"The photo Mom has of Precious Auntie?"
"Must be the same. The old lady said it was sad, because soon after the photo was taken, the girl was scarred for life, the father was dead, the whole family destroyed. People in the village said the girl was jinxed from the beginning-"
Ruth couldn't stand it any longer. "What was the name?"
"Gu."
"Gu?" Ruth felt let down. It was the same mistake. " Gu is the word for 'bone,'" Ruth said. "She must have thought 'bone doctor' meant 'Dr. Bone.'"
"No, no," GaoLing said. "Gu as in 'gorge.' It's a different gu. It sounds the same as the bone gu, but it's written a different way. The third-tone gu can mean many things: 'old,' 'gorge,' 'bone,' also 'thigh,' 'blind,' 'grain,' 'merchant,' lots of things. And the way 'bone' is written can also stand for 'character.' That's why we use that expression 'It's in your bones.' It means, 'That's your character.'"
Ruth had once thought that Chinese was limited in its sounds and thus confusing. It seemed to her now that its multiple meanings made it very rich. The blind bone doctor from the gorge repaired the thigh of the old grain merchant.
"You're sure it's Gu?"
"That's what was written on the photographic plate."
"Did it include her first name?"
"Liu Xin."
"Shooting Star?"
"That's liu xing, sounds almost the same, xing is 'star,' xin is 'truth.' Liu Xin means Remain True. But because the words sound similar, some people who didn't like her called her Liu Xing. The shooting star can have a bad meaning."
"Why?"
"It's confusing why. People think the broom star is very bad to see. That's the other kind, with the long, slow tail, the comes-around kind."
"Comet?"
"Yes, comet. Comet means a rare calamity will happen. But some people mix up the broom star with the shooting star, so even though the shooting star is not bad luck, people think it is. The idea is not so good either-burns up quick, one day here, one day gone, just like what happened to Precious Auntie."
Her mother had written about this, Ruth recalled, a story Precious Auntie told LuLing when she was small-how she looked up at the night sky, saw a shooting star, which then fell into her open mouth.
Ruth began to cry. Her grandmother had a name. Gu Liu Xin. She had existed. She still existed. Precious Auntie belonged to a family. LuLing belonged to that same family, and Ruth belonged to them both. The family name had been there all along, like a bone stuck in the crevices of a gorge. LuLing had divined it while looking at an oracle in the museum. And the given name had flashed before her as well for the briefest of moments, a shooting star that entered the earth's atmosphere, etching itself indelibly in Ruth's mind.
EPILOGUE
It is the twelfth of August and Ruth is in the Cubbyhole, silent. Foghorns blow in the night, welcoming ships into the bay.
Ruth still has her voice. Her ability to speak is not governed by curses or shooting stars or illness. She knows that for certain now. But she does not need to talk. She can write. Before, she never had a reason to write for herself, only for others. Now she has that reason.
The picture of her grandmother is in front of her. Ruth looks at it daily. Through it, she can see from the past clear into the present. Could her grandmother ever have imagined she would have a granddaughter like her-a woman who has a husband who loves her, two girls who adore her, a house she co-owns, dear friends, a life with only the usual worries about leaks and calories?
Ruth remembers how her mother used to talk of dying, by curse or her own hand. She never stopped feeling the urge, not until she began to lose her mind, the memory web that held her woes in place. And though her mother still remembers the past, she has begun to change it. She doesn't recount the sad parts. She only recalls being loved very, very much. She remembers that to Bao Bomu she was the reason for life itself.
The other day Ruth's mother called her. She sounded like her old self, scared and fretful. "Luyi," she said, and she spoke quickly in Chinese, "I'm worried that I did terrible things to you when you were a child, that I hurt you very much. But I can't remember what I did…"
"There's nothing-" Ruth began.
"I just wanted to say that I hope you can forget just as I've forgotten. I hope you can forgive me, because if I hurt you, I'm sorry."
After they hung up, Ruth cried for an hour she was so happy. It was not too late for them to forgive each other and themselves.
As Ruth now stares at the photo, she thinks about her mother as a little girl, about her grandmother as a young woman. These are the women who shaped her life, who are in her bones. They caused her to question whether the order and disorder of her life were due to fate or luck, self-determination or the actions of others. They taught her to worry. But she has also learned that these warnings were passed down, not simply to scare her, but to force her to avoid their footsteps, to hope for something better. They wanted her to get rid of the curses.
In the Cubbyhole, Ruth returns to the past. The laptop becomes a sand tray. Ruth is six years old again, the same child, her broken arm healed, her other hand holding a chopstick, ready to divine the words. Bao Bomu comes, as always, and sits next to her. Her face is smooth, as beautiful as it is in the photo. She grinds an inkstick into an inkstone of duan.
"Think about your intentions," Bao Bomu says. "What is in your heart, what you want to put in others'." And side by side, Ruth and her grandmother begin. Words flow. They have become the same person, six years old, sixteen, forty-six, eighty-two. They write about what happened, why it happened, how they can make other things happen. They write stories of things that are but should not have been. They write about what could have been, what still might be. They write of a past that can be changed. After all, Bao Bomu says, what is the past but what we choose to remember? They can choose not to hide it, to take what's broken, to feel the pain and know that it will heal. They know where happiness lies, not in a cave or a country, but in love and the freedom to give and take what has been there all along.
Ruth remembers this as she writes a story. It is for her grandmother, for herself, for the little girl who became her mother.
About the Author
Amy Tan is the author of The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God's Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, and two children's books, The Moon Lady and The Chinese Siamese Cat, which will be adapted as a PBS series for children. Tan was a co-producer and co-screenwriter of the film version of The Joy Luck Club, and her essays and stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. Her work has been translated into more than twenty-five languages. Tan, who has a master's degree in linguistics from San Jose State University, has worked as a language specialist to programs serving children with developmental disabilities. She lives with her husband in San Francisco and New York.
