Amy Tan - The Bonesetter's Daughter

More ridiculous questions followed.

"Do you know today's date?"

"Monday." Date and day always sound the same to her.

"What was the date five months ago?"

"Still Monday." When you stop to think about it, she's right.

"How many grandchildren do you have?"

"Don't now. She not married yet." He doesn't see that she's joking!

LuLing was like the losing contestant on Jeopardy! Total for LuLing Young: minus five hundred points. And now for our final Jeopardy/ round…

"How old is your daughter?"

LuLing hesitated. "Forty, maybe forty-one." To her mother, she was always younger than she really was.

"What year was she born?"

"Same as me. Dragon year." She looked at Ruth for confirmation. Her mother was a Rooster.

"What month?" Dr. Huey asked.

"What month?" LuLing asked Ruth. Ruth shrugged helplessly. "She don't know."

"What year is it now?"

"Nineteen ninety-eight!" She looked at the doctor as if he were an idiot not to know that. Ruth was relieved that her mother had answered one question right.

"Mrs. Young, could you wait here while your daughter and I go outside to schedule another appointment? "

"Sure-sure. I not go anywhere."

As Dr. Huey turned for the door, he stopped. "And thank you for answering all the questions. I'm sure you must have felt like you were on the witness stand."

"Like O.J."

Dr. Huey laughed. "I guess everyone watched that trial on TV."

LuLing shook her head. "Oh no, not just watch TV, I there when it happen. He kill wife and that friend, bring her glasses. Everything I see."

Ruth's heart started to thump. "You saw a documentary," she said for Dr. Huey's benefit, "a reenactment of what might have happened, and it was like watching the real thing. Is that what you're saying?"

LuLing waved to dismiss this simple answer. "Maybe you see document. / see real thing." She demonstrated with motions. "He grab her like this, cut neck here-very deep, so much blood. Awful."

"So you were in Los Angeles that day?" Dr. Huey asked.

LuLing nodded.

Ruth was flailing for logic. "I don't remember you ever going to L.A. "

"How I go, don't know. But I there. This true! I follow that man, oh he sneaky. O.J. hide in bush. Later, I go his house too. Watch him take glove, stick in garden, go back inside change clothes-" LuLing caught herself, embarrassed. "Well, he change clothes, course I don't look, turn my eyes. Later he run to airport, almost late, jump on plane. I see whole thing."

"You saw this and didn't tell anyone?"

"I scared!"

"The murder must have been an awful thing for you to see," Dr. Huey said.

LuLing nodded bravely.

"Thank you for sharing that. Now, if you'll just wait here a few minutes, your daughter and I are going to step into another room and schedule your next appointment."

"No hurry."

Ruth followed the doctor into another room. "How long have you noticed this kind of confusion?" Dr. Huey asked right away.

Ruth sighed. "It's been a little worse in the last six months, maybe longer than that. But today she seems worse than usual. Except for the last thing she said, she hasn't been that weird or forgetful. It's more like mix-ups, and most of it is due to her not speaking English that well, as you may have noticed. The story about O. J. Simpson-you know, that may be another language problem. She's never been good at expressing herself-"

"It sounded pretty clear to me that she thought she was there," Dr. Huey said gently.

Ruth looked away.

"You mentioned to the nurse that she had a car accident. Was there a head injury? "

"She did bump her head on the steering wheel." Ruth was suddenly hopeful that this was the missing piece to the puzzle.

"Does her personality seem to be changing? Is she depressed, more argumentative?"

Ruth tried to guess what an affirmative response might indicate. "My mother's always gotten into arguments, all her life. She has a terrible temper. And as long as I've known her, she's been depressed. Her husband, my father, was killed forty-four years ago. Hit-and-run. She never got over it. Maybe the depression is becoming worse, but I'm so used to it I'd be the last one to notice. As for her confusion, I was wondering if it was a concussion from the car accident or if she might have had a mini-stroke." Ruth tried to remember the correct medical term. "You know, a TIA."

"So far I don't see any evidence of that. Her motor movements are good, reflexes are fine. Blood pressure is excellent. But we'll want to run a few more tests, also make sure she's not diabetic or anemic, for instance."

"Those could cause problems like this?"

"They could, as could Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia."

Ruth felt her stomach had been punched. Her mother wasn't that bad off. He was talking about a horrible terminal illness. Thank God she had not told the doctor about the other things she had tabulated: the argument her mother had had with Francine over the rent; the ten-million-dollar check from the magazine sweepstakes; her forgetting that Fu-Fu had died. "So it could be depression," Ruth said.

"We haven't ruled out anything yet."

"Well, if it is, you'll have to tell her the antidepressants are ginseng or po chat pills."

Dr. Huey laughed. "Resistance to Western medication is common among our elderly patients here. And as soon as they feel better, they stop taking it to save money." He handed her a form. "Give this to Lorraine at the computer station around the corner. Let's schedule your mother to see the folks in Psychiatry and Neurology, then have her come back to see me again in a month."

"Around the Full Moon Festival."

Dr. Huey looked up. "Is that when it is? I can never keep track."

"I only know because I'm hosting this year's family reunion dinner."

That evening, as Ruth steamed the sea bass, she told Art in an offhanded way, "I took my mom to see the doctor. She may have depression."

And Art said, "So what else is new?"

At dinner, LuLing sat next to Ruth. "Too salty," she remarked in Chinese, poking at her portion of fish. And then she added: "Tell those girls to finish their fish. Don't let them waste food."

"Fia, Dory, why aren't you eating?" Ruth said.

"I'm full," Dory answered. "We stopped at Burger King in the Presidio and ate a bunch of fries before we came home."

"You shouldn't let them eat those things!" LuLing scolded, continuing in Mandarin. "Tell them you don't allow this anymore."

"Girls, I wish you wouldn't ruin your appetites with junk food."

"And I wish you two would stop talking like spies in Chinese," Fia said. "It's like really rude."

LuLing glared at Ruth, and Ruth glanced at Art, but he was looking down at his plate. "Waipo speaks Chinese," Ruth said, "because that's the language she's used to." Ruth had told them to call LuLing "Waipo," the Chinese honorific for "Grandmother," and at least they did that, but then again, they thought it was just a nickname.

"She can speak English too," Dory said.

"Tst!" LuLing grumbled to Ruth. "Why doesn't their father scold them? He should tell them to listen to you. Why doesn't he have more concern for you? No wonder he never married you. No respect for you. Say something to him. Why don't you tell him to be nicer to you?…"

Ruth wished she could go back to being mute. She wanted to shout for her mother to stop complaining about things she could not change. Yet she also wanted to defend her to the girls, especially now that something was wrong with her. LuLing acted eternally strong, but she was also fragile. Why couldn't Fia and Dory understand that and act a little kinder?

Ruth remembered how she felt when she was their age. She too had resented LuLing's speaking Chinese in front of others, knowing they couldn't understand her covert remarks. "Look how fat that lady is," LuLing might say. Or, "Luyi, go ask that man to give us a better price." If Ruth obeyed, she was mortified. And if she didn't, as she now recalled, even more dire consequences followed.