The Woman Warrior_ Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts - Maxine Hong Kingston [69]
The house was more crowded than ever, though some of the children had gone away to school; the jade trees were inside for the winter. Along walls and on top of tables, jade trees, whose trunks were as thick as ankles, stood stoutly, green now and without the pink skin the sun gave them in the spring.
“I am so afraid,” said Moon Orchid.
“There is no one after you,” said Brave Orchid. “No Mexicans.”
“I saw some in the Greyhound station,” said Moon Orchid.
“No. No, those were Filipinos.” She held her sister’s earlobes and began the healing chant for being unafraid. “There are no Mexicans after you,” she said.
“I know. I got away from them by escaping on the bus.”
“Yes, you escaped on the bus with the mark of the dog on it.”
In the evening, when Moon Orchid seemed quieter, her sister probed into the cause of this trouble.
“What made you think anyone was after you?”
“I heard them talking about me. I snuck up on them and heard them.”
“But you don’t understand Mexican words.”
“They were speaking English.”
“You don’t understand English words.”
“This time, miraculously, I understood. I decoded their speech. I penetrated the words and understood what was happening inside.”
Brave Orchid tweaked her sister’s ears for hours, chanting her new address to her, telling her how much she loved her and how much her daughter and nephews and nieces loved her, and her brother-in-law loved her. “I won’t let anything happen to you. I won’t let you travel again. You’re home. Stay home. Don’t be afraid.” Tears fell from Brave Orchid’s eyes. She had whisked her sister across the ocean by jet and then made her scurry up and down the Pacific coast, back and forth across Los Angeles. Moon Orchid had misplaced herself, her spirit (her “attention,” Brave Orchid called it) scattered all over the world. Brave Orchid held her sister’s head as she pulled on her earlobe. She would make it up to her. For moments an attentiveness would return to Moon Orchid’s face. Brave Orchid rubbed the slender hands, blew on the fingers, tried to stoke up the flickerings. She stayed home from the laundry day after day. She threw out the Thorazine and vitamin? that a doctor in Los Angeles had prescribed. She made Moon Orchid sit in the kitchen sun while she picked over the herbs in cupboards and basement and the fresh plants that grew in the winter garden. Brave Orchid chose the gentlest plants and made medicines and foods like those they had eaten in their village.
At night she moved from her own bedroom and slept beside Moon Orchid. “Don’t be afraid to sleep,” she said. “Rest. I’ll be here beside you. I’ll help your spirit find the place to come back to. I’ll call it for you; you go to sleep.” Brave Orchid stayed awake watching until dawn.
Moon Orchid still described aloud her nieces’ and nephews’ doings, but now in a monotone, and she no longer interrupted herself to ask questions. She would not go outside, even into the yard. “Why, she’s mad,” Brave Orchid’s husband said when she was asleep.
Brave Orchid held her hand when she appeared vague. “Don’t go away, Little Sister. Don’t go any further. Come back to us.” If Moon Orchid fell asleep on the sofa, Brave Orchid sat up through the night, sometimes dozing in a chair. When Moon Orchid fell asleep in the middle of the bed, Brave Orchid made a place for herself at the foot. She would anchor her sister to this earth.
But each day Moon Orchid slipped further away. She said that the Mexicans had traced her to this house. That was the day she shut the drapes and blinds and locked the doors. She sidled along the walls to peep outside. Brave Orchid told her husband that he must humor his sister-in-law. It was right to shut the windows; it kept her spirit from leaking away. Then Moon Orchid went about the house turning off the lights like during