Amy Tan - The Bonesetter's Daughter

"The Mouth of the Mountain?" Ruth said.

"The same. Though Zhou didn't live there. A lot of places carry his name, just like every town in the United States has a Washington Street… Now come this way. The reason I brought you here is in the next room."

Soon they were standing in front of another display case. "Don't look at the description in English, not yet," Mr. Tang said. "What do you think this is?" Ruth saw an ivory-colored spadelike object, cracked with lines and blackened with holes. Was it a board for an ancient game of go? A cooking implement? Next to it was a smaller object, light brown and oval, with a lip around it and writing instead of holes. At once she knew, but before she could speak, her mother gave the answer in Chinese: "Oracle bone."

Ruth was amazed at what her mother could recall. She knew not to expect LuLing to remember appointments or facts about a recent event, who was where, when it happened. But her mother often surprised her with the clarity of her emotions when she spoke of her youth, elements of which matched in spirit what she had written in her memoir. To Ruth this was evidence that the pathways to her mother's past were still open, though rutted in a few spots and marked by rambling detours. At times she also blended the past with memories from other periods of her own past. But that part of her history was nonetheless a reservoir which she could draw from and share. It didn't matter that she blurred some of the finer points. The past, even revised, was meaningful.

In recent weeks, LuLing had related several times how she received the apple-green-jade ring that Ruth had retrieved from the La-Z-Boy. "We went to a dance hall, you and I," she said in Chinese. "We came down the stairs and you introduced me to Edwin. His eyes fell on mine and did not turn away for a long time. I saw you smile and then you disappeared. That was naughty of you. I knew what you were thinking! When he asked me to marry, he gave me the ring." Ruth guessed that GaoLing had been the person who did the introductions.

Ruth now heard LuLing speaking in Mandarin to Art: "My mother found one of these. It was carved with words of beauty. She gave it to me when she was sure I would not forget what was important. I never wanted to lose it." Art nodded as if he understood what she had said, and then LuLing translated into English for Mr. Tang: "I telling him, this bone my mother give me one."

"Very meaningful," he said, "especially since your mother was the daughter of a bone doctor."

"Famous," LuLing said.

Mr. Tang nodded as if he too remembered. "Everyone from the villages all around came to him. And your father went for a broken foot. His horse stepped on him. That's how he met your mother. Because of that horse."

LuLing went blank-eyed. Ruth was afraid her mother was going to cry. But instead, LuLing brightened and said, "Liu Xing. He call her that. My mother say he write love poem about this."

Art looked at Ruth, waiting for her to acknowledge whether this was true. He had read some of the translation of LuLing's memoir, but could not connect the Chinese name to its referent. "It means 'shooting star,'" Ruth whispered. "I'll explain later." To LuLing she said, "And what was your mother's family name?" Ruth knew it was a risk to bring this up, but her mother's mind had entered the territory of names. Perhaps others were there, like markers, waiting to be retrieved.

Her mother hesitated only a moment before answering: "Family name Gu." She was looking sternly at Ruth. "I tell you so many time, you don't remember? Her father Dr. Gu. She Gu doctor daughter."

Ruth wanted to shout for joy, but the next instant she realized her mother had said the Chinese word for 'bone.' Dr. Gu, Dr. Bone, bone doctor. Art's eyebrows were raised, in expectation that the long-lost family identity had been found. "I'll explain later," Ruth said again, but this time her voice was listless. "Oh."

Mr. Tang traced characters in the air. "Gu, like this? Or this?" Her mother put on a worried face. "I don't remember." "I don't either," Mr. Tang said quickly. "Oh well, doesn't matter." Art changed the subject. "What's the writing on the oracle bone?" "They're the questions the emperors asked the gods," Mr. Tang replied. "What's the weather going to be like tomorrow, who's going to win the war, when should the crops be planted. Kind of like the six-o'clock news, only they wanted the report ahead of time." "And were the answers right?"

"Who knows? They're the cracks you see next to the black spots. The diviners of the bones used a heated nail to crack the bone. It actually made a sound- pwak! They interpreted the cracks as the answers from heaven. I'm sure the more successful diviners were skilled at saying what the emperors wanted to hear."

"What a great linguistic puzzle," Art said.

Ruth thought of the sand tray she and her mother used over the years. She too had tried to guess what might put her mother at ease, the words that would placate but not be readily detected as fraudulent. At times she had made up the answers to suit herself. But on other occasions, she really had tried to write what her mother needed to hear. Words of comfort, saying that her husband missed her, that Precious Auntie was not angry.

"Speaking of puzzle," Ruth said, "the other day you mentioned that no one ever found the bones of Peking Man."

LuLing perked up. "Not just man, woman too."

"You're right, Mom-Peking Woman. I wonder what happened to her? Were the bones crushed on the train tracks on the way to Tianjin? Or did they sink with the boat?"

"If the bones are still around," Mr. Tang replied, "no one's saying. Oh, every few years you read a story in the paper. Someone dies, the wife of an American soldier, a former Japanese officer, an archaeologist in Taiwan or Hong Kong. And as the story goes, bones were found in a wooden trunk, just like the trunks used to pack the bones back in 1941. Then the rumors leak out that these are the bones of Peking Man. Arrangements are made, ransoms are paid, or what have you. But the bones turn out to be oxtails. Or they are casts of the original. Or they disappear before they can be examined. In one story, the person who had stolen the bones was taking them to an island to sell to a dealer, and the plane went down in the ocean."

Ruth thought about the curse of ghosts who were angry that their bones were separated from the rest of their mortal bodies. "What do you believe?"

"I don't know. So much of history is mystery. We don't know what is lost forever, what will surface again. All objects exist in a moment of time. And that fragment of time is preserved or lost or found in mysterious ways. Mystery is a wonderful part of life." Mr. Tang winked at LuLing.

"Wonderful," she echoed.

He looked at his watch. "How about a wonderful lunch?"

"Wonderful," they said.

As Ruth and Art lay in bed that night, she pondered aloud over Mr. Tang's romantic interest in her mother. "I can understand that he's intrigued with her since he's done this work on her memoir. But he's a man who's into culture, music, poetry. She can't keep up, and she's only going to get worse. She might not even know who he is after a while."

"He's been in love with her since she was a little girl," Art said. "She's not just a source of temporary companionship. He loves everything about her, and that includes who she was, who she is, who she will be. He knows more about her than most couples who are married." He drew Ruth closer to him. "Actually, I'm hoping we might have that. A commitment through time, past, present, future… marriage."

Ruth held her breath. She had pushed the idea out of her head for so long she still felt it was taboo, dangerous.

"I've tried to legally bind you in the past with ownership in the house, which you've yet to take."