The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life

by Amy Tan

  And if my Chinese luck runs out, not to worry. I have the standard American charms as well: insurance and lawyers.

  • room with a view, new kitchen, and ghosts •

  Our San Francisco home, three heart-pounding flights up, has a few unusual touches: a widow’s walk with a drop-dead view of the Golden Gate Bridge, thick walls filled with horsehair, and a remodeled attic which, until recently, was occupied by—there is no way to put this subtly—a ghost.

  Mind you, this was not your run-of-the-mill phantom. Yes, we heard the usual spooky sound effects: footsteps running up and down the stairs, doors slamming, items crashing to the floor. But what made our visitations special was our spirit’s taste in music. It liked the Jeopardy! tune, which, unfortunately, is precisely the sort of haunting melody you can’t get out of your head while trying to write a novel about turn-of-the-century China.

  The first time my husband and I heard it, we were sitting at our kitchen island, eating dinner. A badly whistled tune came from behind our backs: Dah-dee-dah-dah, dah-dee-dah. I turned to Lou. “Did you just do that?” And Lou, who does not believe in the supernatural, replied: “Uh . . . You didn’t?”

  The second time we heard it, we had our dental work checked. Houseguests inquired nervously about the sounds that went bump in the night. Workmen complained that the paint kept turning different colors on the walls. And once, at three in the morning, our television set turned itself on at high volume, tuned to a show featuring a preacher who shouted for us to give our souls to Jesus and our money to an 800 number. I did what any self-respecting homeowner would do. I searched the Yellow Pages and found a structural engineer who was also a psychic house-healer. One way or the other we would get to the bottom of this. And no matter what that was, this would be interesting material for a book.

  For the ghostbusting occasion, I invited a few friends to serve as witnesses. Who would decline an opportunity like this, even if they did not believe in such things?

  Our ghostbuster, George, turned out to be a middle-aged Chinese man with a sensible demeanor and a kind face. One would never guess he was in this peculiar line of work. He thumped on our walls, and jumped on our floorboards to test the squeak factor. “Pretty solid,” he said. “Nice place you have here.”

  He began the spirit eviction by walking through our house. He started in the living room. “Definitely female,” he said. “She once lived here. . . . I get that sense. It’s quite strong. Many happy times here with her family.” He walked into the kitchen. “Whoa! Things are really vibrating here. She doesn’t like this room at all. Did you recently do something to change it?”

  “We painted it.” I gestured toward the Chinese-red walls.

  George nodded. “She’s saying to me, ‘Look what they did to my beautiful kitchen.’ ”

  I was a bit stung by our ghost’s criticism. We moved on to the guest bedroom. “Oh, she is very fond of this room,” George said. “This was her bedroom.” Our poor guests. We moved upstairs to the attic, which now held a pool table. George grew very still as he let out his feelers. “She stays up here most of the time.” Lou and I nodded. He pointed toward the eaves. “She hides in there.” We nodded. The footsteps and loud noises had often come from that spot.

  George said we needed to perform a ceremony in a quiet, darkened room. We descended to the dining room with its somber wood-paneled walls and cabinets. I drew the heavy curtains and pulled the glass pocket door closed.

  A bell was rung and we all joined hands, saying “Om” with long exhalations. After seven of these, the room was warm with our nervousness. George held up a Tibetan singing bowl and ran a wooden stick around its rim, until it sang a warble that resonated through our bodies. It reminded me of the sound track of B movies in which wobbly spaceships could be seen hanging from a filament.

  The prayers began: “We are sorry to tell you that you have passed from this world. This may be a shock to you, but please know another dimension awaits you. It is not good for you to remain stuck on earth any longer. We pray for you to go with God and toward those who love you. . . .”

  The singing bowl kept singing. We kept waiting, not knowing where this ritual would go. Would the ghost manifest herself? Would she sizzle and melt like the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz?

  All at once, the bowl sang a fifth-note higher and smoother, and the temperature in the room dropped by ten degrees. George stopped praying. “She’s left. Can you feel it?” We nodded. Lou and I paid George his fee, and he assured us we should not have any further problems, at least not with this particular spirit.

  Do I actually believe in ghosts? Do I think our house was once haunted? On that score, I remain silent. So does our ghost.

  • retreat to reality •

  My husband and I chanced upon a hidden meadow by the Truckee River just as the August light was fading to a glimmery alpine dusk. That was the wondrous moment when we glimpsed a pathway curving toward a storybook red cabin. By twilight, the scene had the dreamy aura of childhood imagination, the home of Hansel and Gretel, Goldilocks, the Three Bears.

  The cabin’s front porch was just big enough for two chairs and a romantic interlude. From there one could admire the coming of twilight, stars, a rising beacon moon. One could sit in silence, content, on an evening just like this, watching the forest blur into a gray-green scrim, feeling the air cool, hearing the mosquitoes sing, following the bats as they soared and swooped. Then, too soon, as if the meadow were an operatic stage, night’s curtain descended, transforming all that beauty before us into vague memory.

  We exhaled with envy for whoever lived there now. This was a retreat so simple it was grand. What Walden was for Thoreau, I imagined, Tahoe could be for Tan. Being there made me want to wax poetic. “Just two miles from Squaw,” Lou said. “Not a bad place to park your ski gear.”

  As it turned out, the cabin was for sale. The owner had moved out six months before and the place was now rented. When a realtor took us out for a look-see, we learned that the cabin was inhabited by animals, that is, three prime specimens of Jockus extremus, subspecies Ski Patrol, sub-subspecies Alpine Meadows. The evidence hung in the air: stale beer and turbo-charged sweat, unwashed clothes and mildewed sleeping bags, a moldy shower stall and two very crusty toilets. On the kitchen counter lay an ode to the athletic lifestyle: Cheetos, Doritos, half-eaten burritos. I walked into a bedroom littered with four seasons’ worth of sporting goods—hiking boots and river sandals, pitons and paddles, rappeling ropes and gaiters, topo maps and fanny packs, raunchy magazines, jockstraps, bras, and—count them—one, two, three used condoms.

  One was disgusting, two was impressive, but three was definitely stretching it, so to speak. Lou and I knew what the gonzos were up to. Nice try, guys, but I’m a writer. I have imagination. I can see through the dirt, the ruse, the crude effort to keep this place as Club Ski Patrol, and I wasn’t buying any of it—ha!—just the cabin. Get yourself another rental, boys.

  Two months later, when the deal was done, Dave, the owner, was kind enough to drive out and give us folksy advice about the differences between living in the city and living in the wilds. “You can’t just hail a cab when an avalanche blocks the road,” he said. “I knew a guy, wandered out in deep snowdrifts by himself. Springtime, the snowplow turned him up like a petunia.” Lou and I exchanged patient nods. This guy thought we were idiots. In truth, we were seasoned backpackers, hard-core skiers. We’d camped in snow, survived lightning storms, chased away a dozen bears at a time.

  Dave went on: “See that tree? It doesn’t look dead, but it is. You can tell by the lichen. You better take that soldier down before it lands on your propane tank. That tree busts your tank—blam!—there flies you and the cabin clear over to Harrah’s on the South Shore.”

  “We don’t gamble,” Lou replied, and winked at me.

  Dave went on: “Now here’s another thing. Big problem. Big. Squirrels.”

  “Squirrels,” we repeated.

  “Golden-mantle squ
irrels,” Dave affirmed. “Tiny things, look like Chip and Dale, cute as chipmunks. Let me tell you, though, they’re dangerous. Hell, they’re cute as scorpions. Don’t ever feed ’em. They’ll be crawling all over the place, drive you crazy.” We duly nodded. I wondered whether living in the woods all those years had turned Dave into a curmudgeon. That’s what I felt I had become living in the city—a cynic, the human extension to a telephone that was always on hold, eager to push life away from me rather than embrace it. That’s why I needed to be in Tahoe. I wanted to feel grateful again to be part of the world. Gratitude led to a generosity of spirit, and that was what my soul required so I could write.

  Little did I know at the time that the members of the Ski Patrol had already exacted their revenge. They hadn’t just fed the squirrels. They must have fêted them with champagne brunches, barbecue picnics, and midnight buffets.

  We named the first squirrel Fred. He danced around us while we did our chores, twirling and spinning gracefully like Fred Astaire. Our philosophy was “Live and let live,” until, that is, Fred ran up my leg while I was applying a redwood stain to a pair of bookshelves. The creature clung to my pants and screeched as if to say, “Feed me, goddamnit!” I hollered and cursed, trying to shake him off, and Lou came racing toward me just as Fred jumped onto a paintbrush balanced on the can of stain. The brush wobbled for two seconds, then sank, squirrel and all. Fred, now Red, leapt out and left a swath of crimson on his way to a nearby tree.

  Throughout the fall, squirrels hurled themselves at our screen door, their claws gripped in the mesh as they tried to bang their way in. I’d be writing, almost at that perfect point of concentration, a turning point in the story, an epiphany, when a lightning-fast blob would attach itself at the window screen, giving me the evil eye. Aside from writing and reflecting, I could bring myself oneness with nature by picking up black droppings, or by stuffing balls of steel wool (which resembled meditation pillows) into the holes the squirrels had knocked out of our knotty pine paneling.

  During the winter, Lou and I made frequent trips to Tahoe to ski. After a hard day of moguls, we’d return to our snug little cabin, light the woodstove, change into our flannels, and settle in for a home-study course, “The Curious Habits of the Family Sciuridae.” Ignorant people will tell you that squirrels fatten up on acorns through autumn, then hibernate all winter. Pure myth. In reality, they forage for food seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year. And forget acorns. They prefer Newman’s Own light-butter popcorn, bagels, bacon served in catch-and-release traps (we bought two), as well as the occasional bar of soap or antique kilim rug.

  After feasting, squirrels don’t sleep or even snooze. They conduct swing-dance lessons under the eaves, accompanied by the rocking rhythms of an ultrasonic pest control unit (we bought three). They stomp into the wee hours of the night, making such thunderous noise that my mother once mistook a hundred-pound tree limb falling onto our roof for “another big squirrel.”

  Similar observations led Lou and me to surmise that squirrels are probably responsible for erroneous reports of poltergeist activity. The next time you see a candle or spice jar flying through the air, note whether there’s a little critter teeheeing on a ledge about four feet away. Likewise, flickering lights may be caused by microsized buckteeth sawing through your wiring. Distant kin to the busy bee and beaver, squirrels are ever industrious, relentless in their quest to find every conceivable quarter-inch space between the wall and any houseguests raised on stories of rats that chewed off the noses of sleeping babies.

  Spring came, and when the snow melted we hired a tree cutter to take down the dead white fir that Dave had warned us about. Fifty feet of timber fell, the earth shook, and the trunk cracked open, revealing a fleshy mass of pink the color and density of stale cotton candy. The tree cutter poked around, then gravely announced, “That there is your insulation. Squirrels turned this tree into a winter condo.”

  It’s been years since we had our first encounter with Fred. Lou and I have made our peace with the squirrels, that is, we have learned to accommodate ourselves to their habits, just as they’ve adjusted to ours. We don’t mind the tattered-rug look or, for that matter, the chewed-up-hiking-shoe style. It suits us. It’s real Tahoe, rugged, outdoorsy, true-adventure sort of stuff. When I retreat to the cabin, I like to relate to the world in the spirit of a writer like Jack London. Wolves howling, squirrels screeching—with a little imagination, they’re practically the same thing.

  This year, I believe I have reached a new level of harmony. I have let go of anger, frustration, catch-and-release traps. I have come to think of the squirrels as inspiration for a book, in fact, a story like Stephen King’s The Shining or Misery, or Alfred Hitchcock’s movie The Birds—only scarier.

  The story begins in a cabin by a river. The cabin is occupied by a nice, quiet writer. But she is kicked out by a bunch of randy, rowdy Ski Patrolers who buy the place. One day the writer returns with a bag of muffins, which she sprinkles around the cabin at midnight. As for the rest, you’ll have to wait. I have to do more research.

  The muffins are just about ready to come out of the oven.

  • my hair, my face, my nails •

  I’m usually self-conscious about off-the-cuff writing, but sometimes the situations I have written about warrant the immediacy of an unedited form. This e-mail was written to friends who knew Lou and I were in Tahoe, in response to their question, “Are you all right?”

  First, we’re fine, back in San Francisco. The cabin, however, is another matter. We don’t know how it will fare, given what we left. On Jan. 1, we saw the Truckee River was rising. Normally, the river flows about seven feet below our bridge; most winters you can ice skate under it. On Wed. the water was only inches below the bridge and roiling with logs and debris. The road to Truckee and Tahoe City was closed due to floods, and we decided that since we were warm and snug in the cabin, we should simply wait it out. But, to cover our bases, we moved the car to across the bridge. That way, if the bridge washed out, we could walk thru the snow along the river the other way to River Ranch on Alpine Meadows Road, then make our way over to the car. So we thought . . .

  Much to Lou’s annoyance, during dinner, I plugged into my computer and the message board to chat with folks on the weather channel. I described our situation, making sure I exaggerated the danger. “The river might rise and take out our bridge,” I typed. “Do you need to be rescued?” someone typed back. “Nah,” I answered.

  Thursday before dawn, Lou and I heard a rumble, different from the pounding rain (which had not stopped in five days). It sounded to me as if the river had risen so high it was now flowing by our cabin. Jan, our houseguest, was fast asleep downstairs. Lou and I got up, looked out the door. “Wind,” he surmised. And I said, “Then why aren’t the trees blowing around?” At 8 a.m., John Leavitt, from a neighboring cabin, came by and said the whole area was devastated. The roar we heard last night was a mudslide that was only 50 feet from the back of our cabin. The slide which started higher up the mountain took down dozens of huge fir trees, boulders the size of cars, and sent this morass tumbling into the river. The river was brown with mud and swirling with hundred-foot-long trees. Our one-lane gravel road was now bisected by waterfalls and streams. Along this wrecked road were downed power lines. And closer toward the bridge was a giant mudslide that had cut a football field–sized swath down the mountain, felling trees in domino fashion, upturning the earth so that it looked as if the gods had done a bad rototilling job. Some of the logs knocked out the back end of one of the cabins. Kitchen appliances lay strewn in the mud. The propane tank had been whacked open and gas was leaking. Another cabin was pierced through its roof with the pointy end of a tree, which must have been catapulted through the air by the slide. Other cabins had mountain streams gushing through them. Fortunately, our cabin and John’s were the only ones occupied, and our places were intact, although without phone, electricity, or water. Our cabin still had heat, provided by our propane tank,
and, if need be, a woodburning stove.

  The bridge was completely underwater; even the railings had disappeared. Leaning against the bridge was another bridge from upstream, as well as numerous logs. We had ourselves a beaver dam. And if our bridge went, then it would take all this debris and the other logs floating in the river down the white water, missing the bend, and it would land, most likely, in the bar and dining room of River Ranch.

  We decided we had to get out before another slide occurred and cut its way to the river via our cabins. Lou and John went hiking across the mudslide in back of our cabin, thinking they might reach River Ranch and fetch us some help. But Lou got stuck in mud, chest-deep, which was the consistency of quicksand. And John, who is in his 60s, was tiring and didn’t think he could help Lou out. The mountain started sliding again, sending down more trees and boulders. Finally, Lou and John extricated themselves and returned to the cabin, pale and exhausted, telling us that route was impassable.

  Next, they went toward the bridge. Again, Lou got stuck in the deep mud, and when he pulled himself out, he headed down toward the river and spotted a couple of sheriffs across the bridge. They used a bullhorn to talk to him. Suddenly, one of them shouted, “Get the fuck out of the way,” and Lou heard the unmistakable rumble of another slide. He jumped into the river, which got the sheriffs sort of excited, until he made it to shore.

  So Lou and John came back and told us and Nancy, John’s wife, who had joined us with their two dogs and a cat, that we were basically stuck. Our only way out was the river. There was some foolish talk about inflating our cheap summer raft and paddling across. But we all nixed that idea. Around 1 p.m., two sheriffs, dressed in wetsuits, came upon us. They had been struggling to get to us for about an hour and a half. They suggested taking us across the slide, then tying ropes to us so we could pull ourselves across the bridge. Lou said he didn’t think we could make it across the slide, especially since we had four dogs and a cat with us. The sheriffs did a survey up and down the river, and via walkie-talkie, arranged a rescue using a Zodiac raft. We had to wait another hour and a half while things were set up. So Jan made the sheriffs breakfast, lunch, and dinner, since they hadn’t eaten in two days.