(2001) The Bonesetter's Daughter Read online

  One day, at dinnertime, Precious Auntie told me a story with her hands that only I could understand. A rich lady came to my father and told him to unbind her feet and mold them into more modern ones. She said she wanted to wear high-heeled shoes. “But don’t make the new feet too big, ” she said, “not like a slave girl’s or a foreigner’s. Make them naturally small like hers.” And she pointed to my feet.

  I forgot that Mother and my other aunts were at the dinner table, and I said aloud, “Do bound feet look like the white lilies that the romantic books describe?” Mother and my aunts, who still had bound feet, gave me a frowning look. How could I talk so openly about a woman’s most private parts? So Precious Auntie pretended to scold me with her hands for asking such a question, but what she really said was this: They’re usually crimped like flower-twist bread. But if they’re dirty and knotty with calluses, they look like rotten ginger roots and smell like pig snouts three days dead.

  In this way, Precious Auntie taught me to be naughty, just like her. She taught me to be curious, just like her. She taught me to be spoiled. And because I was all these things, she could not teach me to be a better daughter, though in the end, she tried to change my faults.

  I remember how she tried. It was the last week we were together. She did not speak to me for days. Instead she wrote and wrote and wrote. Finally she handed me a bundle of pages laced together with cord. This is my true story, she told me, and yours as well. Out of spite, I did not read most of those pages. But when I did, this is what I learned.

  One late-autumn day, when Precious Auntie was nineteen by her Chinese age, the bonesetter had two new patients. The first was a screaming baby from a family who lived in Immortal Heart. The second was Baby Uncle. They would both cause Precious Auntie everlasting sorrow, but in two entirely different ways.

  The bawling baby was the youngest son of a big-chested man named Chang, a coffinmaker who had grown rich in times of plagues. The carvings on the outside of his coffins were of camphor wood. But the insides were cheap pine, painted and lacquered to look and smell like the better golden wood.

  Some of that same golden wood had fallen from a stack and knocked the baby’s shoulder out of its socket. That’s why the baby was howling, Chang’s wife reported with a frightened face. Precious Auntie recognized this nervous woman. Two years before, she had sat in the bonesetter’s shop because her eye and jaw had been broken by a stone that must have fallen out of the open sky. Now she was back with her husband, who was slapping the baby’s leg, telling him to stop his racket. Precious Auntie shouted at Chang: “First the shoulder, now you want to break his leg as well.” Chang scowled at her. Precious Auntie picked up the baby. She rubbed a little bit of medicine inside his cheeks. Soon the baby quieted, yawned once, and fell asleep. Then the bonesetter snapped the small shoulder into place.

  “What’s the medicine?” the coffinmaker asked Precious Auntie. She didn’t answer.

  “Traditional things,” the bonesetter said. “A little opium, a little herbs, and a special kind of dragon bone we dig out from a secret place only our family knows.”

  “Special dragon bone, eh?” Chang dipped his finger in the medicine bowl, then dabbed inside his cheek. He offered some to Precious Auntie, who sniffed in disgust, and then he laughed and gave Precious Auntie a bold look, as if he already owned her and could do whatever he pleased.

  Right after the Changs and their baby left, Baby Uncle limped in.

  He had been injured by his nervous horse, he explained to the bone-setter. He had been traveling from Peking to Immortal Heart, and during a rest, the horse startled a rabbit, then the rabbit startled the horse, and the horse stepped on Baby Uncle’s foot. Three broken toes resulted, and Baby Uncle rode his bad horse to the Mouth of the Mountain, straight to the Famous Bonesetter’s shop.

  Baby Uncle sat in the blackwood examination chair. Precious Auntie was in the back room and could see him through the parted curtain. He was a thin young man of twenty-two. His face was refined but he did not act pompous or overly formal, and while his gown was not that of a rich gentleman, he was well groomed. She heard him joke about his accident: “My mare was so crazy with fright I thought she was going to gallop straight to the underworld with me stuck astride.” When Precious Auntie stepped into the room, she said, “But fate brought you here instead.” Baby Uncle fell quiet. When she smiled, he forgot his pain. When she put a dragon bone poultice on his naked foot, he decided to marry her. That was Precious Auntie’s version of how they fell in love.

  I have never seen a picture of my real father, but Precious Auntie told me that he was very handsome and smart, yet also shy enough to make a girl feel tender. He looked like a poor scholar who could rise above his circumstances, and surely he would have qualified for the imperial examinations if they had not been canceled several years before by the new Republic.

  The next morning, Baby Uncle came back with three stemfuls of lychees for Precious Auntie as a gift of appreciation. He peeled off the shell of one, and she ate the white-fleshed fruit in front of him. The morning was warm for late autumn, they both remarked. He asked if he could recite a poem he had written that morning: “You speak,” he said, “the language of shooting stars, more surprising than sunrise, more brilliant than the sun, as brief as sunset. I want to follow its trail to eternity.”

  In the afternoon, the coffinmaker Chang brought a watermelon to the bonesetter. “To show my highest appreciation,” he said. “My baby son is already well, able to pick up bowls and smash them with the strength of three boys.”

  Later that week, unbeknownst one to the other, each man went to a different fortune-teller. The two men wanted to know if their combination of birthdates with Precious Auntie’s was lucky. They asked if there were any bad omens for a marriage.

  The coffinmaker went to a fortune-teller in Immortal Heart, a man who walked about the village with a divining stick. The marriage signs were excellent, the fortune-teller said. See here, Precious Auntie was born in a Rooster year, and because Chang was a Snake, that was nearly the best match possible. The old man said that Precious Auntie also had a lucky number of strokes in her name (I will write the number down here when I remember her name). And as a bonus, she had a mole in position eleven, near the fatty part of her cheek, indicating that only sweet words fell from her obedient mouth. The coffinmaker was so happy to hear this that he gave the fortune-teller a big tip.

  Baby Uncle went to a fortune-teller in the Mouth of the Mountain, an old lady with a face more wrinkled than her palm. She saw nothing but calamity. The first sign was the mole on Precious Auntie’s face. It was in position twelve, she told Baby Uncle, and it dragged down her mouth, meaning that her life would always bring her sadness. Their combination of birth years was also inharmonious, she a fire Rooster and he a wood Horse. The girl would ride his back and peck him apart piece by piece. She would consume him with her insatiable demands. And here was the worst part. The girl’s father and mother had reported the date of her birth was the sixteenth day of the seventh moon. But the fortune-teller had a sister-in-law who lived near the bonesetter, and she knew better. She had heard the newborn’s wails, not on the sixteenth day, but on the fifteenth, the only day when unhappy ghosts are allowed to roam the earth. The sister-in-law said the baby sounded like this: “Wu-wu, wu-wu, “ not like a human but like a haunted one. The fortune-teller confided to Baby Uncle that she knew the girl quite well. She often saw her on market days, walking by herself. That strange girl did fast calculations in her head and argued with merchants. She was arrogant and headstrong. She was also educated, taught by her father to know the mysteries of the body. The girl was too curious, too questioning, too determined to follow her own mind. Maybe she was possessed. Better find another marriage match, the fortuneteller said. This one would lead to disaster.

  Baby Uncle gave the fortune-teller more money, not as a tip, but to make her think harder. The fortune-teller kept shaking her head. But after Baby Uncle had given a total of a
thousand coppers, the old lady finally had another thought. When the girl smiled, which was often, her mole was in a luckier position, number eleven. The fortune-teller consulted an almanac, matched it to the hour of the girl’s birth. Good news. The Hour of the Rabbit was peace-loving. Her inflexibility was just a bluff. And any leftover righteousness could be beaten down with a strong stick. It was further revealed that the fortune-teller’s sister-in-law was a gossip known for exaggeration. But just to make sure the marriage went well, the fortune-teller sold Baby Uncle a Hundred Different Things charm that covered bad dates, bad spirits, bad luck, and hair loss. “But even with this, don’t marry in the Dragon Year. Bad year for a Horse.”

  The first marriage proposal came from Chang’s matchmaker, who went to the bonesetter and related the good omens. She boasted of the coffinmaker’s respect, as an artisan descended from noted artisans. She described his house, his rock gardens, his fish ponds, the furniture in his many rooms, how the wood was of the best color, purple like a fresh bruise. As to the matter of a dowry, the coffinmaker was willing to be more than generous. Since the girl was to be a second wife and not a first, couldn’t her dowry be a jar of opium and a jar of dragon bones? This was not much, yet it was priceless, and therefore not insulting to the girl’s worth.

  The bonesetter considered the offer. He was growing old. Where would his daughter go when he died? And what other man would want her in his household? She was too spirited, too set in her ways. She had no mother to teach her the manners of a wife. True, the coffinmaker would not have been his first choice of son-in-law, if he had had another, but he did not want to stand in the way of his daughter’s future happiness. He told Precious Auntie about the generous offer from the coffinmaker.

  To this, Precious Auntie huffed. “The man’s a brute,” she said. “I’d rather eat worms than be his wife.”

  The bonesetter had to give Chang’s matchmaker an awkward answer: “I’m sorry,” he said, “but my daughter cried herself sick, unable to bear the thought of leaving her worthless father.” The lie would have been swallowed without disgrace, if only the offer from Baby Uncle’s matchmaker had not been accepted the following week.

  A few days after the future marriage was announced, the coffinmaker went back to the Mouth of the Mountain and surprised Precious Auntie as she was returning from the well. “You think you can insult me, then walk away laughing? “

  “Who insulted whom? You asked me to be your concubine, a servant to your wife. I’m not interested in being a slave in a feudal marriage.”

  As she tried to leave, Chang pinched her neck, saying he should break it, then shook her as if he truly might snap off her head like a winter twig. But instead he threw her to the ground, cursing her and her dead mother’s private parts.

  When Precious Auntie recovered her breath, she sneered, “Big words, big fists. You think you can scare a person into being sorry? “

  And he said these words, which she never forgot: “You’ll soon be sorry every day of your miserable life.”

  Precious Auntie did not tell her father or Hu Sen what had happened. No sense in worrying them. And why lead her future husband to wonder if Chang had a reason to feel insulted? Too many people had already said she was too strong, accustomed to having her own way. And perhaps this was true. She had no fear of punishment or disgrace. She was afraid of almost nothing.

  A month before the wedding, Baby Uncle came to her room late at night. “I want to hear your voice in the dark,” he whispered. “I want to hear the language of shooting stars.” She let him into her k’ang and he eagerly began the nuptials. But as Baby Uncle caressed her, a wind blew over her skin and she began to tremble and shake. For the first time, she was afraid, she realized, frightened by unknown joy.

  The wedding was supposed to take place in Immortal Heart village, right after the start of the new Dragon Year. It was a bare spring day. Slippery pockets of ice lay on the ground. In the morning, a traveling photographer came to the bonesetter’s shop in the Mouth of the Mountain. He had broken his arm the month before, and his payment was a photograph of Precious Auntie on her wedding day. She wore her best winter jacket, one with a high fur-lined collar, and an embroidered cap. She had to stare a long time into the camera, and as she did so, she thought of how her life would soon change forever. Though she was happy, she was also worried. She sensed danger, but she could not name what it was. She tried to look far into the future, but she could see nothing.

  For the journey to the wedding, she changed her clothes to her bridal costume, a red jacket and skirt, the fancy headdress with a scarf that she had to drape over her head once she left her father’s home. The bonesetter had borrowed money to rent two mule carts, one to carry gifts for the groom’s family, the other for the bride’s trunks of blankets and clothes. There was an enclosed sedan chair for the bride herself, and the bone-setter also had to hire four sedan carriers, two carters, a flute player, and two bodyguards to watch out for bandits. For his daughter, he had procured only the best: the fanciest sedan chair, the cleanest carts, the strongest guards with real pistols and gunpowder. In one of the carts was the dowry, the jar of opium and the jar of dragon bones, the last of his supply. He assured his daughter many times not to worry about the cost. After her wedding, he could go to the Monkey’s Jaw and gather more bones.

  Halfway between the villages, two bandits wearing hoods sprang out of the bushes. “I’m the famous Mongol Bandit!” the larger one bellowed. Right away, Precious Auntie recognized the voice of Chang the coffinmaker. What kind of ridiculous joke was this? But before she could say anything, the guards threw down their pistols, the carriers dropped their poles, and Precious Auntie was thrown to the floor of the sedan and knocked out.

  When she came to, she saw Baby Uncle’s face in a haze. He had lifted her out of the sedan. She looked around and saw that the wedding trunks had been ransacked and the guards and carriers had fled. And then she noticed her father lying in a ditch, his head and neck at an odd angle, the life gone from his face. Was she in a dream? “My father,” she moaned. “I want to go to him.” As she bent over the body, unable to make sense of what had happened, Baby Uncle picked up a pistol that one of the guards had dropped.

  “I swear I’ll find the demons who caused my bride so much grief,” he shouted, and then he fired the pistol toward heaven, startling his horse.

  Precious Auntie did not see the kick that killed Baby Uncle, but she heard it, a terrible crack, like the opening of the earth when it was born. For the rest of her life she was to hear it in the breaking of twigs, the crackling of fire, whenever a melon was cleaved in the summer.

  That was how Precious Auntie became a widow and an orphan in the same day. “This is a curse,” she murmured, as she stared down at the bodies of the men she loved. For three sleepless days after their deaths, Precious Auntie apologized to the corpses of her father and Baby Uncle. She talked to their still faces. She touched their mouths, though this was forbidden and caused the women of the house to fear that the wronged ghosts might either possess her or decide to stay.

  On the third day, Chang arrived with two coffins. “He killed them!” Precious Auntie cried. She picked up a fire poker and tried to strike him. She beat at the coffins. Baby Uncle’s brothers had to wrestle her away. They apologized to Chang for the girl’s lunacy, and Chang replied that grief of this magnitude was admirable. Because Precious Auntie continued to be wild with admirable grief, the women of the house had to bind her from elbows to knees with strips of cloth. Then they laid her on Baby Uncle’s k’ang, where she wiggled and twisted like a butterfly stuck in its cocoon until Great-Granny forced her to drink a bowl of medicine that made her body grow limp. For two days and nights, she dreamed she was with Baby Uncle, lying on the k’ang as his bride.

  When she revived, she was alone in the dark. Her arms and legs had been unbound, but they were weak. The house was quiet. She went searching for her father and Baby Uncle. When she reached the main hall, the bodies were g
one, already buried in Chang’s wooden handiwork. Weeping, she wandered about the house and vowed to join them in the yellow earth. In the ink-making studio, she went looking for a length of rope, a sharp knife, matches she could swallow, anything to cause pain greater than she felt. And then she saw a pot of black resin. She lowered a dipper into the liquid and put it in the maw of the stove. The oily ink became a soup of blue flames. She tipped the ladle and swallowed.

  Great-Granny was the first to hear the thump-bumping sounds in the studio. Soon the other women of the household were there as well. They found Precious Auntie thrashing on the floor, hissing air out of a mouth blackened with blood and ink. “Like eels are swimming in the bowl of her mouth,” Mother said. “Better if she dies.”

  But Great-Granny did not let this happen. Baby Uncle’s ghost had come to her in a dream and warned that if Precious Auntie died, he and his ghost bride would roam the house and seek revenge on those who had not pitied her. Everyone knew there was nothing worse than a vengeful ghost. They caused rooms to stink like corpses. They turned bean curd rancid in a moment’s breath. They let wild creatures climb over the walls and gates. With a ghost in the house, you could never get a good night’s sleep.

  Day in and day out, Great-Granny dipped cloths into ointments and laid these over Precious Auntie’s wounds. She bought dragon bones, crushed them, and sprinkled them into her swollen mouth. And then she noticed that another part of Precious Auntie had become swollen: her womb.

  Over the next few months, Precious Auntie wounds changed from pus to scars, and her womb grew like a gourd. She had once been a fine-looking girl. Now all except blind beggars shuddered at the sight of her. One day, when it was clear she was going to survive, Great-Granny said to her speechless patient: “Now that I’ve saved your life, where will you and your baby go? What will you do?”