Free The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts by Maxine Hong Kingston Page B

and a small, limited area; she would have one drawer to sort, one bed to make.
    To shut the door at the end of the workday, which does not spill over into evening. To throw away books after reading them so they don’t have to be dusted. To go through boxes on New Year’s Eve and throw out half of what is inside. Sometimes for extravagance to pick a bunch of flowers for the one table. Other women besides me must have this daydream about a carefree life. I’ve seen Communist pictures showing a contented woman sitting on her bunk sewing. Above her head is her one box on a shelf. The words stenciled on the box mean “Fragile,” but literally say, “Use a little heart.” The woman looks very pleased. The Revolution put an end to prostitution by giving women what they wanted: a job and a room of their own.
    Free from families, my mother would live for two years without servitude. She would not have to run errands for my father’s tyrant mother with the bound feet or thread needles for the old ladies, but neither would there be slaves and nieces to wait on her. Now she would get hot water only if she bribed the concierge. When I went away to school my mother said, “Give the concierge oranges.”
    Two of my mother’s roommates, who had organized their corners to their satisfaction, made tea and set a small table with their leftover travel food. “Have you eaten, Lady Scholar?” they invited my mother. “Lady Scholar, come drink tea,” they said to each of the others. “Bring your own cup.” This largess moved my mother—tea, an act of humility. She brought out meats and figs she had preserved on the farm. Everyone complimented her on their tastiness. The women told which villages they came from and the names they would go by. My mother did not let it be known that she had already had two children and that some of these girls were young enough to be her daughters.
    Then everyone went to the auditorium for two hours of speeches by the faculty. They told the students that they would begin with a text as old as the Han empire, when the prescription for immortality had not yet been lost. ChangChung-ching, father of medicine, had told how the two great winds, yang and yin , blew through the human body. The diligent students would do well to begin tonight memorizing his book on colds and fevers. After they had mastered the ancient cures that worked, they would be taught the most up-to-date western discoveries. By the time the students graduated—those of them who persevered—their range of knowledge would be wider than that of any other doctor in history. Women have now been practicing medicine for about fifty years, said one of the teachers, a woman, who complimented them for adding to their growing number and also for coming to a school that taught modern medicine. “You will bring science to the villages.” At the end of the program, the faculty turned their backs to the students, and everyone bowed the three bows toward the picture of Doctor Sun Yat-sen, who was a western surgeon before he became a revolutionary. Then they went to the dining hall to eat. My mother began memorizing her books immediately after supper.
    There were two places where a student could study: the dining hall with its tables cleared for work, everyone chanting during the common memorization sessions; or the table in her own room. Most students went to the dining hall for the company there. My mother usually stayed in her room or, when a roommate wanted the privacy of it also, went to a secret hiding place she had hunted out during the first week of school. Once in a while she dropped by the dining hall, chanted for a short while with the most advanced group, not missing a syllable, yawned early, and said good-night. She quickly built a reputation for being brilliant, a natural scholar who could glance at a book and know it.
    “The other students fought over who could sit next to me at exams,” says my mother. “One glimpse at my paper when