Just Shoot Me!

I'm at Chapter Seven now of Amy Tan's "The Bonesetter's Daughter." Ruth Young's mother, LuLing, has come to life as a difficult woman haunted by a ghost and a curse in her past. But then everything in Ruth's life seem difficult: her boyfriend, her boyfriend's ex-wife and two daughters, her clients and her ghostwriting job, her list of tasks. It seems that the harder she tries to organize and the harder she tries not to be difficult, the more things become difficult. Ruth just thrives on the difficult.

Life is a cycle of struggles and difficulties, we don't even have to try.

But I believe there is a way out if only for just a moment.

For Ruth it was the sea. For my father, it was the afternoons spent outside on the porch doing nothing in particular, just staring out into the sky. For my maternal grandmother, it was her sewing and her paper flowers. For my fat aunt, it's plucking out her eyebrows and then painting them back on. For my thin aunt, it's the many happy hours spent fiddling with her washing machine. And for my mom, it's the potted plants in the garden.

So what is your escape strategy?

Throughout the book, a philosophy of language is told in the many practical ways a mode of thought is expressed: in English, in Mandarin, in the translation between Mandarin to English, in markings made by chopsticks on a sandbox, in brush strokes on paper, and in the Days of No Talk that Ruth has observed for eight years. I myself have never deliberately used silence as a language but I know that Less Talk can Mean More.

"Maybe I die soon! Everybody happy!"

LuLing's ultimate threat. I remember my father would say jokingly, "If I get sick and be too much trouble, just shoot me!"

Our neighbour Alex tells his wife, "If I get sick and be too much trouble, just poison me!"

And Penny's husband suffering horribly from gout cries out, "God, why don't you just kill me!"

But where there are less audible death wishes, the more real and great the danger seems to be. We are just surprised that one day without warning someone has popped himself off. A kid at school jumped to his death one day. Too much Ayn Rand, someone said. A girl at school jumped to her death one day. Broken heart, the tabloids said. A childhood friend slashed his wrist while stationed on the North Pole. Too much religion, some reported back home. A student in another class swallowed toilet cleaning acid. Nobody had any idea why.

Certainly, I had and continue to have my own LuLing moments. Actually, I even say it with conceited certainty, "One day I will die and you will miss me!"

Four years ago I wrote: "Emotionally, I am probably like a string that had been broken and knotted together again, and I forget that the break is really there. I still haven't quite learned to breathe properly. I wish it was as easy as getting myself to drink more water."

"Remember, Fatima," someone once told me, "It's only 'ormonal!"

In my early "'ormonal" teens my threats were slightly different: "Why don't you just kill yourself!" "I'm going to kill you!" "Why don't you just die!" "Are you really asking for pain on your body?"

It's been three days and the credit people are giving Penny a hard time getting her savings. A hard time because she isn't keen on getting another loan. I think they are deliberately making it difficult so as to discourage people from getting their savings. Now she has to go to a different town to get it, and if she still doesn't get it, I'll tell them to go fucking kill themselves.

I don't think I have a real escape strategy, maybe my writing but not really. If I feel miserable then the world will just have to fall apart with me.

San Roque
July 17, 2011