Amy Tan - The Hundred Secret Senses

Libby-ah, Libby-ah? Can I turn on the light? I want to show you something. …

Okay, okay! Don’t get mad! I’m sorry. I’m turning it off. See? It’s dark again. Go back to sleep. … I was going to show you the pen that fell out of Daddy Bob’s trouser pocket. … You tilt it one way, you see a lady in a blue dress. You tilt it the other way, wah! – the dress falls down. I’m not lying. See for yourself. I’ll turn on the light. Are you ready? … Oh, Libby-ah, your eyes are swollen big as plums! Put the wet towel back over them. Tomorrow they won’t itch as much. … The pen? I saw it sneaking out of his pocket when we were at Sunday mass. He didn’t notice because he was pretending to pray. I know it was just pretend, mm-hmm, because his head went this way – booomp! – and he was snoring. Nnnnnnnhhh! It’s true! I gave him a little push. He didn’t wake up, but his nose stopped making those sounds. Ah, you think that’s funny? Then why are you laughing?

So anyway, after a while I looked at the Christmas flowers, the candles, the colored glass. I watched the priest waving the smoky lantern. Suddenly I saw Jesus walking through the smoke! Yes, Jesus! I thought he had come to blow out his birthday candles. I told myself, Finally I can see him – now I am a Catholic! Oh, I was so excited. That’s why Daddy Bob woke up and pushed me down.

I kept smiling at Jesus, but then I realized – ah? – that man was not Jesus but my old friend Lao Lu! He was pointing and laughing at me. ‘Fooled you,’ he said, ‘I’m not Jesus! Hey, you think he has a bald head like mine?’ Lao Lu walked over to me. He waved his hand in front of Daddy Bob. Nothing happened. He touched his little finger light as a fly on Daddy Bob’s forehead. Daddy Bob slapped himself. He slowly pulled the nasty pen from Daddy Bob’s pocket and rolled it into a fold of my skirt.

‘Hey,’ Lao Lu said. ‘Why are you still going to a foreigners’ church? You think a callus on your butt will help you see Jesus?’

Don’t laugh, Libby-ah. What Lao Lu said was not polite. I think he was remembering our last lifetime together, when he and I had to sit on the hard bench for two hours every Sunday. Every Sunday! Miss Banner too. We went to church for so many years and never saw God or Jesus, not Mary either, although back then it was not so important to see her. In those days, she was also mother to baby Jesus but only concubine to his father. Now everything is Mary this and that! – Old St. Mary’s, Mary’s Help, Mary Mother of God, forgiving me my sins. I’m glad she got a promotion. But as I said, in those days, the Jesus Worshippers did not talk about her so much. So I had to worry only about seeing God and Jesus. Every Sunday, the Jesus Worshippers asked me, ‘Do you believe?’ I had to say not yet. I wanted to say yes to be polite. But then I would have been lying, and when I died maybe they would come after me and make me pay two kinds of penalty to the foreign devil, one for not believing, another for pretending that I did. I thought I couldn’t see Jesus because I had Chinese eyes. Later I found out that Miss Banner never saw God or Jesus either. She told me she wasn’t a religious kind of person.

I said, ‘Why is that, Miss Banner?’

And she said, ‘I prayed to God to save my brothers. I prayed for him to spare my mother. I prayed that my father would come back to me. Religion teaches you that faith takes care of hope. All my hopes are gone, so why do I need faith anymore?’

‘Ai!’ I said. ‘This is too sad! You have no hopes?’

‘Very few,’ she answered. ‘And none that are worth a prayer.’

‘What about your sweetheart?’

She sighed. ‘I’ve decided he’s not worth a prayer either. He deserted me, you know. I wrote letters to an American navy officer in Shanghai. My sweetheart’s been there. He’s been in Canton. He’s even been in Guilin. He knows where I am. So why hasn’t he come?’

I was sad to hear that. At the time, I didn’t know her sweetheart was General Cape. ‘I still have many hopes of finding my family again,’ I said. ‘Maybe I should become a Jesus Worshipper.’

‘To be a true worshipper,’ she said, ‘you must give your whole body to Jesus.’

‘How much do you give?’

She held up her thumb. I was astonished, because every Sunday she preached the sermon. I thought this should be worth two legs at least. Of course, she had no choice about preaching. No one understood the other foreigners, and they couldn’t understand us. Their Chinese was so bad it sounded just like their English. Miss Banner had to serve as Pastor Amen’s go-between. Pastor Amen didn’t ask. He said she must do this, otherwise no room for her in the Ghost Merchant’s House.

So every Sunday morning, she and Pastor stood by the doorway to the church. He would cry in English, ‘Welcome, welcome!’ Miss Banner would translate into Chinese: ‘Hurry-come into God’s House! Eat rice after the meeting!’ God’s House was actually the Ghost Merchant’s family temple. It belonged to his dead ancestors and their gods. Lao Lu thought the foreigners showed very bad manners picking this place for God’s House. ‘Like a slap in the face,’ he said. ‘The God of War will drop horse manure from the sky, you wait and see.’ Lao Lu was that way – you make him mad, he’ll pay you back.

The missionaries always walked in first, Miss Banner second, then Lao Lu and I, as well as the other Chinese people who worked in the Ghost Merchant’s House – the cook, the two maids, the stableman, the carpenter, I forget who else. The visitors entered God’s House last. They were mostly beggars, a few Hakka God Worshippers, also an old woman who pressed her hands together and bowed three times to the altar, even though she was told over and over again not to do that anymore. The newcomers sat on the back benches – I’m guessing this was in case the Ghost Merchant came back and they needed to run away. Lao Lu and I had to sit up front with the missionaries, shouting ‘Amen!’ whenever the pastor raised his eyebrows. That’s why we called him Pastor Amen – also because his name sounded like ‘Amen,’ Hammond or Halliman, something like that.

As soon as we flattened our bottoms on those benches, we were not supposed to move. Mrs. Amen often jumped up, but only to wag her finger at those who made too much noise. That’s how we learned what was forbidden. No scratching your head for lice. No blowing your nose into your palm. No saying ‘Shit’ when clouds of mosquitoes sang in your ear – Lao Lu said that whenever anything disturbed his sleep.

That was another rule: No sleeping except when Pastor Amen prayed to God, long, boring prayers that made Lao Lu very happy. Because when the Jesus Worshippers closed their eyes, he could do the same and take a long nap. I kept my eye open. I would stare at Pastor Amen to see if God or Jesus was coming down from the heavens. I had seen this happen to a God Worshipper at a temple fair. God entered an ordinary man’s body and threw him to the ground. When he stood up again, he had great powers. Swords thrust against his stomach bent in half. But no such thing ever happened to Pastor Amen. Although one time when Pastor was praying, I saw a beggar standing at the door. I remembered that the Chinese gods sometimes did this, came disguised as beggars to see what was going on, who was being loyal, who was paying them respect. I wondered if the beggar was a god, now angry to see foreigners standing at the altar where he used to be. When I looked back a few minutes later, the beggar had disappeared. So who knows if he was the reason for the disasters that came five years later.