foreigners, and they couldn’t understand us. Their Chinese was so bad it sounded just like their English. Miss Banner had to serve as Pastor Amen’s go-between. Pastor Amen didn’t ask. He said she must do this, otherwise no room for her in the Ghost Merchant’s House.
So every Sunday morning, she and Pastor stood by the doorway to the church. He would cry in English, ‘Welcome, welcome!’ Miss Banner would translate into Chinese: ‘Hurry-come into God’s House! Eat rice after the meeting!’ God’s House was actually the Ghost Merchant’s family temple. It belonged to his dead ancestors and their gods. Lao Lu thought the foreigners showed very bad manners picking this place for God’s House. ‘Like a slap in the face,’ he said. ‘The God of War will drop horse manure from the sky, you wait and see.’ Lao Lu was that way – you make him mad, he’ll pay you back.
The missionaries always walked in first, Miss Banner second, then Lao Lu and I, as well as the other Chinese people who worked in the Ghost Merchant’s House – the cook, the two maids, the stableman, the carpenter, I forget who else. The visitors entered God’s House last. They were mostly beggars, a few Hakka God Worshippers, also an old woman who pressed her hands together and bowed three times to the altar, even though she was told over and over again not to do that anymore. The newcomers sat on the back benches – I’m guessing this was in case the Ghost Merchant came back and they needed to run away. Lao Lu and I had to sit up front with the missionaries, shouting ‘Amen!’ whenever the pastor raised his eyebrows. That’s why we called him Pastor Amen – also because his name sounded like ‘Amen,’ Hammond or Halliman, something like that.
As soon as we flattened our bottoms on those benches, we were not supposed to move. Mrs. Amen often jumped up, but only to wag her finger at those who made too much noise. That’s how we learned what was forbidden. No scratching your head for lice. No blowing your nose into your palm. No saying ‘Shit’ when clouds of mosquitoes sang in your ear – Lao Lu said that whenever anything disturbed his sleep.
That was another rule: No sleeping except when Pastor Amen prayed to God, long, boring prayers that made Lao Lu very happy. Because when the Jesus Worshippers closed their eyes, he could do the same and take a long nap. I kept my eye open. I would stare at Pastor Amen to see if God or Jesus was coming down from the heavens. I had seen this happen to a God Worshipper at a temple fair. God entered an ordinary man’s body and threw him to the ground. When he stood up again, he had great powers. Swords thrust against his stomach bent in half. But no such thing ever happened to Pastor Amen. Although one time when Pastor was praying, I saw a beggar standing at the door. I remembered that the Chinese gods sometimes did this, came disguised as beggars to see what was going on, who was being loyal, who was paying them respect. I wondered if the beggar was a god, now angry to see foreigners standing at the altar where he used to be. When I looked back a few minutes later, the beggar had disappeared. So who knows if he was the reason for the disasters that came five years later.
At the end of the prayer time, the sermon would begin. The first Sunday, Pastor Amen spoke for five minutes – talk, talk, talk! – a lot of sounds that only the other missionaries could understand. Then Miss Banner translated for five minutes. Warnings about the devil. Amen! Rules for going to heaven. Amen! Bring your friends with you. Amen! Back and forth they went, as if they were arguing. So boring! For two hours, we had to sit still, letting our bottoms and our brains grow numb.
At the end of the sermon, there was a little show, using the music box that belonged to Miss Banner. Everyone liked this part very much. The singing was not so good, but when the music started, we knew our suffering was almost at an end. Pastor Amen lifted both hands and told us to rise. Mrs. Amen walked to the front of the room. So did the nervous missionary named Lasher, like laoshu, ‘mouse,’ so that was what we called her, Miss Mouse. There was also a foreign doctor named Swan, which sounded like suan-le, ‘too late’ – no wonder sick people were scared to see him. Dr. Too Late was in charge of opening Miss Banner’s music box and winding it with a key. When the music started, the three of them sang. Mrs. Amen had tears pouring from her eyes. Some of the old country people asked out loud if the box contained tiny foreigners.
Miss Banner once told me the music box was a gift from her father, the only memory of her family that she had left. Inside, she kept a little album for writing down her thoughts. The music, she said, was actually a German song about drinking beer, dancing, and kissing pretty girls. But Mrs. Amen had written new words, which I heard a hundred times but only as sounds: ‘We’re marching with Jesus on two willing feet, when Death turns the corner, our Lord we shall meet.’ Something like that. You see, I remember that old song, but this time the words have new meaning. Anyway, that was the song we heard every week, telling everyone to go outside to eat a bowl of rice, a gift from Jesus. We had many beggars who thought Jesus was a landlord with many rice fields.
The second Sunday, Pastor Amen spoke for five minutes, Miss Banner for three. Then Pastor for another five minutes, Miss Banner for one. Everything became shorter and shorter on the Chinese side, and the flies drank from our sweat for only one and a half hours that Sunday. The week after that it was only one hour. Later, Pastor Amen had a long talk with Miss Banner. The following week, Pastor Amen spoke for five minutes, Miss Banner spoke the same amount. Again Pastor spoke for five minutes, Miss Banner the same amount. But now she didn’t talk about rules for going to heaven. She was saying, ‘Once upon a time, in a kingdom far away, there lived a giant and the filial daughter of a poor carpenter who was really a king. …’ At the end of each five minutes, she would stop at a very exciting part and say something like: ‘Now I must let Pastor speak for five minutes. But while you wait, ask yourself, Did the tiny princess die, or did she save the giant?’ After the sermon and story were over, she told people to shout ‘Amen’ if they were ready to eat their free bowl of rice. Ah, big shouts!
Those Sunday sermons became very popular. Many beggars came to hear Miss Banner’s stories from her childhood. The Jesus Worshippers were happy. The rice-eaters were happy. Miss Banner was happy. I was the only one who worried. What if Pastor Amen learned what she was doing? Would he beat her? Would the God Worshippers pour coals over my body for teaching a foreigner to have a disobedient Chinese tongue? Would Pastor Amen lose face and have to hang himself? Would the people who came for rice and stories and not Jesus go to a foreigners’ hell?
When I told Miss Banner my worries, she laughed and said no such thing would happen. I asked her how she knew this. She said, ‘If everyone is happy, what harm can follow?’ I remembered what the man who returned to Thistle Mountain had said: ‘Too much happiness always overflows into tears of sorrow.’
We had five years of happiness. Miss Banner and I became great and loyal friends. The other missionaries remained strangers to me. But from seeing little changes every day, I knew their secrets very well. Lao Lu told me about shameful things he saw from outside their windows, also strange things he saw when he was inside their rooms. How Miss Mouse cried over a locket holding a dead person’s hair. How Dr. Too Late ate opium pills for his stomachache. How Mrs. Amen hid pieces of Communion bread in her drawer, never eating it, just saving it for the end of the world. How Pastor Amen reported to America that he had made one hundred converts when really it was only one.
In return, I told Lao Lu some of the secrets I had seen myself. That Miss Mouse had feelings for Dr. Too Late, but he didn’t notice. That Dr. Too Late had strong feelings for Miss Banner, and she pretended not to notice. But I did not tell him that Miss Banner still had great feelings for her number-three sweetheart, a man named Wa-ren. Only I knew this.
For five years, everything was the same, except for these small changes. That was our life back then, a little hope, a little change, a little secret.
And yes, I had my secrets too. My first secret was this. One night, I dreamed I saw Jesus, a foreign man with long hair, long beard, many followers. I told Miss Banner, except I forgot to mention the part about the dream. So she told Pastor Amen, and he put me down for a hundred converts – that’s why I knew it was only
