Amy Tan - The Bonesetter's Daughter

She called the doctor and got the nurse. "This is Ruth Young, LuLing Young's daughter. We 're coming to see Dr. Huey for a checkup at four, but I just wanted to mention a few things…" She felt like a collaborator, a traitor and a spy.

When Ruth returned to the living room, she found her mother searching for her purse.

"We don't need any money," Ruth said. "And if we do, I can pay."

"No, no pay! Nobody pay!" LuLing cried. "Inside purse put my health card. I don't show card, doctor charge me extra. Everything suppose be free."

"I'm sure they have your records there. They won't need to see the card."

LuLing kept searching. Abruptly she straightened herself and said, "I know. Leave my purse at GaoLing house. Must be she forget tell me."

"What day did you go?"

"Three days go. Monday."

"Today's Monday."

"How can be Monday? I go three days go, not today!"

"You took BART?" Since the car accident, LuLing had been taking public transportation when Ruth wasn't able to act as chauffeur.

"Yes, and GaoLing late pick me up! I wait two hour. Fin'y she come. And then she accuse me, say, Why you come early, you suppose come here eleven. I tell her, No, I never say come eleven. Why I say coming eleven when I already know I coming nine o'clock? She pretend I crazy, make me so mad."

"Do you think you might have left it on the BART train?"

"Left what?"

"Your purse."

"Why you always take her side?"

"I'm not taking sides…"

"Maybe she keep my purse, don't tell me. She always want my things. Jealous of me. Little-girl time, she want my chipao dress, want my melon fruit, want everybody attention."

The dramas her mother and Auntie had gone through over the years resembled those off-Broadway plays in which two characters perform all the roles: best friends and worst enemies, archrivals and gleeful conspirators. They were only a year apart, seventy-seven and seventy-six, and that closeness seemed to have made them competitive with each other.

The two sisters came to America separately, and married a pair of brothers, sons of a grocer and his wife. LuLing's husband, Edwin Young, was in medical school, and as the elder, he was "destined" as LuLing put it, to be smarter and more successful. Most of the family's attention and privileges had been showered on him. GaoLing's husband, Edmund, the little brother, was in dental school. He was known as the lazy one, the careless boy who would always need a big brother to watch over him. But then big brother Edwin was killed in a hit-and-run car accident while leaving the UCSF library one night. Ruth had been two years old at the time. Her uncle Edmund went on to become the leader of the family, a well-respected dentist, and an even more savvy real estate investor in low-income rental units.

When the grocer and then his wife died, in the 1960s, most of the inheritance-money, the house, the store, gold and jade, family photos- went to Edmund, with only a small cash gift given to LuLing in consideration of her brief marriage to Edwin. "Only give me this much" LuLing often described, pinching her fingers as if holding a flea. "Just because you not a boy."

With the death money, along with her years of savings, LuLing bought a two-unit building on Cabrillo and Forty-seventh, where she and Ruth lived in the top flat. GaoLing and Edmund moved to Saratoga, a town of vast-lawned ranch-style homes and kidney-shaped pools. Occasionally they would offer LuLing furniture they were going to replace with something better. "Why I should take?" she would fume. "So they can pity for me? Feel so good for themself, give me things they don't want? "

Throughout the years, LuLing lamented in Chinese, "Ai-ya, if only your father had lived, he would be even more successful than your uncle. And still we wouldn't spend so carelessly like them!" She also noted what should have been Ruth's rightful property: Grandmother Young's jade ring, money for a college fund. It shouldn't have mattered that Ruth was a girl or that Edwin had died. That was old Chinese thinking! LuLing said this so often Ruth could not help fantasizing what her life might have been like had her father lived. She could have bought patent-leather shoes, rhinestone-covered barrettes, and baby roses. Sometimes she stared at a photo of her father and felt angry he was dead. Then she felt guilty and scared. She tried to convince herself that she deeply loved this father she could not even remember. She picked the flowerlike weeds that grew in the cracks of sidewalks and put them in front of his framed picture.

Ruth now watched as LuLing searched in the closet for her purse. She was still pointing out GaoLing's transgressions. "Later grown-up time, want my things too. Want your daddy marry her. Yes, you don't know this. Edwin not Edmund, because he oldest, more success. Every day smile for him, show off her teeth, like monkey." LuLing turned around and demonstrated. "But he not interest in her, only me. She so mad. Later she marry Edmund, and when you daddy die, she say, Ooooh, so lucky I not marry Edwin! So stupid she saying that. To my face! Don't consider me, only concerning herself. I say nothing. I never complaining. Do I ever complaining?"

Ruth joined in the search, sticking her hands under seat cushions.

LuLing straightened herself to all four feet, eleven inches of indignity. "And now you see! Why GaoLing still want my money? She crazy, you know. She always think I got more, hiding somewhere. That's why I think she take my purse."

The dining room table, which LuLing never used, was a raft of junk mail. Ruth pushed aside the Chinese-language newspapers and magazines. Her mother had always been sanitary, but never neat. She hated grease but didn't mind chaos. She kept junk mail and coupons, as if they were personal greeting cards.

"Here it is!" Ruth cried. What a relief. She pulled out a green pocket-book from underneath a mound of magazines. As LuLing checked that her money and credit cards were still inside, Ruth noticed what had obscured the purse in the first place: new issues of Woodworking Today, Seventeen, Home Audio and Video, Runner's World, Cosmopolitan, Dog Fancy, Ski, Country Living -magazines her mother would never read in a million years.

"Why do you have all these?"

LuLing smiled shyly. "First I thinking, Get money, then tell you. Now you ask, so now I show you." She went to the kitchen drawer where she kept years of expired coupons and pulled out an oversized envelope.

"News from the gods, " LuLing murmured. "I won ten million dollar! Open and see."

Sure enough, inside were a sweepstakes promotion coupon that resembled a check, and a sheet of peel-off miniature magazine covers. Half the covers were missing. LuLing must have ordered three dozen magazines. Ruth could picture the mail carrier dragging over a sackful of them every day, spilling them onto the driveway, her mother's hopes and logic jumbled into the same pile.

"You surprise?" LuLing wore a look of absolute joy.

"You should tell the doctor your good news."

LuLing beamed, then added, "I win all for you."

Ruth felt a twinge in her chest. It quickly grew into an ache. She wanted to embrace her mother, shield her, and at the same time wanted her mother to cradle her, to assure her that she was okay, that she had not had a stroke or worse. That was how her mother had always been, difficult, oppressive, and odd. And in exactly that way, LuLing had loved her. Ruth knew that, felt it. No one could have loved her more. Better perhaps, but not more.

"Thanks, Ma. It's wonderful. We'll talk about it later, what to do with the money. But now we have to go. The doctor said we could still come at four, and we shouldn't be late."

LuLing turned crabby again. "You fault we late."