pork. But later I had a queasy feeling and worried that my stomach was blistering inside out.

After dinner, I sat in the courtyard with Old Widow Lau and her daughters-in-law, listening to the buzz of mosquitoes and gossiping voices. I slapped the insects away, recalling the big fan Precious Auntie used to chase the heat and the bugs from both of us. When my eyes kept falling down, Old Widow Lau told me to go find my bed. So I went to the sad little shed that held my bundle and a rope-cot. As I fingered the holes of the cot's rattan weave, I realized yet another thing: This was the first time I had to sleep by myself. I lay down and closed my eyes. As I tumbled into thoughtlessness, I heard rats scratching along the wall. I leaned over to see if cups of turpentine had been placed under the legs of the cot. They had not. And again, rather than be grateful that Precious Auntie had always done all these things for me, I blamed her for keeping me so stupid.

When I awoke, I found I had no one to fix my hair or inspect my ears and nails. Having no comb, I used my fingers to undo the tangles. The shirt-jacket and trousers I had worn to bed were sweaty, and no fresh clothes lay in their place. They were not suitable to wear for my accidental meeting that day. And the costume that I had chosen to wear now did not look quite right, but that was all I had thought to bring. I was a grown girl, and there I was, helpless and stupid beyond belief. That was how well Precious Auntie had raised me.

When I appeared before Old Widow Lau, she exclaimed, "Is your head just an empty eggshell? Why are you wearing a padded jacket and winter trousers? And what's the matter with your hair?"

How could I answer? That Precious Auntie had refused to advise me? The truth was, when I had chosen these clothes, I was thinking only that I should bring my best things with the nicest embroidery. And my best had not seemed too uncomfortable when I had put them in my bundle during the cooler hours of the morning the day before.

"What a disaster!" Old Widow Lau muttered as she flung about all the clothing I had brought. "Pity the family that takes in this stupid girl for a daughter-in-law." She hurried to her trunks to search among the slim dresses of her youth. At last she settled on a dress borrowed from one of her daughters-in-law, a lightweight chipao that was not too old-fashioned. It had a high collar, short sleeves, and was woven in the colors of summer foliage, lilac for the body and leafy green for the trim and frog clasps. Old Widow Lau then undid my messy braids and dragged a wet comb through my hair.

At noon she announced we were leaving for the ink shop. She informed her servant we would not eat our lunch at home. She was certain her cousin the inkmaker was preparing a special meal at his place. "If the other family is also there," she warned me, "eat a little of each dish to show you are not picky, but don't be greedy. Let others be served first and act like you are the least important."

Lantern Market Street was not far from the Pottery-Glazing District, perhaps a thirty-minute rickshaw ride. But Old Widow Lau was afraid we might accidentally miss our accidental meeting if we did not allow for a few extra minutes to ensure that we arrived on time. "After all," she fretted aloud, "what if the rickshaw driver is old and lame? What if it begins to rain?"

Sometime after the noon hour, I found myself standing before our family's ink shop, anxious to see Father. Old Widow Lau was paying the rickshaw driver-or rather, arguing with him that he should not charge us so much for an extra passenger since I was still a small child. "Small child?" the driver said with a huff. "Where are your eyes, old woman?" I stared at the lap of the lilac dress I had borrowed, patted the neatly knotted bun at the back of my head. I was embarrassed but also proud that the driver thought I was a grown-up woman.

Almost every door on the street led to a shop, and flanking each door were red banners with good-luck couplets. The couplet by our family's shop was particularly fine. It had been written in a cursive style, the one Precious Auntie was teaching me to copy. The manner was more like a painting than writing, very expressive, running down like cloud-swept branches. You could tell that whoever had written this was an artist, cultured and deserving of respect. Reluctantly, I admitted to myself that this calligraphy must have been Precious Auntie's.

At last, Old Widow Lau was done haggling with the driver and we stepped inside Father's shop. It was north-facing, quite dim inside, and perhaps this was why Father did not see us at first. He was busy with a customer, a man who was distinguished-looking, like the scholars of two decades before. The two men were bent over a glass case, discussing the different qualities of inksticks. Big Uncle welcomed us and invited us to be seated. From his formal tone, I knew he did not recognize who we were. So I called his name in a shy voice. And he squinted at me, then laughed and announced our arrival to Little Uncle, who apologized many times for not rushing over sooner to greet us. They rushed us to be seated at one of two tea tables for customers. Old Widow Lau refused their invitation three times, exclaiming that my father and uncles must be too busy for visitors. She made weak efforts to leave. On the fourth insistence, we finally sat. Then Little Uncle brought us hot tea and sweet oranges, as well as bamboo latticework fans with which to cool ourselves.

I tried to notice everything so I could later tell GaoLing what I had seen, and tease out her envy. The floors of the shop were of dark wood, polished and clean, no dirty footprints, even though this was during the dustiest part of the summer. And along the walls were display cases made of wood and glass. The glass was very shiny and not one pane was broken. Within those glass cases were our silk-wrapped boxes, all our hard work. They looked so much nicer than they had in the ink-making studio at Immortal Heart village.

I saw that Father had opened several of the boxes. He set sticks and cakes and other shapes on a silk cloth covering a glass case that served as a table on which he and the customer leaned. First he pointed to a stick with a top shaped like a fairy boat and said with graceful importance, "Your writing will flow as smoothly as a keel cutting through a glassy lake." He picked up a bird shape: "Your mind will soar into the clouds of higher thought." He waved toward a row of ink cakes embellished with designs of peonies and bamboo: "Your ledgers will blossom into abundance while bamboo surrounds your quiet mind."

As he said this, Precious Auntie came back into my mind. I was remembering how she taught me that everything, even ink, had a purpose and a meaning: Good ink cannot be the quick kind, ready to pour out of a bottle. You can never be an artist if your work comes without effort. That is the problem with modern ink from a bottle. You do not have to think. You simply write what is swimming on the top of your brain. And the top is nothing but pond scum, dead leaves, and mosquito spawn. But when you push an inkstick along an inkstone, you take the first step to cleansing your mind and your heart. You push and you ask yourself, What are my intentions? What is in my heart that matches my mind?

I remembered this, and yet that day in the ink shop, I listened to what Father was saying, and his words became far more important than anything Precious Auntie had thought. "Look here," Father said to his cus tomer, and I looked. He held up an inkstick and rotated it in the light. "See? It's the right hue, purple-black, not brown or gray like the cheap brands you might find down the street. And listen to this." And I heard a sound as clean and pure as a small silver bell. "The high-pitched tone tells you that the soot is very fine, as smooth as the sliding banks of old rivers. And the scent-can you smell the balance of strength and delicacy, the musical notes of the ink's perfume? Expensive, and everyone who sees you using it will know that it was well worth the high price."

I was very proud to hear Father speak of our family's ink this way. I sniffed the hot air. The smell of spices and camphor was very strong.

"This soot," Father continued, "is far better than Anhui pine. We make it from a kind of tree so rare that it's now forbidden to chop it down. Luckily, we have a supply felled by lightning, blessed by the gods." Father asked the customer if he had heard about the ancient human skullcap recently unearthed from the quarry at Dragon Bone Hill. The old scholar nodded. "Well, we're from the village one hill over," Father explained. "And the trees in our village are said to be more than a million years old! How do we know? Think about it. When those million-year-old folks roamed the earth around Dragon Bone Hill, didn't they need trees to sit under? Trees for shade? Trees to make fires? Trees to build stools and tables and beds? Aha, am I right? Well then, we, the people from the village next to Dragon Bone Hill, supplied that need. And now we 're the ones who own the remains of those ancestral trees. We call them Immortal Heart wood."

Father motioned to the shelves. "Now, look here, on this shelf there's only a pinch per stick, so the cost is less. In this row, two pinches. And in this case, it is almost entirely the soot of Immortal Tree wood. The ink draws easily into the brush, like nectar into a butterfly's nostril."

In the end, the customer bought several of the most expensive sticks and left the shop. I wanted to clap, as if I had just seen a play for the gods. And then Father was coming toward us, toward me. I rose from the chair with a leaping heart. I had not seen him since Great-Granny's funeral more than three months before. I wondered if he would say anything about my more grown-up appearance.

"What! Is it already five o'clock in the evening?" he asked.

This caused Old Widow Lau to jump up and cry, "We're too early! We should leave and come back later!"

That was how I learned what time we were supposed to come, five o'clock, not one. Old Widow Lau was so upset by this open announcement of her mistake that my father had to insist five times that she be seated again. And then my uncles brought more tea and more oranges, but still everything was awkward.

After a while, Father expressed his care and his concern for me. "You look too thin," he said. Or perhaps he said I was looking quite plump. Next he asked after the health of my mother, then that of GaoLing and my younger brothers, then that of the various aunts and in-laws. Good, well, fine, I chattered like a duck. Wearing those new clothes, it was hard for me to answer in a. natural way. Finally he asked if I had eaten yet. And although I was hungry enough to faint, I had no chance to answer, for Old Widow Lau was crying: "We've eaten, we 're full enough to burst! Please don't let us be any more trouble. Go on with your work."

"We're not busy at all," Father answered out of politeness, "not too busy for family."

And Old Widow Lau answered even more politely, "Really, we must go… but before we leave, have you heard what happened to…?" And she started talking nervously of some distant relations. After Old Widow Lau had mentioned at least five or six more relatives, my father set down his teacup and stood up.

"Cousin Lau, where are my manners? I shouldn't force you to entertain me any longer. I know you came early so you and my daughter could wander the city streets and become lost in marvelous sights." He handed me a few coins for sweets and dumplings, warning me I should treat Elder Aunt well and not wear her out. "Take your time," he told her. "No need to rush back for our sake."

Old Widow Lau was embarrassed to be dismissed in this clever way. I was overjoyed. And soon we were outside in the festering heat.

Down the lane we found a dumpling stall where we could sit on outdoor benches. As I gobbled down my dumplings, Old Widow Lau complained that the hot dampness was swelling her feet: "Soon they'll be as soft and useless as rotted bananas." She was too frugal to take a rickshaw home to Lantern Market Street, only to have to turn around and come back. But she worried aloud that when we returned to the shop at five o'clock, we would have our accidental meeting with someone important, and there we would be, mouths open, tongues out, panting like worm-infested gutter dogs. "Don't sweat," she warned me.

We started walking, searching for shade. I listened to Old Widow Lau's complaints with one ear as I watched people pass us on the streets: Young men who appeared to be students or apprentices. Old Manchu women with heavy bundles. Girls with short modern hairstyles and Western clothes. Everyone walked with purpose, a quick step that was not the style of people back home. Now and then, Old Widow Lau pushed my shoulder and snapped, "Eh! Don't gawk like you're an old greasy-hat from the countryside."

And so we continued our ramble, two streets east, then two streets north, then two streets east again. That was the method my old cousin took to avoid our getting lost. Soon we found ourselves in a park with weeping willows and walkways over a pond covered with floating flowers and twitching larva. Old Widow Lau sat down on a bench under the shade of a tree and began to fan herself vigorously, complaining that she was going to explode like an overbaked yam. In a short while, her jaw dropped onto her chest and she was asleep.

Close by was an open-air pavilion made of dark wood lattice screens and rows of column posts supporting its heavy tiled roof. I went to a corner of the pavilion and squeezed against a post, trying to make myself still and unseen like a lizard. From there, I watched a man mastering his mind over his sword. I saw an old man blowing musical notes out of a metal comb, while the old woman beside him peeled an orange and tried to catch a butterfly that dipped and swooped toward the rind. Down a flight of stairs, a young couple sat by a small pond, pretending to admire ducks while the tips of their fingers secretly touched. There was also a foreigner, although I did not recognize him as such at first, for he was dressed in the clothes of a scholar, a long summer gown and trousers. His eyes were gray like muddy water. Around another pillar, a nursemaid was cooing to a baby, trying to get him to look at her, but the baby was screaming, trying to look back at the foreigner. And thin another man, very elegant in his dress and manners, walked to a tree and parted the curtains of a cage I had not even noticed before. Birds immediately began to sing. I felt that I had entered a world a thousand years old and that I had always been there, but only just now had opened my eyes to see it.

I stayed until the pavilion was nearly empty. And then I heard Old Widow Lau bellowing my name. "You scared my body right out of my skin," she scolded, and pinched my arm hard.

As we walked back to my father's shop, I was a different girl. My head was a sandstorm, ideas and hopes whirling about freely. I was wondering all the while what those people at the pavilion would remember the next day and the day after that. Because I knew I would never forget a moment of that day, the day I was to begin my new life.

Just as Old Widow Lau had planned, my prospective mother-in-law accidentally passed by the shop promptly at five o'clock. The woman was younger than Mother. She had a stern countenance and was critical-looking. On her wrists she wore much gold and jade, to show how valu able she was. When Old Widow Lau called to her, she acted puzzled at first, then delighted.

"What luck that we should run into you here," Old Widow Lau cried in a high voice. "When did you arrive in Peking?… Oh, visiting a cousin? How are things back in Immortal Heart?" After we had recovered from our fake surprise, Old Widow Lau introduced the woman to Father and my uncles. I was concentrating so hard on not showing any expression whatsoever that I did not hear the woman's name.

"This is my cousin's Eldest Daughter, Liu LuLing," Old Widow Lau said. "She is fifteen."

"I'm fourteen," I corrected, and Old Widow Lau gave me a scolding glance before adding, "Almost fifteen. She is visiting Peking this week. The family lives in Immortal Heart village as well but they sell their ink in Peking. And as you can see," she said, sweeping her hand out to indicate the shop, "their business is doing not too bad."

"In part, we have your husband to thank," Father then said. "We buy much of our excellent wood from him."

"Really?" Old Widow Lau and the woman said at once. My ears turned toward him, curious now that our family knew this family.

"That's correct. We get the camphor wood from Mr. Chang," Father continued. "And he has also supplied us with coffins on less fortunate occasions, and always of the best quality."

Chang the coffinmaker. As exclamations of more surprise and pleasure rang out, I could imagine Precious Auntie pounding the air with her fists. She would never allow me to marry into this family. And then I reminded myself that this was not her decision to make.

"We, too, are thinking of starting a business in Peking," Mrs. Chang said.

"Is that so? Perhaps we can help you in some way," Father said politely.

"We wouldn't want to trouble you," Mrs. Chang said.

"No trouble at all," Father countered.

"You should get together and discuss the possibility," Old Widow Lau suggested, at just the right moment.

As Mrs. Chang paused to think of the excellence of this idea, Father added: "In any case, I've been eager to talk to your husband more about the dragon bones he contributed to the great scientific discovery of Peking Man."

Mrs. Chang nodded. "We were astonished that those ugly little bones were so valuable. Lucky we didn't eat them up as medicine."

I was thinking what it would mean if I married into this rich and famous family. GaoLing would be spitting with envy. Mother would treat me with special fondness. Of course, the Changs probably would not allow Precious Auntie to come as nursemaid to their future grandchildren, especially if she kept spitting and thrashing whenever their name was mentioned.

At the end, it was decided that Old Widow Lau, my father, and I should visit a house in Peking belonging to Chang's cousin, where we could see some unusual rocks in the garden. This was good news to Old Widow Lau, for it meant that the signs were good that the Changs considered me a prospect. And I was glad, for this meant I could stay longer in Peking.

Two evenings later, we went to the cousin's house for a Viewing the Moon party. I wore another borrowed dress. I sat quietly and did not eat too much and talked even less. Mr. Chang had come up from Immortal Heart, and he and Father discussed Peking Man.

"All the pieces of the skull must stay in China," Father said. "That is not only proper, it's the agreement with the foreigners."

"Those foreigners," Chang said, "you can't trust them to keep their word. They'll find a way to sneak out some pieces. They'll find excuses, make new treaties, put up pressure."

"No treaty can change that Peking Man is a Chinese man and should stay where he lived and died."

Suddenly Mr. Chang saw me sitting on a garden stool. "Maybe one day you and I can collect more Peking Man together. How would you like that?"

I nodded eagerly.

The next day, I was a contented girl as I rode home. I had never felt such importance. I had not shamed Old Widow Lau or my family. In fact, I had been a great success. My father had criticized me in small ways about unimportant matters. So I knew he was proud of me. Old Widow Lau had bragged to her daughters-in-law that I had looks and manners to warrant ten marriage proposals. She was certain I would receive a marriage offer from the Changs within the week.

Though I had yet to meet the Changs' fourth son, who was back in Dragon Bone Hill, I knew he was two years older than I was. Like the other sons, he was an apprentice in his father's coffin-making business. What's more, there had been talk that he, the youngest son, might expand the coffin-making business to Peking, just as our family had done with the ink business. That meant I would live in Peking.

During all these discussions, I did not ask if my future husband was smart, if he was educated, if he was kind. I did not think about romantic love. I knew nothing of that. But I did know that marriage had to do with whether I improved my station in life or made it worse. And to judge by the Changs' manners and the jewelry the Chang wife wore, I, too, was about to become a more important person. What could be wrong with that?

Mr. Wei had come before dawn to take me back. The sky was dark and the air was still clear of summer's rotting smells. In the cart, I began to dream of all the ways I had to change my life. Of course, I needed new clothes right away. And I should be more careful to keep my face out of the sun. I did not want to look like a dark little peasant girl. After all, we were artisans and merchants from an old clan, very respected.

By the time the stars faded and the sun rose, Peking had disappeared from the horizon, and the landscape before me returned to the same dusty dull.

Hours later, the cart climbed the last hill that hid Immortal Heart. I could hear the crowing of cocks, the yowling of dogs, all the familiar sounds of our village.

Mr. Wei started bellowing a peasant love song loud enough to burst his lungs. As we turned the bend, we came upon Sheepherder Wu gathering his flock. The late-afternoon sun sliced through the trees and fell on the backs of the sheep. Wu lifted his stick and called a greeting to Mr. Wei and me. Just then his herd turned in one motion, one direction, like a cloud bringing a storm, and I sensed a great danger. I recalled that Mother had once spoken quietly of this sheepherder's being a widower, who needed a new wife to help him run the looms for his wool. I could practically feel the graininess of yellow Gobi dust as my fingers picked through the wool. I could smell the lamb stink seeping into my fingers, my bones. And now that I stared at the sheepherder with his grin and his upraised stick, I was even more determined that I should marry the son of the Changs. Perhaps that son would turn out to be a one-eyed idiot. So be it. I would still be daughter-in-law to a famous family who ran a business in Peking.

As quickly as it takes to snap a twig-that's how fast the mind can turn against what is familiar and dear. There I was, about to arrive at my old home, and I was not filled with sentimental fondness for all I had grown up with. Instead I noticed the ripe stench of a pig pasture, the pockmarked land dug up by dragon-bone dream-seekers, the holes in the walls, the mud by the wells, the dustiness of the unpaved roads. I saw how all the women we passed, young and old, had the same bland face, sleepy eyes that were mirrors of their sleepy minds. Each person's life was the same as the next person's. Each family was as important as the next, which was to say, not very important. They were country people, both naive and practical, slow to change but quick to think that a disturbance of ants on the ground was a sign of bad luck from the gods high above. Even Precious Auntie had become this way in my mind, a sleepy-headed greasy-hat from the country.

I remembered a funny saying about life in a slow village: When you have nothing else to do, you can always busy yourself picking maggots out of rice. Once I had laughed at that saying. Now I saw that it was true.

Mr. Wei was still singing his loud folk songs as we rode into the town square. And then we came to Pig's Head Lane. I passed all the familiar faces and listened to their harsh, dust-choked greetings. As we came closer to the bend of the neck where our house stood, my heart began to drum in my ears. I saw the family gateway, the arch with its peeling timber, the fading red couplet banners that hung on the pillars.

But just as I pushed open the gate, my heart flew back into my chest, and I was filled with a longing to see Precious Auntie. She would be glad to see me. She had cried when I left. I dashed into the front courtyard: "I'm home! I'm home already!" I went into the ink studio, where I saw Mother and GaoLing. "Ah, back so soon?" Mother said, not bothering to stop her work. "Cousin Lau sent me a note that the meeting went well, and the Changs will probably take you."

I was bursting to tell them about my adventures, the pleasures I had enjoyed. But Mother stopped me: "Hurry and clean up, so you can help your little sister and me grind this up." And GaoLing wrinkled her nose and said, "Choi You smell like the hind end of a donkey."

I went to the room I shared with Precious Auntie. Everything was in its usual place, the quilt folded just so at the bottom of the k'ang. But she was not there. I wandered from room to room, from little courtyard to little courtyard. With each passing moment, I felt more anxious to see her.

And then I heard a pot banging. She was in the root cellar, eager that I should know she was there. I peered down the steep ladder and into the tunnel. She waved, and as she climbed up from the shadows, I saw that she still had the figure of a girl. In the brief moment of seeing only half of her face lit by the sun, she was again as beautiful as she had seemed to me when I was a small child. When she emerged from the hole, she put the pot down and stroked my face, then said with her hands, Have you really come back to me, my Doggie? She pulled my tangled braid and snorted. Didn't take your comb? No one to remind you? Now you know why you need me. You have no brains! She jabbed the side of my head, and this made me irritable. With spit on her finger, she rubbed dirt from my cheek, then felt my forehead. Are you sick? You seem feverish.

"I'm not sick," I said. "I'm hot." She went back to unraveling the mats of my hair. I glanced at her ropy scars, her twisted mouth.

I pulled away. "I can clean myself," I said.

She began to make hissing sounds. Gone one week and now you 're so grown-up?

I snapped back: "Of course. After all, I'm about to be a married woman."

I heard. And not as a concubine but as a wife. That's good. I raised you well, and everyone can see that.

I knew then that Mother had not told her the name of the family. She had to hear it sooner or later. "The family is the Changs," I said, watching the words cut her in two. "That's right, Chang the coffinmaker."

She sounded as if she were drowning. She rocked her head like a clanging bell. And then she told me with slashing hands, You cannot. I forbid you.

"It's not for you to decide!" I shouted back.

She slapped me, then pushed me against the wall. Again and again, she beat me on my shoulders, around my head, and at first I whimpered and cowered, trying to protect myself. But then I became angry. I pushed her back and stood tall. I drained all expression out of my face and this sur prised her. We stared at each other, breathing hard and fast, until we no longer recognized each other. She dropped onto her knees, pounding her chest over and over, her sign for useless.

"I need to go help Mother and GaoLing," I said, then turned from her and walked away.

GHOST

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.

"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.

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. "I've 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.

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.

We slept at the farthest ends of the k'ang 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.

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 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.

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.

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 aren't you eating? Are you ill? You seem warm. You forehead is hot. Why are you so pale?

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?

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.

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.

Immediately Precious Auntie sat up and was talking to me with her hands.

"I can't see what you're saying," I said. And when she went to light the kerosene lamp, I protested, "Don't bother, I'm sleepy. I don't want to talk right now." She lit the lamp anyway. I went to the k'ang 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.

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: "I'm still going."

For a long time, she did not move. Then she began to cry and beat her chest. Her hands moved fast: Don't you have feelings for who lam?

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."

She slapped her palms against the wall. And then she finally blew out the lamp and left the room.

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 doesn't care about my future happiness. Only Mother does. That is the difference between a nursemaid and a mother.

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, "She's dead! She's dead!"

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. "Who's 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.

Of that day, that was all I remembered. I didn't know how I came to be in my room, lying on the k'ang. When I awoke in the dark, I thought it was still the morning before. I sat up and shuddered, shaking off my nightmare.

Precious Auntie was not in the k'ang. 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 along her shoulders like moving hair. I was scared to see what was inside the studio, but my shaking hands were already lighting the lamp.

The walls were clean. So was the floor. Precious Auntie was not there. I was relieved, and returned to bed.

When I woke up the next time, it was morning and GaoLing was on the edge of the k'ang. "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.

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.

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 Auntie's body, 'If you haunt us, I'll sell LuLing as a whore.'" After that, Mother ordered Old Cook to put the body in a pushcart and throw it over the cliff. "She's 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.

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 turned and went the other direction, following the turns of the cliff's 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?

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.

For five days I could not move. I could not eat. I could not even cry. I lay in the lonely k'ang 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.

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.

Only GaoLing talked to me, shyly. "Are you hungry yet? If you don't want that dumpling, I'll eat it." And I remember this: Often, when I lay on my k'ang, she came to me and called me Big Sister. She stroked my hand.

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. "What's wrong? What's 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.

"Gone," Little Uncle said. His teeth chattered as if he were cold. "Everything's burnt up. We're finished."

"Burnt?" Mother cried. "What are you saying?"

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.

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.

"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."

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 Auntie's 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 family's fortunes wafted up to the gods as incense, ashes, and poisonous smoke.

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.

The buildings next to our family's 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.

By the time Little Uncle finished telling us this, Mother, my aunts, and GaoLing had stopped wailing. They looked as though their bones and 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.

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."

"Why?" GaoLing wanted to know.

"Don't 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 GaoLing's 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 don't bargain too hard. Everyone put a bundle together, but don't bother with trifles…" I was amazed at how Mother's mind flowed, as if she were accustomed to running two paces ahead of a flood.

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:

"Will we lose the house?"

"Will we starve?"

"Do we really have to run away?"

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?

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 family's 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.

After the official left, we waited to hear from Father what we should do. He sagged into his elmwood chair. Then Mother announced, "We're finished. There's no changing fate. Today we'll go to the market and tomorrow we'll feast."

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.

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 other's 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 were 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.

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 won't have to suffer like us."

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 we're 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 warrior's 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 can't see, the unseen come to me."

She shook an empty bowl in front of us. "A ghost is now waiting to speak to you."

"What ghost?" I asked right away.

"Someone who was like a mother to you," the girl answered just as fast.

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."

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."

"Show us what you can do first," GaoLing said.

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 stick's 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 calligrapher's. I read the first line.

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, it's as if the stars never existed. I felt sad, but did not know why.

The girl smoothed the dirt once more and said, "The ghost has no more to say to you."

"That's 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."

GaoLing said, "That is one meaning. There are others."

"What, then?" I asked. But she could not think of anything else to say.

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."

"Why do you say that?" Father asked.

"It's true, isn't it?" the old man insisted. "I feel you've had a lot of bad luck and there's no other reason for it. Am I right?"

"We had a suicide," Father admitted, "a nursemaid whose daughter was about to be married."

"And bad luck followed."

"A few calamities," Father answered.

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. He's newly arrived in your town, so he's 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, you'd know who he is." The young man, who claimed to be the priest's 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."

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."

A few hours later, the Catcher of Ghosts and his assistant stood in our courtyard.

The priest had a white beard, and his long hair was piled like a messy bird's-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 reached across the table for more to eat.

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 it's done," he said to the priest, "this catching of ghosts. Do you seize them in your fists? Is the struggle fierce or dangerous?"

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.

"How do you prove sincerity?" Father asked.

"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.

"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."

"How much might be enough?" Father asked.

The priest frowned. "Only you know if your sincerity is little or great, fake or genuine."

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.

"This is good," the priest said. "A little sincerity is better than none at all."

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.

"Where's the girl that the ghost loved best?" asked the priest.

"There," Mother said, and pointed to me. "The ghost was her nursemaid."

"Her mother," Father corrected. "The girl's her bastard."

I had never heard this word said aloud, and I felt as if blood was going to pour out of my ears.

The priest gave a small grunt. "Don't worry. I've had other cases just as bad." Then he said to me: "Fetch me the comb she used for your hair."

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.

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.

"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.

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 hornet's nest. When this was done, the Catcher of Ghosts tapped the jar with his beating stick and said, "It's over. She's caught. Go ahead. Try to open it, you try. Can't be done."

Everyone looked, but no one would touch. Father asked, "Can she escape?"

"Not possible," said the Catcher of Ghosts. "This jar is guaranteed to last more than several lifetimes."

"It should be more," Mother grumbled. "Stuck in a jar forever wouldn't be too long, considering what she's done. Burned down our shop. Nearly killed our family. Put us in debt." I was crying, unable to speak on Precious Auntie's behalf. I was her traitor.

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.

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 Mother's motto. About a week later, Father stood in the courtyard, bellowing like a madman.

"Make another banquet," he shouted.

Then our uncles followed: "Our bad luck has ended! No damages! That was the magistrate's decision-no damages at all!"

We rushed toward them, children, aunts, tenants, and dogs.

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.

"The Catcher of Ghosts was right," Father concluded. "The ghost is gone."

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 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 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.

"At least we are not selling you as a slave girl," she added.

Without feeling, I said, "Thank you."

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 that's like saying drought is never followed by drought, or flood by flood. Everyone knows that isn't true."

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 you'd better get ready. Mr. Wei is already waiting to take you in his cart."

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. "I'll come find you," she promised, and gave me her favorite jacket.

"Mother will punish you if I take it," I said.

"I don't care."

She followed me to Mr. Wei's 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.

When the cart turned down Pig's 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:

I looked at the sky, so clear, so bright, and in my heart I was howling.

DESTINY

The orphanage was an abandoned monastery near Dragon Bone Hill, a hard climb up a zigzag road from the railway station. To spare the donkey, Mr. Wei made me walk the last kilometer. When he let me off and said good-bye, that was the start of my new life.

It was autumn, and the leafless trees looked like an army of skeletons guarding the hill and the compound at the top. When I walked through the gate, nobody greeted me. Before me was a temple of dried-out wood and peeling lacquer, and in the bare open yard stood rows of girls in white jackets and blue trousers, lined up like soldiers. They bent at the waist- forward, side, back, side-as if obedient to the wind. There was another strange sight: two men, one foreign, one Chinese. It was only the second time I had seen a foreigner so close. They walked across this same courtyard, carrying maps, followed by a troop of men with long sticks. I was afraid I had stumbled upon a secret army for the Communists.

As I stepped over the threshold, I nearly jumped out of my skin. Dead bodies in shrouds, twenty or thirty. They stood in the middle of the hall, along the sides, some tall, some short. Immediately, I thought they were the Returning Dead. Precious Auntie had once told me that in her childhood some families would hire a priest to put a dead body under a spell and make it walk back to its ancestral home. The priest led them only at night, she said, so the dead wouldn't meet any living people they could possess. By day, they rested in temples. She didn't believe the story herself until she heard a priest banging a wooden bell late at night. And rather than run away like the other villagers, she hid behind a wall to watch. Kwak, kwak, and then she saw them, six of them, like giant maggots, leaping forward ten feet into the air. What I saw I can't say for certain, Precious Auntie told me. All I know is that for a long time afterward, I was not the same girl.

I was about to run out the door when I saw the glint of golden feet. I looked more carefully. They were statutes of gods, not dead people. I walked toward one and pulled off the cloth. It was the God of Literature with his horned head, a writing brush in one hand, a valedictorian's cap in the other. "Why did you do that?" a voice called out, and I turned around and saw a little girl.

"Why is he covered?"

"Teacher said he is not a good influence. We should not believe in the old gods, only Christian ones."

"Where is your teacher?"

"Who have you come to see?"

"Whoever arranged to take Liu LuLing as an orphan." The girl ran off. A moment later, two lady foreigners were standing before me.

The American missionaries had not been expecting me, and I had not expected them to be Americans. And because I had never talked to a foreigner, I could not speak, only stare. They both had short hair, one white, the other curly red, and they also wore glasses, which made me think they were equally old.

"Sorry to say, no arrangements have been made," the white-haired lady told me in Chinese.

"Sorry to say," the other added, "most orphans are much younger."

When they asked my name, I was still unable to talk, so I used my fin ger to paint the characters in the air. They talked to each other in English voices.

"Can you read that, can you?" one of them asked me, pointing to a sign in Chinese.

"'Eat until full, but do not hoard,'" I read.

One of the ladies gave me a pencil and a sheet of paper. "Can you write those same words down?" I did, and they both exclaimed: "She didn't even look back at the sign." More questions flew at me: Could I also use a brush? What books had I read? Afterward, they again spoke to each other in foreign talk, and when they were done, they announced that I could stay.

Later I learned I had been welcomed so that I could be both student and tutor. There were only four teachers, former students of the school, who now lived in one of the thirty-six rooms and buildings in the compound. Teacher Pan taught the older girls. I was his helper. When he had been a student fifty years before, the school was for boys only. Teacher Wang taught the younger girls, and her widowed sister-we called her Mother Wang-took care of the babies in the nursery, as did older girls she assigned as helpers. Then there was Sister Yu, a tiny woman with a bony hunched back, a hard hand, and a sharp voice. She was in charge of Cleanliness, Neatness, and Proper Behavior. Besides scheduling our baths and our tasks for the week, she liked to boss around the cook and his wife.

The missionary ladies, I found out, were not equally old. Miss Grutoff, the curly-haired one, was thirty-two, half the age of the other. She was the nurse and headmistress of the school. Miss Towler was the director of the orphanage, and she begged donations from people who should have pity on us. She also led our Sunday chapel, conducted dramas of Christian history, and played the piano while teaching us to sing "like the angels." At the time, of course, I did not know what an angel was. I also could not sing.

As for the foreign men, they were not Communists but scientists who worked the quarry where the bones of Peking Man had been found. Two foreign and ten Chinese scientists lived in the north end of the monastery compound, and they ate their morning and evening meals in the temple hall with us. The quarry was nearby, about a twenty-minute walk down and up and down a winding path.

Altogether, there were seventy or so children: thirty big girls, thirty little girls, and ten babies, more or less, depending on how many grew up and how many died. Most of the girls were like me, the love children of suicides, singsong girls, and unmarried maidens. Some were like the entertainers GaoLing and I had seen on Beggars Lane -girls without legs or arms, a cyclops, a dwarf. And there were also half-breed girls, all of them fathered by foreigners, one English, one German, one American. I thought they were strangely beautiful, but Sister Yu was always mocking them. She said they had inherited haughtiness in the Western part of their blood and this had to be diluted with humility. "You can have pride in what you do each day," said Sister Yu, "but not arrogance in what you were born with." She also often reminded us that self-pity was not allowed. That was an indulgence.

If a girl wore a long face, Sister Yu would say, "Look at Little Ding over there. No legs, and still she smiles all day long." And Little Ding's fat cheeks rose and nearly swallowed her eyes, she was that glad to have buds instead of limbs. According to Sister Yu, we could find immediate happiness by thinking of someone else whose situation was much worse than our own.

I acted as big sister to this same Little Ding without legs, and Little Ding was big sister to a younger girl named Little Jung who had only one hand. Everyone had a relationship like that, being responsible to someone else, just like in a family. The big and small girls shared the same living quarters, three rooms of twenty girls each, three rows of beds in each room. The first row was for the youngest girls, the second row was for the in-between girls, and the third row was for the oldest girls. In this way, Little Ding's bed was below mine, and Little Jung's was below Little Ding's, everyone positioned by her level of responsibility and respect.

To the missionaries, we were Girls of New Destiny. Each classroom had a big red banner embroidered with gold characters that proclaimed this. And every afternoon, during exercise, we sang our destiny in a song that Miss Towler had written, in both English and Chinese:

Whenever special visitors came by the school, Miss Grutoff had us perform a skit and Miss Towler played piano music, very dramatic to hear, like the kind in silent movies. One group of girls held up signs that were connected to Old Fate: opium, slaves, the buying of charms. They stumbled around on bound feet and fell down helpless. Then the New Destiny girls arrived as doctors. They cured the opium smokers. They unbound the feet of the fated ones and picked up brooms to sweep away the useless charms. In the end, they thanked God and bowed to the special guests, the foreign visitors to China, thanking them as well for helping so many girls overcome bad fate and move forward with their New Destiny. In this way, we raised a lot of money, especially if we could make the guests cry.

During chapel, Miss Towler always told us that we had a choice to become Christians or not. No one would ever force us to believe in Jesus, she said. Our belief had to be genuine and sincere. But Sister Yu, who had come to the orphanage when she was seven, often reminded us of her old fate. She had been forced to beg as a child, and if she did not collect enough coins, she was given nothing but curses to eat. One day when she protested she was hungry, her sister's husband threw her away like a piece of garbage. In this school, she said, we could eat as much as we wanted. We never had to worry that someone would kick us out. We could choose what we wanted to believe. However, she added, any student who did not choose to believe in Jesus was a corpse-eating maggot, and when this unbeliever died, she would tumble into the underworld, where her body would be pierced by a bayonet, roasted like a duck, and forced to suffer all kinds of tortures that were worse than what was happening in Manchuria.

Sometimes I wondered about the girls who could not choose. Where would they go when they died? I remember seeing a baby even the missionaries did not think had a New Destiny, a baby that had been fathered by her own grandfather. I saw her in the nursery, where I worked every morning. No one gave her a name, and Mother Wang told me not to pick her up, even if she cried, because something was wrong with her neck and head. She never made a sound. She had a face as flat and round as a large platter, two big eyes, and a tiny nose and mouth stuck in the middle. Her skin was as pale as rice paste, and her body, which was too small for her head, was as still as a wax flower. Only her eyes moved, back and forth, as if watching a mosquito drift across the ceiling. And then one day, the crib where she once lay was empty. Miss Grutoff said the baby was now a child of God, so I knew she had died. Over the years that I lived at the orphanage, I saw six other babies that looked the same, always fathered by a grandfather, born with the same "universal face," as Mother Wang called it. It was as though the same person had come back into the same body for someone else's mistake. Each time, I welcomed that baby back like an old friend. Each time, I cried when she left the world again.

Because I came from a family of inkmakers, I was the best calligraphy student the school had ever had. Teacher Pan said so. He often recounted to us the days of the Ching, how everything had become corrupt, even the examination system. Yet he also spoke of those old times with a sentimental fondness. He said to me, "LuLing, if you had been born a boy back then, you could have been a scholar." Those were his exact words. He also said I was a better calligrapher than his own son, Kai Jing, whom he taught himself.

Kai Jing, who was a geologist, was actually a very good calligrapher, especially for someone whose right side had been weakened by polio when he was a child. Lucky for him, when he fell ill, the family spent a great deal of money, their entire savings, to hire the best Western and Chinese doctors. As a result, Kai Jing recovered with only a small limp and a drooped shoulder. The missionaries later helped him get a scholarship at the famous university in Peking where he studied to become a geologist. After his mother died, he returned home to take care of his father and work with the scientists in the quarry.

Every day he rode his bicycle from the orphanage to the quarry and back, pedaling right to the door of his father's classroom. Teacher Pan would perch sideways on the back of the bicycle, and as his son pedaled off to their rooms at the other end of the compound, we students and teachers called out, "Be careful! Don't fall off!"

Sister Yu admired Kai Jing a great deal. She once pointed him out to the children and said, "See? You, too, can set a goal to help others rather than remain a useless burden." Another time I heard her say, "What a tragedy that a boy so handsome has to be lame." Perhaps this was supposed to comfort the students as well. But to my mind she was saying Kai Jing's tragedy was greater than that of others simply because he had been born more pleasing to the eye. How could Sister Yu, of all people, think such a thing? If a rich man loses his house, is that worse than if a poor man loses his?

I asked an older girl about this, and she said, "What a stupid question. Of course! The handsome and the rich have more to lose." Yet this did not seem right to me.

I thought of Precious Auntie. Like Kai Jing, she had been born with a natural beauty, and then her face was ruined. I heard people say all the time, "How terrible to have a face like that. It would have been better if she had died." Would I have felt the same if I had not loved her? I thought of the blind beggar girl. Who would miss her?

Suddenly I wanted to find that beggar girl. She could talk to Precious Auntie for me. She could tell me where she was. Was she wandering in the End of the World or was she stuck in the vinegar jar? And what about the curse? Would it find me soon? If I died this moment, who would miss me in this world? Who would welcome me in the next?

When the weather was good, Teacher Pan took us older girls to the quarry at Dragon Bone Hill. He was proud to do so, because his son was one of the geologists. The quarry had started as a cave like the one that belonged to Precious Auntie's family, but when I saw it, it was a giant pit about one hundred fifty feet deep. From top to bottom and side to side, the walls and floor had been painted with white lines, so that it looked like a giant's fishnet had been placed inside. "If a digger finds a piece of an animal, a person, or a hunting tool," Kai Jing explained to us, "he can write down that it came from this square of the quarry and not that one. We can calculate the age of the piece by where it was found, the eighth layer being the oldest. And then the scientists can go back to that spot and dig some more."

We girls always brought thermoses of tea and small cakes for the scientists, and when they saw us arrive, they quickly climbed up from the bottom, refreshed themselves, and said with grateful sighs, "Thank you, thank you. I was so thirsty I thought I would turn into another one of these dried-up bones." Every now and then, a rickshaw made its way up the steep road, and a pipe-smoking foreigner with thick glasses stepped out and asked if anything new had been found. Usually the scientists pointed this way and that, and the man with glasses nodded but seemed disappointed. But sometimes he became very excited, and sucked on his pipe faster and faster as he talked. Then he got back in the rickshaw and went down the hill, where a shiny black car would be waiting to take him back to Peking. If we ran to a lookout point on the hill, we could see to the far end of the flat basin, and there was the black car, running along the narrow road, sending up streams of dust.

When winter came, the scientists had to hurry before the ground grew too hard and the season of digging came to an end. They let some of us girls climb down and help put the dug-up dirt in boxes, or repaint the white lines on the quarry floor, or carefully sift what had already been sifted ten times. We were not allowed in any of the places where there were ropes-that was where human bones had been found. To an inexperienced eye, it was easy to mistake the bones for rocks or bits of pottery, but I knew the difference from all those times I had collected bones with Precious Auntie. I also knew that Peking Man was the bones not just from one person, but from many-men, women, children, babies. The pieces were small, not enough to make even one whole person. I did not say these things to the other girls. I did not want to show off. So like them, I helped only where the scientists said we could be, where there were mostly animal bones, deer horns, and turtle shells.

I remember the day Teacher Pan's son gave me special praise. "You are a careful worker," Kai Jing said. After that, sifting dirt carefully was my favorite job. But then the weather turned icy cold and we could no longer feel our fingers or cheeks. So that was the end of that kind of work and praise.

My next-favorite job was tutoring the other students. Sometimes I taught painting. I showed the younger students how to use the brush to make cat ears, tails, and whiskers. I painted horses and cranes, monkeys, and even a hippopotamus. I also helped the students improve their calligraphy and their minds. I recalled for them what Precious Auntie had taught me about writing characters, how a person must think about her intentions, how her ch'i flowed from her body into her arm, through the brush, and into the stroke. Every stroke had meaning, and since every word had many strokes, it also had many meanings.

My least favorite job was whatever Sister Yu assigned me to do for the week: sweeping the floors, cleaning the basins, or lining up the benches for chapel and putting them back at the tables for lunch. These jobs would not have been so bad if Sister Yu had not always picked apart what I had done wrong. One week, for a change, she put me in charge of crawling insects. She complained that the monks had never killed them, thinking they might have been former mortals and holy ones. "Former landlords is what these bugs likely were," Sister Yu grumbled, then told me: "Step on them, kill them, do whatever you must to keep them from coming in." The doors to most of the rooms, except those belonging to the foreigners, were never closed except in the winter, so the ants and cockroaches marched right over the thresholds. They also came in through any crack or hole in the wall, as well as through the large wooden latticed panels that allowed breezes and light to come in. But I knew what to do. Precious Auntie had taught me. I glued paper over the lattices. And then I took a stick of chalk from the schoolroom and drew a line in front of all the thresholds and around the cracks. The ants would sniff that chalk line and get confused, then turn around and leave. The cockroaches were braver. They walked right through the chalk, and the dust went into their joints and under their shells, and the next day they lay upside down, with their legs in the air, choked to death.

That week Sister Yu did not criticize me. Instead I received an award for Remarkable Sanitation, two hours free to do anything I wanted, as long as it was not evil. In that crowded place, there was no room to be alone. So that was what I chose to do with my prize. For a long time, I had not reread the pages Precious Auntie had written to me before she died. I had resisted because I knew I would cry if I saw those pages again, and then Sister Yu would scold me for allowing self-pity in front of Little Ding and the other younger girls. On a Sunday afternoon, I found an abandoned storeroom, smelling of must and filled with small statutes. I sat on the floor against one wall near a window. I unfolded the blue cloth that held the pages. And for the first time I saw that Precious Auntie had sewn a little pocket into the cloth.

In that pocket were two wondrous things. The first one was the oracle bone she had shown me when I was a girl, telling me I could have it when I had learned to remember. She had once held this, just as her father had once held this. I clutched that bone to my heart. And then I pulled out the second thing. It was a small photograph of a young woman wearing an embroidered headwrap and a padded winter jacket with a collar that reached up to her cheeks. I held the picture up to the light. Was it…? I saw that it was indeed Precious Auntie before she had burned her face. She had dreamy eyes, daring eyebrows that tilted upward, and her mouth-such plump pouting lips, such smooth skin. She was beautiful, but she did not look the way I remembered her, and I was sorry it was not her burnt face in the photo. The more I looked, however, the more she became familiar. And then I realized: Her face, her hope, her knowledge, her sadness-they were mine. Then I cried and cried, glutting my heart with joy and self-pity.

Once a week, Miss Grutoff and the cook's wife went to the railway station to pick up packages and mail. Sometimes there were letters from their friends at other missionary schools in China or from the scientists at Peking Union Medical College. Other times there would be letters with pledges of money. These came from far away: San Francisco in California, Milwaukee in Wisconsin, Elyria in Ohio. Miss Grutoff would read the letters aloud at Sunday chapel. She would show us on a globe, "Here we are, there they are. And they are sending you love and lots of money." Then she would spin the globe so we could become dizzy with this idea. I used to wonder, Why would a stranger love another stranger? Mother and Father were like strangers to me now. They did not love me. To them, I no longer existed. And what about GaoLing's promises to find me? Had she tried? I did not think so.

One afternoon, after I had been at the orphanage for two years, Miss Grutoff handed me a letter. I recognized the handwriting immediately. It was noontime, and in that noisy main hall, I became deaf. The girls nearest me clamored to know what the letter said and who had written it. I ran away from them, guarding my treasure like a starved dog. I still have it, and this is what I read:

"My dearest sister, I apologize for not writing sooner. Not one day has passed that I don't think of you. But I could not write. Mr. Wei would not tell me where he had taken you. Neither would Mother. I finally heard in the market last week that the quarries at Dragon Blue Hill were becoming busy again, and that the American and Chinese scientists were living in the old monastery, along with the students of the orphanage. The next time I saw First Brother's Wife, I said, 'I wonder if LuLing has met the scientists, since she lives so close to them.' And she answered, 'I was wondering the same.' So then I knew.

"Mother is well, but she complains that she is so busy her fingertips are always black. They are still working hard to replenish the inksticks lost in the fire. And Father and our uncles had to rebuild the shop in Peking. They borrowed the money and lumber from Chang the coffinmaker, who now owns most of the business. They received part of the business when I married Chang Fu Nan, the fourth son, the boy you were supposed to marry.

"Mother said we were lucky the Changs wanted any of the girls in our family at all. But I don't think I'm lucky. I think you are lucky that you did not become a daughter-in-law to this family. Every day, with each bite I eat, I am reminded of the Changs' position over our family. We are in debt to them for the wood, and the debt keeps growing. In a hundred years, the Liu clan will still be working for them. The inksticks no longer sell as well or for as much money. To be honest, the quality is no longer as good, now that the ingredients are inferior and Precious Auntie is no longer here to do the carvings. As reminder of our family's debt, I receive no spending money of my own. To buy a stamp for this letter, I had to barter away a hairpin.

"You should also know that the Chang family is not as rich as we believed when we were children. Much of their fortune has been drained away by opium. One of the other son's wives told me that the problem began when Fu Nan was a baby and tore his shoulder out of the socket. His mother began feeding him opium. Later, the mother died, beaten to death, some say, although Chang claims she fell off the roof by accident. Then Chang took another wife, who used to be the girlfriend of a warlord who had been trading opium for coffins. The second wife had the habit, too. The warlord told Chang that if he ever harmed her, he would turn him into a eunuch. And Chang knew this could happen, because he had seen other men who were missing parts of their body for failing to pay their opium debts.

"This household is a misery of shouting and madness, a constant search for money for more opium. If Fu Nan could sell pieces of me for his smoke, he would do so. He's convinced I know where to find more dragon bones. He jabbers that I should tell him, so we will all be rich. If only I did know, I would sell them to leave this family. I would even sell myself. But where would I go?

"Sister, I am sorry for any suffering or worry this letter causes you. I write this only so you know why I have not come to see you and why you are lucky to be where you are. Please do not write back to me. This would only cause me trouble. Now that I know where you are, I will try to write again. In the meantime, I hope your health is good and you are content. Your sister, Liu GaoLing."

When I finished, the letter was still shaking in my hands. I remembered that I had once been jealous of GaoLing. Now her fate was worse than mine. Sister Yu had said we could find happiness in our own situation when we thought of people whose lives were much worse. But I was not happy.

Yet in time, I did become less unhappy. I accepted my life. Maybe it was the weakness of memory that made me feel less pain. Perhaps it was my life force growing stronger. All I knew was, I had become a different girl from the one who had arrived at the orphanage.

Of course, by then even the gods in the monastery had changed their minds. Over the years, Miss Towler had been removing the coverings from the statues, one by one, as cloth was needed for making clothes or quilts. Eventually, all the statues revealed themselves, mocking Miss Towler, so she said, with their red faces, three eyes, and bare bellies. And there were many, many statues, both Buddhist and Taoist, because the monastery had been occupied by both kinds of monks in different centuries, depending on which warlord was in charge of the land. One day, before Christmas, when it was too cold to go anywhere, Miss Grutoff decided that we should convert the Chinese gods into Christians. We would baptize them with paint. The girls who had grown up in the orphanage since they were babies thought this would be a lot of fun. But some of the students who had come later did not want to deface the gods and tempt their wrath. They were so scared that when they were dragged to the statues they screamed and foamed at the mouth, then fell to the ground as if possessed. I was not afraid. I believed that if I was respectful to both the Chinese gods and the Christian one, neither would harm me. I reasoned that Chinese people were polite and also practical about life. The Chinese gods understood that we were living in a Western household run by Americans. If the gods could speak, they, too, would insist that the Christian deities have the better position. Chinese people, unlike foreigners, did not try to push their ideas on others. Let the foreigners follow their own ways, no matter how strange they were, that was their thinking. As my brush ran over their gold-and-red faces, I said, "Pardon me, Jade Ruler, forgive me, Chief of the Eight Immortals, I am only making a disguise for you, in case the Communists or the Japanese come and recruit statues for a bonfire." I was a good artist. With some of the gods, I glued on sheep's hair for beards, noodles for long hair, feathers for wings. In this way, Buddha became fat Jesus, the Goddess of Mercy was Mary of the Manger, the Three Pure Ones, boss gods of the Taoists, turned into the Three Wise Men, and the Eighteen Lohan of Buddha were converted to the Twelve Apostles with six sons. Any small figures in hell were promoted to angels. The following year, Miss Grutoff decided we should also paint the little Buddha carvings throughout the compound. There were hundreds of those.

The year after that, Miss Grutoff found the musty storeroom where I had gone to reread Precious Auntie's pages. The statues there, Sister Yu said, were for a Taoist diorama that showed what would happen if a person went to the underworld. There were dozens of figures, very realistic and scary to see. One was a kneeling man with horned animals feeding on his entrails. Three figures dangled from a pole like pigs on a spit. Four people sat in a vat of boiling oil. And there were giant devils, red-faced with pointed skulls, ordering the dead to go into battle. When we finished painting those, we had a complete nativity scene, Baby Jesus, Mother Mary, Father Joseph, everybody including Santa Claus. Even so, the mouths on the statues were still wide open in screaming fright. No matter what Miss Grutoff said, most of the girls did not think the nativity statues were singing "Joy to the World."

After we finished with those statues, there were no more idols to be changed to angels. By then, I too had changed, from tutor to teacher, from lonely girl to one who was in love with Teacher Pan's son.

The way we started was this.

Every year, during the small New Year, the students painted good- luck banners for the temple fair in the Mouth of the Mountain. And so I was with Teacher Pan and our students in the classroom one day, painting the long red strips, which covered the desks and floors.

As usual, Kai Jing came by on his bicycle to take his father to his rooms. The ground at Dragon Bone Hill was frozen hard, so most of Kai Jing's time was devoted to drawing diagrams, writing reports, and making casts of different spots where bones were found. On this particular day, Kai Jing came early, and Teacher Pan was not ready to leave. So Kai Jing offered to help us paint banners. He stood next to me at my table. I was glad for the extra hands.

But then I noticed what he was doing. Whatever character or figure I drew, he would make the same. If I drew "fortune," he drew "fortune." If I wrote "abundance," he wrote "abundance." If I painted "all that you wish," he painted the same, stroke by stroke. He used almost the same rhythm, so that we were like two people performing a dance. That was the beginning of our love, the same curve, the same dot, the same lifting of the brush as our breath filled as one.

A few days later, the students and I took the banners to the fair. Kai Jing accompanied me, walking alongside, talking quietly. He held a little book of brush paintings done on mulberry paper. On the cover it said: The Four Manifestations of Beauty. "Would you like to know what's inside?" he asked. I nodded. Anyone who overheard us would have thought we were speaking of school lessons. But really, he was speaking of love.

He turned the page. "With any form of beauty, there are four levels of ability. This is true of painting, calligraphy, literature, music, dance. The first level is Competent." We were looking at a page that showed two identical renderings of a bamboo grove, a typical painting, well done, realistic, interesting in the detail of double lines, conveying a sense of strength and longevity. "Competence," he went on, "is the ability to draw the same thing over and over in the same strokes, with the same force, the same rhythm, the same trueness. This kind of beauty, however, is ordinary.

"The second level," Kai Jing continued, "is Magnificent." We looked together at another painting, of several stalks of bamboo. "This one goes beyond skill," he said. "Its beauty is unique. And yet it is simpler, with less emphasis on the stalk and more on the leaves. It conveys both strength and solitude. The lesser painter would be able to capture one quality but not the other."

He turned the page. This painting was of a single stalk of bamboo. "The third level is Divine," he said. "The leaves now are shadows blown by an invisible wind, and the stalk is there mostly by suggestion of what is missing. And yet the shadows are more alive than the original leaves that obscured the light. A person seeing this would be wordless to describe how this is done. Try as he might, the same painter could never again capture the feeling of this painting, only a shadow of the shadow."

"How could beauty be more than divine?" I murmured, knowing I would soon learn the answer.

"The fourth level," Kai Jing said, "is greater than this, and it is within each mortal's nature to find it. We can sense it only if we do not try to sense it. It occurs without motivation or desire or knowledge of what may result. It is pure. It is what innocent children have. It is what old masters regain once they have lost their minds and become children again."

He turned the page. On the next was an oval. "This painting is called Inside the Middle of a Bamboo Stalk. The oval is what you see if you are inside looking up or looking down. It is the simplicity of being within, no reason or explanation for being there. It is the natural wonder that anything exists in relation to another, an inky oval to a page of white paper, a person to a bamboo stalk, the viewer to the painting."

Kai Jing was quiet for a long time. "This fourth level is called Effortless," he said at last. He put the booklet back in his jacket and looked at me thoughtfully. "Recently I have felt this beauty of Effortlessness in all things," he said. "How about you?"

"It's the same for me," I said, and began to cry.

For we both knew we were speaking about the effortlessness with which one falls in love without intending to, as if we were two stalks of bamboo bent toward each other by the chance of the wind. And then we bent toward each other and kissed, lost in the nowhere of being together.

EFFORTLESS

The first night Kai Jing and I tried forbidden joy, it was summertime, a bright-moon night. We had slipped into a dark storage room at the abandoned end of a corridor, far from the eyes and ears of others. I had no shame, no guilty feelings. I felt wild and new, as though I could swim the heavens and fly through waves. And if this was bad fate, let it be. I was the daughter of Precious Auntie, a woman who also could not control her desires, who then gave birth to me. How could this be bad when the skin on Kai Jing's back was so smooth, so warm, so fragrant? Was it also fate to feel his lips on my neck? When he unbuttoned the back of my blouse and it fell to the floor, I was ruined, and I was glad. Then the rest of my clothing slipped off, piece by piece, and I felt I was growing lighter and darker. He and I were two shadows, black and airy, folding and blending, weak yet fierce, weightless, mindless of others-until I opened my eyes and saw that a dozen people were watching us.

Kai Jing laughed. "No, no, they're not real." He tapped one. They were the painted-over theater of hell, now converted to Merry Christmas.

"They're like an audience at a bad opera," I said, "not so pleased." There was Mother Mary with a screaming mouth, the sheepherders with pointed heads, and Baby Jesus, whose eyes stuck out like a frog's. Kai Jing draped my blouse over the head of Mary. He covered Joseph with my skirt, while Baby Jesus received my slip. Then Kai Jing put his own clothes over the Three Wise Men and turned the sheepherders around. When all their eyes faced the wall, Kai Jing guided me to lie down in the straw, and once more we became shadows.

But what happened after that was not like a poem or a painting of the fourth level. We were not like nature, as beautifully harmonious as a leafy tree against the sky. We had expected all these things. But the straw made us itch and the floor stank of urine. A rat stumbled out of its nest, and this caused Kai Jing to roll off me and knock Baby Jesus out of his crib. The frog-eyed monster lay next to us, as if it were our love child. Then Kai Jing stood up and lighted a match, searching for the rat. And when I looked at Kai Jing's private parts, I saw he was no longer possessed. I also saw he had ticks on his thigh. A moment later, he pointed out three on my bottom. I jumped up and was dancing to shake them off. I had to try very hard not to laugh and cry as Kai Jing turned me around and inspected me, then burned off the ticks with the tip of a match. When I took back my blouse from Mary's head, she looked glad that I was ashamed, even though we had not fulfilled our desires.

As we quickly dressed, Kai Jing and I were too embarrassed to talk. He also said nothing as he walked me to my room. But at the door, he told me, "I'm sorry. I should have controlled myself." My heart hurt. I didn't want to hear his apology, his regrets. I heard him add: "I should have waited until we're married." And then I gasped and began to cry, and he embraced me and uttered promises that we would be lovers for ten thousand lifetimes, and I vowed the same, until we heard a loud "Shhhh!" Even after we quieted, Sister Yu, whose room was next to mine, kept grumbling: "No consideration for others. Worse than roosters…"

The next morning, I felt like a different person, happy but also worried. Sister Yu had once said that you could tell which girls in the lanes were prostitutes because they had eyes like chickens. What she meant by this, I didn't know. Did the eyes become redder or smaller? Would others see in my eyes that I had a new kind of knowledge? When I arrived in the main hall for breakfast, I saw that almost everyone was there, gathered in a circle, talking in serious voices. As I walked in, it seemed that all the teachers lifted their eyes to stare at me, shocked and sad. Then Kai Jing shook his head. "Bad news," he said, and the blood drained from my limbs so that even if I had wanted to run away I was too weak to do so. Would I be kicked out? Had Kai Jing's father refused to let him marry me? But how did they know? Who told? Who saw? Who heard? Kai Jing pointed to the shortwave radio that belonged to the scientists, and the others turned back to listen. And I wondered: Now the radio is announcing what we did? In English?

When Kai Jing finally told me, I didn't have even one moment to be relieved that the bad news was not about me. "The Japanese attacked last night," he said, "close to Peking, and everyone is saying it is war for sure."

Maku polo this, maku polo that, I heard the radio voice say. I asked: "What is this maku thing?"

Sister Yu said, "The Maku Polo Bridge. The island dwarves have captured it." I was surprised to hear her use this slur for the Japanese. In the school, she was the one who taught the girls not to use bad names, even for those we hated. Sister Yu went on: "Shot their rifles in the air-just for practice, they said. So our army shot back to teach the liars a lesson. And now one of the dwarves is missing. Probably the coward ran away, but the Japanese are saying one missing man is enough reason to declare war." With Sister Yu translating the English into Chinese, it was hard to tell which was the news and which were her opinions.

"This Maku Polo Bridge," I said, "how far away is it?"

"North of here, in Wanping," Miss Grutoff said, "close to the railway station."

"But that's the Reed Moat Bridge, forty-six kilometers from my village," I said. "When did they start calling it something else?"

"More than six hundred years ago," Miss Grutoff said, "when Marco Polo first admired it." And as everyone continued to talk about the war, I was wondering why no one in our village knew the bridge had changed its name so long before. "Which way are the Japanese advancing?" I asked. "North to Peking or south to here?"

Everyone stopped talking at once. A woman stood in the doorway. With the bright sun behind her, she was a shadow, and I could not make out who she was, only that she wore a dress. "Is Liu LuLing still living here?" I heard her say. I squinted. Who was asking this? I was already confused about so many things, now this as well. As I walked toward her, my confusion turned into a guess, then the guess into a certainty. Precious Auntie. I had often dreamed that her ghost would come back. As in dreams, she could talk and her face was whole, and as in dreams, I rushed toward her. And at last, this time she did not push me away. She threw open her arms and cried: "So you still recognize your own sister!"

It was GaoLing. We spun each other around, danced and slapped each other's arms, taking turns to cry, "Look at you." I had not heard from her since she wrote me the letter four or five years before. In minutes, we were treating each other like sisters once again. "What's happened to your hair?" I joked, grabbing her messy curls. "Was it an accident, or did you do this on purpose?"

"Do you like it?"

"Not bad. You look modern, no longer the country girl."

"No flies circling your head, either. I heard rumors you're now a high-and-mighty intellectual."

"Only a teacher. And you, are you still-"

"Wife to Chang Fu Nan. Six years already, hard to believe."

"But what's happened to you? You look terrible."

"I haven't eaten since yesterday."

I jumped up, went to the kitchen, and brought her back a bowl of mil let porridge, some pickles and steamed peanuts, and little cold dishes. We sat in a corner of the hall, away from news of the war, she eating with much noise and speed. "We've been living in Peking, Fu Nan and I, no children," she said between thick mouthfuls. "We have the back rooms of the ink shop. Everything's been rebuilt. Did I tell you this in my letter?"

"Some."

"Then you know that the Changs own the business, our family owns only the debt. Father and our uncles are back in Immortal Heart village, churning out ink till it sweats from their pores. And now that they're home all the time, they have bad tempers and argue constantly among themselves about who is to blame for this, that, and the weather."

"What about First Brother and Second Brother?" I asked. "Home, too?"

"The Nationalists conscripted First Brother five years ago. All the boys his age had to go. And Second Brother ran off to join the Communists two years after that. Big Uncle's sons followed, then Big Uncle cursed that all three should never come back. Mother didn't speak to him until the United Front was formed and Uncle apologized, saying now it didn't matter which side they were on."

"And Mother, how's her health?"

"Remember how black her hair used to be? Now it's like an old man's beard, white and wiry. She no longer dyes it."

"What? I thought it was naturally black from working with the ink."

"Don't be stupid. They all dyed their hair-Great-Granny, the aunts. But these days Mother doesn't care what she looks like. She claims she hasn't slept in two years. She's convinced the tenants are stealing from us at night and rearranging the furniture. And she also believes Great-Granny's ghost has returned to the latrine. She hasn't had a bowel movement bigger than a bean sprout in months. The shit's hardened to mortar, she says, that's why she's distended like a summer gourd."

"This is terrible to hear." Though this was the same Mother who had kicked me out, I took no pleasure in hearing about her difficulties. Perhaps a little bit of me still thought of Mother and Father as my parents.

"What about Precious Auntie's ghost? Did she ever come back?"

"Not a wail or a whimper, which is strange, since that Catcher of Ghosts turned out to be a fake, not a monk at all. He had a wife and three brats, one of whom was the assistant. They were using the same vinegar jar to catch other ghosts, just opened the lid, sealed it up, over and over. They caught a lot of foolish customers that way. When Father heard this, he wanted to stuff the crook in the jar and plug it up with pony dung. I said to him, 'If Precious Auntie's ghost never came back, what does it matter?' But ever since, he's been muttering about the two ingots he lost, tallying their worth, while according to him was enough to purchase the sky."

My mind was a sandstorm: If the monk was a fake, did that mean Precious Auntie had escaped? Or was she never put in the jar? And then I had another thought.

"Maybe there never was a ghost because she never died," I said to GaoLing.

"Oh, she died for sure. I saw Old Cook throw her body in the End of the World."

"But perhaps she was not entirely dead and she climbed back up. Why else didn't I find her? I searched for hours, from side to side and top to bottom."

GaoLing looked away. "What a terrible day that was for you… You didn't find her, but she was there. Old Cook felt sorry that Precious Auntie didn't get a proper burial. He pitied her. When Mother wasn't looking, he went down there and piled rocks on top of the body."

And now I pictured Precious Auntie struggling up the ravine, a rock rolling toward her, striking her, then another and another, as she tumbled back down. "Why didn't you tell me this sooner?"

"I didn't know until Old Cook died, two years after Precious Auntie. His wife told me. She said he did good deeds that no one even knew about."

"I need to go back and find her bones. I want to bury them in a proper place."

"You'll never find them," GaoLing said. "The cliff broke off again last year during the rainstorms, a ledge the length of five men. Collapsed all at once and buried everything along that side of the ravine with rocks and dirt three stories deep. Our house will be the next to go."

And I mourned uselessly: "If only you had come and told me sooner."

"What a pity, I know. I didn't think you'd still be here. If it weren't for Mr. Wei's gossipy wife, I wouldn't have known you were a teacher here. She told me when I came home for a visit during Spring Festival."

"Why didn't you come see me then?"

"You think my husband gives me permission to take a holiday when I want? I had to wait for the way of heaven to throw me a chance. And then it came at the worst time. Yesterday Fu Nan told me to go to Immortal Heart village to beg more money from his father. I said to him, 'Didn't you hear? The Japanese are parading their army along the railway.' Fff. He didn't care. His greed for opium is greater than any fear that his wife could be run through with a bayonet."

"Still eating the opium?"

"That's his life. Without it, he's a rabid dog. So I went to Wanping, and sure enough, the trains stopped and went no further. All the passengers got off and milled around like sheep and ducks. We had soldiers poking us to keep moving. They herded us into a field, and I was certain we were going to be executed. But then we heard pau-pau-pau, more shooting, and the soldiers ran off and left us there. For a minute, we were too afraid to move. The next I thought, Why should I wait for them to come back and kill me? They can chase me. So I ran away. And soon everyone did, scattering every which way. I must have walked for twelve hours."

GaoLing took off her shoes. The heels were broken, the sides were split, and her soles had bleeding blisters. "My feet hurt so much I thought they would kill me with the pain." She snorted. "Maybe I should let Fu Nan think I was killed. Yes, make him feel he is to blame. Though probably he'd feel nothing. He'd just go back to his cloudy dreams. Every day is the same to him, war or no war, wife or no wife." She laughed, ready to cry. "So Big Sister, what do you say? Should I go back to him?"

What could I do except insist four times that she stay with me? And what could she do except insist three times that she did not want to be a burden? Finally, I took her to my room. She wiped her face and neck with a wet cloth, then lay on my cot with a sigh, and fell asleep.

Sister Yu was the only one who objected to GaoLing's living with me at the school. "We're not a refugee camp," she argued. "As it is, we have no cots to take any more children."

"She can live in my room, stay in my bed."

"She is still a mouth to feed. And if we allow one exception, then others will want an exception, too. In Teacher Wang's family alone, there are ten people. And what about the former students and their families? Should we let them in as well?"

"But they're not asking to come here."

"What? Is moss growing on your brain? If we are at war, everyone will soon ask. Think about this: Our school is run by the Americans. The Americans are neutral on the Japanese. They are neutral on the Nationalists and the Communists. Here you don't have to worry which side wins or loses from day to day. You can just watch. That's what it means to be neutral."

For all these years, I had bitten back my tongue when Sister Yu was bossy. I had shown her respect when I felt none. And even though I was now a teacher, I still did not know how to argue with her. "You talk about kindness, you say we should have pity"-and before I could tell her what I really thought of her, I said, "and now you want to send my sister back to an opium addict?"

"My eldest sister also had to live with one," she replied. "When her lungs were bleeding, her husband refused to buy any medicine. He bought opium for himself instead. That's why she's dead-gone forever, the only person with deep feeling for me." It was no use. Sister Yu had found yet another misery to compare as greater than anyone else's. I watched her hobble out of the room.

When I found Kai Jing, we walked out the gate and around the back wall of the orphanage to snuggle. And then I told him my complaints about Sister Yu.

"You may not think so, but she really does have a good heart," he said. "I've known her since we were children together."

"Maybe you should marry her, then."

"I prefer a woman with ticks on her pretty bottom."

I slapped his hands away. "You mean to be loyal," he went on. "She means to be practical. Don't fight differences of meaning. Find where you mean the same. Or simply do nothing for now. Wait and see." I can honestly say I admired Kai Jing as much as I loved him. He was kind and sensible. If he had a fault, it was his foolishness in loving me. And as my head floated in the pleasure of this mystery and his caresses, I forgot about big wars and small battles.

When I returned to my room, I was startled to see Sister Yu there, shouting at GaoLing: "As hollow as a worm-eaten tree trunk!"

GaoLing shook her fist and said: "The morals of a maggot."

Then Sister Yu laughed. "I hate that man to the very marrow of my bones!"

GaoLing nodded. "Exactly my feeling, too."

After a while, I understood that they were not fighting with each other but in a contest to name the worst insult for the devils who had wronged them. For the next two hours, they tallied their grievances. "The desk that was in my father's family for nine generations," GaoLing said, "gone in exchange for a few hours of pleasure."

"No food, no coal, no clothes in winter. We had to huddle so tightly together we looked like one long caterpillar."

Later that night, GaoLing said to me, "That Sister Yu is very wise, also a lot of fun." I said nothing. She would soon learn this woman could also be like a stinging wasp.

The next day, I found them seated together in the teacher's dining room. Sister Yu was talking in a quiet voice, and I heard GaoLing answer her, "This is unbearable to even hear. Was your sister pretty as well as kind?"

"Not a great beauty, but fair," Sister Yu answered. "Actually, you remind me of her-the same broad face and large lips."

And GaoLing acted honored, not insulted at all. "If only I could be as brave and uncomplaining."

"She should have complained," Sister Yu said. "You, too. Why must those who suffer also be quiet? Why accept fate? That's why I agree with the Communists! We have to struggle to claim our worth. We can't stay mired in the past, worshipping the dead."

GaoLing covered her mouth and laughed. "Careful what you say, or the Japanese and Nationalists will take turns whacking off your head."

"Whack away," Sister Yu said. "What I say, I mean. The Communists are closer to God, even though they don't believe in Him. Share the fish and loaves, that's what they believe. It's true, Communists are like Christians. Maybe they should form a united front with Jesus worshippers rather than with the Nationalists."

And GaoLing put her hand over Sister Yu's mouth. "Are all Christians as stupid as you are?" They were freely insulting each other, as only good friends can.

A few days after this, I found the two of them sitting in the courtyard before dinner, reminiscing like comrades stuck together through the ages like glue and lacquer. GaoLing waved me over to show me a letter with a red seal mark and the emblem of the rising sun. It was from the "Japanese Provisional Military Police."

"Read it," Sister Yu said.

The letter was to Chang Fu Nan, announcing that his wife, Liu GaoLing, had been arrested at Wanping as an anti-Japanese spy. "You were arrested?" I cried.

GaoLing slapped my arm. "You melonhead, read more."

"Before she escaped from the detention center, where she was awaiting execution," the letter said, "Liu GaoLing confessed that it was her husband, Chang Fu Nan, who sent her to the railway station to conduct her illegal mission. For this reason, the Japanese agents in Peking wish to speak to Chang Fu Nan of his involvement in her spying activities. We will be coming soon to Chang Fu Nan's residence to discuss the matter."

"I typed the words," Sister Yu boasted.

"And I carved the seals," GaoLing said.

"It's very realistic," I told them. "My heart went peng-peng-peng when I read it."

"Fu Nan will think firecrackers have exploded in his chest," said GaoLing. She and Sister Yu squealed like schoolgirls.

"But won't Mother and Father be in agony when they hear you're missing?"

"I'll go see them next week if the roads are safe."

And that's what GaoLing did, went to Immortal Heart, where she discovered that Fu Nan had told no one about the letter. About a month later, she returned to the school as Sister Yu's helper. "Mother and Father knew only what the Chang father told him," she reported. "'That husband of yours,' Father said to me. 'I thought he was all boast and no backbone. And then we hear he's joined the army-didn't even wait to be forced to go.'"

"I also told Mother and Father that I ran into you at the railway station at the Mouth of the Mountain," GaoLing said. "I bragged you were an intellectual, working side by side with the scientists-and you'd soon be married to one."

I was glad she had said this. "Were they sorry about what they did to me?"

"Ha! They were proud," GaoLing said. "Mother said, 'I always knew we did well by her. Now you see the result.'"

The dew turned to frost, and that winter we had two kinds of weddings, American and Chinese. For the American part, Miss Grutoff gave me a long white dress she had made for her own wedding but never wore. Her sweetheart died in the Great War, so it was a bad-luck dress. But she had such happy tears when she gave me the gown, how could I refuse? For the Chinese banquet, I wore a red wedding skirt and head scarf that GaoLing had embroidered.

Since GaoLing had already told Mother and Father I was to be married, I invited them out of politeness. I hoped they would use the convenient excuse of war to not come. But Mother and Father did come, as did the aunts and uncles, big and little cousins, nephews and nieces. No one talked of the great embarrassment of what we all knew. It was very awkward. I introduced Mother and Father as my aunt and uncle, which would have been a true fact if I had not been a love child without proper claim to any family. And most everyone at the school acted politely toward them. Sister Yu, however, gave them critical stares. She muttered to GaoLing, loud enough for Mother to hear: "They threw her away, and now they stuff their mouths at her table." All day long, I felt confused-happy in love, angry with my family, yet strangely glad that they were there. And I was also worried about the white wedding dress, thinking this was a sign that my happiness would not last for long.

Only two of the scientists, Dong and Chao, came to our party. Because of the war, it was too dangerous for anyone to work in the quarry anymore. Most of the scientists had fled for Peking, leaving behind almost everything except the relics of the past. Twenty-six of the local workers stayed, as did Kai Jing, Dong, and Chao, who also lived on the former monastery grounds. Someone needed to keep an eye on the quarry, Kai Jing reasoned. What if the Japanese decided to blow up the hill? What if the Communists used the quarry as a machine-gun trench? "Even if they used it as an open pit toilet," I said to him, "how can you stop them?" I was not arguing that he and I should run to Peking as well. I knew he would never separate from his old father, and his old father would never separate from the school and the orphan girls. But I did not want my husband to go into the quarry as hero and come out as martyr. So much was uncertain. So many had already gone away. And many of us felt left behind. As a result, our wedding banquet was like the celebration of a sad victory.

After the banquet, the students and friends carried us to our bedchamber. It was the same storeroom where Kai Jing and I had gone for that disaster of a first night. But now the place was clean: no rats, no urine, no ticks or straw. The week before, the students had painted the walls yellow, the beams red. They had pushed the statues to one side. And to keep the Three Wise Men from watching us, I had made a partition of ropes and cloth. On our wedding night, the students remained outside our door for many hours, joking and teasing, laughing and setting off firecrackers. Finally they tired and left, and for the first time Kai Jing and I were alone as husband and wife. That night, nothing was forbidden, and our joy was effortless.

The next day, we were supposed to visit the houses of our in-laws. So we went to the two rooms at the other end of the corridor, where Teacher Pan lived. I bowed and served him tea, calling him "Baba," and we all laughed over this formality. Then Kai Jing and I went to a little altar I had made with the picture of Precious Auntie in a frame. We poured tea for her as well, then lighted the incense, and Kai Jing called her "Mama" and promised he would take care of my entire family, including the ancestors who had come before me. "I am your family now, too," he said.

All at once, a cold breath poured down my neck. Why? I thought of our ancestor who died in the Monkey's Jaw. Was that the reason? I remembered the bones that were never brought back, the curse. What was the meaning of this memory?

"There are no such things as curses," Kai Jing later told me. "Those are superstitions, and a superstition is a needless fear. The only curses are worries you can't get rid of."

"But Precious Auntie told me this, and she was very smart."

"She was self-taught, exposed to only the old ideas. She had no chance to learn about science, to go to a university like me."

"Then why did my father die? Why did Precious Auntie die?"

"Your father died because of an accident. Precious Auntie killed herself. You said so yourself."

"But why did the way of heaven lead to these things?"

"It's not the way of heaven. There is no reason."

Because I loved my husband very much, I tried to abide by the new ideas: no curses, no bad luck, no good luck, either. When I worried over dark clouds, I said there was no reason. When wind and water changed places, I tried to convince myself that there was no reason for this as well. For a while, I had a happy life, not too many worries.

Every evening after dinner, Kai Jing and I paid a visit to his father. I loved to sit in his rooms, knowing this was my family home, too. The furnishings were plain, old, and honest, and everything had its place and purpose. Against the west wall, Teacher Pan had placed a cushioned bench that was his bed, and above that, he had hung three scrolls of calligraphy, one hundred characters each, as if done in one breath, one inspiration. By the south-facing window, he kept a pot of flowers in season, bright color that drew the eye away from shadows. Against the east wall were a simple desk and a chair of dark polished wood, a good place for thought. And on the desk were precious scholar-objects arranged like a still-life painting: a lacquered leather box, ivory brush holders, and an inkstone of duan, the best kind of stone, his most valuable possession, a gift from an old missionary who had taught him in his boyhood.

One night Teacher Pan gave me that duan inkstone. I was about to protest, but then I realized that he was my father now, and I could accept it openly with my heart. I held that circle of duan and ran my ringers over its silky smoothness. I had admired that inkstone since the days when I first came to the school as his helper. He had brought it to class once to show to the students. "When you grind ink against stone you change its character, from ungiving to giving, from a single hard form to many flowing forms. But once you put the ink to paper, it becomes unforgiving again. You can't change it back. If you make a mistake, the only remedy is to throw away the whole thing." Precious Auntie had once said words that were similar. You should think about your character. Know where you are changing, how you will be changed, what cannot be changed back again. She said that when I first learned to grind ink. She also said this when she was angry with me, during the last days we were together. And when I heard Teacher Pan talking about this same thing, I promised myself I would change and become a better daughter.

Much had changed, and I wished Precious Auntie could see how good my life was. I was a teacher and a married woman. I had both a husband and a father. And they were good people, unlike GaoLing's in-laws, the Changs. My new family was genuine and sincere to others, the same inside as they showed outside. Precious Auntie had taught me that was important. Good manners are not enough, she had said, they are not the same as a good heart. Though Precious Auntie had been gone for all these years, I still heard her words, in happy and sad times, when it was important.

After the Japanese attacked the Mouth of the Mountain, GaoLing and I climbed to the hilltop whenever we heard distant gunfire. We looked for the direction of the puffs of smoke. We noticed which way the carts and trucks were moving along the roads. GaoLing joked that we brought news faster than the ham radio that Kai Jing and Miss Grutoff sat in front of for half the day, hoping to hear a word from the scientists who had gone to Peking. I did not understand why they wanted the radio to talk back to them. It spoke only about bad things-which port city was taken, how nearly everyone in this or that town was killed to teach the dead people a lesson not to fight against the Japanese.

"The Japanese won't win here," GaoLing would say in the evenings. "They may be fast in the sea, but here in the mountains they're like fish flopping on the sand. Our men, on the other hand, are like goats." Every night she said this to convince herself it was true. And for a while, it was true. The Japanese soldiers could not push their way up the mountain.

While water couldn't run uphill, money did. All kinds of vendors from down below sneaked past the barricades and brought their goods up the mountain so that people from the hill towns could spend their money before they were killed. GaoLing, Kai Jing, and I would walk along the ridge road to buy luxuries. Sometimes I filled my tin with shaoping, the savory flaky buns coated with sesame seeds that I knew Teacher Pan loved so much. Other days I bought fried peanuts, dried mushrooms, or candied melon. There were many shortages during wartime, so any delicacies we could find were always an excuse for little parties.

We held them in Teacher Pan's sitting room. GaoLing and Sister Yu always joined us, as did the scientists-Dong, the older man with a gentle smile, and Chao, the tall young one whose thick hair hung in front of his face. When we were pouring the tea, Teacher Pan would wind his phonograph. And as we savored our treats, we listened to a song by Rach maninoff called "Oriental Dance." I can still see Teacher Pan, waving his hand like a conductor, telling the invisible pianist and cello players where to quiet down, where to come back with full feeling. At the end of the party, he would lie on the cushioned bench, close his eyes, and sigh, grateful for the food, Rachmaninoff, his son, his daughter-in-law, his dear old friends. "This is the truest meaning of happiness," he would tell us. Then Kai Jing and I would go for an evening stroll before we returned to our own room, grateful ourselves for the joy that exists only between two people.

Those were the small rituals we had, what comforted us, what we loved, what we could look forward to, what we could be thankful for and remember afterward.

Even in wartime and poverty, people must have plays and opera. "They are the speech and music of the soul," Kai Jing told me. Every Sunday afternoon, the students performed for us, and they were very enthusiastic. But to be honest, the acting and music were not very good, painful sometimes to listen to and see, and we had to be very good actors ourselves to pretend this was enjoyment beyond compare. Teacher Pan told me that the plays were just as bad when I was a student and performed in them. How long ago that seemed. Now Miss Towler was bent over with old age, almost as short as Sister Yu. When she played the piano, her nose nearly touched the keys. Teacher Pan had cataracts and worried that soon he would not be able to paint anymore.

When winter came, we heard that many of the Communist soldiers were falling sick and dying of diseases before they had a chance to fire a single bullet. The Japanese had more medicine, warmer clothes, and they took food and supplies from whatever villages they occupied. With fewer Communist troops to defend the hills, the Japanese were crawling up, and with each step, they chopped down trees so no one could hide and escape. Because they were coming closer, we could no longer safely walk the ridge road to buy food.

Yet Kai Jing and his colleagues still went to the quarry, and this made me crazy with anxiety. "Don't go," I always begged him. "Those old bones have been there for a million years. They can wait until after the war." That quarry was the only reason we had arguments, and sometimes when I remember this, I think I should have argued more, argued until he stopped going. Then I think, no, I should have argued less, or not at all. Then maybe his last memories of me would not have been those of a complaining wife.

When Kai Jing was not at the quarry, he taught the girls in my class about geology. He told them stories about ancient earth and ancient man, and I listened, too. He drew pictures on the chalkboard of icy floods and fiery explosions from underneath, of the skull of Peking Man and how it was different from a monkey's, higher in the forehead, more room for his changing brain. If Miss Towler or Miss Grutoff were listening, Kai Jing did not draw the monkey or talk about the ages of the earth. He knew that his ideas about life before and everlasting were different from theirs.

One day, Kai Jing told the girls how humans grew to be different from monkeys: "Ancient Peking Man could stand up and walk. We see this by the way his bones are formed, the footprints he left in the mud. He used tools. We see this by the bones and rocks he shaped to cut and smash. And Peking Man probably also began to speak in words. At least his brain was capable of forming a language."

A girl asked, "What words? Were they Chinese?"

"We don't know for certain," Kai Jing said, "because you cannot leave behind spoken words. There was no writing in those days. That happened only thousands of years ago. But if there was a language, it was an ancient one that likely existed only in that time. And we can only guess what Peking Man tried to say. What does a person need to say? What man, woman, or child does he need to say it to? What do you think was the very first sound to become a word, a meaning?"

"I think a person should always say her prayers to God," another girl said. "She should say thank you to those who are nice to her."

That night, when Kai Jing was already asleep, I was still thinking about these questions. I imagined two people without words, unable to speak to each other. I imagined the need: The color of the sky that meant "storm." The smell of fire that meant "Flee." The sound of a tiger about to pounce. Who would worry about such things?

And then I realized what the first word must have been: ma, the sound of a baby smacking its lips in search of her mother's breast. For a long time, that was the only word the baby needed. Ma, ma, ma. Then the mother decided that was her name and she began to speak, too. She taught the baby to be careful: sky, fire, tiger. A mother is always the beginning. She is how things begin.

One spring afternoon, the students were performing a play. I remember it well, a scene from The Merchant of Venice, which Miss Towler had translated into Chinese. "Fall down on your knees and pray," they were chanting. And right then, my life changed. Teacher Pan burst into the hall, panting and shouting, "They've seized them."

Between broken breaths, he told us that Kai Jing and his friends had gone to the quarry for their usual inspection. Teacher Pan had gone along for the fresh air and small talk. At the quarry they found soldiers waiting. They were Communists, and since they were not Japanese, the men were not concerned.

The leader of the soldiers approached them. He asked Kai Jing, "Hey, why haven't you joined us?"

"We're scientists not soldiers," Kai Jing explained. He started to tell them about the work with Peking Man, but one of the soldiers cut him off: "No work has been going on here in months."

"If you've worked to preserve the past," the leader said, trying to be more cordial, "surely you can work to create the future. Besides, what past will you save if the Japanese destroy China?"

"It's your duty to join us," another soldier grumbled. "Here we are spilling our own blood to protect your damn village."

The leader waved for him to be quiet. He turned to Kai Jing. "We're asking all men in the villages we defend to help us. You don't need to fight. You can cook or clean or do repairs." When no one said anything, he added in a less friendly voice: "This isn't a request, it's a requirement. Your village owes us this. We order you. If you don't come along as patriots, we'll take you as cowards."

It happened that quickly, Teacher Pan said. The soldiers would have taken him as well, but they decided an old man who was nearly blind was more trouble than help. As the soldiers led the men away, Teacher Pan called out, "How long will they be gone?"

"You tell me, comrade," the leader said. "How long will it take to drive out the Japanese?"

Over the next two months, I grew thin. GaoLing had to force me to eat, and even then I could not taste anything. I could not stop thinking of the curse from the Monkey's Jaw, and I told GaoLing this, though no one else. Sister Yu held Praying for a Miracle meetings, asking that the Communists defeat the Japanese soon, so that Kai Jing, Dong, and Chao could return to us quickly. And Teacher Pan wandered the courtyards, his eyes misty with cataracts. Miss Grutoff and Miss Towler would not allow the girls to go outside the compound anymore, even though the fighting took place in other areas of the hills. They had heard terrible stories of Japanese soldiers raping girls. They found a large American flag and hung this over the gateway, as if this were a charm that would protect them from evil.

Two months after the men disappeared, Sister Yu's prayers were half answered. Three men walked through the gateway early in the morning, and Miss Grutoff beat the gong of the Buddha's Ear. Soon everyone was shouting that Kai Jing, Dong, and Chao had returned. I ran so fast across the courtyard I tripped and nearly broke my ankle. Kai Jing and I grabbed each other and gave in to happy sobs. His face was thinner and very brown; his hair and skin smelled of smoke. And his eyes-they were different. I remember thinking that at the time. They were faded, and I now think some part of his life force had already gone.

"The Japanese now occupy the hills," he told us. "They drove off our troops." That was how Sister Yu learned that the other half of her miracle prayer had not come true. "They'll come looking for us."

I heated water, made a bath, and washed his body with a cloth as he sat in the narrow wooden tub. And then we went to our bedchamber and I pinned a cloth over the lattice window so it would be dark. We lay down, and as he rocked me, he talked to me in soft murmurs, and it took all of my senses to realize that I was in his arms, that his eyes were looking at mine. "There is no curse," he said. I was listening hard, trying to believe that I would always hear him speak. "And you are brave, you are strong," he went on. I wanted to protest that I didn't want to be strong, but I was crying too much to speak. "You cannot change this," he said. "This is your character."

He kissed my eyes, one at a time. "This is beauty, and this is beauty, and you are beauty, and love is beauty and we are beauty. We are divine, unchanged by time." He said this until I promised I believed him, until I agreed it was enough.

The Japanese came for Kai Jing, Dong, and Chao that evening. Miss Grutoff was brave and declared that she was an American and they had no right to enter the orphanage. They paid no attention to her, and when they started to walk toward the rooms where the girls were hiding under their beds, Kai Jing and the other men came forward and said they did not need to look any further. I tried to follow.

A few days later, I heard wailing in the main hall. When GaoLing came to me with red eyes, I stopped her from saying what I already knew. For a month more, I tried to keep Kai Jing alive in my heart and mind. For a while longer, I tried so much to believe what he had said: "There is no curse." And then finally I let GaoLing say the words.

Two Japanese officers questioned the men day and night, tried to force them to say where the Communist troops had gone. On the third day, they lined them up, Kai Jing, Dong, and Chao, as well as thirty other villagers. A soldier stood nearby with a bayonet. The Japanese officer said he would ask them once again, one at a time. And one by one, they shook their heads, one by one they fell. In my mind, sometimes Kai Jing was first, sometimes he was last, sometimes he was in between.

I was not there when this happened, yet I saw it. The only way I could push it out of my mind was to go into my memory. And there in that safe place, I was with him, and he was kissing me when he told me, "We are divine, unchanged by time."

CHARACTER

GaoLing said the Japanese would soon come for all of us, so I should not bother to kill myself right away. Why not wait and die together? Less lonely that way.

Teacher Pan said I should not leave him for the other world. Otherwise, who would he have left as family to give him comfort in his last days?

Miss Grutoff said the children needed me to be an inspiration of what an orphan girl could become. If they knew I had given up hope, then what hope could they have?

But it was Sister Yu who gave me the reason to stay alive and suffer on earth. Kai Jing, she said, had gone to the Christian heaven, and if I did suicide, I would be forbidden by God to go see him. To me, the Christian heaven was like America, a land that was far away, filled with foreigners, and ruled by their laws. Suicide was not allowed.

So I stayed and waited for the Japanese to come back and get me. I visited Teacher Pan and brought him good things to eat. And every afternoon, I walked outside the school to the part of the hillside with many little piles of rocks. That was where the missionaries buried the babies and girls who had died over the years. That was where Kai Jing lay as well. In our room, I found a few dragon bones he had dug up in the last few months. They were nothing too valuable, just those of old animals. I picked up one and with a thick needle carved words into it to make an oracle bone like the one Precious Auntie had given me. I wrote: "You are beauty, we are beauty, we are divine, unchanged by time." When I finished one, I began another, unable to stop. Those were the words I wanted to remember. Those were the morsels of grief I ate.

I put those oracle bones at Kai Jing's grave. "Kai Jing," I said each time I placed them there. "Do you miss me?" And after a long silence, I told him what had happened that day: who was sick, who was smart, how we had no more medicine, how it was too bad he wasn't there to teach the girls more about geology. One day I had to tell him that Miss Towler had not awakened in the morning and soon she would be lying next to him. "She went gently to God," Miss Grutoff had said at breakfast, and she acted glad that it was this way. But then she clamped her mouth shut and two deep lines grew down the sides, so I knew she was pitifully sad. To Miss Grutoff, Miss Towler had been mother, sister, and oldest friend.

After Miss Towler's death, Miss Grutoff began to make American flags. I think she made those flags for the same reason I made oracle bones for Kai Jing's grave. She was saving some memory, afraid of forgetting. Every day she would sew a star or a stripe. She would dye scraps of cloth red or blue. She had the girls in the school make flags, as well. Soon there were fifty flags waving along the outside wall of the old monastery building, then a hundred, two hundred. If a person did not know this was an orphanage for Chinese girls, he would think many, many Americans were inside having a patriotic party.

One cold morning, Japanese soldiers finally flocked onto the grounds. We were in the main hall for Sunday worship, although it was not Sunday. We heard gun sounds, pau-pau. We ran to the door and saw Cook and his wife lying facedown in the dirt, and the chickens squabbling nearby, pecking at a bucket of grain that had tipped over. The big American flag that used to hang over the gateway was now lying on the ground. The girls be gan to cry, thinking that Cook and his wife were dead. But then we saw Cook move a little, turn his head to the side, carefully looking to see who was around them. Miss Grutoff pushed past us to the front. I think we all wondered if she would order the Japanese soldiers to leave us alone, since she was an American. Instead, she asked us to be quiet. No one moved or talked after that. And then we watched, hands covering our mouths to keep from screaming, as the Japanese soldiers shot down the rest of those hundreds of flags, pau-pau, pau-pau, taking turns, criticizing if anyone missed. When all the flags were in pieces, they began to shoot at the chickens, which flapped and squawked and fell to earth. Finally, they took the dead chickens and left. Cook and his wife stood up, the remaining chickens clucked quietly, and the girls let out the wails they had kept locked inside.

Miss Grutoff asked everyone to return to the main hall. There she informed us in a shaky voice what she had learned on the ham and shortwave radios several days before: Japan had attacked the United States, and the Americans had declared war on Japan. "With America on our side, now China will be able to win the war more quickly," she said, and she led us to join her in clapping. To please her, we smiled to pretend we believed this good news. Later that night, when the girls had gone to their rooms, Miss Grutoff told the teachers and the cook and his wife what else she had heard from her friends at Peking Union Medical College.

"The bones of Peking Man are lost."

"Destroyed?" Teacher Pan asked.

"No one knows. They've disappeared. All the pieces of forty-one ancient people. They were supposed to be taken by train to be loaded on an American boat sailing from Tientsin to Manilla, but the ship was sunk. Some say the boxes were never loaded onto the boat. They say the Japanese stopped the trains. They thought the boxes contained only the possessions of American soldiers, so they threw them on the tracks to let them get smashed by other trains. Now no one knows what to think. It's not good, either way." As I listened, I felt my own bones grow hollow. All of Kai Jing's work, his sacrifice, his last trip to the quarry-all was for nothing? I imagined those little pieces of skulls floating among the fish in the harbor, sinking slowly to the bottom, sea eels swimming over them, covering them with sand. I saw other fragments of bones thrown off the train like garbage, the tires of army trucks crushing them until the pieces were no bigger than grains of Gobi sand. I felt as if those bones were Kai Jing's.

The next day, the Japanese returned to take Miss Grutoff to a prisoner-of-war camp. She had known this would happen, and yet she had not tried to escape. "I would never willingly leave my girls," she told us. Her suitcases were already packed, and she was wearing her travel hat with a scarf that wrapped around her neck. Fifty-six weeping girls stood at the gate to say good-bye. "Teacher Pan, don't forget the lessons of the apostles," she called out, just before she boarded the back of the truck. "And please be sure to tell the others so they can pass on the good word." I thought it was a strange farewell. So did the others, until Teacher Pan showed us what she meant.

He took us to the main hall, to the statue of an apostle. He twisted off its hand. Inside was a hole that he and Miss Grutoff had carved out, where they had hidden silver, gold, and a list of names of former students in Peking. For the past month he and Miss Grutoff had been doing this, late at night. Each apostle had only part of her personal savings, so if the Japanese found money in one, as heathens they might not know which of hundreds of statues to search to find the rest.

If things became dangerous around the orphanage, we were supposed to use the money to take the girls to Peking, four or five at a time. There they could stay with former students and friends of the school. Miss Grutoff had already contacted these people, and they agreed that if the time came, they would willingly help us. We needed only to tell them by the ham radio when we were coming.

Teacher Pan assigned each of us-teachers, helpers, and four older students-to an apostle for our share of the refugee money. And from the day that Miss Grutoff left, Teacher Pan had us practice and memorize which apostle was which and where the wood had been dug out of its body. I thought it was enough that we recognized which was our own statue, but Sister Yu said, "We should say all the names out loud. Then the apostles will protect our savings better." I had to say those names so many times they are still in my head: Pida , Pa , Matu, Yuhan, Jiama yi, Jiama er, Andaru, Filipa, Tomasa, Shaimin, Tadayisu, and Budalomu. The traitor, Judasa, did not have a statue.

About three months after Miss Grutoff left us, Teacher Pan decided it was time for us to go. The Japanese had become angry that the Communists were hiding in the hills. They wanted to draw them out by slaughtering people in the nearby villages. Sister Yu also told GaoLing and me that the Japanese were doing unspeakable acts with innocent girls, some as young as eleven or twelve. That was what had happened in Tientsin, Tungchow, and Nanking. "Those girls they didn't kill afterward tried to kill themselves," she added. So we knew what she was saying just by using the frightened parts of our imaginations.

Counting four older students who had stayed on through the war, we had twelve chaperones. We radioed Miss Grutoff's friends in Peking, who said the city was occupied, and although the situation was calm, we should wait to hear from them. The trains did not always run, and it would not be good for us to be stuck for days waiting at different cities along the way. Teacher Pan determined the order in which the groups would leave: first that led by Mother Wang, who could tell us how the journey went, then those of the four older girls, then those of Cook's wife, Teacher Wang, Cook, GaoLing, me, Sister Yu, and last, Teacher Pan.

"Why should you be last?" I asked him.

"I know how to use the radio."

"You can teach me just as easily."

"And me," said Sister Yu and GaoLing.

We argued, taking turns at being brave. And to do that, we had to be a little unkind and criticize each other. Teacher Pan's eyes were too poor for him to be left alone. Sister Yu was too deaf. GaoLing had bad feet and a fear of ghosts that made her run the wrong way. Plenty was wrong with me, as well, but in the end, I was allowed to go last so I could visit Kai Jing's grave as long as possible.

And now I can confess how scared I was those last few days. I was responsible for four girls: six years, eight, nine, and twelve. And while it was still comforting to think about killing myself, it made me nervous to wait to be killed. As each group of girls left, the orphanage seemed to grow larger and the remaining footsteps louder. I was afraid the Japanese soldiers would come and find the ham radio, then accuse me of being a spy and torture me. I rubbed dirt on the girls' faces and told them that if the Japanese came, they should scratch their heads and skin, pretending to have lice. Almost every hour, I prayed to Jesus and Buddha, whoever was listening. I lighted incense in front of Precious Auntie's photo, I went to Kai Jing's grave and was honest with him about my fears. "Where is my character?" I asked him. "You said I was strong. Where is that strength now?"

On the fourth day of our being alone, we heard the message on the radio: "Come quickly. The trains are running." I went to tell the girls, and then I saw that a miracle had happened, but whether this came from the Western God or the Chinese ones, I don't know. I was simply thankful that all four girls had swollen eyes, green pus coming out of the corners. They had an eye infection, nothing serious, but it was awful to see. No one would want to touch them. As for myself, I thought quickly and had an idea. I took some of the leftovers of the rice porridge we had eaten that morning, and drained off the watery portion and smeared this liquid onto my skin, my cheeks, forehead, neck, and hands, so that when it dried I had the leathery, cracked appearance of an old country woman. I put some more of the sticky rice water into a thermos and to that I added chicken blood. I told the girls to gather all the chicken eggs left in the pens, even the rotten ones, and put them in sacks. Now we were ready to walk down the hill to the railway station.

When we were about a hundred paces down the road, we saw the first soldier. I slowed my pace and took a sip from the thermos. The soldier remained where he was, and stopped us when we reached him.

"Where are you going?" he asked. We five looked up and I could see an expression of disgust pass over his face. The girls started to scratch their heads. Before I answered, I coughed into a handkerchief, then folded it so he could see the blood-streaked mucus. "We are going to market to sell our eggs," I said. We lifted our sacks. "Would you like some as a gift?" He waved us on.

When we were a short distance away, I took another sip of the rice water and chicken blood to hold in my mouth. Twice more we were stopped, twice more I coughed up what looked like the bloody sputum of a woman with tuberculosis. The girls stared with their green oozing eyes.

When we arrived in Peking, I saw from the train window that Gao-Ling was there to meet us. She squinted to make sure it was I getting off the train. Slowly she approached, her lips spread in horror. "What happened to you?" she asked. I coughed blood one last time into my handkerchief. "Ai-ya!" she cried, and jumped back. I showed her my thermos of "Japanese chase-away juice." And then I began to laugh and couldn't stop. I was crazy-happy, delirious with relief.

GaoLing complained: "The whole time I've been worried sick, and you just play jokes."

We settled the girls in homes with former students. And over the next few years, some married, some died, some came to visit us as their hon orary parents. GaoLing and I lived in the back rooms of the old ink shop in the Pottery-Glazing District. We had Teacher Pan and Sister Yu join us. As for GaoLing's husband, we all hoped he was dead.

Of course, it made me angry beyond belief that the Chang family now owned the ink shop. For all those years since Precious Auntie died, I had not had to think about the coffinmaker too much. Now he was ordering us to sell more ink, sell it faster. This was the man who killed my grandfather and father, who caused Precious Auntie so much pain she ruined her life. But then I reasoned that if a person wants to strike back, she must be close to the person who must be struck down. I decided to live in the ink shop because it was practical. In the meantime, I thought of ways to get revenge.

Luckily, the Chang father did not bother us too much about the business. The ink was selling much, much better than before we came. That was because we used our heads. We saw that not too many people had a use for inksticks and ink cakes anymore. It was wartime. Who had the leisure and calm to sit around and grind ink on an inkstone, meditating over what to write? We also noted that the Chang family had lowered the quality of the ingredients, so the sticks and cakes crumbled more easily. Teacher Pan was the one who suggested we make quick-use ink. We ground up the cheap ink, mixed it with water, and put it in small jars that we bought for almost nothing at a medicine shop that was going out of business.

Teacher Pan also turned out to be a very good salesman. He had the manners and writing style of an old scholar, which helped convince customers that the quality of our quick-use ink was excellent, though it was not. To demonstrate it, however, he had to be careful not to write anything that could be interpreted as anti-Japanese or pro-feudal, Christian or Communist. This was not easy to do. Once he decided he should simply write about food. There was no danger in that. So he wrote, "Turnips taste best when pickled," but GaoLing worried that this would be taken either as a slur against the Japanese or as siding with the Japanese, since turnips were like radishes and radishes were what the Japanese liked to eat. So then he wrote, "Father, Mother, Brother, Sister." Sister Yu said that this looked like a listing of those who had died, that this was his way of protesting the occupation. "It could also be a throwback to Confucian principles of family," GaoLing added, "a wish to return to the time of emperors." Everything had dangers, the sun, the stars, the directions of the wind, depending on how many worries we each had. Every number, color, and animal had a bad meaning. Every word sounded like another. Eventually I came up with the best idea for what to write, and it was settled: "Please try our Quick Ink. It is cheap and easy to use."

We suspected that many of the university students who bought our ink were Communist revolutionaries making propaganda posters that would appear on walls in the middle of the night. "Resist Together," the posters said. Sister Yu managed the accounts, and she was not too strict when some of the poorer students did not have enough money to pay for the ink. "Pay what you can," she told them. "A student should always have enough ink for his studies." Sister Yu also made sure we kept some money for ourselves without the Chang father's noticing that anything was missing.

When the war ended in 1945, we no longer had to think about secret meanings that could get us in trouble with the Japanese. Firecrackers burst in the streets all day long and this made everyone nervously happy. Overnight the lanes grew crowded with vendors of every delicious kind of thing and fortune-tellers with only the best news. GaoLing thought this was a good day to ask her fortune. So Sister Yu and I went wandering with her.

The fortune-teller GaoLing chose could write three different words at one time with three different brushes held in one hand. The first brush he put between the tip of his thumb and one finger. The second rested in the web of his thumb. The third was pinched at the bend of his wrist. "Is my husband dead?" GaoLing asked him. We were all surprised by her bluntness. We held our breath as the three characters formed at once: "Return Lose Hope."

"What does that mean?" Sister Yu said.

"For another small offering," the fortune-teller answered, "the heavens will allow me to explain." But GaoLing said she was satisfied with this answer, and we went on our way.

"He's dead," GaoLing announced.

"Why do you say that?" I asked. "The message could also mean he's not dead."

"It clearly said all hope is lost about his returning home."

Sister Yu suggested: "Maybe it means he'll return home, then we'll lose hope."

"Can't be," GaoLing said, but I could see a crack of doubt running down her forehead.

The next afternoon, we were sitting in the courtyard of the shop, enjoying a new sense of ease, when we heard a voice call out, "Hey, I thought you were dead." A man was looking at GaoLing. He wore a soldier's uniform.

"Why are you here?" GaoLing said as she rose from the bench.

He sneered. "I live here. This is my house."

Then we knew it was Fu Nan. It was the first time I saw the man who might have been my husband. He was large like his father, with a long, wide nose. GaoLing rose and took his bundle and offered him her seat. She treated him extra politely, like an unwanted guest. "What happened to your fingers?" she asked. Both of his little fingers were missing.

He seemed confused at first, then laughed. "I'm a damn war hero," he said. He glanced at us. "Who are they?" GaoLing gave our names and said what each of us did to run the business. Fu Nan nodded, then gestured toward Sister Yu and said, "We don't need that one anymore. I'll manage the money from now on."

"She's my good friend."

"Who says?" He glared at GaoLing, and when she did not look away, he said, "Oh, still the fierce little viper. Well, you can argue with the new owner of this shop from now on. He arrives tomorrow." He threw down a document covered with the red marks of name seals. GaoLing snatched it.

"You sold the shop? You had no right! You can't make my family work for someone else. And the debt-why is it now even bigger? What did you do, gamble the money away, eat it, smoke it, which one?"

"I'm going to sleep now," he said, "and when I wake up, I don't want to see that woman with the hunchback. The way she looks makes me nervous." He waved one hand to dismiss any further protests. He left, and soon we smelled the smoke of his opium clouds. GaoLing began to curse.

Teacher Pan sighed. "At least the war is over and we can see if our friends at the medical school might know of rooms where we can squeeze in."

"I'm not going," GaoLing said.

How could she say this after all she had told me about her husband? "You'd stay with that demon?" I exclaimed.

"This is our family's ink shop. I'm not walking away from it. The war is over, and now I'm ready to fight back."

I tried to argue and Teacher Pan patted my arm. "Give her time. She '11 come to her senses."

Sister Yu left that afternoon for the medical school, but soon she returned. "Miss Grutoff is back," she told us, "released from the war camp. But she is very, very sick." The four of us immediately left for the house of another foreigner, named Mrs. Riley. When we went in, I saw how thin Miss Grutoff had become. We used to joke that foreign women had big udders because of the cow's milk they drank. But now Miss Grutoff looked drained. And her color was poor. She insisted on standing up to greet us, and we insisted she sit and not bother to be polite with old friends. Loose skin hung from her face and arms. Her once red hair was gray and thin. "How are you?" we asked.

"Not bad," she said, cheerful and smiling. "As you can see, I'm alive. The Japanese couldn't starve me to death, but the mosquitoes almost had their way with me. Malaria."

Two of the little girls at the school had had malaria and died. But I did not tell Miss Grutoff. There would be plenty of time for bad news later.

"You must hurry and get well," I said. "Then we can reopen the school."

Miss Grutoff shook her head. "The old monastery is gone. Destroyed. One of the other missionaries told me."

We gasped.

"The trees, the building, everything has been burned to the ground and scattered." The other foreigner, Mrs. Riley, nodded.

I wanted to ask what had happened to the graves, but I could not speak. I felt as I had that day when I knew Kai Jing had been killed. Thinking about him caused me to try to remember his face. But I saw more clearly the stones under which he lay. How long had I loved him when he was alive? How long had I grieved for him since he had died?

Mrs. Riley then said: "We 're going to open a school in Peking once we find a building. But now we need to help Miss Grutoff get well, don't we, Ruth?" And she patted Miss Grutoff's hand.

"Anything," we took turns saying. "Of course we'll help. We love Miss Grutoff. She is mother and sister to us all. What can we do?" Mrs. Riley then said Miss Grutoff had to return to the United States to see the doctors in San Francisco. But she would need a helper to accompany her to Hong Kong and then across the ocean.

"Would one of you be willing to go with me? I think we can arrange for a visa."

"We can all go!" GaoLing answered at once.

Miss Grutoff became embarrassed. I could see this. "I wouldn't want to trouble more than one of you," she said. "One is enough, I think." And then she sighed and said she was exhausted. She needed to lie down.

When she left the room, we looked at one another, uncertain how to begin the discussion of who should be the one to help Miss Grutoff. America? Miss Grutoff did not ask this only as a favor. We all knew she was also offering a great opportunity. A visa to America. But only one of us could take it. I thought about this. In my heart, America was the Christian heaven. It was where Kai Jing had gone, where he was waiting for me. I knew this was not actually true, but there was a hope that I could find happiness that had stayed hidden from me. I could leave the old curse, my bad background.

Then I heard GaoLing say, "Teacher Pan should go. He's the oldest, the most experienced." She had jumped in with the first suggestion, so I knew she wanted to go, as well.

"Experienced at what?" he said. "I can't be of much help, I'm afraid. I'm an old man who can't even read and write unless the words are as large and close as my shaky hands. And it would not be proper for a man to accompany a lady. What if she needs help during the night?"

"Sister Yu," GaoLing said. "You go, then. You're smart enough to overcome any obstacle." Another suggestion! GaoLing was desperate to go, to have someone argue that it should be she who went.

"If people don't trample me first," Sister Yu said. "Don't be ridiculous. Besides, I don't want to leave China. To be frank, while I have Christian love for Miss Grutoff and our foreign friends, I don't care to be around other Americans. Civil war or not, I'd rather stay in China."

"Then LuLing should go," GaoLing said.

What could I do? I had to argue: "I could never leave my father-in-law or you."

"No, no, you don't have to keep this old man company," I heard my father-in-law say. "I've been meaning to tell you that I may marry again. Yes, me. I know what you're thinking. The gods are laughing, and so am I."

"But who?" I asked. I could not imagine he had any time to court a woman. He was always at the shop, except when he went on brief errands.

"She lives next door to us, the longtime widow of the man who ran the bookshop."

"Wah! The man who sued my family?" GaoLing said.

"The books were fake," I reminded her. "The man lost the lawsuit, remember?" And then we remembered our manners and congratulated Teacher Pan by asking if she was a good cook, if she had a pleasant face, a kind voice, a family that was not too much trouble. I was happy for him but also glad that I no longer had to argue that I could not go to America.

"Well, it's clear to me LuLing should be the one to go to America with Miss Grutoff," Sister Yu said. "Teacher Pan will soon be bossed around by a new wife, so LuLing has less need to stay."

GaoLing hesitated a moment too long before saying, "Yes, that's the best. It's settled, then."

"What do you mean?" I said, trying to be bighearted. "I can't leave my own sister."

"I'm not even your real sister," GaoLing said. "You go first. Later, you can sponsor me."

"Ah, see! That means you want to go!" I could not help rubbing it in. But now that everything had been decided, I felt I could safely do this.

"I didn't say that," GaoLing said. "I meant only if things change and later I need to come."

"Why don't you go first, and later you can sponsor me? If you stay, that husband of yours will put you under his thumb and grind you to pieces." I was really being generous.

"But I can't leave my sister, any more than she can leave me," GaoLing said.

"Don't argue," I told her, "I'm older than you. You go first, then I'll go to Hong Kong in a month or so and wait for the sponsorship papers to come through."

GaoLing was supposed to argue that she should be the one to wait in Hong Kong. But instead she asked, "Is that how long it takes to sponsor another person? Only one month?"

And though I had no idea how long it took, I said, "Maybe it's even quicker than that." I still thought she was going to agree to wait.

"That fast," GaoLing marveled. "Well, if it's that quick, I might as well go first, but only so I can leave that demon of a husband right away."

Just then Mrs. Riley came back to the room. "We've agreed," Sister Yu announced. "GaoLing will accompany Miss Grutoff to San Francisco."

I was too stunned to say anything. That night, I went over in my head how I had lost my chance. I was angry that GaoLing had tricked me. Then I had sisterly feelings and was glad she was going so she could get away from Fu Nan. Back and forth I went, between these two feelings. Before I fell asleep, I decided this was fate. Now whatever happened, that was my New Destiny.

Three days later, just before we left for Hong Kong, we had a little party. "There's no need for tears and good-byes," I said. "Once we're settled in the new country, we'll invite you all to come visit."

Teacher Pan said that he and his new wife would enjoy that very much, a chance to visit another country before their life was over. Sister Yu said she had heard much about dancing in America. She confessed that she had always wanted to learn how to dance. And for the rest of the evening, which was the last time we ever saw them, we took turns guessing and joking. Miss Grutoff would be healed, then come back to China, where she would make more orphan girls act in more bad plays. GaoLing would be rich, having finally found the right fortune-teller, one who could write with four brushes at once. And I would be a famous painter.

We toasted one another. Soon, maybe in a year or less, Sister Yu and Teacher Pan with his new wife would sail to America for a holiday. Gao-Ling and I would come to the harbor in San Francisco and wait for them in our new automobile, a shiny black one with many comfortable seats and an American driver. Before we drove them to our mansion on top of a hill, we would stop at a ballroom. And to celebrate our reunion, we all agreed, we would dance and dance and dance.

FRAGRANCE

Each night when I returned to the rooming house in Hong Kong, I lay on a cot with wet towels over my chest. The walls were sweating because I couldn't open the windows for fresh air. The building was on a fishy street on the Kowloon side. This was not the part where the fish were sold. There it smelled of the morning sea, salty and sharp. I was living in Kowloon Walled City, along the low point in a wide gutter, where the scales and blood and guts gathered, swept there by the fishmongers' buckets of water at night. When I breathed the air, it was the vapors of death, a choking sour stink that reached like fingers into my stomach and pulled my insides out. Forever in my nose, that is the fragrance of Fragrant Harbor.

The British and other foreigners lived on the Hong Kong Island side. But in Kowloon Walled City, it was almost all Chinese, rich and raggedy, poor and powerful, everyone different, but we all had this in common: We had been strong, we had been weak, we had been desperate enough to leave behind our motherland and families.

And there were also those who made money from people's despair. I went to many blind seers, the wenmipo who claimed they were ghost writers. "I have a message from a baby," they called. "A message from a son." "A husband." "An ancestor who is angry." I sat down with one and she told me, "Your Precious Auntie has already been reincarnated. Go three blocks east, then three blocks north. A beggar girl will cry out to you, 'Auntie, have pity, give me hope.' Then you will know it is she. Give her a coin and the curse will be ended." I did exactly as she said. And on that exact block, a girl said those exact words. I was so overjoyed. Then another girl said those words, another and another, ten, twenty, thirty little girls, all without hope. I gave them coins, just in case. And for each of them, I felt pity. The next day, I saw another blind lady who could talk to ghosts. She also told me where to find Precious Auntie. Go here, go there. The next day was the same. I was using up my savings, but I didn't think it mattered. Soon, any day now, I would leave for America.

After I had lived a month in Hong Kong, I received a letter from Gao-Ling:

"My Own True Sister, Forgive me for not writing you sooner. Teacher Pan sent your address to me, but I did not receive it right away, because I was moving from one church lady's house to another. I'm also sorry to tell you that Miss Grutoff died a week after we arrived. Right before she flew to heaven, she said she made a mistake coming back to America. She wanted to return to China so her bones could rest there, next to Miss Towler's. I was glad to know how much she loved China, and sorry because it was too late to send her back. I went to her funeral, but not too many people knew her. I was the only one who cried, and I said to myself, She was a great lady.

"My other news is not so good, either. I learned I cannot sponsor you, not yet. The truth is, I almost was not able to stay myself. Why we thought it would be so easy, I don't know. I see now we were foolish. We should have asked many more questions. But now I have asked the questions, and I know of several ways for you to come later. How much later depends.

"One way is for you to apply as a refugee. The quota for Chinese, however, is very low, and the number who want to get in is beyond count. To be honest, your chances are like a leak moving against a flood.

"Another way is for me to be a citizen first so I can sponsor you as my sister. You will have to claim that Mother and Father are your real mother and father, since I cannot sponsor a cousin. But as a relative, you would be in a different line, ahead of ordinary refugees. For me to become a citizen, however, means I have to learn English first and get a good job. I promise you I am studying very hard, in case this is the means I have to turn to.

"There is a third way: I can marry a citizen and then become a citizen faster. Of course, it is inconvenient that I am already married to Chang Fu Nan, but I think no one needs to know this. On my visa papers, I did not mention it. Also, you should know that when I applied for the visa, the visa man asked for documents as proof of my birth, and I said, 'Who has documents for such things?' He said, 'Oh, were they burned during the war like everyone else's?' I thought that was the correct answer, so I agreed this was true. When you prepare your visa papers, you must say the same thing. Also make yourself five years younger, born 1921. I already did, born 1922, but in the same month as the old birthday. This will give you extra time to catch up.

"Mother and Father have already written to ask me to send them my extra money. I have had to write back and say I have none. If I do in the future, of course, I will send some to you. I feel so guilty that you insisted I come first and I gave in to your demands. Now it is you who are stuck, not knowing what to do. Don't mistake my meaning. Life here is not so easy. And making money is not like we imagined. All those stories of instant riches, don't believe them. As for dancing, that is only in the movies. Most of the day, I clean houses. I am paid twenty-five cents. That may sound like a lot, but it costs that much to eat dinner. So it is hard to save money. For you, of course, I am willing to starve.

"In his last letter, Father said he almost died of anger when he learned that Fu Nan lost the ink business in Peking. He said Fu Nan has returned to Immortal Heart and is lying around useless, but the Chang father is not being critical, saying Fu Nan is a big war hero, lost two fingers, saved lives. You know what I was thinking when I read that. Most terrible of all, our family still has to supply the inksticks and ink cakes, and we receive none of the profit, only a lesser debt. Everyone has had to take on various home businesses, weaving baskets, mending, doing menial labor that makes Mother complain that we have fallen as low as the tenants. She asks me to hurry and become rich, so I can pull her out of the bowels of hell.

"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 him 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?"

For the next few weeks he popped up like that, every time I left the house. I could not call the police. What could I say? "My brother-in-law who is not really my brother-in-law is following me, asking me for money and the address of my sister who is not my true sister"? And then one day when I stepped outside to go to the market, he was not there. The entire time I was out, I expected I would see him, and I was prepared to be miserable. Nothing. When I returned home, I was puzzled and felt a strange relief. Perhaps he died, I allowed myself to hope. For the next week, I saw no sign of him. I felt no sudden cold breeze. Could it be that my luck had changed? When I opened the next letter from GaoLing, I was convinced this was true.

"I was so angry to hear that Fu Nan has been bothering you," she wrote. "That turtle spawn will stop at nothing to satisfy himself. The only way to get rid of him for a few days is to give him money for his opium. But soon this will no longer be a problem for you. Happy news has ar rived! I have found another way you can come. Do you remember the brothers I told you about-one is studying to be a dentist, the other a doctor? Their family name is Young and the father said a person like you can come if a person like him sponsors you as a Famous Visiting Artist. This is like a tourist with special visiting privileges. The family is very kind to do this, since I am not yet related to them. Of course, I cannot ask them to pay your way. But they have already completed the application and supplied the documents. The next step is for me to earn more money so we can buy the boat passage. In the meantime, you must prepare yourself to leave at any moment. Obtain the boat schedules, have a doctor's examination for parasites…"

I read the long list she provided, and was surprised at how smart she truly was. She knew so much, and I felt like a child now being guided by a worried mother. I was so happy I let tears fall right there as I rode the ferry home. And because I was on the ferry, I did not think to be afraid when I felt a breeze. To me it was a comfort. But then I looked up.

There was Fu Nan. One of his eyes was missing.

I nearly jumped off the boat I was so scared. It was as if I were seeing what would happen to me. "Give me some money," he said.

That night, I put Precious Auntie's picture on a low table and lighted some incense. I asked her forgiveness and that of her father. I said that the gift she had given me would now buy me my freedom and that I hoped she would not be angry with me for this, as well.

The next day, I sold the oracle bone to the second shop I had gone to all those months ago. With my savings as a maid, I had enough money to buy a ticket in steerage. I got the boat schedules and sent GaoLing a telegram. Every few days, I gave Fu Nan money for his habit, enough to put him into dreams. And then finally the visa was approved. I was a Famous Visiting Artist.

I sailed for America, a land without curses or ghosts. By the time I landed, I was five years younger. Yet I felt so old.