Chapter 6 Chapter Four

Ruth returned to her mother's house and began to tidy up, throwing away the many useless things Ru Ling had accumulated: dirty paper towels, plastic bags, small packages of soy sauce and mustard from restaurants, disposable chopsticks, used straws, expired coupons, Empty medicine bottles with little cotton balls left inside.She dumped all the bottles and jars in the cupboard, some of them unopened.In addition to the rotten food in the freezer of the refrigerator, it is full of four large garbage bags. It made her feel better to clear these things out, as if she were clearing out the tangles in her mother's brain.She cleaned one cupboard after another.She found some small handkerchiefs with holly patterns on them, which Ru Ling had been reluctant to use for Christmas.Ruth put them into a bag to donate to charity later.She also finds worn-out towels she's been using since she was a kid and cheap sheets she bought on sale.The new bedding was still in its gift box at the department store, untouched.

But when Ruth went to get those old towels, she found that she was as reluctant to throw away these old things as her mother.They are full of traces of past lives, have their own lives, histories, personalities, and are tightly linked with other memories.For example, this towel with a crabapple pattern in her hand, she remembered thinking that it was very beautiful.She often wraps her wet hair in this towel, pretending to be a turbaned queen.One day she took a towel to the beach and was scolded by her mother for not using the "good stuff" but the green towel with the fuzzy sides.The education Ruth received since she was a child made it impossible for her to spend thousands of dollars every year on Italian-made brand-name bedding like Gideon did, and throw away last year's ones like expired old magazines without feeling a bit sorry.Perhaps Ruth was not as stingy and stingy as her mother, but she always cared about it, for fear of losing something and regretting it later.

Ruth walked into her mother's bedroom. There was a lot of perfume on the dressing table. There were more than two dozen bottles, all intact in the box.Mom called them "stinky water."Ruth once tried to explain to her mother that toilet water did not mean toilet water, but eau de toilette.But Ru Ling said that the name sounded like stinky water in the toilet, not to mention that these were gifts from Gao Ling and his family, Ru Ling felt that they intended to humiliate her. "If you don't like their presents," Ruth once said, "why tell them every time it's exactly what you want?"

"How can I not be polite?" "Since you hate it so much, then you should be polite and just throw it away." "Throw it away? How can you throw it away? Isn't that a waste of money!" "Then give it to someone else." "Who would want that? Toilet water! Pooh! People think I'm going to humiliate them!" In the end, the twenty or so bottles were placed on Ru Ling's dressing table. The twenty or so humiliations, some were given by Gao Ling, and some were given by Gao Ling's daughter. They didn't know that every morning, Ru Ling Waking up and seeing these presents, she felt indignantly that the whole world was against her.Out of curiosity, Ruth opened one of the boxes, unscrewed the bottle cap, and it really stinks!Mom was right.But she thought about it again, how long is the shelf life of perfume?Perfume is not like wine, it gets better with age.Ruth threw the boxes into the charity bag, and suddenly realized the absurdity of the move, so, although she felt that it was a waste, she resolutely threw the boxes into the garbage bag.And what about this box of powder cakes?Ruth opened the golden lily-patterned compact.This powder box is at least 30 years old, and the powder inside has been oxidized for many years, and has turned orange-red, like the color of the face of a ventriloquist puppet.No matter what it looks like, this stuff must be poisonous, maybe cause cancer, or Alzheimer's.Everything in the world, no matter how innocuous and harmless it may seem, is potentially dangerous. When you least pay attention, the toxins in it will seep out, infect you and make you sick.These are the principles that Ru Ling instilled in her.

She took out the powder puff, and there were some lumps of powder on the edges of the puff, but the center part was very smooth, obviously Lu Ling used to use it every day to cover the wrinkles on her face.She threw the compact and puff into the trash bag.After a while, he hurriedly picked it up again, almost unable to hold back the tears.This compact is a part of mom's life!What if my mother is nostalgic and misses these old things?She opened the powder box again, looked at her heartbroken expression in the small mirror, and saw the orange powder again.No, there's no caring about it, this stuff is poisonous, it's scary.She tossed the compact into the trash bag again.

In the evening, one corner of the living room was filled with all kinds of things that Ruth didn't think her mother needed: an old-fashioned telephone, sewing charts, old utility bills, five frosted glass iced tea cups, and a pile of slogans coffee cups of different styles and colors, a three-headed desk lamp, one of which has long since disappeared, the old clamshell-shaped recliner that was on the porch, an old-fashioned toaster with worn-out wires and a curved body. The shaped lines are like the fenders on a Buick car, a kitchen alarm clock, the hands on the surface are in the shape of knives and forks and spoons, and mother's wool bag, which contains a lot of unfinished purple, cyan and green slippers , expired medicines, and a shabby drying rack that looked like spider feet.

It was getting late, but Ruth kept working harder, looking around, finger-twisting to see what needed repairs in the house to avoid accidents.The wall outlets need to be replaced, the smoke detectors should be replaced, and the water heater should be turned down to keep my mother from accidentally burning herself in the shower.Was that brown stain on the ceiling from a water leak?She carefully traced the places that might be rained, and all the way to the floor next to the sofa, her examining eyes stopped, rushed forward, lifted a corner of the carpet, and stared at the floor.This is one of the secret places where my mother hides things. She always likes to put valuable things in it, in case there is a war, or in the words of her mother, there will be "unimaginable natural and man-made disasters". These things will come in handy.Ruth held down one end of the plank, and there was a click, and the other end of the floor lifted like a seesaw.aha!Gold snake bracelet!She took out the bracelet and giggled triumphantly, like a contestant on a TV entertainment show who picked the right answer and opened the right door.At the beginning, her mother dragged her to the Royal Jade Museum on Jackson Street and bought this bracelet for one hundred and twenty dollars. Ru Ling once told Ruth that it was made of twenty-four carat pure gold. You can weigh it and resell it for full price.

What happened to Ruling's other secret collections?Ruth took a photo-album basket out of the fireplace hearth which was never in use, then groped for a loose hearth brick and removed it—haha, it was still there!It's incredible!A twenty-dollar bill with four one-dollar bills rolled inside.Now that she had found this small fortune again, the testimony of her youth, she felt dazed for a while.When the mother and daughter first moved here, Lu Ling hid five twenty-dollar bills under the brick.Ruth went to check every three to five times, and every time she found that the position of the banknote had not changed.One day, she put one of her own hairs on top of the roll of bills, as she did in a teenage detective movie.Every time she went to check after that, her hair was still there.When Ruth was fifteen, she began to "borrow" money from this roll of bills to meet her own emergencies—it was nothing more than a dollar or two for mascara, movie tickets, and Marlboro cigarettes. Something like these moms forbid.At the beginning, she was always anxious and had to put the money back to feel at ease.As soon as the money was put back, she was always relieved that she hadn't been caught.She found reasons for herself, thinking that she deserved the money. She tidied the lawn, washed the dishes, and was scolded by her mother every time she had nothing to do, so she deserved some pay.Gradually, she changed the few twenty-dollar bills into ten-dollar bills, then five-dollar bills, and finally there were only a few one-dollar bills wrapped in the only remaining twenty-dollar bill.

Now, thirty-one years have passed, facing the evidence of her original crime, she seems to have returned to her girlhood, and it seems that after a long time, she looks back at herself as a teenager.I used to be an unhappy girl, full of passion, anger and all kinds of sudden impulses.She once hesitated: Should I believe in God or be an atheist?Do you believe in Buddhism or be a radical hippie?No matter what belief you choose, what kind of impact will your mother's perennial pain and unhappiness have on you?Do ghosts really exist?If not, does that mean that the mother is actually mentally ill?Is there really such a thing as good luck in the world?Otherwise, why should her cousins ​​live in a fine house in Saratoga?Sometimes, she made up her mind to be the exact opposite of her mother.Instead of complaining all day long, she should do some constructive work.She will join the peacekeeping force and serve in a remote jungle.Or she wants to be a veterinarian, treating injured animals.Later, she wanted to be a special education teacher, teaching those mentally retarded children.She will not be like her mother, saying that half of her daughter's brain is missing all day long, she will treat students as equal souls to everyone, and will not find fault with them.

She wrote these pent-up emotions in a diary given to her by Aunt Gao Ling for Christmas as a vent.She had just finished reading ① in English class at the time, and like the other girls in the class, she was filled with the feeling that she, like Anne, was different, innocent, ignorant of the tragedy that was coming, He was widely praised after his death.The diary will prove that she once existed, witness her importance, and more importantly, that one day, somewhere in the future, there will be someone who can understand her mind, even if she is no longer alive at that time.The ability to believe that her pain was not meaningless brought her great comfort.In the diary, she can speak freely and honestly.Frankly, of course, include life records.So the diary began by recording the top ten hits on the radio charts at the time, and also mentioned that a boy named Michael Pub had a "reaction" when he danced with Wendy.This was Wendy's version, and Ruth thought at the time that the "reaction" meant that the boy was elated and happy.

She knew that her mother was peeking at her diary. One day, her mother asked Ruth, "Why do you like the song "Turn, Turn, Turn"? Everyone likes it, so you follow others?" Another time, my mother sniffed deliberately, He said to her, "Why does it smell like cigarettes?" At that time, Ruth had just written in her diary that she was out with a group of friends and met some hippies in the park, and the hippies invited them to smoke.Ruth was thankful that her mother thought they were smoking cigarettes, and if she found out they were smoking marijuana, she would be in big trouble.After that questioning, Ruth hid the diary in the bottom of the wardrobe, in the middle of the mattress, or behind a drawer.But no matter where she hides, mother can always find it.At least Ruth deduced from her mother's latest injunctions that her mother must have read her diary. "No beach after school." "No more with that Lisa." Or "Why are you so obsessed with boys?" But if Ruth protested that her mother was peeking at her diary, Ruling would Began to be evasive, never to admit that she had read Ruth's diary, but she would say something like "A daughter should not keep a secret from her mother." , Spanish, and some polysyllabic words that mom didn't recognize.For example, "Aquatic amusements of the silica particulate variety" means the beach at Lands End. Ruth thought, could it be that mother never understood that the more she insisted that there should be no secrets between mother and daughter, the more her daughter would try to hide it from her?But maybe Mom felt it.Perhaps Mother had something of her own to keep from Ruth. "It's better not to say bad things." Mom said.Mother and daughter cannot trust each other at all.Betrayal and infidelity start with little things like this, not some big lie, but these little secrets of life. Ruth finally remembered where she ended up hiding the diary.She had forgotten it existed for so many years.She went into the kitchen and climbed onto the workbench, not as agile as she had been at sixteen.She reached out and groped on the top of the cabinet, and quickly found the diary. There was a heart-shaped pattern on the cover of the diary. She once wrote down the names of a few boys she liked at the beginning, and some of the names were later written in pink. Nail polish is gone.She came down with this dusty old diary, touching the red gilt cover. She felt numb in her hands and feet, as if her unchangeable future destiny was predicted in the diary.She felt like she was sixteen again.Open the cover, and the two-inch large characters on the inner page immediately come into view: STOP! ! !personal documents! ! !To read without authorization is to commit the great crime of trespassing! ! !That's right!I am talking about you! But her mother read it right, and more than that, she followed exactly what Ruth wrote on the penultimate page, which nearly killed both mother and daughter. In the week before Ruth wrote those fatal words, the mutual torment between mother and daughter had intensified.They are like two people trapped in a sandstorm, bearing great pain, constantly blaming each other for the disaster.The sudden escalation of the conflict occurred the night before.Ruth was leaning against the bedroom window, smoking a cigarette, with the door closed.Hearing the sound of her mother's footsteps approaching her room, she immediately threw out the cigarette, fell on the bed, and pretended to be reading.As usual, Ru Ling walked in without knocking on the door.Ruth looked up at her with a pure and innocent expression, and Ruling yelled, "You're smoking!" "I don't!" "You're just smoking," Ru Ling pointed at the window and strode over.The cigarette fell on the window sill downstairs, and the lingering smoke curled up, exposing Ruth's lie. "I'm an American," Ruth exclaimed. "I have the right to privacy and the right to pursue my own happiness. I don't live to satisfy your demands!" "No! You are so wrong!" "do not bother me!" "How did I give birth to a daughter like you? What's the point of me being alive? Why don't I just die?" Ru Ling was out of breath, and Ruth felt that her mother was like a mad dog. "Do you want me to die?" Ruth shivered nervously, but she shrugged her shoulders in a nonchalant way and said, "I don't care." Mom took a few breaths and left Ruth's room.Ruth got up and slammed the door shut. Later, weeping indignantly, she wrote in her diary: "I hate her! There will never be a mother as bad as her. She doesn't love me, doesn't listen to me, doesn't understand me at all, only Pick me up, get crazy, make me feel worse." She knew her mother would read the words. She knew she was taking a risk by writing this.This is pure malice.But the sense of guilt made her even more brave.She went on to write more vicious and terrible words, and though she later crossed them out, it was too late.Now that Ruth looked at the blacked-out lines, she still remembered clearly the words she had written and the words her mother had read: "You always shout that you want to commit suicide, so why do you just say no? I hope you will do it quickly. Just die, go, go, go, kill yourself! Aunt Bao told you Die, me too!" Even then, she was shocked that she had written such vicious words.She still feels shocked when she recalls the past.At that time, she was crying while writing, and her heart was full of anger, fear, and an inexplicable sense of relief. Her mother hurt her so deeply, and now she can finally openly let her mother know: I want to hurt you too.Then she hid the diary in the back of the drawer where she put her underwear, which is not hard to find.She deliberately put the diary upright, with the spine facing inward, and put a pair of pink floral underwear on it.In this way, she can clearly know whether her mother has touched the diary. After school the next day, Ruth wandered outside on purpose.She walks along the beach, stopping at the grocery store to look at cosmetics.She also called Wendy from a public phone booth.She just wanted to make sure that by the time she got home, her mother had read what she had written.She expected a big scene, mother didn't cook, just quarreled, shouted to die, and said that Ruth wanted her mother to die soon so that she could move in with Aunt Gaoling.Ruling would not stop until Ruth admitted that she had written those vicious words. Then Ruth imagined another situation.After reading those words, my mother clenched her fists and knocked on her chest, swallowing the pain in her heart, and clenched her teeth to prevent herself from crying.Later, when Ruth came home, Mom would pretend not to see her, make dinner, sit down, and eat alone in silence.Ruth would not budge, and asked her mother to sit down to eat too.She would rather eat cereal with every meal than admit her mistake.The cold war between mother and daughter would last for several days, and mother tortured Ruth with her silence, rejection and indifference.Ruth always suppressed the pain in her heart, saying that she was strong until the matter passed, unless, as usual, Ruth couldn't stand it any longer, she bowed her head to admit her mistake, and cried and begged her mother for forgiveness. By the end of the day, Ruth had no time to think about what was going to happen. She had to go home.She forced herself to walk in the direction of home, it was useless to think too much, and the reality was no worse than imagined.Just let it go, she told herself.She went upstairs with heavy steps, and as soon as she opened the door, she saw her mother running over and said to her worriedly, "You're finally back!" But wait, she realized that this was not her mother, but Aunt Gao Ling. "Your mother is injured," Aunt Gao Ling said, grabbing Ruth's arm and dragging her out of the door again. "Hurry up, hurry up, we have to go to the hospital right away." "Injured?" Ruth was suddenly top-heavy and unable to move. "What's going on? How did she get hurt?" "She fell through the window. I don't know why she was leaning against the window. She fell on the concrete floor, and the tenant downstairs called the ambulance. She fell and had head problems. I Don't know what the exact extent of the injury was, but the doctor said it was bad. Let's hope her brain isn't damaged." Ruth sobbed first, then curled up, crying hysterically.This is all caused by her, and she wants this kind of thing to happen.She cried and cried until she was out of breath and passed out.When they got to the hospital, Aunt Gao Ling had to send Ruth to the emergency room for emergency treatment.A nurse held up a paper bag and asked her to breathe into it, but Ruth knocked the bag down, and then someone came and gave her an injection, and she immediately felt limp and light, and all her troubles disappeared.She felt a warm, dark blanket covering her body, covering her head and face.In the darkness of nothingness, she could hear her mother's voice telling the doctor that now her daughter could finally be at peace, we died together, mother and daughter. In fact, Mom broke her shoulder, broke a rib, and had a mild concussion.After her mother was discharged from the hospital, Aunt Gao Ling stayed at home for a few days, helping with cooking and doing housework, so that her mother would have time to learn to bathe and change clothes by herself.Ruth always stood by and asked weakly from time to time: "Can I help?" Aunt Gao Ling asked her to help cook, wash the bathtub, or help mother change the clean sheets. In the next few days, Ruth was uneasy, wondering if her mother told Aunt Gao Ling what she read in Ruth's diary, or why she jumped off the building.She carefully observed her aunt's expression and analyzed every word she said, hoping to find some clues.But from Aunt Gao Ling's tone of voice, Ruth could not detect the slightest anger, disappointment or false sympathy.Mother's behavior was equally puzzling.She didn't look angry, but she showed a sad and frustrated expression, as if something was missing from her whole body.But what is it?Love?Still worried?The mother's eyes were dull, and she didn't care about everything that happened in front of her. No matter how big or small, everything didn't matter.What exactly does this mean?Why doesn't she want to fight anymore?Ru Ling ate the porridge and drank the tea brought by Ruth. The mother and daughter also talked, but they talked about insignificant things that would neither cause quarrel nor misunderstanding. "I'm going to school," Ruth said. "Have you got money for lunch?" "Yes. Would you like some tea?" "No more." Many times a day, Ruth wanted to say sorry to her mother, that she was a bad girl and that everything was her fault.But Mother was apparently pretending she hadn't read what Ruth wrote in her diary, which would amount to an open admission that she had.So, for weeks on end, they were wary of touching each other's sore spots. On Ruth's sixteenth birthday, when she came home from school, she found that her mother had bought some of her favorite things: two kinds of rice dumplings, one stuffed with meat, one stuffed with red bean paste, and a strawberry cream cake. "I can't do better," Ruling said.Her right hand was still splinted and fixed with a sling, so she couldn't hold anything.It must be very hard for my mother to walk all the way back from the supermarket with several bags in one left hand.Ruth felt that what her mother did must mean that she was willing to forgive herself. "I like these things," said Ruth politely. "awesome." "No time to buy presents," murmured Mom. "I found something, maybe you still like it." She pointed to the coffee table.Ruth walked over slowly and picked up a package that was awkwardly wrapped, the wrapper taped up and no ribbon.There is a black leather book inside, and a small red satin bag with a small button on the bag.Inside the pouch was a gold ring set with two oval-shaped emeralds.Ruth had always been very fond of the ring.The ring was passed down from Ruth's father, and the grandmother gave it to him to give to his fiancée.Mother never wears them.Gao Ling once hinted that this ring should be given to her and passed on to her son, who is also the only grandson of the Yang family.After that, every time Lu Ling mentioned the ring, she would talk about how greedy her sister was. "Wow, my God, my God," Ruth marveled, staring at the ring in her palm. "This is the finest jade, don't lose it," Ru Ling warned her. "I won't." Ruth put the ring on her middle finger.The ring is too small to fit in, and fits just fine on the ring finger. Ruth turned to the other gift.It was a pocket book bound in black leather with a red ribbon inside as a bookmark. "You held it upside down," Mom said, turning the book upside down with the spine on the right.She turned the pages of the book from left to right on behalf of Ruth, and there were all Chinese characters in it. "This is the Bible in Chinese," Mom said.She turned to another page, and inside the page was a black-and-white photo of a young Chinese woman. "This is my mother," Lu Ling's voice sounded a little nervous. "Look, I printed an extra copy for you." She took out another photo covered with wax paper. Ruth nodded. Mom mentioned her mother, which is very important.She really wanted to concentrate on listening to her mother's speech and not look at the ring on her hand, but she couldn't help but imagine what her classmates would say when they saw it. They would definitely envy her very much. "When I was young, I held the Bible here," Lu Ling patted his chest, "I also thought of my mother when I slept." Ruth nodded and said, "She looks beautiful like this." She had met Ruling Gaoling's mother and Ruth's grandmother before.The grandma in those photos has a big white face covered with deep wrinkles, her mouth is tightly closed, and her thin lips are as sharp as a knife's edge.Ruling clipped the pretty photo into the Bible and held out his hand to Ruth. "Give me back." "what?" "Give me back the ring." Bewildered, Ruth reluctantly handed the ring into Ruling's hand, and watched her put it back into the satin pouch. "It's a pity to use a good thing now. If I give it to you in the future, you will cherish it even more." Ruth wanted to yell, "No! You can't do that! It's my birthday present." But of course, she didn't say anything, but stood aside silently, and saw Lu Ling go to the recliner and push up the cushion. There was a wooden board under the cushion, and she pushed up the wooden board. , she put the "Bible" and the small bag for the ring into the interlayer.It turns out that this is also where my mother hides things! "One day, you can keep these things forever." one day?Ruth's throat tightened.She wanted to scream. "When will it be forever?" But she knew what her mother meant, "One day I will die, and you won't have to listen to my rambling." Ruth had mixed feelings in her heart. On the one hand, she felt very happy that her mother gave her such A good birthday gift for herself, which means that her mother still loves her, but on the other hand, she is disappointed that her mother took the ring back so soon. The next day, Ruth pulled up the cushion and wood of the recliner and reached into the mezzanine for the little bag.She took out the ring, and seeing this untouchable contraband, she was so nervous that it seemed that the ring had been swallowed by herself, like a stick in her throat.Maybe her mother had given her the ring purely to torture her.That may well be the case.Mom knows best how to make her sad!snort!Ruth thought, I just won't let you get away with it.She's going to pretend she doesn't care.She decided to force herself never to look at the ring again, as if there was no such thing. A few days later, Ruling came into Ruth's room and accused her of going to the beach again.Ruth lied and said that she didn't go, and Ru Ling brought Ruth's sneakers in from the door, and the two shoes slapped each other, and the sand flowed out. "That's sidewalk sand!" Ruth protested. In this way, the struggle between the mother and daughter began again.Ruth found this feeling both foreign and familiar.The more they quarreled, the more fierce they became, and the more they quarreled, the more confident they became. They broke through the Chuhe-Han boundary formed just last month and regained their lost ground.Both of them seem to know that the worst is over, and it doesn't matter how fiercely they quarrel and scold. Later, Ruth hesitates to throw away the diary.She took out the diary that caused the catastrophe from the underwear drawer, flipped through it, and couldn't help sobbing softly.The diary records her inner voice, at least part of it is her true inner voice.These pages contained her own life, some of which she did not want to forget.But when she turned to the last page, she realized painfully that God, Mother, and Aunt Precious knew that she had almost committed mortal murder.She carefully crossed out the last few words, scribbling over and over with a ballpoint pen until nothing remained but an ink blotch on the paper.On the next and final page, she wrote: "I'm sorry. Sometimes I just wish you could say sorry to me too." Although she would never be able to show these words to her mother, she already felt better writing this.These words don't matter good or bad, they are just her true inner reflection.Then, she wanted to hide the diary in a place where her mother would never find it.She climbed onto the kitchen worktop, raised her arms high, and tossed the diary on top of the cupboard.It was safe, secret, and hard to get. Over time, Ruth herself forgot that the diary was there. Ruth recalled that over the years, she and her mother had never talked about what happened back then.She put the diary down.What happened in the past is not no longer changing, what is permanent is that the world is destined to change.She developed a strange kind of sympathy for her younger self, and at the same time was ashamed to realize how stupid and self-centered she had been.If she had a daughter, it would cause her as much pain as her mother did when she grew up.Her daughter, who must be fifteen or sixteen by now, would also yell "I hate you" at Ruth.She couldn't help but wonder if her mother was the same, yelling "hate you" to her mother. Suddenly, she thought of the two photos they had seen during the Mid-Autumn Festival dinner that day.In the picture of my mother, Aunt Gao Ling and grandma together, my mother is about fifteen or sixteen years old.There was another photo of Aunt Bao, which Ru Ling mistakenly thought was the photo of her mother.A thought suddenly crossed my mind: the picture my mother put in the Bible.She once said it was her mother.Who is that in that photo? Ruth pushed back the cushions and wood of the recliner.Everything was intact: the little black Bible, the satin satin bag, and the emerald-encrusted ring inside were all unharmed.She opened the "Bible", and there was a picture covered in wax paper, which was the one her mother showed her on the day of the Mid-Autumn Festival dinner.Auntie Bao wore a novel decoration on her head and a high-necked winter coat.What does it mean?Could it be that my mother had a brain problem thirty years ago?Or is it true that Aunt Bao is her mother as mother said?If that is the case, does that mean that there is actually no problem with the mother's brain?Ruth stared at the photo again, trying to pick out some features resembling her mother's in the eyebrows.But she could see nothing. What else is hiding under the chair?Ruth reached in and pulled out a brown shopping bag tied with a red Christmas ribbon.There is a stack of manuscripts inside, all written in Chinese characters.On the top of some of the pages, there is a beautiful and correct big character written with a brush.She had seen this manuscript before.But when and where did you see it? Suddenly, she remembered the manuscripts that were stacked in the bottom drawer on the right side of her desk. "True," she recalled beginning the first page of it. "I know these things are true." What is the next sentence saying?The names of the dead, the secrets that go with them.What's the secret?She felt that her mother's life was at stake, and the only savior was the stack of manuscript paper in her hand, but the manuscript was always by her side. She looked at the big letter at the beginning of the first page of the new manuscript in her hand.The voice of her mother scolding her came to mind, "study hard." Yes, she should have worked hard to learn Chinese.That word is very familiar, with a curve at the bottom and three dots next to it—heart!Then came the first sentence, which looked a lot like the beginning of the manuscript she had at home. "These things I—" But the following is different.The next word is "should".The word mother used to say.The next word is "no," which my mother used to say too.The next one... She doesn't know her anymore. "These things I shouldn't—" Ruth tried to guess what would come next: "These things I shouldn't tell people." "These things I shouldn't write down." "These things I shouldn't say." She I walked into my bedroom and looked for my mother's English-Chinese dictionary on the bookshelf.She looked up the Chinese expressions of the words "tell", "write" and "speak", but they were all different from what was written in her mother's manuscript.She eagerly flipped through the dictionary and continued to look it up. After about ten minutes, she finally figured it out: "I shouldn't forget these things." When did Mom give her the other manuscript?About five or six years ago?Were these also written at the time?Did she know at the time that she was slowly losing her memory?Did Mom ever think about giving Ruth the complete manuscript?When does she want to give it?When she finally gave the ring to Ruth for permanent safekeeping?Or when she felt Ruth finally realized the importance of these things?Ruth went on to read the following words.But apart from the word "I", everything else was in chaos.She only recognizes "I", but there are thousands of Chinese characters below that she doesn't know.What should she do? Ruth lay in bed with the manuscript beside her.She looked at Aunt Bao's photo, and then stuck the photo to her chest.Tomorrow she was going to call Art in Hawaii to see if he could recommend someone to be an interpreter.this is one.She was to get the rest of the manuscript from home.This is two.She wanted to call Aunt Gao Ling to see how much she knew.This is three.She wants to ask her mother to tell her about her life.This time she will ask and listen to her mother attentively.She would sit and listen to her mother calmly, without rushing to do other things.She could even move in with her mother and spend more time getting to know her.This move may not please Art.He might think that Ruth's move out means something is wrong with their relationship.But someone has to take care of Mom, and she wishes she could do it herself.她想要在这里，听妈妈讲述自己的故事，陪她回顾生命中经历的种种曲折，听妈妈解释一个汉字的多重涵义，传译母亲的心声，尽量了解母亲的思绪。她会过得充实而忙碌，而且，终有一天，她与母亲可以不必紧张地扳着手指记数。