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"That's from the sidewalk!" Ruth protested.
And so the rights continued, and felt to Ruth both strange and familiar. They argued with increasing vigor and assurance, crossing the temporary boundaries of the last month, defending the old terrain. They flung out more pain, knowing already they had survived the worst.
Later, Ruth debated over throwing away her diary. She retrieved the dreaded book, still in the back of her underwear drawer. She turned the pages, reading here and there, weeping for herself. There was truth in what she had written, she believed, some of it, at least. There was a part of her in these pages that she did not want to forget. But when she arrived at the final entry, she was stricken with a sense that God, her mother, and Precious Auntie knew that she had committed near-murder. She carefully crossed out the last sentences, ru
Though she could never show her mother those words, it felt good to write them. She was being truthful and neither good nor bad. She then tried to think of a place where her mother would never find her diary. She climbed onto the kitchen counter and stretched her arm way up and tossed the diary on top of the cabinet, so far out of reach that she too forgot about it over time.
Ruth now reflected that in all the years gone by, she and her mother had never talked about what had happened. She put down the diary. Forever did not mean what it once had. Forever was what changed inevitably over time. She felt a curious sympathy for her younger self, as well as an embarrassed hindsight in how foolish and egocentric she had been. If she had had a child, it would have been a daughter who grew up to make her just as miserable as she had made her mother. That daughter would have been fifteen or sixteen right about now, shouting that she hated Ruth. She wondered whether her mother had ever told her own mother that she hated her.
At that moment, she thought of the photos they had looked at during the Moon Festival di
Ruth went to the vinyl chair, removed the cushion and the cutting board. Everything was still there: the small black Bible, the silk pouch, the apple-green-jade ring. She opened the Bible, and there it was, the wax-paper sleeve with the same photo her mother had shown her at the family reunion di
What else was in the bottom of the chair? Ruth reached in and pulled out a package wrapped in a brown grocery bag and tied with red Christmas ribbon. Inside was a stack of paper, all written on in Chinese. At the top of certain sheets was a large character done in stylish brushed-drawn calligraphy. She had seen this before. But where? When?
And then it came to her. The other pages, the ones buried in her bottom right-hand desk drawer. "Truth," she recalled the top of that first page read. "These are the things I know are true." What did the next sentences say? The names of the dead, the secrets they took with them. What secrets? She sensed her mother's life was at stake and the answer was in her hands, had been there all along.
She looked at the top page of this new stack in her hands, the large calligraphed character. She could hear her mother scolding her, "Should study harder." Yes, she should have. The large character was familiar, a curved bottom, three marks over it-heart! And the first sentence, it was like the begi
"These are the things I should not forget."
Her mother had given her those other pages-what?-five or six years before. Had she written these at the same time? Did she know then that she was losing her memory? When did her mother intend to give her these pages, if ever? When she eventually gave her the ring to keep? When it was clear that Ruth was ready to pay attention? Ruth sca
Ruth lay down on the bed, the pages next to her. She looked at the photo of Precious Auntie and put that on her chest. Tomorrow she would call Art in Hawaii and see if he could recommend someone who could translate. That was One. She would retrieve the other pages from home. That was Two. She would call Auntie Gal and see what she knew. That was Three. And she would ask her mother to tell her about her life. For once, she would ask. She would listen. She would sit down and not be in a hurry or have anything else to do. She would even move in with her mother, spend more time getting to know her. Art would not be too happy about that. He might take her moving out as a sign of problems. But someone had to take care of her mother. And she wanted to. She wanted to be here, as her mother told her about her life, taking her through all the detours of the past, explaining the multiple meanings of Chinese words, how to translate her heart. Her hands would always be full, and finally, she and her mother could both stop counting.
PART TWO
–
HEART
These are the things I must not forget.
I was raised with the Liu clan in the rocky Western Hills south of Peking. The oldest recorded name of our village was Immortal Heart. Precious Auntie taught me how to write this down on my chalkboard. Watch now, Doggie, she ordered, and drew the character for "heart": See this curving stroke? That's the bottom of the heart, where blood gathers and flows. And the dots, those are the two veins and the artery that carry the blood in and out. As I traced over the character, she asked: Whose dead heart gave shape to this word? How did it begin, Doggie? Did it belong to a woman? Was it drawn in sadness?
I once saw the heart of a fresh-killed pig. It was red and glistening. And I had already seen plenty of chicken hearts in a bowl, waiting to be cooked. They looked like tiny lips and were the same color as Precious Auntie's scars. But what did a woman heart look like? "Why do we have to know whose heart it was?" I asked as I wrote the character.
And Precious Auntie flapped her hands fast: A person should consider how things begin. A particular begi