The Hundred Secret Senses (5 page)
My mother and father joined the struggle. My uncles, my aunts, my older brothers, nearly everyone over thirteen in Thistle Mountain and from the cities down below. Fifty or sixty thousand people. Peasants and landowners, soup peddlers and teachers, bandits and beggars, and not just Hakkas, but Yaos and Miaos, Zhuang tribes, and even the Puntis who were poor. It was a great moment for Chinese people, all of us coming together like that.
I was left behind in Thistle Mountain to live with my grandmother. We were a pitiful village of scraps, babies and children, the old and the lame, cowards and idiots. Yet we were happy, because just as he had promised, the Heavenly King sent his soldiers to bring us food, more kinds than we could have ever imagined in a hundred years. And the soldiers also brought us stories of great victories: How the Heavenly King had set up his new kingdom in Nanjing. How taels of silver were more plentiful than rice. What fine houses everyone lived in, men in one compound, women in another. What a peaceful life—church on Sunday, no work, only rest and happiness. We were glad to hear that we now lived in a time of Great Peace.
The following year, the soldiers came with rice and salt-cured fish. The next year, it was only rice. More years passed. One day, a man who had once lived in our village returned from Nanjing. He said he was sick to death of Great Peace. When there is great suffering, he said, everyone struggles the same. But when there is peace, no one wants to be the same. The rich no longer share. The less rich envy and steal. In Nanjing, he said, everyone was seeking luxuries, pleasures, the dark places of women. He said the Heavenly King now lived in a fine palace and had many concubines. He allowed his kingdom to be ruled by a man possessed with the Holy Ghost. And General Cape, the man who rallied all the Hakkas to fight, had joined the Manchus and was now a traitor, bound by a Chinese banker’s gold and marriage to his daughter. Too much happiness, said the man who returned, always overflows into tears of sorrow.
We could feel in our stomachs the truth of what this man said. We were hungry. The Heavenly King had forgotten us. Our Western friends had betrayed us. We no longer received food or stories of victory. We were poor. We had no mothers, no fathers, no singing maidens and boys. We were bitter cold in the wintertime.
The next morning, I left my village and went down the mountain. I was fourteen, old enough to make my own way in life. My grandmother had died the year before, but her ghost didn’t stop me. It was the ninth day of the ninth month, I remember this, a day when Chinese people were supposed to climb the heights, not descend from them, a day for honoring ancestors, a day that the God Worshippers ignored to prove they abided by a Western calendar of fifty-two Sundays and not the sacred days of the Chinese almanac. So I walked down the mountain, then through the valleys between the mountains. I no longer knew what I should believe, whom I could trust. I decided I would wait for a sign, see what happened.
I arrived at the city by the river, the one called Jintian. To those Hakka people I met, I said I was Nunumu. But they didn’t know who the Bandit Maiden was. She was not famous in Jintian. The Hakkas there didn’t admire my eye that a ghost horse had knocked out. They pitied me. They put an old rice ball into my palm and tried to make me a half-blind beggar. But I refused to become what people thought I should be.
So I wandered around the city again, thinking about what work I might do to earn my own food. I saw Cantonese people who cut the horns off toes, Yaos who pulled teeth, Puntis who pierced needles into swollen legs. I knew nothing about drawing money out of the rotten parts of other people’s bodies. I continued walking until I was beside the low bank of a wide river. I saw Hakka fishermen tossing big nets into the water from little boats. But I had no nets, no little boat. I did not know how to think like a fast, sly fish.
Before I could decide what to do, I heard people along the riverbank shouting. Foreigners had arrived! I ran to the dock and watched two Chinese
kuli
boatmen, one young, one old, walking down a narrow plank, carrying boxes and crates and trunks from a large boat. And then I saw the foreigners themselves, standing on the deck—three, four, five of them, all in dull black clothes, except for the smallest one, who had clothing and hair the shiny brown of a tree-eating beetle. That was Miss Banner, but of course I didn’t know it at the time. My one eye watched them all. Their five pairs of foreign eyes were on the young and old boatmen balancing their way down the long, thin gangplank. On the shoulders of the boatmen were two poles, and in the saggy middle a large trunk hung from twisted ropes. Suddenly, the shiny brown foreigner ran down the plank—who knew why?—to warn the men, to ask them to be more careful. And just as suddenly, the plank began to bounce, the trunk began to swing, the men began to sway, and the five foreigners on the boat began to shout. Back and forth, up and down—our eyes leapt as we watched those boatmen clenching their muscles and the shiny foreigner flapping her arms like a baby bird. In the next moment, the older man, at the bottom of the plank, gave one sharp cry—I heard the crack, saw his shoulder bone sticking out. Then two
kuli
s, one trunk, and a shiny-clothed foreigner fell with great splashes into the water below.
I ran to the river edge. The younger
kuli
had already swum to shore. Two fishermen in a small boat were chasing the contents that had spilled out of the trunk, bright clothing that billowed like sails, feathered hats that floated like ducks, long gloves that raked the water like the fingers of a ghost. But nobody was trying to help the injured boatman or the shiny foreigner. The other foreigners would not; they were afraid to walk down the plank. The Punti people on the shore would not; if they interfered with fate, they would be responsible for those two people’s undrowned lives. But I didn’t think this way. I was a Hakka. The Hakkas were God Worshippers. And the God Worshippers were fishers of men. So I grabbed one of the bamboo poles that had fallen in the water. I ran along the bank and stuck this out, letting the ropes dangle downstream. The
kuli
and the foreigner grabbed them with their eager hands. And with all my strength, I pulled them in.
Right after that the Punti people pushed me aside. They left the injured boatman on the ground, gasping and cursing. That was Lao Lu, who later became the gatekeeper, since with a broken shoulder he could no longer work as a
kuli.
As for Miss Banner, the Puntis dragged her higher onto the shore, where she vomited, then cried. When the foreigners finally came down from the boat, the Puntis crowded around them, shouting, “Give us money.” One of the foreigners threw small coins on the ground, and the Puntis flocked like birds to devour them, then scattered away.
The foreigners loaded Miss Banner in one cart, the broken boatman in another. They loaded three more carts with their boxes and crates and trunks. And as they made their way to the mission house in Changmian, I ran behind. So that’s how all three of us went to live in the same house. Our three different fates had flowed together in that river, and became as tangled and twisted as a drowned woman’s hair.
It was like this: If Miss Banner had not bounced on the plank, Lao Lu never would have broken his shoulder. If his shoulder had not broken, Miss Banner never would have almost drowned. If I hadn’t saved Miss Banner from drowning, she never would have been sorry for breaking Lao Lu’s shoulder. If I hadn’t saved Lao Lu, he never would have told Miss Banner what I had done. If Miss Banner hadn’t known this, she never would have asked me to be her companion. If I hadn’t become her companion, she wouldn’t have lost the man she loved.
THE GHOST MERCHANT
’
S HOUSE
was in Changmian, and Changmian was also in Thistle Mountain, but north of my village. From Jintian it was a half-day’s journey. But with so many trunks and moaning people in carts, we took twice as long. I learned later that
Changmian
means “never-ending songs.” Behind the village, higher into the mountains, were many caves, hundreds. And when the wind blew, the mouths of the caves would sing
wu! wu!—
just like the voices of sad ladies who have lost sons.
That’s where I stayed for the last six years of my life—in that house. I lived with Miss Banner, Lao Lu, and the missionaries—two ladies, two gentlemen, Jesus Worshippers from England. I didn’t know this at the time. Miss Banner told me many months later, when we could speak to each other in a common tongue. She said the missionaries had sailed to Macao, preached there a little while, then sailed to Canton, preached there another little while. That’s also where they met Miss Banner. Around this time, a new treaty came out saying the foreigners could live anywhere in China they pleased. So the missionaries floated inland to Jintian, using West River. And Miss Banner was with them.
The mission was a large compound, with one big courtyard in the middle, then four smaller ones, one big fancy main house, then three smaller ones. In between were covered passageways to connect everything together. And all around was a high wall, cutting off the inside from the outside. No one had lived in that place for more than a hundred years. Only foreigners would stay in a house that was cursed. They said they didn’t believe in Chinese ghosts.
Local people told Lao Lu, “Don’t live there. It’s haunted by fox-spirits.” But Lao Lu said he was not afraid of anything. He was a Cantonese
kuli
descended from ten generations of
kuli
s! He was strong enough to work himself to death, smart enough to find the answer to whatever he wanted to know. For instance, if you asked him how many pieces of clothing did the foreign ladies own, he wouldn’t guess and say maybe two dozen each. He would go into the ladies’ rooms when they were eating, and he would count each piece, never stealing any, of course. Miss Banner, he told me, had two pairs of shoes, six pairs of gloves, five hats, three long costumes, two pairs of black stockings, two pairs of white stockings, two pairs of white undertrousers, one umbrella, and seven other things that may have been clothing, but he could not determine which parts of the body they were supposed to cover.
Through Lao Lu, I quickly learned many things about the foreigners. Only later did he tell me why local people thought the house was cursed. Many years before, it had been a summer mansion, owned by a merchant who died in a mysterious and awful way. Then his wives died, four of them, one by one, also in mysterious and awful ways, youngest first, oldest last, all of this happening from one full moon to the next.
Like Lao Lu, I was not easily scared. But I must tell you, Libby-ah, what happened there five years later made me believe the Ghost Merchant had come back.
E
ver since we separated, Simon and I have been having a custody spat over Bubba,
my
dog. Simon wants visitation rights, weekend walks. I don’t want to deny him the privilege of picking up Bubba’s poop. But I hate his cavalier attitude about dogs. Simon likes to walk Bubba off leash. He lets him romp through the trails of the Presidio, along the sandy dog run by Crissy Field, where the jaws of a pit bull, a rottweiler, even a mad cocker spaniel could readily bite a three-pound Yorkie-chihuahua in half.
This evening, we were at Simon’s apartment, sorting through a year’s worth of receipts for the free-lance business we haven’t yet divided. For the sake of tax deductions, we decided “married filing joint return” should still apply.
“Bubba’s a dog,” Simon said. “He has the right to run free once in a while.”
“Yeah, and get himself killed. Remember what happened to Sarge?”
Simon rolled his eyes, his look of “Not that again.” Sarge had been Kwan’s dog, a scrappy Pekingese-Maltese that challenged any male dog on the street. About five years ago, Simon took him for a walk—off leash—and Sarge tore open the nose of a boxer. The owner of the boxer presented Kwan with an eight-hundred-dollar veterinary bill. I insisted Simon should pay. Simon said the boxer’s owner should, since his dog had provoked the attack. Kwan squabbled with the animal hospital over each itemized charge.
“What if Bubba runs into a dog like Sarge?” I said.
“The boxer started it,” Simon said flatly.
“Sarge was a vicious dog! You were the one who let him off leash, and Kwan ended up paying the vet bill!”
“What do you mean? The boxer’s owner paid.”
“Oh no, he didn’t. Kwan just said that so you wouldn’t feel bad. I told you that, remember?”
Simon twisted his mouth to the side, a grimace of his that always preceded a statement of doubt. “I don’t remember that,” he said.
“Of course you don’t! You remember what you
want
to remember.”
Simon sneered. “Oh, and I suppose you don’t?” Before I could respond, he held up his hand, palm out, to stop me. “I know, I know.
You
have an indelible memory!
You
can never forget a thing! Well, let me tell you, your recollection of every last detail has nothing to do with memory. It’s called holding a goddamn grudge.”
WHAT SIMON SAID
has annoyed me all night long. Am I really the kind of person who hangs on to resentments? No, Simon was being defensive, throwing back barbs. Can I help it if I was born with a knack for remembering all sorts of things?
Aunt Betty was the first person to tell me I had a photographic memory; her comment made me believe I would grow up to be a photographer. She said this because I once corrected her in front of a bunch of people on her account of a movie we had all seen together. Now that I’ve been making my living behind the camera lens for the last fifteen years, I don’t know what people mean by photographic memory. How I remember the past isn’t like flipping through an indiscriminate pile of snapshots. It’s more selective than that.
If someone asked me what my address was when I was seven years old, the numbers wouldn’t flash before my eyes. I’d have to relive a specific moment: the heat of the day, the smell of the cut lawn, the slap-slap-slap of rubber thongs against my heels. Then once again I’d be walking up the two steps of the poured-concrete porch, reaching into the black mailbox, heart pounding, fingers grasping— Where is it? Where’s that stupid letter from Art Linkletter, inviting me to be on his show? But I wouldn’t give up hope. I’d think to myself, Maybe I’m at the wrong address. But no, there they are, the brass numbers above, 3-6-2-4, complete with tarnish and rust around the screws.
That’s what I remember most, not addresses but pain—that old lump-in-the-throat conviction that the world had fingered me for abuse and neglect. Is that the same as a grudge? I wanted so much to be a guest on
Kids Say the Darndest Things.
It was the kiddie route to fame, and I wanted once again to prove to my mother that I was special, in spite of Kwan. I wanted to snub the neighborhood kids, to make them mad that I was having more fun than they would ever know. While riding my bicycle around and around the block, I’d plot what I’d say when I was finally invited to be on the show. I’d tell Mr. Linkletter about Kwan, just the funny stuff—like the time she said she loved the movie
Southern Pacific.
Mr. Linkletter would raise his eyebrows and round his mouth. “Olivia,” he’d say, “doesn’t your sister mean
South
Pacific?” Then people in the audience would slap their knees and roar with laughter, and I’d glow with childish wonder and a cute expression.
Old Art always figured kids were so sweet and naive they didn’t know they were saying embarrassing things. But all those kids on the show knew precisely what they were doing. Why else didn’t they ever mention the
real
secrets—how they played night-night nurse and dickie doctor, how they stole gum, gunpowder caps, and muscle magazines from the corner Mexican store. I knew kids who did those things. They were the same ones who once pinned down my arms and peed on me, laughing and shouting, “Olivia’s sister is a retard.” They sat on me until I started crying, hating Kwan, hating myself.
To soothe me, Kwan took me to the Sweet Dreams Shoppe. We were sitting outside, licking cones of rocky road ice cream. Captain, the latest mutt my mother had rescued from the pound, whom Kwan had named, was lying at our feet, vigilantly waiting for drips.
“Libby-ah,” Kwan said, “what this word, lee-tahd?”
“Reee-tard,” I corrected, lingering over the word. I was still angry with Kwan and the neighbor kids. I took another tongue stab of ice cream, thinking of retarded things Kwan had done. “Retard means
fan-tou
,” I said. “You know, a stupid person who doesn’t understand anything.” She nodded. “Like saying the wrong things at the wrong time,” I added. She nodded again. “When kids laugh at you and you don’t know why.”
Kwan was quiet for the longest time, and the inside of my chest began to feel tickly and uncomfortable. Finally she said in Chinese: “Libby-ah, you think this word is me,
retard
? Be honest.”
I kept licking the drips running down the side of my cone, avoiding her stare. I noticed that Captain was also watching me attentively. The tickly feeling grew, until I let out a huge sigh and grumbled, “Not really.” Kwan grinned and patted my arm, which just about drove me crazy. “Captain,” I shouted. “Bad dog! Stop begging!” The dog cowered.
“Oh, he not begging,” Kwan said in a happy voice. “Only hoping.” She petted his rump, then held her cone above the dog’s head. “Talk English!” Captain sneezed a couple of times, then let go with a low
wuff.
She allowed him a lick.
“Jang Zhongwen!
Talk Chinese!” Two high-pitched yips followed. She gave him another lick, then another, sweet-talking him in Chinese. And it annoyed me to see this, how any dumb thing could make her and the dog instantly happy.
Later that same night Kwan asked me again about what those kids had said. She pestered me so much I thought she really was retarded.
L
ibby-ah, are you sleeping? Okay, sorry, sorry, go back to sleep, it’s not important. . . . I only wanted to ask you again about this word,
retard.
Ah, but you’re sleeping now, maybe tomorrow, after you come home from school. . . .
Funny, I was thinking how I once thought Miss Banner was this way,
retard.
She didn’t understand anything. . . . Libby-ah, did you know I taught Miss Banner to talk? Libby-ah? Sorry, sorry, go back to sleep, then.
It’s true, though. I was her teacher. When I first met her, her speech was like a baby’s! Sometimes I laughed, I couldn’t help it. But she did not mind. The two of us had a good time saying the wrong things all the time. We were like two actors at a temple fair, using our hands, our eyebrows, the fast twist of our feet to show each other what we meant. That’s how she told me about her life before she came to China. What I thought she said was this:
She was born to a family who lived in a village far, far west of Thistle Mountain, across a tumbling sea. It was past the country where black people live, beyond the land of English soldiers and Portuguese sailors. Her family village was bigger than all these lands put together. Her father owned many ships that crossed this sea to other lands. In these lands, he gathered money that grew like flowers, and the smell of this money made many people happy.
When Miss Banner was five, her two little brothers chased a chicken into a dark hole. They fell all the way to the other side of the world. Naturally, the mother wanted to find them. Before the sun came up and after the sun came down, she puffed out her neck like a rooster and called for her lost sons. After many years, the mother found the same hole in the earth, climbed in, and then she too fell all the way to the other side of the world.
The father told Miss Banner, We must search for our lost family. So they sailed across the tumbling sea. First they stopped at a noisy island. Her father took her to live in a large palace ruled by tiny people who looked like Jesus. While her father was in the fields picking more flower-money, the little Jesuses threw stones at her and cut off her long hair. Two years later, when her father returned, he and Miss Banner sailed to another island, this one ruled by mad dogs. Again he put Miss Banner in a large palace and went off to pick more flower-money. While he was gone, the dogs chased Miss Banner and tore at her dress. She ran around the island, searching for her father. She met an uncle instead. She and this uncle sailed to a place in China where many foreigners lived. She did not find her family there. One day, as she and the uncle lay in bed, the uncle became hot and cold at the same time, rose up in the air, then fell into the sea. Lucky for her, Miss Banner met another uncle, a man with many guns. He took her to Canton, where foreigners also lived. Every night, the uncle laid his guns on the bed and made her polish them before she could sleep. One day, this man cut off a piece of China, one with many fine temples. He sailed home on this floating island, gave the temples to his wife, the island to his king. Miss Banner met a third uncle, a Yankee, also with many guns. But this one combed her hair. He fed her peaches. She loved this uncle very much. One night, many Hakka men burst into their room and took her uncle away. Miss Banner ran to the Jesus Worshippers for help. They said, Fall on your knees. So she fell on her knees. They said, Pray. So she prayed. Then they took her inland to Jintian, where she fell in the water and prayed to be saved. That’s when I saved her.
Later on, as Miss Banner learned more Chinese words, she told me about her life again, and because what I heard was now different, what I saw in my mind was different too. She was born in America, a country beyond Africa, beyond England and Portugal. Her family village was near a big city called
Nu Ye,
sounds like Cow Moon. Maybe this was New York. A company called Russia or Russo owned those ships, not her father. He was a clerk. The shipping company bought opium in India— those were the flowers—then sold it in China, spreading a dreaming sickness among Chinese people.
When Miss Banner was five, her little brothers did not chase chickens into a hole, they died of chicken pox and were buried in their backyard. And her mother did not puff her neck out like a rooster. Her throat swelled up and she died of a goiter disease and was buried next to her sons. After this tragedy, Miss Banner’s father took her to India, which was not ruled by little Jesuses. She went to a school for Jesus-worshipping children from England, and they were not holy but naughty and wild. Later, her father took her to Malacca, which was not ruled by dogs. She was talking about another school, where the children were also English and even more disobedient than the ones in India. Her father sailed off to buy more opium in India but never returned—why, she did not know, so she grew many kinds of sadness in her heart. Now she had no father, no money, no home. When she was still a young maiden, she met a man who took her to Macao. Lots of mosquitoes in Macao; he died of malaria there and was buried at sea. Then she lived with another man, this one an English captain. He helped the Manchus, fought the God Worshippers, earned big money for each city he captured. Later, he sailed home, bearing many looted temple treasures for England and his wife. Miss Banner then went to live with another soldier, a Yankee. This one, she said, helped the God Worshippers, fought against the Manchus, also earned money by looting the cities he and the God Worshippers burned to the ground. These three men, Miss Banner told me, were not her uncles.
I said to her, “Miss Banner-ah, this is good news. Sleeping in the same bed with your uncles is not good for your aunts.” She laughed. So you see, by this time, we could laugh together because we understood each other very well. By this time, the calluses on my feet had been exchanged for an old pair of Miss Banner’s tight leather shoes. But before this happened, I had to teach her how to talk.
To begin, I told her my name was Nunumu. She called me Miss Moo. We used to sit in the courtyard and I would teach her the names of things, as if she were a small child. And just like a small child, she learned eagerly, quickly. Her mind wasn’t rusted shut to new ideas. She wasn’t like the Jesus Worshippers, whose tongues were creaky old wheels following the same grooves. She had an unusual memory, extraordinarily good. Whatever I said, it went in her ear then out her mouth.
I taught her to point to and call out the five elements that make up the physical world: metal, wood, water, fire, earth.
I taught her what makes the world a living place: sunrise and sunset, heat and cold, dust and heat, dust and wind, dust and rain.
I taught her what is worth listening to in this world: wind, thunder, horses galloping in the dust, pebbles falling in water. I taught her what is frightening to hear: fast footsteps at night, soft cloth slowly ripping, dogs barking, the silence of crickets.