The Bonesetter's Daughter Part 11

Over the following days, Ruth anguished over whether her mother had told Auntie Gal what she had read in Ruth's diary, why she had jumped out the window. She searched Auntie Gal's face for signs that she knew. She a.n.a.lyzed every word she said. But Ruth could not detect any anger or disappointment or false pity in how Auntie Gal spoke. Her mother was just as puzzling. She acted not angry but sad and defeated. There was less less of something-but what was that? Love? Worry? There was a dullness in her mother's eyes, as if she did not care what was in front of her. All was equal, all was unimportant. What did that mean? Why didn't she want to fight anymore? LuLing accepted the bowls of rice porridge Ruth brought her. She drank her tea. They spoke, but the words were about meaningless facts, nothing that could lead to disputes or misunderstanding. of something-but what was that? Love? Worry? There was a dullness in her mother's eyes, as if she did not care what was in front of her. All was equal, all was unimportant. What did that mean? Why didn't she want to fight anymore? LuLing accepted the bowls of rice porridge Ruth brought her. She drank her tea. They spoke, but the words were about meaningless facts, nothing that could lead to disputes or misunderstanding.

"I'm going to school now," Ruth would say.

"You have lunch money?"

"Yeah. You need more tea?"

"No more."

And each day, several times a day, Ruth wanted to tell her mother that she was sorry, that she was an evil girl, that everything was her fault. But to do so would be to acknowledge what her mother obviously wanted to pretend never existed, those words Ruth had written. For weeks, they walked on tiptoe, careful not to step on the broken pieces.

On her sixteenth birthday, Ruth came home from school and found her mother had bought some of her favorite foods: the sticky rice wrapped in lotus leaves, both kinds, one with meat filling, one with sweet red-bean paste, as well as a Chinese sponge cake stuffed with strawberries and whipped cream. "Cannot cook you better things," LuLing said. Her right side was still supported in a sling, and she could not lift anything with that arm. It was hard enough for her to haul bags of groceries from the market with her left hand. Ruth saw these offerings as a gesture of forgiveness.

"I like this stuff," Ruth said politely. "It's great."

"No time buy gift," her mother mumbled. "But I find some things, maybe you still like." She pointed to the coffee table. Ruth slowly walked over and picked up a lumpy package that was clumsily wrapped in tissue paper and tape, no ribbon. Inside she found a black book and a tiny purse of red silk, fastened with a miniature frog clasp. And within the purse was a ring Ruth had always coveted, with a thin gold band and two oval pieces of apple-green jade. It had been a gift from Ruth's father, who had received it from his mother to give to his future bride. Her mother never wore it. GaoLing had once hinted that the ring should belong to her, so it could be pa.s.sed along to her son, who was also the only grandson. Forever after, LuLing brought up the ring in the context of that greedy remark of her sister's.

"Wow, wow, wow." Ruth stared at the ring in her palm.

"This is very good jade, don't loose," her mother warned.

"I won't lose it." Ruth slid the ring onto her middle finger. Too small for that one, but it did fit her ring finger.

Finally Ruth looked at the other gift. It was a pocket-sized book with black leather covers, a red ribbon for a place marker.

"You holding backward," her mother said, and flipped it so the back was the front but facing the wrong way. She turned the pages for Ruth, left to right. Everything was in Chinese. "Chinese Bible," her mother said. She opened it to a page with another place marker, a sepia-toned photograph of a young Chinese woman.

"This my mother." LuLing's voice sounded strangled. "See? I make copy for you." She pulled out a wax-paper sleeve with a duplicate of the photograph.

Ruth nodded, sensing this was important, that her mother was giving her a message about mothers. She tried to pay attention and not look at the ring on her finger. But she could not help imagining what the kids at school would say, how envious they would be.

"When I little-girl time, hold this Bible here." LuLing patted her chest. "Sleep time, think about my mother."

Ruth nodded. "She was pretty then." Ruth had seen other photos of LuLing and GaoLing's mother-Waipo is what Ruth called her. In those, Waipo had a doughy face with wrinkles as deep as cracks and a mouth as severe, straight, and lipless as a sword slash. LuLing slipped the pretty picture into the Bible, then held one hand, palm up. "Now give back."

"What?"

"Ring. Give back."

Ruth didn't understand. Reluctantly she put the ring in LuLing's hand and watched as she returned it to the silk purse.

"Some things too good use right now. Save for later, 'predate more."

Ruth wanted to cry out, "No! You can't do that! It's my my birthday present." birthday present."

But she said nothing, of course. She stood by, her throat tightening, as LuLing went to her vinyl easy chair. She pulled up the bottom cushion. Underneath was a cutting board, and beneath that a flap, which she lifted. Into this shallow cavern, her mother placed the Bible and the ring in its purse. So that's where she also hid things!

"Someday I give you forever."

Someday? Ruth's throat ached. She wanted to cry. "When's forever?" But she knew what her mother meant-forever as in, "When I forever dead, then you don't need listen me anymore." Ruth was a mix of emotions, happy that her mother had given her such nice presents, because this meant she still loved her, yet filled with a new despair that the ring had been taken away so soon.

The next day, Ruth went to the easy chair, pulled back the cushion and cutting board, then reached her hand into the hollow to feel for the silk purse. She extracted the ring and looked at it, now a forbidden object. She felt as if she had swallowed it and it was caught in her throat. Maybe her mother had shown her the ring just to torture her. That was probably it. Her mother knew exactly how to make her miserable! Well, Ruth would not let her have the satisfaction. She would pretend she didn't care. She would force herself never to look at the ring again, to act as though it did not exist.

A few days after that, LuLing came into Ruth's room, accusing her of having gone to the beach. When Ruth lied and said she had not, LuLing showed Ruth the sneakers she had left by the front door. She banged them together and a storm of sand rained down.

"That's from the sidewalk!" Ruth protested.

And so the rights continued, and felt to Ruth both strange and familiar. They argued with increasing vigor and a.s.surance, crossing the temporary boundaries of the last month, defending the old terrain. They flung out more pain, knowing already they had survived the worst.

Later, Ruth debated over throwing away her diary. She retrieved the dreaded book, still in the back of her underwear drawer. She turned the pages, reading here and there, weeping for herself. There was truth in what she had written, she believed, some of it, at least. There was a part of her in these pages that she did not want to forget. But when she arrived at the final entry, she was stricken with a sense that G.o.d, her mother, and Precious Auntie knew that she had committed near-murder. She carefully crossed out the last sentences, running her ballpoint pen over and over the words until everything was a blur of black ink. On the next page, the last page, she wrote: "I'm sorry. Sometimes I just wish you would say you're sorry too."

Though she could never show her mother those words, it felt good to write them. She was being truthful and neither good nor bad. She then tried to think of a place where her mother would never find her diary. She climbed onto the kitchen counter and stretched her arm way up and tossed the diary on top of the cabinet, so far out of reach that she too forgot about it over time.

Ruth now reflected that in all the years gone by, she and her mother had never talked about what had happened. She put down the diary. Forever did not mean what it once had. Forever was what changed inevitably over time. She felt a curious sympathy for her younger self, as well as an embarra.s.sed hindsight in how foolish and egocentric she had been. If she had had a child, it would have been a daughter who grew up to make her just as miserable as she had made her mother. That daughter would have been fifteen or sixteen right about now, shouting that she hated Ruth. She wondered whether her mother had ever told her own mother that she hated her.

At that moment, she thought of the photos they had looked at during the Moon Festival dinner. Her mother had been around fifteen in the photo with Auntie Gal and Waipo. And there was another photo, the one of Precious Auntie, whom LuLing had mistakenly identified as her mother. A thought ran through her mind: The photo her mother kept in the Bible. She had also said that was her mother. Who was in that picture?

Ruth went to the vinyl chair, removed the cushion and the cutting board. Everything was still there: the small black Bible, the silk pouch, the apple-green-jade ring. She opened the Bible, and there it was, the wax-paper sleeve with the same photo her mother had shown her at the family reunion dinner. Precious Auntie, wearing the peculiar headdress and high-collared winter clothes. What did this mean? Was her mother demented thirty years before? Or was Precious Auntie really who her mother said she was? And if she was, did that mean her mother was not not demented? Ruth stared at the photo again, searching the features of the woman. She couldn't tell. demented? Ruth stared at the photo again, searching the features of the woman. She couldn't tell.

What else was in the bottom of the chair? Ruth reached in and pulled out a package wrapped in a brown grocery bag and tied with red Christmas ribbon. Inside was a stack of paper, all written on in Chinese. At the top of certain sheets was a large character done in stylish brushed-drawn calligraphy. She had seen this before. But where? When?

And then it came to her. The other pages, the ones buried in her bottom right-hand desk drawer. "Truth," she recalled the top of that first page read. "These are the things I know are true." What did the next sentences say? The names of the dead, the secrets they took with them. What secrets? She sensed her mother's life was at stake and the answer was in her hands, had been there all along.

She looked at the top page of this new stack in her hands, the large calligraphed character. She could hear her mother scolding her, "Should study harder." Yes, she should have. The large character was familiar, a curved bottom, three marks over it-heart! And the first sentence, it was like the beginning of the page she had at home. "These are the things I-" And then it was different. The next word was And the first sentence, it was like the beginning of the page she had at home. "These are the things I-" And then it was different. The next word was ying-gai, ying-gai, "should." Her mother used that a lot. The next, that was "should." Her mother used that a lot. The next, that was bu, bu, another word her mother often said. And the one after that... she didn't know. "These are the things I should not-" Ruth guessed what the next word might be: "These are the things I should not another word her mother often said. And the one after that... she didn't know. "These are the things I should not-" Ruth guessed what the next word might be: "These are the things I should not tell." tell." "These are the things I should not "These are the things I should not write write." "These are the things I should not speak speak." She went into her bedroom, to a shelf where her mother kept an English-Chinese dictionary. She looked up the characters for "tell," "write," "speak," but they did not match her mother's writing. She feverishly looked up more words, and ten minutes later, there it was: "These are the things I should not forget."

Her mother had given her those other pages-what?-five or six years before. Had she written these at the same time? Did she know then that she was losing her memory? When did her mother intend to give her these pages, if ever? When she eventually gave her the ring to keep? When it was clear that Ruth was ready to pay attention? Ruth scanned the next few characters. But nothing except the one for "I" looked familiar, and there were ten thousand words that could follow "I." Now what?

Ruth lay down on the bed, the pages next to her. She looked at the photo of Precious Auntie and put that on her chest. Tomorrow she would call Art in Hawaii and see if he could recommend someone who could translate. That was One. She would retrieve the other pages from home. That was Two. She would call Auntie Gal and see what she knew. That was Three. And she would ask her mother to tell her about her life. For once, she would ask. She would listen. She would sit down and not be in a hurry or have anything else to do. She would even move in with her mother, spend more time getting to know her. Art would not be too happy about that. He might take her moving out as a sign of problems. But someone had to take care of her mother. And she wanted to. She wanted to be here, as her mother told her about her life, taking her through all the detours of the past, explaining the multiple meanings of Chinese words, how to translate her heart. Her hands would always be full, and finally, she and her mother could both stop counting.

PART TWO.

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, Watch now, Doggie, she ordered, and drew the character for "heart": 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. 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: 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? 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. 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 coa.r.s.e 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 doc.u.ments. Those important doc.u.ments 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 gla.s.s 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, ca.s.sia, 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 sh.e.l.l 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 b.u.mped 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 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 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 mu of land grew smaller and smaller and the cliff crept closer to the back of our house. 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, "G.o.ddess 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, Constipated, Precious Auntie once explained to me. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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 G.o.ds. 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 G.o.ds.

"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 G.o.ds 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. 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 pa.s.sed 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, pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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. 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 G.o.ds. 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, 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. 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 sh.e.l.ls 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 ceremony 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, 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. 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 pa.s.sed 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, When the ears grow soft and flatten against the head, she once told me, she once told me, then it's too late. A few seconds later, the last breath hisses out. The body turns cold. 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. 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 beensoaked 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. 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. 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, This is my true story, she told me, she told me, and yours as well. and yours as well. Out of spite, I did not read most of those pages. But when I did, this is what I learned. Out of spite, I did not read most of those pages. But when I did, this is what I learned.