The other day Ruths mother called her. She sounded like her old self, scared and fretful. "Luyi," she said, and she spoke quickly in Chinese, "Im worried that I did terrible things to you when you were a child, that I hurt you very much. But I cant remember what I did. . . ."
As Ruth now stares at the photo, she thinks about her mother as a little girl, about her grandmother as a young woman. These are the women who shaped her life, who are in her bones. They caused her to question whether the order and disorder of her life were due to fate or luck, self-determination or the actions of others. They taught her to worry. But she has also learned that these warnings were passed down, not simply to scare her, but to force her to avoid their footsteps, to hopefor something better. They wanted her to get rid of the curses.
After they hung up, Ruth cried for an hour she was so happy. It was not too late for them to forgive each other and themselves.
"I just wanted to say that I hope you can forget just as Ive forgotten. I hope you can forgive me, because if I hurt you, Im sorry."
It is the twelfth of August and Ruth is in the Cubbyhole, silent. Foghorns blow in the night, welcoming ships into the bay.
"Think about your intentions," Bao Bomu says. "What is in your heart, what you want to put in others." And side by side, Ruth and her grandmother begin. Words flow. They have become the same person, six years old, sixteen, forty-six, eighty-two. They write about what happened, why it happened, how they can make other things happen. They write stories of things that are but should not have been. They write about what could have been, what still might be. They write of a past that can be changed. After all, Bao Bomu says, what is the past but what we choose to remember? They can choose not to hide it, to take whats broken, to feel the pain and know that it will heal. Theyknow where happiness lies, not in a cave or a country, but in love and the freedom to give and take what has been there all along.
Ruth still has her voice. Her ability to speak is not governed by curses or shooting stars or illness. She knows that for certain now. But she does not need to talk. She can write. Before, she never had a reason to write for herself, only for others. Now she has that reason.
Ruth remembers how her mother used to talk of dying, by curse or her own hand. She never stopped feeling the urge, not until she began to lose her mind, the memory web that held her woes in place. And though her mother still remembers the past, she has begun to change it. She doesnt recount the sad parts. She only recalls being loved very, very much. She remembers that to Bao Bomu she was the reason for life itself.
Ruth remembers this as she writes a story. It is for her grandmother, for herself, for the little girl who became her mother.
In the Cubbyhole, Ruth returns to the past. The laptop becomes a sand tray. Ruth is six years old again, the same child, her broken arm healed, her other hand holding a chopstick, ready to divine the words. Bao Bomu comes, as always, and sits next to her. Her face is smooth, as beautiful as it is in the photo. She grinds an inkstick into an inkstone of duan.
The picture of her grandmother is in front of her. Ruth looks at it daily. Through it, she can see from the past clear into the present. Could her grandmother ever have imagined she would have a granddaughter like her—a woman who has a husband who loves her, two girls who adore her, a house she co-owns, dear friends, a life with only the usual worries about leaks and calories?
"Theres nothing—" Ruth began.
