"If you are greedy, what is inside you is what makes you always hungry," said Popo.
"Your own thoughts are so busy swimming inside that everything else gets pushed out," Popo told me.
One was about a greedy girl whose belly grew fatter and fatter. This girl poisoned herself after refusing to say whose child she carried. When the monks cut open her body, they found inside a large white winter melon.
But I often heard stories of a ghost who tried to take children away, especially strong-willed little girls who were disobedient. Many times Popo said aloud to all who could hear that my brother and I had fallen out of the bowels of a stupid goose, two eggs that nobody wanted, not even good enough to crack over rice porridge. She said this so that the ghosts would not steal us away. So you see, to Popo we were also very precious.
This is how a daughter honors her mother. It is shou so deep it is in your bones. The pain of the flesh is nothing. The pain you must forget. Because sometimes that is the only way to remember what is in your bones. You must peel off your skin, and that of your mother, and her mother before her. Until there is nothing. No scar, no skin, no flesh.
And then Popo said something that was worse than the burning on my neck.
And then my mother cut a piece of meat from her arm. Tears poured from her face and blood spilled to the floor.
She stopped brushing. And then I could feel her long smooth fingers rubbing and searching under my chin, finding the spot that was my smooth-neck scar. As she rubbed this spot, I became very still. It was as though she were rubbing the memory back into my skin. And then her hand dropped and she began to cry, wrapping her hands around her own neck. She cried with a wailing voice that was so sad. And then I remembered the dream with my mothers voice.
"Who is this ghost? Not an honored widow. Just a numberthree concubine. If you take your daughter, she will become like you. No face. Never able to lift up her head."
My mother took her flesh and put it in the soup. She cooked magic in the ancient tradition to try to cure her mother this one last time. She opened Popos mouth, already too tight from trying to keep her spirit in. She fed her this soup, but that night Popo flew away with her illness.
In two years time, my scar became pale and shiny and I had no memory of my mother. That is the way it is with a wound. The wound begins to close in on itself, to protect what is hurting so much. And once it is closed, you no longer see what is underneath, what started the pain.
I saw my mother on the other side of the room. Quiet and sad. She was cooking a soup, pouring herbs and medicines into the steaming pot. And then I saw her pull up her sleeve and pull out a sharp knife. She put this knife on the softest part of her arm. I tried to close my eyes, but could not.
My mother began to loosen my braids and brush my hair with long sweeping strokes.
Popo was very smart. I came hurrying back from the other world to find my mother.
"An-mei, listen carefully." Her voice had the same scolding tone she used when I ran up and down the hallway. "An-mei, we have made your dying clothes and shoes for you. They are all white cotton."
Here is how I came to love my mother. How I saw in her my own true nature. What was beneath my skin. Inside my bones.
And then the talking stopped. My uncle rose from his chair. Everyone turned to look at the door, where a tall woman stood. I was the only one who spoke.
I listened, scared.
I looked at her with my know-nothing face, but inside I was trembling. I was the girl whose belly held a colorless winter melon.
When I was a young girl in China, my grandmother told me my mother was a ghost. This did not mean my mother was dead. In those days, a ghost was anything we were forbidden to talk about. So I knew Popo wanted me to forget my mother on purpose, and this is how I came to remember nothing of her. The life that I knew began in the large house in Ningpo with the cold hallways and tall stairs. This was my uncle and aunties family house, where I lived with Popo and my little brother.
That is when I began to understand the stories Popo taught me, the lessons I had to learn for my mother. "When you lose your face, An-mei," Popo often said, "it is like dropping your necklace down a well. The only way you can get it back is to fall in after it."
"Come back, stay here," murmured my mother to Popo. "Nuyer is here. Your daughter is back." Popos eyes were open, but now her mind ran in many different directions, not staying long enough to see anything. If Popos mind had been clear she would have raised her two arms and flung my mother out of the room.
Another time, Popo told me about a girl who refused to listen to her elders. One day this bad girl shook her head so vigorously to refuse her aunties simple request that a little white ball fell from her ear and out poured all her brains, as clear as chicken broth.
"An-mei, you have been a good daughter?" she asked, smiling a secret look.
It was late at night when I went to Popos room. My auntie said it was Popos dying time and I must show respect. I put on a clean dress and stood between my auntie and uncle at the foot of Popos bed. I cried a little, not too loud.
Still my mother shouted for me to come. I remember her voice so clearly now. An-mei! An-mei! I could see my mothers face across the table. Between us stood the soup pot on its heavy chimney-pot stand—rocking slowly, back and forth. And then with one shout this dark boiling soup spilled forward and fell all over my neck. It was as though everyones anger were pouring all over me.
This was the kind of pain so terrible that a little child should never remember it. But it is still in my skins memory. I cried out loud only a little, because soon my flesh began to burst inside and out and cut off my breathing air.
"You throw strong words at me, but you are nothing," Auntie said. "You are the son of a mother who has so little respect she has become ni, a traitor to our ancestors. She is so beneath others that even the devil must look down to see her."
I worshipped this mother from my dream. But the woman standing by Popos bed was not the mother of my memory. Yet I came to love this mother as well. Not because she came to me and begged me to forgive her. She did not. She did not need to explain that Popo chased her out of the house when I was dying. This I knew. She did not need to tell me she married Wu Tsing to exchange one unhappiness for another. I knew this as well.
Right before Popo became so sick she could no longer speak, she pulled me close and talked to me about my mother. "Never say her name," she warned. "To say her name is to spit on your fathers grave."
"An-mei," she murmured, now more gently. "Your dying clothes are very plain. They are not fancy, because you are still a child. If you die, you will have a short life and you will still owe your family a debt. Your funeral will be very small. Our mourning time for you will be very short."
I was sitting at the top of the stairs when she arrived. I knew it was my mother even though I had seen her in all my memory. She stood just inside the doorway so that her face became a dark shadow. She was much taller than my auntie, almost as tall as my uncle. She looked strange, too, like the missionary ladies at our school who were insolent and bossy in their too-tall shoes, foreign clothes, and short hair.
When I returned to my room later that afternoon, she was there, standing tall. And because I remember Popo told me not to speak her name, I stood there, mute. She took my hand and led me to the settee. And then she also sat down as though we had done this every day.
"Even your mother has used up her tears and left. If you do not get well soon, she will forget you."
Now I could imagine my mother, a thoughtless woman who laughed and shook her head, who dipped her chopsticks many times to eat another piece of sweet fruit, happy to be free of Popo, her unhappy husband on the wall, and her two disobedient children. I felt unlucky that she was my mother and unlucky that she had left us. These were the thoughts I had while hiding in the corner of my room where my father could not watch me.
Every night I cried so that both my eyes and my neck burned. Next to my bed sat Popo. She would pour cool water over my neck from the hollowed cup of a large grapefruit. She would pour and pour until my breathing became soft and I could fall asleep. In the morning, Popo would use her sharp fingernails like tweezers and peel off the dead membranes.
"An-mei, you know who I am," she said with a small scold in her voice. This time I did not look for fear my head would burst and my brains would dribble out of my ears.
I was four years old. My chin was just above the dinner table, and I could see my baby brother sitting on Popos lap, crying with an angry face. I could hear voices praising a steaming dark soup brought to the table, voices murmuring politely, "Ching! Ching!"—Please, eat!
My auntie, who had a very bad temper with children, told him he had no shou, no respect for ancestors or family, just like our mother. Auntie had a tongue like hungry scissors eating silk cloth. So when my brother gave her a sour look, Auntie said our mother was so thoughtless she had fled north in a big hurry, without taking the dowry furniture from her marriage to my father, without bringing her ten pairs of silver chopsticks, without paying respect to my fathers grave and those of our ancestors. When my brother accused Auntie of frightening our mother away, Auntie shouted that our mother had married a man named Wu Tsing who already had a wife, two concubines, and other bad children.
I could not speak because of this terrible choking feeling. I could not see because of all the tears that poured out to wash away the pain. But I could hear my mothers crying voice. Popo and Auntie were shouting. And then my mothers voice went away.
All my life, Popo scared me. I became even more scared when she grew sick. This was in 1923, when I was nine years old. Popo had swollen up like an overripe squash, so full her flesh had gone soft and rotten with a bad smell. She would call me into her room with the terrible stink and tell me stories. "An-mei," she said, calling me by my school name. "Listen carefully." She told me stories I could not understand.
Later that night Popos voice came to me.
In Popos room my auntie protested, "Too late, too late," as my mother approached the bed. But this did not stop my mother.
I watched my mother, seeing her for the first time, this pretty woman with her white skin and oval face, not too round like Aunties or sharp like Popos. I saw that she had a long white neck, just like the goose that had laid me. That she seemed to float back and forth like a ghost, dipping cool cloths to lay on Popos bloated face. As she peered into Popos eyes, she clucked soft worried sounds. I watched her carefully, yet it was her voice that confused me, a familiar sound from a forgotten dream.
But even my brothers happiness went away. One hot summer day when Popo was already very sick, we stood outside watching a village funeral procession marching by our courtyard. Just as it passed our gate, the heavy framed picture of the dead man toppled from its stand and fell to the dusty ground. An old lady screamed and fainted. My brother laughed and Auntie slapped him.
My auntie quickly looked away and did not call her by name or offer her tea. An old servant hurried away with a displeased look. I tried to keep very still, but my heart felt like crickets scratching to get out of a cage. My mother must have heard, because she looked up. And when she did, I saw my own face looking back at me. Eyes that stayed wide open and saw too much.
I felt our house was so unhappy, but my little brother did not seem to think so. He rode his bicycle through the courtyard, chasing chickens and other children, laughing over which ones shrieked the loudest. Inside the quiet house, he jumped up and down on Uncle and Aunties best feather sofas when they were away visiting village friends.
An-Mei Hsu
The only father I knew was a big painting that hung in the main hall. He was a large, unsmiling man, unhappy to be so still on the wall. His restless eyes followed me around the house. Even from my room at the end of the hall, I could see my fathers watching eyes. Popo said he watched me for any signs of disrespect. So sometimes, when I had thrown pebbles at other children at school, or had lost a book through carelessness, I would quickly walk by my father with a know-nothing look and hide in a corner of my room where he could not see my face.
Even though I was young, I could see the pain of the flesh and the worth of the pain.
And when my brother shouted that Auntie was a talking chicken without a head, she pushed my brother against the gate and spat on his face.
"Ma," I had cried, rushing off my chair, but my auntie slapped my face and pushed me back down. Now everyone was standing up and shouting, and I heard my mothers voice crying, "An-mei! An-mei!" Above this noise, Popos shrill voice spoke.
