The Woman Warrior_ Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts - Maxine Hong Kingston [30]
“You will not win, Boulder,” she spoke to the ghost. “You do not belong here. And I will see to it that you leave. When morning comes, only one of us will control this room, Ghost, and that one will be me. I will be marching its length and width; I will be dancing, not sliding and creeping like you. I will go right out that door, but I’ll come back. Do you know what gift I will bring you? I’ll get fire, Ghost. You made a mistake haunting a medical school. We have cabinets full of alcohol, laboratories full. We have a communal kitchen with human-sized jars of oil and cooking fat, enough to burn for a month without our skipping a single fried meal. I will pour alcohol into my washbucket, and I’ll set fire to it. Ghost, I will burn you out. I will swing the bucket across the ceiling. Then from the kitchen my friends will come with the lard; when we fire it, the smoke will fill every crack and corner. Where will you hide, Ghost? I will make this room so clean, no ghost will ever visit here again.
“I do not give in,” she said. “There is no pain you can inflict that I cannot endure. You’re wrong if you think I’m afraid of you. You’re no mystery to me. I’ve heard of you Sitting Ghosts before. Yes, people have lived to tell about you. You kill babies, you cowards. You have no power over a strong woman. You are no more dangerous than a nesting cat. My dog sits on my feet more heavily than you can. You think this is suffering? I can make my ears ring louder by taking aspirin. Are these all the tricks you have, Ghost? Sitting and ringing? That is nothing. A Broom Ghost can do better. You cannot even assume an interesting shape. Merely a boulder. A hairy butt boulder. You must not be a ghost at all. Of course. There are no such things as ghosts.
“Let me instruct you, Boulder. When Yen, the teacher, was grading the provincial exams one year, a thing with hair as ugly as yours plopped itself on his desk. (That one had glaring eyes, though, so it wasn’t blind and stupid like you.) Yen picked up his ferule and hit it like a student. He chased it around the room. (It wasn’t lame and lazy.) And it vanished. Later Yen taught us, ‘After life, the rational soul ascends the dragon; the sentient soul descends the dragon. So in the world there can be no ghosts. This thing must have been a Fox Spirit.’ That must be just what you are—a Fox Spirit. You are so hairy, you must be a fox that doesn’t even know how to transform itself. You’re not clever for a Fox Spirit, I must say. No tricks. No blood. Where are your hanged man’s rotting noose and icy breath? No throwing shoes into the rafters? No metamorphosis into a beautiful sad lady? No disguises in my dead relatives’ shapes? No drowned woman with seaweed hair? No riddles or penalty games? You are a puny little boulder indeed. Yes, when I get my oil, I will fry you for breakfast.”
She then ignored the ghost on her chest and chanted her lessons for the next day’s classes. The moon moved from one window to the other, and as dawn came, the thing scurried off, climbing quickly down the foot of the bed.
She fell asleep until time for school. She had said she was going to sleep in that room, and so she did.
She awoke when the students came tumbling into the room. “What happened?” they asked, getting under the quilt to keep warm. “Did anything happen?”
“Take my earlobes, please,” said my mother, “and pull them back and forth. In case I lost any of my self, I want you to call me back. I was afraid, and fear may have driven me out of my body and mind. Then I will tell you the story.” Two friends clasped her hands while