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Synopsis -

Book One, SHANGHAIED TO HEAVEN (pp.1-422), tells the background - the story opens around 1880 in China.

Book Two, THE SHANGHAIED CHILD (pp.423-829), describes my own early experiences in a missionary family of strict Fundamentalists in China.  Also certain encounters with out fellow Fundamentalists in the USA.

I find myself back in memory, seated with my doll on a hanging balcony
of fragile wood right under the towering ceiling of our haunted home. I
contemplate the locked attic door with a loathing yet with a need to
understand. I sit at the edge of a dreadful void - seemingly our plunging
stairwell below me - and judge everything from my childish point of view.

It all began for me when my Grandma Emma first broke to me the news that
we were about to move from the Mission on Shanghai's Szechuen Road where I
had been so happy, with all my Chinese playmates at a little kindergarten
for girls where I was learning to read Chinese, and I'd made some
wonderful friends there also.

"Dear Beulah Mae," my Grandma summoned me to her side there, and when she
addressed me thus I knew the matter was serious. "We are going to move to
a new place to live. Won't that be fun? (She was trying to sound brave
and cheerful.)

"Must we leave this place?"

"Yes, of course."

"Why?"

"Beulah Mae, you know that your parents have been teaching highschool here
for over three years in this Mission. They've had a lot of problems, as
you yourself have observed, with old Mr. W- and his two daughters ever
since the start. So we have decided to move away and your parents have
resigned from their teaching posts."

"Can I still go to my kindergarten here?"

"I'm afraid not," said my grandma, "but soon now you'll be seven and your
parents will send you instead to Miss Dearborn's School where you'll have
lots of nice white playmates also."

"I like my Chinese friends best." I said.

"Oh, they'll still be your friends. You can visit them sometimes at their
homes. But you do need to have white children also as your friends.
You're a little white child yourself."

I nodded regretfully, for I felt myself "all-Chinese" inside and had
little regard for my own white race and background. Not to argue, however
- for with Grandma it could not be done since her arguments outmatched
yours - I asked instead:

"What's the new house like?"

"Well, you'll know when you see it!"

She seemed curiously unwilling to discuss it further with me. But I had
overheard her with my parents talking around the oval dining-table after
I'd been put to bed the other evening. Grandma had said to my parents:

"Are you wise to rent such a haunted place? Beulah is very young to have
to go through what may prove to be a harrowing experience. I have a
feeling that she has mediumistic tendencies and we don't want her to
follow in the steps of the founders of Spiritism - those Fox sisters - do
we?"

I listened sharply, visualizing actual foxes which I'd only seen in
pictures; also Chinese fox-ghosts, of which I'd heard stories from my
fellow kindergarten playmates. What did the word "haunt" mean? And
"mediumistic"? These were new words to me.

My missionary mother was saying,

"Oh, I have no fear of that! Jesus will protect her. He'll protect us all!"

"Well, I hope so," said Grandma doubtfully, "but it's always risky to
beard the lion in its den. And that's a notorious place you've gone and
rented!"

(What did "notorious" mean? Another word I must learn!)

"Mother!"

My mother's voice was filled with reproach. "Sometimes I fear you have no
faith at all. We'll simply send those demons packing in no time, when we
name the name of Jesus there."

"In `no time?" murmured my Grandma. "What can you possibly mean? We live
in a Kingdom of Time and in this same Kingdom of `Time we must send them
packing, if we manage it at all. Ghosts are very hard to exorcize. The
Roman Catholic priesthood is best at it - probably because they're in
league with the Devil. But you aren't, Pansy, even if you do help your
Benjamin sometimes when he has nightmares and you `send the devil away'
for him."

"Mother Emma," broke in Benjamin, "I was never like that - nor had I any
nightmares - till my bout with typhus in West China that turned me into a
Fundamentalist as a result."

"Be thankful you're a Modernist no longer," replied my mother, "they even
believe in Darwin's lies, these days. I saved you from that."

"You saved me from a lot of things."

"And you should be grateful," exclaimed Grandma, hastening to defend her
sacred daughter. "I'm sure Modernism did not become you. I've heard how
you behaved: challenging your fellow missionaries to Cockadoodle-do
contests before you fell so ill."

"A pity you told her, Pansy" said he.

"I was merely telling my mother how wonderfully you've been transformed,
Benjamin. You'd never insult your fellow-missionaries thus today."

"It was a harmless game that I learned in Northumberland when I was a boy.
One simply crows between the knees of one's opponent and challenges them
to knock your head off when and if they manage it. They never do."

"I nearly broke our engagement" said my mother, still furious over the
memory.

"Well, never mind," said my Grandma, "don't start arguing over things dead
and gone, in the past. Right now we are facing a new situation and it is
too late to retreat."

"Having put our hands to the plow we will not turn back" agreed my mother.

"So let us don the Whole Armor of God to be able to resist the shafts of
the Evil One" my father added.

In the adjoining room I yawned. When they talked like that (as they
usually did), I grew bored. I knew all the texts they quoted, for I had
to learn "a Bible verse before breakfast" every single day, and then we
had Family Worship after breakfast when we read a chapter of the Bible
regularly.

They talked this way sometimes simply not to keep arguing, as I knew. It
was "safe". Though, even so, my parents sometimes argued with each other
while quoting differing Bible texts, as I'd observed! They loved each
other deeply as I knew. But my mother was an American and my father a
Britisher and they really disliked the nationalities of each other.

I was listed on my father's British passport, but my mother hoped I'd take
out U.S. citizenship when I grew up. She'd lost her citizenship upon
marrying but hoped to get it back one day too.

Grandma still felt like arguing, however, and muttered,

"I still think you shouldn't have rented that place. What if those haunts
cannot be removed?"

"We'll get rid of them all at once, mother!" her daughter cried.

"Well, I hope so, Pansy!" My father (Benjamin Surtees) sounded annoyed.
"Without faith we cannot please God. Where is your faith?"

"Where is `your's, Benjamin? If you'd had any you'd have rented something
nicer. There were those nice old foreign houses on Darroch Road itself
with some old trees in their gardens. Beulah should have a garden and the
place you've chosen hasn't anything more than that horridly haunted little
courtyard we will never enjoy, I'm afraid. Those other houses looked
quite affordable."

"We asked. They're mostly empty but they're still asking exorbitant
rents. They're probably far more haunted than the place we chose. Most
Chinese and even foreign old houses in China do get haunted somehow. I
know of various examples and so do you. Why, our own house back in Huchow
had a spirit often appearing" said my mother.

"An angel" said Grandma.

"The Chinese said it was just a kwei."

"Your father met it and it was an angel" said Grandma firmly, and her
lower chin jutted forth stubbornly.

"Satan also masquerades as an angel of light."

"Yes, and so we must be careful when we get to this new place."

"The trouble with you, Emma," growled my father, omitting the added title
"Mother" probably deliberately, "is that you're just too American. Here,
you've even been complaining over the `common street children' there -
Eurasian, Portuguese, and so on - whom we hope to convert to Jesus, but
all you want is to turn everybody into a `proper American', a mere
carbon-copy of all the rest of your fellows in America."

"That's a typical remark I'd expect from a Britisher" replied Grandma
coldly.

"Hush!" cried my mother. (These arguments over nationality really
troubled my mother who wanted "sweetness and light" to reign in our little
family, but the topic of Britishers served as a red flag to my grandma.
She'd get onto political themes also and criticize Britain's behavior ever
since the opium wars. There was no end to it, and pretty soon Benjamin
would be discussing the `total ignorance of all Yanks, especially
Fundamentalists', though he himself was trying his hardest to be one to
please his adored wife.)

"We'd better shut the door" my mother added. "We may be keeping Beulah
awake as our voices rise."

"I hope not," said Grandma, "our recent conversation hasn't been
particularly edifying."

I heard my father push back his chair and cross over to the door. He
looked in at me but I was already lying down again "possuming", pretending
to be fast asleep, though I knew I never fooled my father, no matter how I
tried. He shut the door and I did then fall asleep right away, still
wondering what they were discussing.

In the days that followed, our small flat at the great Mission on Szechuen
Road was full of confusion and bustle. Dah-Shi-Fu, our devoted cook and
chief-bottle-washer, was forever running up and down the short flight of
outdoor steps carrying out "rubbish". There were even some dog-eared old
Gospel tracts in the heaps to be discarded regretfully. They'd been left
piled up in corners and had somehow grown too crummy to be given away. My
parents felt very bad about it, muttering, "That comes from having been so
crowded. At Dah-Shin-Fong we'll have more room for storing everything."

Dah-Shin-Fong meant "Big New Houses" but they were very old. From the
last century! Of course we were only in the year 1924 and I'd been born
at the close of Great World War, in the year 1917, "beneath Buddha's
Shadow by Mount Omei, West China", as I'd learned. Supposedly it was a
sad business in some views to have such an origin. But my parents
remained strangely nostalgic and sentimental, and often spoke of Mount
Omei with longing still, though they condemned Buddha and his followers as
proper missionaries must do.

Watching our Dah-Shi-Fu making off so happily with all that rubbish,
Grandma remarked,

"He'll sell it to some rag-man and make a few coppers in the deal and
welcome, poor fellow! It's a pity we can't pay him more."

"He's very happy with the salary and it's all we can afford," my mother
reminded her. "Besides, we've promised we'll start paying a small salary
to his old mother too as our amah. And that makes them both feel rich.
She's saving up for her coffin."

"I - I - don't like discussing that sort of thing!" huffed my Grandma. "I
still have hopes that Jesus will return before I - for one - will have to
die, and definitely before you, Pansy, have to die. But it's sad to think
of someone saving up for a mere coffin."

"Well, all the Chinese do, mother!" said my mother very nicely. "We have
to be patient with them. We may manage to convince them that `Jesus
Saves', but we can't seem to get it into their heads about his imminent
Second Coming. They even get it muddled with their `Buddha yet to come',
the idol in the temples on top of Mount Omei."

"Yes, it's very discouraging" Grandma agreed. "Sometimes I get to feeling
like I ought to try to save up for my own coffin too. For all the good
that my small Baptist pension does `me! You seem to spend it all on your
new Bible-men lately, dear Benjamin."

"Beulah," interrupted my mother, "will you run downstairs and pick some
pansies for me? There must be some left going to seed in those
flowerbeds. I've been missing those pansies you used to pick for me
regularly." (My parents' lady bosses had made it a point that I should be
put to picking pansies daily, to keep me "out-of-mischief", as they put
it.)

"Mama! I did bring you pansies day before yesterday. And you threw them
away without even putting them into some water."

"I was a bit distracted right then. Besides, the little vase I use was
already packed" she exclaimed lamely.

"That's all right" I forgave her, "but do I have to pick more pansies?"

"Yes, please" begged my mother.

"Then promise you won't just throw them away!"

Grandma interrupted. "Oh, don't make her pick pansies, dear Pansy. Right
now, there isn't time for that. Beulah, go to the next room and pack your
own doll in your tiny suitcase. We'll be moving already this very
afternoon and there's no time to waste."

I began moving slowly towards the door she indicated. Forgetting my
presence, she turned to my father ready for battle and inquired:

"Now, what were we talking about?" I turned back to wait for my father's
reply, as I lingered on the neutral territory of the door's threshold,
ready to duck out of sight if need be.

"Your `coffin!" said my father sourly. "That's what we were discussing
right then!"

"No, we were not! It was your Bible-men we were discussing" she snapped
back.

"Please, please!" cried my mother. "This is not the Christian spirit we
should be developing in preparation for bearding Satan in his den. Let us
kneel and pray and ask for more love and tolerance and -"

"And AGAPE!" added my father glaring at his mother-in-law, who did not
deign to reply to that thrust.

They got down on their knees together and I prepared to retreat urgently
out-of-sight and do that packing. But my mother called me back.

"Come, dear Beulah! And join us in prayer."

So I had to get onto my knees too. I was developing already very knobby
knees. (We prayed all day long, as it did seem to me.)

My father had just begun the prayer, however, when we heard heavy
footsteps outside our living-room door. We recognized them immediately so
we all leaped to our feet, and stood staring at the door for an instant
unhappily, without making a move.

Then my father stepped forward, ready when the knocking would commence.

The door was now firmly knocked upon by invisible bony knuckles. My
father flung open the door almost belligerently and muttered,

"Good day, Miss Ethel and Miss Anne [or `Miss Ora'?]!" very coldly.

"Good day to you," they answered as formally, then turned to look at the
rest of us but didn't cross the threshold. Everything was in such a mess,
anyway, within the room as they could see.

They were real 19-century types, and very old. They were like living
skeletons but Grandma had assured me they were "a few years younger" than
she happened to be, and Grandma didn't look that old.

"We came to see if you needed anything," one of the two declared. (I
could never tell them apart from any distance, for I was a very myopic
child, and even their voices sounded identical, as identical as did their
shapes appear to me.)

"But we see you need nothing!" put in the other, quickly.

"Nothing!" agreed my Grandma firmly. I knew she detested them both and
had detested these two unmarried daughters of "Old Mr. W-, our boss", for
the past forty-odd years. Grandma considered them "the haughtiest
missionaries of Shanghai and probably of all China". And she could not
forgive them for having been the bane of her daughter's life for the past
several years, as her employers at the highschool. (And Benjamin's too!)

"Well," said the two of them, while surveying our shabby possessions.
(Our steamer trunks at least were now al packed and closed!) "So, it's
over. Perhaps it's just as well!"

"You will find my daughter and Benjamin hard to replace," declared my
Grandma icily.

"That's as may be. But they've been very intractable. And so have you,
Mrs. Mason!" (Addressing my Grandma.)

"I will not tolerate younger snippets telling me of my `intractability'!"

"Let us not quarrel on this last morning that we have to be together,"
said the sisters, taking turns as they spoke so that you scarcely noticed
when one left off and the other took over. "But as for us being
`snippets', it's a long time, Mrs. Emma Mason, since you saw us as
`snippets'. And, as we remember it, `you weren't much more than a snippet
yourself when you first arrived in Shanghai, in the year 1880 as we've
been remembering. Such a foolish brave young woman, following your crazy
husband George to `save the lost' and planning to live and dress like
Chinese in the process. Why, you were even proud of him when he started
growing a queue by 1883, and wore those Chinese garments henceforth.
`Following in the steps of Hudson Taylor', of all people."

"I trust you are not criticizing Hudson Taylor, are you?" Grandma almost
barked.

"Oh, no! He's famous and we respect his China Inland Mission, certainly.
But it was temerarious of you and your husband to try to follow in Hudson
Taylor's steps."

"We opened Huchow to the Gospel, whatever you say, and there's a fine
Baptist mission still there where we opened the way." [Thus Grandma chose
to recall it. But the true story was so different, see Book Four.]

"Well, well! Boasting as ever. But we still feel you were temerarious to
copy Hudson Taylor of all people."

"We are all temerarious when we try to follow Christ!" Grandma snapped,
(and I tried to remember that long, long word - tema-rary-yous - but knew
I'd surely forget it or leave something out, "timorous" sounded better but
meant quite the opposite, probably. Well, Grandma had never been
"timorous", as she herself had sometimes insisted. Yet she had her weak
points, I knew, and could be timid too, at times - when having to cross a
street full of hurtling modern day traffic, for instance. (As for my
parents, Grandma had called them "both timorous and foolhardy, which is a
bad combination" as she's added. "And you're just plain timid sometimes!"
my father had answered her on that occasion, and at once they began
quarreling over precise definitions in describing each other not too
lovingly right then, though I knew they really liked and admired each
other a lot, did my Grandma and my dad. It was this business of being
British and not American and vice-versa that stirred them both up.)

"Hmmmm!" the W-spinsters were grunting. "Yes, it `is temerarious for you
to take Jesus' sayings so literally. Have you a free cent in your
pockets?"

My father was evidently pretty sure they were not planning to make a
little contribution (say some friendly "severance pay", to make up for
those years of shocking underpayment), so he answered haughtily,

"We've paid our first month rental already - we didn't have to pay any key
money as you know. The distant owners would have let us move in for free,
I'm sure, but we insisted on paying a nominal rent."

"Yes, it's better when you move into haunted houses not to become free
boarders," one of the two agreed.

"In Beulah's presence, we didn't discuss that sort of thing!" cried
my mother hastily.

"`Little pitchers have big ears' and I'm sure she's overheard you all
discussing the matter already, haven't you, child?" they asked of me.

I wore for their benefit my stupidest expression, letting my lower
jaw hang down and my myopic eyes gazed vaguely in their general
direction. I was proffering my ignorance to them for my parents'
sakes.

"She's got a face like a stupid Chinese. That comes from sending her
to school with all those Chinese girls - it's the only language she
knows by now. It's a shame."

My Grandma's fury was rising, as I knew. I stepped back, away from
their scrutiny and closer to her, and she reach out an old, wrinkled
hand and patted my shoulder. `She knew I'd put on an act to avoid
saying "Yes" to those two. It wasn't really lying, for I'd been
taught strictly to "let my yea be yea and my nay, nay".

(But even Jesus "answered not a word" to his tormentors, didn't he?)

"So you say you still have a few coppers to rub together?" asked on
of the two nastily, addressing my father (for they were as angry as
Grandma now).

"Certainly! Enough to pay the coolies nicely. For we do not stint!
But as for tomorrow, that's God's business," my father replied.

"Faith missionaries!" the sisters snapped. (Because my parents were
"nobodies" they'd hired them as highschool teachers with a very low
salary when they first returned from the USA in 1920, following my
father's slow recovery from typhus. He'd been pensioned off by his
own Mission Board and sent back from China to the U.S.A. at the start
of the year 1918. But when he resolved to return "anyway", they'd
cut off his pension: so indeed my parents had "returned to the Field
by faith".)

But Grandma felt we were being insulted and her reply was heated:

"Well, in a sense we were sent out by a Board of our own! A splendid
little band of Pentecostals back in California sent us out and
promised to start collecting `widows' mites' to send us. You mustn't
think so badly of my daughter's and my son-in-law's faith. And of
mine too I trust."

"Well, `you have your small but regular Baptist pension, at least,"
they replied. "But why are we standing here arguing?"

Why? I knew the reason. It was the only fun they had, the poor old
ladies! All day long they spent with their octogenarian father
upstairs running all the huge Mission for him. And visiting
missionaries were so deferential and boring!

Grandma was the only person who dared cross swords with them and the
fencing was lively and sharp every time. They'd miss her once she
was gone!

"I'm sorry we can't offer you to sit down," my mother spoke up. "But
Dah-Shi-Fu has already carried our lighter furniture downstairs and
we've summoned some coolies to carry the rest of the stuff down by
1:30; and it's now already nearly noon. We'll be going soon and
you'll not have us bothering you any longer as we seem to have done,"
she added forlornly.

"Dear Pansy!" they cried. "You were such a precious infant. We both
loved you! But they brought you up in `their way and here you are -
a replica of your parents, though not quite as snippity. But nobody
is, these days," they sighed. "A pity your father died when still so
young! But what we came down for was to tell you we're sorry in a
way to be losing you, believe it or not. I know we've complained a
lot but it was for your benefit, not that you ever took our
admonitions seriously, more's the pity! We'll especially feel the
loss of you, Benjamin, though we've never approved of you as you
know. But the way you teach arithmetic, algebra, and geometry has
been much appreciated by your students and by us, and they are all
very sorry you must go. You wouldn't want to come back just to give
classes in mathematics, still? We could pay you a bit more, maybe?"

They looked uncomfortable and added, "You wouldn't have any other
duties. Just drop by say three times a week for those classes, and
the money will come in handy."

My father was tempted. I could see it. But my mother cried, "We did
not return to China to teach mathematics!"

"But `you don't, Pansy! `You haven't a head for it," the old ladies
laughed. "We're simply making this offer now to your husband."

But Grandma had her pride and seconded her daughter. "We came back to
preach the gospel as our Pentecostal Board back at home expects us to
do."

"We know! And there you have now your son-in-law and daughter making
mountebanks of themselves already on every highway and byway, and I
know you don't like that, Emma Mason, any more than we do. Oh, well!
There's no convincing you. And so let us not quarrel further at this
last minute. God bless you in your new venture - or adventure! And
Pansy, forgive us if we caused you too many tears; (your eyes used to
fill when we had to scold you!). But since your own mother has not
the wit to reprove you, who else would?"

Grandma was spluttering furiously, gasping to herself already, "Well
I never...", but they hurried on: "But we've always loved you. And
Emma - I mean Mrs. Mason - you are sometimes very loveable too. We
wish you well and hope you'll drop by for tea - "

"For another argument?"

"It's refreshing, you know. You enjoy it as much as we do. If only
Pansy had your spunk, she and Benjamin could have become missionaries
sponsored by our own big Board back at home - we'd have arranged it."

"Non-Baptist!" put in my mother shaking her head. (She was a weird
cross between Baptist and Pentecostal - a most unlikely blend of the
two!)

"There you go again. But what we wanted to say, Mrs. Mason, is,
please do drop by sometimes. Our father wants it too. He speaks of
you as `the lovely young Emma Keeler Mason' even yet and doesn't
realize we all have been growing a little old. He sent us down to
tell you this now. He's been drifting lately more and more into the
Past. He wanted to say goodbye to you himself but the stairs are
difficult lately. You wouldn't want to run upstairs, Mrs. Mason now,
for his sake? He really wanted to tell you goodbye."

"My!" said Grandma, clearly flattered and pleased. "Oh, my!" she
added, "but those four flights of stairs are steep."

"They are, for us too," said the two old ladies. "They grow steeper
daily."

"All stairways to Heaven are steep!" said my incorrigible Grandma.
"Not that I ever viewed your penthouse apartment as Heaven. Tell
your father, I'm not up to climbing. I'm seventy-off years old."

"We know your true age - isn't it nearer eighty?"

"Certainly not. Go back up to your penthouse apartment - that's as
far as `your stairs will take you right now. I never regarded your
top floor as Heaven, I must say."

"Forever nasty!" They started to turn away, then glanced back to
add, "Well, goodbye, before we get onto any further topics of this
nature," and they beat a hasty retreat, looking sad and upset, which
was unusual.

"Mother," complained my mother, "You are always so rude to them. We
should respect their age."

"I'm their senior, remember, dear Pansy. You better start respecting
my age also, not just theirs."

"But you hurt them!"

"I did not. They went away chuckling to themselves. As they
mentioned, had you my spunk, they'd be clinging to you desperately,
just as they tried to cling to me."

"Oh, mother, you are impossible!"

"Really, you are!" my father rose to his adored wife's defense.

Grandma cackled (a really `old lady's laugh) then said "Shall we
continue our prayers?"

She was being nasty, another dig at my father as I realized

"We'd better get on with our packing. Beulah, go and pack your
dollie," ordered my Ma.

"Aren't we going to have dinner? I'm hungry." (We had `dinner' at
noon, not to call it `lunch'.) "What's there to eat?" I asked too.

"We'll have to sit on the trunks and picnic. Da-Shi-Fu has prepared
fried beancurd and pats of rice we can hold in our hands, and it
won't crumble. Won't that be nice?"

I beamed. I loved rice and beancurd, even when no other vegetables
might be present that day. I still hung around, for my parents and
Grandma said such fascinating things at times.

"I really wish we could have had a happier leave-taking," my mother
went on. "You were so inconscionably rude, mother dear!"

I knew I'd never learn `that long word! Nobody used it in our
family, but my mother was that upset she was remembering words you
didn't even find in the Bible, for she's grown up in a very educated,
bookish home, speaking in English in private even if they spoke
perfect Chinese when with the Chinese.

"I'm simply open and frank!" Grandma boasted; she was still pleased
that she'd worsted the W-sisters, so they'd fled. "Jesus said we
must always speak the truth. We're teaching little Beulah to be open
and frank also. Aren't we, dear?"

"Yes, Grandma. But when will we eat? I'm very hungry."

"There's also salted peanuts!" added my mother approvingly.

"Salted peanuts! Blobs of sticky rice! `Beancurd!" groaned my
father. "Well, praise the Lord for minor blessings, anyway. I
suppose there's not even going to be any hot Chinese tea to wash it
down?"

"I'm afraid not, Benjamin," my mother apologized. "There's a bottle
of boiled water left in the bathroom, if you're thirsty. And we're
taking more boiled water with us too. But the charcoal burner is
already on its way to the new place with Amah in a rickshaw loaded
with all the kitchen things and their own things too. She'll be
preparing things there for our arrival."

"Peanuts!" muttered my father to himself again.

"Benjamin!" cried Grandma. "You're acting like a capricious child.
You'd better thank your Lord that your one and only child happens to
love salted peanuts and fried beancurd. Otherwise, what would you
feed her of that's all you can afford?"

"Yes," my father said, pulling himself together. "But perhaps I
should have taken that job they offered, teaching arithmetic?"

"Benjamin," my mother cried, "Where is your faith?" (Mathematics as
a topic of conversation, or for teaching to the Chinese, who had the
abacus - and what else did they need? - left her cold.)

"Truly we need faith to move mountains!" said my father. "`God will
supply all our needs in Christ Jesus' as the text goes. Perhaps we
`had better say a little prayer right now."

"Later, Benjamin. There's still a bit to pack," my mother reminded
him. They all set to work again and so did I. My doll looked cute
in its tiny suitcase with a tiny pillow under her head, but when I
closed the top of the suitcase I thought of coffins again, (Amah's
and Grandma's), and felt both sad and guilty. One shouldn't even
treat a doll in such a way!

That same afternoon my parents rode off each in a rickshaw, but they
were so hidden from sight by suitcases, boxes, bags, and even a
mattress each, they didn't even show.

"Soon we'll set off too in our own rickshaw," Grandma assured me.

"Will there be room?"

"There's always room for you on my lap, in the same rickshaw!"

"I mean, under all the boxes."

"Which boxes? They're all gone, save the big trunks, the
dining-table, the beds, and so on. We have to stay here till we see
them all carted away. Then Dah-Shi-Fu will call a rickshaw for the
two of us and our few odds and ends."

"All this?" I asked, looking down at the heap beside our feet, where
we stood in the big central courtyard of the Mission compound. My
own toy suitcase with the doll inside reposed on top of the heap.

It was a Saturday afternoon, so the usual crowds of Chinese children
and students of all ages were not thronging around. My parents had
already said goodbye to them all on Friday, and many a girl student
had actually wept. My mother had wept in sympathy also. I too had
been close to tears as my kindergarten friends said goodbye to their
pet, "Lamei", which was my Chinese name.

Dah-Shi-Fu was up in our now vacated little two-room apartment,
half-a-floor above us. He was setting the place to rights, sweeping
it out to leave the floor-boards bare of litter and then he'd wash
them clean. We had our pride. And we knew that the W-sisters would
descend again to inspect the premises and woe to us if a flaw were
found. A couple of years earlier, for instance, I had done a bit of
crayoning on a whitewashed wall out of boredom, and how frantic my
mother had been till every trace of it had been successfully removed!
She's even had that bit whitewashed again, "just in case", so of
course the newly whitewashed patch was brighter than the old
whitewash around it and that had upset her too. But in due course
the patch had become less noticeable and didn't show now. Probably
the W-sisters wouldn't notice it, hopefully.

Our own broom and mop and pail had been sent ahead with our things
and so, for this occasion, Dah-Shi-Fu had borrowed the schools
implements out of a downstairs cupboard of the place. He was now
sweeping up the last scraps of dust and shredded papers which not
even a rag-man would want.

He terminated his task and came down the short flight of outdoor
stairs with the heaped-up dust-shovel and the cleaning implements. I
watched him throwing the dust into a bin, emptying and rinsing the
pail and wringing out the mop, all done with extreme care. Then he
put the things away and came up to us.

"Is there something else I should do, Mei Tai-Tai?" he asked her.
(Mei was the Chinese way of saying "Mason" which was her surname.)
"Do you wish to inspect how I left the rooms upstairs?"

"No, Dah-Shi-Fu. I know you did a good job. And now we can only wait."

It had felt so funny a minute ago, as we stood there like "homeless",
our beds stranded in the open together with our table and chairs -
and nothing properly set up - the beds taken to pieces. I'd felt
sad. A home was "breaking up", one I'd greatly enjoyed. I'd loved
living right above what grandma had called "that noisome Chinese
alleyway", for the sounds and even the scents had held meaning for
me. The Chinese lived their fascinating lives and I could listen and
watch, even though the glimpses I obtained were blurry. (I still,
however, wasn't quite aware that the world didn't look that way to
other eyes. They saw things clearly, true, which I failed to see,
but since most grownups took my failure to distinguish things
sometimes as sign of my stupidity, I'd simply leaned to interpret
blurs in a sort of "divining" fashion to figure out what I might be
studying from afar. Squinting helped a bit. Actually my Chinese
friends recognized my problem and helped me "see" by telling me what
I couldn't see. But white folks didn't.

"Oh, good!" cried my Grandma. "Here comes the cart!"

A huge cart was being pulled into the compound by some five or six
coolies. They'd been ordered a day earlier and were arriving now on
the dot. They pulled cart along with ropes and sometimes one or
another would step backwards to push the cart too.

They began loading our things onto the cart with great ease and
expertise while Dah-Shi-Fu superintended carefully. Grandma drew me
nearer (though we remained out of the way), and said to me in English:

"Pity them, dear little Beulah! These are the souls your parents
wish to save. Human dray-horses is all they are, and they have to do
this sort of work just to have enough to eat - and little of that too!"

But I didn't pity them. I wildly admired their strength and beauty;
their bare, sleek, coppery torsos shining with sweat in the sunlight.
They wore knee-length pants held up at the waist by a sort of sash.
They had sandals on, plaited out of coarse straw. They were laughing
and joking together as they lifted the heavy trunks and furniture
onto the cart. It had all been heaped together down on the
sidewalk in advance. My mother had had coolies summoned earlier just
to bring it all down, so Dah-Shi-Fu could leave the two rooms we'd
vacated shiningly clean before we left that Mission forever.

Whatever the Chinese did they seemed to enjoy. Rickshaw coolies
pulled their rickshaws so proudly, while the students at the Mission
learning all sorts of things studied with equal pleasure and joy.
Self-pity did not seem to be a Chinese characteristic. It was found
more among white folks, as it seemed to me, and yet the white folks
were all "rich" in comparison to most of the Chinese I could observe
in Shanghai.

Grandma was saying, "Soon, back in America, every family will have
their own car. It won't happen soon, here. Always, here, there will
be human dray-horses doing all the heavy work, alas." (Grandma
seemed to want every Chinese coolie to have a car of his own too.)

"Who pulls carts in America?" I asked my Grandma to keep her talking.

"Dray-horses, of course. Real big dray-horses. Of course," she
added somberly, "Here in China horse would cost a lot to feed and the
oats and hay the Chinese would have to grow for them would seem
wasteful. On the same land they'd grow food for humans instead. So
many human mouths to feed here in China! Such crowds of people!"

"I like there to be lots of Chinese," said I.

Grandma had to laugh. "There's no way to make you see how necessary
we missionaries - and all the white people here - are to the Chinese!
Can't you pity these fellows now working so hard?"

"No, Grandma."

"Why not?"

"They're happy Grandma, happier than us!"

"What an awful thing to say. In what way are they happy?"

"They love to work."

"Well, so do we."

I wasn't sure about that. We had to work with the "sweat of our
brow" because of Adam's Fall so we hated it didn't we?

"Grandma, in America now they also have big trucks." I reminded her.

"Horrid, stinky things!" was Grandma's reply. "Still, it's better
than putting humans to the degradation of having to be dray-horses
themselves."

The card by now was loaded like a miniature Tower of Babel with our
nondescript things. The coolies took up the ropes and began to chant
a pulling song together. They looked so pleased with the big job
they were accomplishing, it made me feel very proud of them.

The beggars at the wide-open courtyard gates, just outside, had been
watching. They moved to the sides to let the cart pass, and they
studied the contents with attention.

"I want to say goodbye to them now, Grandma!" I remembered.

"Oh, you and your beggars!" said Grandma. "Anyway, I've no free
coppers for you to give them today. I need all I've got in my purse
to pay our rickshaw."

Dah-Shi-Fu had gone to summon a rickshaw for us and now he returned
leading a beaming coolie pulling a ramshackle rickshaw that creaked
when we stepped aboard it and groaned still more when our suitcases
were piled at our feet, till they towered up before our faces.

Dah-Shi-Fu waved us away. I felt myself in a funny sort of
"dimension", still "homeless", for my old home would nevermore
welcome me, and what of this new haunted place? Would it ever feel
like home? Or was I entering - intruding into - a Kingdom of Kwei.
I knew many stories about Kwei (ghosts or demons), told me by my
little Chinese friends. Some of them had haunted old houses also,
crowded together in Chinatown. Now I would have one too. One had to
snub kwei whenever possible, treat them like natural phenomena, and
sometimes they got discouraged and went away. They were stubborn
like the beggars in the streets, however, always wanting handouts of
a spiritual kind!

In my mind's eye (which due to my myopia was getting a lot of
exercise), I visualized Dah-Shi-Fu back at the mission as he
descended to his own dark basement room. He cast a quick glance
around. Not a scrap or stick remained that was worth saving, only
some rubbish which he would not waste time in clearing away. The old
white women on top would never descend this far to inspect.

He shook his head and carried out the last bundles of his own and his
mother's things, and summoned a rickshaw for himself. But he
bargained fiercely, for Benjamin had given him more than the
rickshaw's proper price and those coppers he'd keep for himself.

Our rickshaw-man delivered us to the doorstep of "No.1 Dah-Shin-Fong,
Off-Darroch Road, Shanghai", which would be our full new address. He
set down his handle shafts, turned to unload the boxes and suitcases,
and watched us stepping off the vehicle. He looked hopeful, and
smiled happily when Grandma filled his hand with the copper coins
she'd been collecting for just such a purpose. (She also collected
scraps of white paper, which she cut from old envelopes and other
printed pamphlets, so I'd not run out of drawing paper.)

He looked pleased and now I was glad that she hadn't given me some of
those coppers for my beggars at the Mission. This rickshaw-man
deserved them more.

He looked so proud and pleased with his eyes bright and his face
flushed, I felt proud of him. I was proud of all my Chinese. They
were so brave. Even my beggars back at the gates of the Mission,
whom I'd never see again! But there would be beggars here probably.
(Actually, as I'd learned later, the wizened Chinese watchman at the
great gates of our long Dah-Shin-Fong Lane chased them ruthlessly
away. They did sometimes join the dogs to scavenge in the
garbage-cans standing at all the back-doors of the long attached
building - at least twenty houses in all. And street-hawkers also
could enter by that narrow back lane; but none of them were admitted
into the wider front lane of Dah-Shin-Fong.

That old watchman had many tasks. He might be old and shriveled but
he observed everything and reported it to the distant owners. If my
parents managed to exorcize the bothersome ghosts of the first house
built against the cobbled road outside, he would report to the
owners, and our rent would soar accordingly at once! In a way, it
suited us to share the place with those ghosts!

That first afternoon we spent at Dah-Shin-Fong, the ghosts cowered in
their attic. Who dared invade the premises so fearlessly? They'd
chased off all other would-be occupants in times gone by. But we
seemed to be a different breed, coming with full intentions of
crowding them out by the power of our own gods. They considered my
mother's Yasu (or Yesu) namely Jesus ***???*** He'd been outwitting
demons ever since his visit on Earth so long ago. Nonetheless, he
had given Legion "about two-thousand years" longer of tenancy on the
planet, for in that story of the Gadarene Swine in the Gospels, each
pig had stood for a year as any ghost knew. And the time was not yet
up. It was only 1924. No matter how you counted this "Christian
Era" (perhaps from the year 4 B.C. when Christ was born, or perhaps
from A.D. 30 or 33 when he got crucified), the old reckoning remained
firm. The present Siad Era of the World Tree of Space-Time could not
end for another few years, at least. Then, certainly, there would be
great changes and a lot of `kwei must tumble into the feared Abyss of
No-Space and No-Time. A real Black Hole of a place, horrible to have
to fall through endlessly: a Bottomless Pit!

But they still had a bit of time left to enjoy this dimension of
mortality, and if they behaved with care they might avoid being
exorcized by these new white folk.

I felt the odd thoughts circling around us but couldn't make them
out.

I watched now my father attending to the cart that had just arrived.
The men carried the things up a tall inner stairway to wherever my
mother up there indicated. Grandma had drawn me well aside of their
way. Now it was done and my father paid them well and they were
happy. I admired how they laughed when they shared out the silver
bits and extra coppers, tucking their private shares into some sort
of a purse attached to their trousers' waist-bands, apparently. Then
they went off singing their pulling song, but it was now a light cart
they pulled.

"Well, that's nice," said Grandma, standing in the Lane still beside
me. "Shall we go in? Your mother will already have made up our two
beds in our lovely new upper room as she planned to do. She wants
the place to look attractive so you'll like it from the start. Isn't
that nice of her?"

"Yes, Grandma." My mother tried so hard to be kind and thoughtful,
and she chiefly succeeded except when she was exhausted. At such
times she simply seemed to fade away, her "shining white-dove soul"
as I glimpsed it paling to a shadow. She then lay down if she had a
chance till she caught her breath and "kept right on going" anew.

"We'll have a lot of stairs to climb here," said Grandma. "It'll be
hard on your poor mother, I'm afraid..."

She spoke of the stairway with intense dislike.

We enter the downstairs front room together and Grandma told me,

"This is going to be your papa's chapel. It would have made a nice
living room, but never mind. Ah! Here already is your papa's ancient
organ. He had it stored away when we lived in the Mission. Tt's at
least a hundred years old."

"There are no chairs here, Grandma, if it's going to be a chapel."

"He'll be getting some backless wooden benches made as soon as the
Lord sends him the money for that too."

Grandma led me to the backdoor of that future chapel, and we found
ourselves in a narrow bright hall. To my left was a half-wall topped
by windows, and there was a door in it to match, opening onto a small
courtyard. It seemed strangely dark out in the courtyard there, but
queerly enough the small hall itself inside was bright, for the light
poured down from somewhere overhead.

I pressed my nose against the grimy window-pane (which Dah-Shi-Fu
would soon scrub till crystal-bright) and studied this courtyard.
Its dark cement walls were embossed with mold and moss and the dank
stone slabs of the paving looked green with age.

Across was a very tall outer wall with huge dark wooden gates sunk
into it. I realized it must open onto the cobbled road on the other
side of it.

"We could come in that way too, couldn't we?" I asked Grandma.

"No," was her flat reply. She led me ahead, and at once we reached
the kitchen door where Dah-Shi-Fu's mother was already crouched over
a brazier of powdered coal briquettes, fanning it so as to heat up a
kettle.

She welcomed us happily and Grandma greeted her graciously and so did
I. We then turned back to study the stairway rising up from that
narrow hall.

Grandma's head fell backwards as she stared straight up. "The roof
is a long way away," she remarked; then she looked back down at me.
"It's a high, high climb - all of four floors and more, till you
reach the final balcony leading to a drying-terrace at the rear.
You'll develop good muscles in your little legs; and, as Benjamin
puts it, `Thank God for small blessings'. Maybe," she added,
however, doubtfully again.

The old wooden stairway zigzagged from the front part of the house to
the back part and back again repeatedly - the two parts seemingly
built up separately and linked only by the stairway and, of course,
the lofty roof and the side walls. The first side wall separated us
from the outer airwell above the courtyard, and the second opposite
inner wall separated us from the neighboring house (always empty, as
I'd soon learn, because of the frightening sounds to be heard from
our own place, apparently. We would soon make even more sounds:
endless hymns and prayers shouted all day long, with occasional cries
of "Begone, Satan", and "God save us" interspersed).

One usually thinks of haunted houses as built over dreadful dungeons.
But there were no basement quarters here, barring hidden rows of
graves of victims who'd been tortured by a former bandit-gang, and
those skeletons still lay under the front room's wooden flooring,
right beneath our feet, as everyone knew - even my parents. But what
to do with them? The downstairs chapel's floor was securely nailed
down by now, and only there would you find such burials below. In
the kitchen the floor was of cement as also in the little downstairs
hall. No burials there, probably.

My father would very much have liked to get rid of those legendary
skeletons, but had no idea how to tackle such a grave task; so he
therefore chose to ignore them, together with the ghosts.

"Flying buttresses!" said Grandma. "Those zigzagging stairs hang up
there with no visible means of support, as far as I can tell. But of
course they must be fastened by pegs to the walls, here and there,"
she added hopefully. But then she also added sharply,

"Don't ever lean against the wooded banisters!"

"Why, Grandma?"

"The wood is very old and brittle. This house is fifty years old if
it isn't a hundred. Only the walls themselves were built of brick.
The rest is wood - the floors, the stairs, everything. And of course
the roof is of old grey Chinese tiles. I hope they don't leak." (It
turned out they didn't leak, but there was much dampness in the
haunted attic anyway.

We set foot on the first step. The old wood of it creaked. "It
really is rickety," sighed Grandma, distrustfully. "Promise to walk
slowly and carefully whenever you navigate these stairs, just in
case. And they're so uneven - not one stair matches its fellow."

The stairs turned like the slats of an opened fan, and we found
ourselves now crowded against the dividing wall that separated us
from the house next door. Both of us remembered no to hold onto the
bannisters as we climbed.

This long straight climb brought us to another fanlike turning, and
we stepped onto a sort of platform or narrow landing before an open
door. Here was the first upstairs room - a room the size of the
kitchen below, being built above it, at the back of the house.

"Here," said Grandma "- once they partition it into four cubbyholes
- will be a small WC, a bathtub adjoining it, then Amah's room, and
here in from a tiny entrance hall. There's a bright window over the
street for the WC but the light into the entrance from this other
window over the courtyard isn't very good. The bathroom will have no
window, and this other window looking over the back lane is dark too,
because the wall across is so very high. Poor Amah! But it can't be
helped. There was no other way to plot how the divisions could be
arranged. Now let's go further up the stairs to see the next room,
in front."

This now was a shorter flight, without any turnings. Right above our
heads, in the wall between us and the courtyard, a big glass window
had been set, but not the type you could open. It let in a lot of
light though grimy. Although it was difficult to reach, Dah-Shi-Fu
would soon get it clean with lots of soapy water, using a mop tied to
a long bamboo pole. Dah-Shi-Fu (like my mother) took pride in
keeping our place clean, wherever we were. He would soon be a
familiar figure on these stairs with his mop and pail, creating a
waterfall daily of muddy water that would erase human and non-human
footprints ruthlessly.

This window in the wall overlooking the outer airwell provided the
brightness that the stairwell enjoyed by day. It was well above the
level of the towering courtyard wall that separated us from the highway.

We now reached a big front room with a high ceiling. It was right
above the chapel downstairs.

"Isn't it a nice big room?" said Grandma. "And with four windows to
it! Two above the Lane, one above the cobbled road, and the other
over the courtyard inside. Every house on this Lane is built on the
same pattern, but they don't have the windows onto the outside street
as we do. Ours is the brightest house of all the row."

It seemed funny to me to think of all that long row filled with rooms
and stairs just like these of our place, but with very different
people living inside.

"This room will be partitioned into three," Grandma went on. The two
windows over the Lane will be for two bedrooms, one each. And here
is to be the living-dining-room. It'll also bright, what with the
street window and this one over the courtyard. It'll be very nice."

"And what's right above us here?"

"The attic."

"Oh, I always wanted an attic." (We'd read stories of children who
had their playrooms in attics.) "Could I have it as my playroom, Grandma?"

"No!"

"Why not, Grandma?"

"It's - too dark!"

"May we go and see?"

"Not right now. It's - too far to climb."

She didn't want to talk about it, as I could see. "And now there's
another long flight of stairs to climb, like the one below it we came
up already - the one against this wall," indicating the inner wall,
separating us from the adjoining attached dwelling.

These zigzagging flight circled a wide-mouthed plunging stairwell
that opened all the way down. There was but one room at each landing
as you climbed.

The place had been "modernized" in years gone by. That is to say
electricity had been installed; a water tap had been added to the dank
courtyard below and my father had further arranged that a pipe be run
up to that first back room where it would gush over the future iron
bathtub he'd find in some second-hand shop. The drainpipe too was
now added, nailed or fastened somehow to the outer wall, so the dirty
water could flow downward onto the street's old cobblestones direct.
That was as far as our sanitation went. The usual wooden box with a
cover enclosing a big porcelain urn played the role of a W.C., once
it was installed. Meanwhile for the first night we used "pots" under
our beds.

We were considering tackling the next lap of our climb when my father
ran down those steps and announced:

"I've helped Pansy set up your two beds and now she's making them up
for you both. You can go up right now - she's still there."

At that same moment Dah-Shi-Fu hurried up from below. "Oh, good,"
said my father to him in Chinese. "You're just in time to help me
set up the bed and things here. There's a lot to do before nightfall
and the electricity won't be turned on till tomorrow. We've got to
use candles for this first night here."

"I like it," I told my Grandma. "I'm pretending we're climbing up
the inside of a tall mountain." She paused on the long, high
stairway to catch her breath and smiled down on me. We were both
well away from the balustrade and our finger-tips trailed along the
wall dividing us from next door, as we climbed.

"I'm glad you like it," said Grandma. "You like the feel of it do you?"

"I - I think so, Grandma. Such a nice house has to be nice."

What I meant was simply that with all the windows (once Dah-Shi-Fu
made them crystal clean and the light could enter freely), how could
it not be nice. As for the sense of "something wrong", one might
need a broom with a very long handle to sweep away the Shadows high
over our heads. I was glancing up again and there seemed to be a
hanging balcony instead of yet another lap of stairway right above us
now, and beyond that? More Shadows.

"There are cobwebs still everywhere!" said Grandma also glancing up.
"Dah-Shi-Fu will need a broom with a very long handle to sweep them
all away."

Just as I'd thought! Though, being so short-sighted, I'd noticed
only "Shadows", not cobwebs which Grandma with her far-seeing eyes
noticed.

"But let's keep on climbing!" said Grandma. "And not just keep
standing here like tourists gaping up!"

With her left hand she now took my right hand, and her right hand
pressed against that inner wall as we resumed our climb. The stairs
were so long because each room (save the downstairs back kitchen) had
very high ceilings. And the plunging stairwell around which the
stairway zigged and zagged was all of four floors deep and more, if
you studied it from up near the roof.

We felt like ants climbing up a serpenting vine - or perhaps it was
more like a web spun by some giant spider long ago? At each turn
there sprouted a "leaf", just one leaf which was a minute platform or
landing leading to a room all on its own with no companion "leaf"
attached. Each room thus was totally isolated from the other rooms,
and linked only by the "branches" of the perilous stairway.

Jack had climbed a beanstalk (as Grandma had once told me when I kept
asking for "for stories"), and reached a new level where giants
ruled, on high. But here, no matter how I climbed, only shadows
ruled in this strange upper dimension.

"Here we are!" Grandma sounded triumphant. We now stood on a landing
with the door in front of us open. We were now higher than that
side-window that let light into the lower part of the chimney-like
"black well"... Well, the stairwell wasn't really "black" to one's
normal eyesight, but black it was to the inner eye.

My mother stood at the entrance, outlined against the light coming
from three windows in that back room.

"She likes it!" Grandma announced to my mother, who replied: "Oh, I'm
so glad. Thanks be to Jesus. They cannot touch her then, I see."

"Let us hope so," Grandma agreed. "But let's not discuss that topic,
shall we? Not to give certain `little pitchers' ideas!"

I still lingered on the narrow landing studying the next rise of
stairs. Here, it was a shorter flight once again going straight
upwards to another landing with a closed door facing me.

"What's behind that door?" I demanded.

"The attic."

"Can we go and see it?"

"Not right now. Come in and see your new bedroom!"

The attic was so close above us here, I couldn't put it out of my
mind. It haunted my thoughts already. Still, I entered our new
bedroom with Grandma and she praised Pansy for the look of the room.
"So brightly whitewashed already!" she exclaimed.

"I sent Dah-Shi-Fu especially to whitewash just this room in advance.
It had been so dark and smudgy - fingerprints all over the walls."

"Hmmmm!" said Grandma, and I knew she was envisioning people locked
away in here as prisoners long ago. I glimpsed the picture in her
mind.

"But now it's all like new," said Grandma determinedly. "And those
two snowy bedspreads add a finishing touch. I didn't even know you
had them, Pansy!"

"I was saving them for this sort of purpose. They're from Pasadena
long ago. They're threadbare, but nicely bleached, aren't they?"

We admired the bedspreads for a moment, then I crossed to the window
above the cobbled street.

""How high we are!" I exclaimed. The window was open and the
window-panes had also been washed crystal clean already, obviously
done by Dah-Shi-Fu when he whitewashed the room, including even the
ceiling. It was all white! The floor of wooden boards was
red-varnished. But I noticed that the open window-panes
there, kept swinging back and forth as if there were a breeze, but
the air was motionless, so I stepped back not to be hit.

Grandma looked at my mother. My mother said: "Ever since we entered
this room they've been swinging back and forth that way. The other
windows too, till I closed and locked them."

We'll close and lock this window too," said Grandma and she did so at
once. "There, that's better! Anyway, it's turning cooler, and
evening will soon set in, so we don't need them open, do we?"

"Lie down and rest, Mother," my mother was telling grandma. "You
look exhausted. You missed your usual afternoon nap."

"So do you look exhausted, Pansy. You lie down this instant on
Beulah's bed and she can lie beside me."

"I'm much too busy yet, Mother," was her reply and she walked out and
closed the door after herself.

Grandma sighed and fell backwards onto her bed. I stood more to the
center of the room, and not against any wall. My bed stood against
the wall above the courtyard and beyond its closed window was a blank
wall, obviously the attic's inner wall, windowless.

"Lie down!" she commanded me.

"I'm not tired."

"You - must - rest!" she said. And when she issued a command in that
way I knew she meant it. I obeyed.

"Tell me a story, then," I suggested, determined to be rewarded for
my "instant obedience". I'd flopped onto the bed with abandon, so
the springs jumped and creaked.

But Grandma was still for a moment, while I listened to the old house
groan and creak; and it felt like it was swaying also a bit. Fingers
tapped . . . all those fingerprints covered by the whitewash were
re-issuing themselves, "trying to come through and be visible". I
wondered if Grandma heard them also.

At last she spoke up. "We will sing together `Little Drops of
Water'. It's your favorite."

The finger-tappings turned into raindrops tapping, though beyond the
window it wasn't a rainy afternoon. Quite the contrary.

Grandma began the song in her cracked old voice. I seconded her with
my piping infantile treble:

"Little drops of water,
Little grains of sand. . ."

(Sound of sand drifting over ancient civilizations and peoples,
burying them, burying them all.)

"Make the mighty oceans,
And the beauteous land."

(Great waves washing old civilizations away; tall volcanoes growing
taller as the lava poured forth anew.)

"And the little moments,
Little though they be,"

(A dense new silence filled the house. The Shadows wished to learn
the secrets of Time which only the living - we still in the Flesh -
experienced even if we didn't understand it.)

"Make the mighty ages
Through eternity."

Our song ended. The whole house groaned with dis-ease, a sense of
utter abandonment and guilt. Guilt because it had witnessed most
terrible scenes of vicious cruelty in times gone by. Sadistic souls
had worshipped Evil here by torturing the helpless and the good,
trying thus to win favors from Hell.

Grandma had said, "Promise me to walk slowly on the stairs," but she
had not insisted, so I'd withheld making any promise. She must not
expect me to crawl about slowly as old ladies do.

And now the evening had come and the candles had been lit - one in
each room including one down in the kitchen. The stairs were unlit
but I carried a burning stub of a candle as I went back and forth
inventing imaginary excuses, and I loved the hot wax dripping on my
fingertips. It spoke of Reality, and so did the flame, even if fire
was dangerous and, could it take possession of this old house and
send up smoke and tongues of fire, all the rooms' floors and the
stairway too would be instantly consumed leaving just one huge gaping
chimney-like hole. The old tiles overhead would fall in too and the
sky would look in upon this secret place.

"Be careful, be careful with the candle!" cried my mother, but my
father reminded her, "It can't set anything on fire if she doesn't
leave it burning somewhere, forgotten. Blow out that candle whenever
you enter a lighted room, Beulah," he reminded me and I said "I do."

A whirling, flaming, fiery sword had guarded the entrance to our lost
Eden. A guard of cherubim had wielded that sword.

My candle was flaming sword which I thrust at the gathering Shadows,
I defied them as they spun up and down this dark stairwell; I watched
my own long shadow leap in pursuit, cast by my little candle-flame.
I defied them all. They must go. There was no room for them in our
new home. I was a child of preternatural brilliance with my own
bright source of light within me, as I'd experienced during my visits
in infancy to the "River of the Water of Life" that led me to the
bright Center of Creation, God's Throne, where he welcomed all little
children, and all little creatures of every kind.

Imaginatively, I'd visited that spot at nap hour daily, back at the
other place, while curled at the foot of Grandma's bed behind the
screens in the living room, while she slept. I knew my way from that
"platform" (her bed) direct to my Father's Arms. From here, now,
however, the way would not be so clear and I must wander through the
Shadow of Death for a while still, and not find the River of the
Waters of Life easily.

Here the Shadows would teach me Sorrow and Darkness and the Father
allowed it, for my spark would not be blown out but burn the stronger
no matter how often seemingly quenched. And I'd learn...

I'd learn through all the years that would follow when the trials of
Dah-Shin-Fong were a thing of the past. I'd learn and learn. That
was the purpose of my being, my being alive at all. For I chose Life
not Death; though I might fall under the spell momentarily of
Sorrow's power over our souls, and the "Mystery of Melancholy", as
fould illustrated alike in Grecian ruins and in those solemn marble
mausoleums found in southern countries, erected by believers of
another Faith, not mine. For my mother was a Baptist turned
Pentecostal; but those "other ones" might be Catholic or Orthodox.
And they had their bits of sacred relics from former saints with
which they battled the dark, and it might be valid also, though
necromantic.

But I preferred a direct vision of brightness, where possible. It
wasn't often possible, as I knew. There were dungeons all over our
planet. And hidden graves where the victims of evil are repeatedly
concealed.

I ran happily up and down, brandishing my burning candle-stub. Our
picnic supper of beancurd and salt-peanuts, but with hot Chinese tea
in bowls to wash it down, and with more of those rice-pats we'd had
at noon, was over and cleared away. Dah-Shi-Fu had retired to the
dark portion of the kitchen where a curtain would be hung up to
separate his sector from the big built-of-bricks old Chinese stove -
now freshly whitewashed - where he'd be cooking daily and the amah
would stoke it from the rear with bundles of dried straw. (Coal
briquettes were expensive and needn't now be used.)

Our Amah was already in bed in the first upper-back room that would
soon be divided into four cubbyholes, one of which would be her own.
We had now just said our evening prayers while sitting right at the
oval dining-table in the upper-front room soon to be partitioned into
three rooms. (The floor was too dirty to kneel properly.) My
parents went on sitting there with a candle stuck into an empty
bottle of `tziang-yu (or soya sauce) in the center. They were
resting, too tired to start getting ready for bed. Grandma had said
goodnight and gone up to our high back room already. I was told to
follow quickly, but I kept finding any little excuse to continue
circulating between the two rooms, up and down the flight of stairs
curving up.

I was in a triumphant mood as I used my candle-flame to sweep shadows
away repeatedly, and my multiple shadow chased them further too. It
was exhilarating. Angels must have fun too when chasing away demons
with long spears of light.

As I kept popping into my parents' big front room, they began to grow
exasperated. "When are you going to get into bed?" my mother asked.

"I game skipping up to her and she said, "Blow out your candle!"

"I need it to go upstairs again."

"You can light it at our candle when you go."

I blew it out obediently, but I was restless. I skipped from window
to window to look out. The street lights hung at about level with
our street window and they danced about, flickering as from poor
connections. I didn't like the view from the other inner window that
faced the courtyard's airwell. It was frozen and dark. Yes, there
was an iciness beyond the closed window-panes there. All four
windows were now closed.

"Enough rushing around!" my father shouted. He wondered if I too
heard the footsteps that were starting above our heads. Someone was
walking back and forth on the attic's floor, evidently. And there
was nobody there as we all knew.

I stopped my own happy noises to listen and looked at my mother
inquiringly.

"It's next door," she murmured, unhappy to be telling me a lie. I
pitied her and asked no questions, but skipped over to the other two
windows over the front Lane; but it was dark below there too, so I
whirled and executed a happy little dance that really blew my poor
father's attempt at calm. I was like a fantastic little sprite myself.

"What's the matter with you?" he shouted.

"She probably needs to go to the bathroom," my mother explained.
"Children do twitch around to keep it in, you know."

"I don't want to!" I argued, but she remained unconvinced.

"You can use `our pot," suggested my mother. "It's the big one right
under our bed over there."

Indignantly I denied her accusations. Under no condition would I
lower my dignity (or my posterior either) above that clumsy item of
furniture.

"Well, use your own pot. It's under your bed!" my mother replied.
"Go now! But kiss us goodnight first if you can wait."

"Of course I can," said I. I kissed her petal-soft cheek, just
missing the return kiss she tried to give me, but at times it was bit
moist and left a scent on my cheek - not unpleasant, but I liked to
keep my smells in place. I mean to say: my nose was like that of
some small burrowing animal's snout, and while I welcomed being
hugged by my mother, I didn't appreciate a hurried kiss. Proper hugs,
yes. Not absent-minded smacks on the face!

I then kissed my father's cheek gingerly. He'd had no time that day
to shave since early morning long before dawn, when our last day at
the Mission commenced. He used an old-fashioned razor and kept it
sharpened with a strop that hung beside his shaving mirror that he'd
be attaching to a wall down in the bathroom probably, once everything
was properly installed.

"Can I run up and down just once more first, Mama?" I asked.

"Whatever for?"

"I'm practicing the stairs."

"Practicing the stairs?"

"Learning to go up and down them quickly."

"Please go slowly up and down those stairs. Your Grandma already
warned you."

"Yes, Mama, but quicker is best!"

"Now why? I'd like to know," asked my father.

"I'm playing tag. Pretending someone wants to catch me from behind.
And I'm chasing someone in front too."

"You are `not to play that game on the stairs," shouted my poor father.

"But Papa," I argued. "Sometimes you need to go fast."

"Nonsense!"

"But if I wanted to go to the bathroom in a hurry, what must I do?"

"Use the pot under your own bed. Or even your Grandma's pot."

"I don't like using pots."

"Enough arguing. Up you go immediately and stay there!" shouted my
father, intensely annoyed because the overhead footsteps were growing
louder and more threatening as the night moved on toward the witching
hour.

Arriving in Grandma's and my upper back room, I found her quietly lying
on the top of her counterpane. She already wore her stout white
flannel nightgown buttoned up to her neck and that reached her feet,
and the arms reached her fragile wrists, but she seemed relaxed.

"What a lot of noise you've been making, playing on that stairway,"
she reproved me.

"I wasn't playing, Grandma. I was practicing."

"Practicing what?"

"Going up and down stairs, Grandma. Not to fall."

"You sounded like you were jumping and running."

"I only jumped two steps each time, to reach the platform."

"The landing," she corrected me automatically. "But why?"

"It's like playing hopscotch. Landings are safe, even this one up
here so high - probably." (I wondered about this higher landing of
ours with the attic just a bit higher beyond and across from us.)

"What are you trying to tell me?"

"Nothing, Grandma. I was pretending the stairs were like hopscotch
squares. I should have hopped up and down with the landing as `home'
where you could put down two feet."

"Don't you dare hop up and down those stairs!"

"I won't Grandma. I just pretend to hop. I hop with my left foot
and tell my right foot: `You're not really there!' so it feels that
way, anyway."

"Dear Lord," said Grandma. "I do think you're a little crazy. There
you were, too, back at the Mission when you were four or five, trying
to learn to walk on air. I hope you'll never try that here."

"Oh no! Not here. They wouldn't let me. I'd fall like a stone.
Here you can't levit - er, I've forgotten the word that you used once
with mama, when telling her about me."

"Oh Heavens. What sharp ears you always have. And the words you
pick up! `Levitate' is the word you're seeking and it just means
`walking on air'. I was simply telling your mama how you used to
keep trying to walk on air when alone with me."

"Well, I don't anymore, not since the baptism."

"Then that's one good thing that resulted from it. Nothing else, I'm
afraid. It was all disastrous".
(See Book One for the account)

"I only wanted to try to walk on water like Jesus, Grandma. But they
put that long old dressing-gown on me that tangled my feet, so I
couldn't have walked on water anyway. And I nearly drowned."

"No, you did not, you were held properly."

"But I swallowed lots of water anyway, Grandma."

"Because you started screaming under water. If you'd have held your
breath while being baptized -"

"I got frightened, Grandma."

"Well, never, never discuss it with your mother."

"I never do Grandma. It upsets her."

"You're a precocious child."

The door opened and my mother entered. "Is it Beulah you mean?" she
asked. "Yes, she `is advanced for her age, isn't she? I don't really
agree with those missionaries who find her stupid."

"If that's all they said about her it would be nice," said Grandma
with a sigh, lying back on her bed and closing her eyes.

"They say I'm still not saved, don't they, mama?"

"Beulah!" came Grandma's warning cry, so I shut up.

"Of course you're saved!" cried my mama. "You pray to Jesus very
nicely. I came up now just to hear your prayers for this first night.
Will you begin them now?"

"Let her get into her nightie first," put in my grandma.

My mother hurried me into it, murmuring, "No chance to wash you face
and hands tonight. Well - tomorrow! Now kneel down and begin. Which
will you say? `Gentle Jesus, meek and mild'?"

"No!" I said firmly, and rattled off the shorter prayer,

 "Now I lay me down to sleep,
 I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
 If I should die before I wake
 I pray the Lord my soul to take, Amen."

"Beulah," remonstrated my mother. "I taught you to say, `If Thou
shouldst come before I wake' instead of `If I should die'."

"But mama, the missionaries say I'll surely not be taken up in the
Second Coming."

"Beulah," came Grandma's voice. "You are upsetting your mother again.
And Pansy," she went on, "you are not to take seriously what all
those old curmudgeons say. This child has a soul that is absolutely
pure - there is no evil in her. She takes after you - my dear
innocent child that you still are - and after me somewhat. And, while
I may be not very saintly, I have no dark fund of evil in me, either,
as I trust you'll agree."

When Grandma was being "open and frank" in this way I was always
fascinated.

"We are all desperate sinners in the sight of God," murmured my
mother unhappily. "Just being here reminds me of this, somehow. How
will we ever exorcise the --"

"Pansy! There are little pitchers here. And stop your worrying. If
anybody's saved you are, as those old missionaries must agree. They
envy you and even your Benjamin."

"Oh, they cannot envy us! What is there to envy?"

"That's precisely it. You obey Jesus literally. You sacrifice
everything to follow him - even your only child," she added, and I
felt her resentment when she said that.

"Oh, mother!" Pansy's voice broke. "It is so hard to follow Christ."

"You make it difficult for yourself - your little daughter has chosen
the easy way."

"Has she?"

"Indeed. When something hurts - even just a bump of scratch - I hear
her saying, `Dear Jesus, make me well!' And he does, astonishingly.
And I'll tell you this now, for you need reassurance, I've heard her
whispering during naptime when she used to share my nap with me
there. And she was addressing Our Father, saying all sorts of
endearing little things to him as though he were right there. She
talks about everything with him - not in our style of prayer-language
but in her own simple words - and I only hope this place won't
blanket her beautiful innocent faith. You were never like that,
Pansy, when little. We couldn't keep you from `fearing God too much.
I suppose it was the fright that dragon's huge effigy created in you
when you were four or so that has lasted all your life."

"What has the dragon to do with God?"

"You think of it as the Devil, don't you? So did I at the time. But
your father George use to look upon it as a sort of amusing `animal
of the skies'. And I do feel he regarded it as a sort of pet. Our
little Beulah probably will also. A child needs pets," Grandma went
on, and added, "Tonight, Pansy, I'm going to make for Beulah a
Shadow-Show. Do you remember how you girls loved it back in Huchow
when you were small?"

"Mother, I don't know about that. Your `dog' used to frighten me even
when I laughed."

"Beulah won't be frightened!" Grandma assured her.

"Mother, sometimes I think Benjamin is right to worry about all the
fantasy you sow in her mind."

"Benjamin!" That was her only answer.

Grandma certainly didn't think much of Britishers in general. She
read to me all sorts of fantasies she borrowed from her old
lady-friends who'd kept the books from when they had children.
Children's books of which my father did not approve! Mostly by
American writers, of course.

"Mother, don't keep telling her about `the dragon and my father'!"

"She already knows the story by heart."

"A pity." My mother looked very saddened as she kissed us goodnight.
She left us, closing the door in her wake.

There we were between Earth and Heaven and a terrible Void right
beneath us, for the stairwell went down and down...far lower than the
apparent level of the ground floor. And above were the processions of
stars stretching away towards Infinity, and we such small little
ones, God's Mayfly creatures.

Grandma would remember them all, his little creatures...summon them
all in procession before my delighted eyes, for the first and last
time. (Only by candle-light could such magic be achieved.)

Grandma sat up and slipped her feet into slippers, and went over to
the bureau to adjust the candle that stood in a `tsiang-yu bottle,
proud and tall.

"When I was a little girl," she told me, "back in the mid-nineteenth
century or just a little later, we had no electricity and used a lot
of candles. I lived in a lovely big old house back in America; it was
once our great-grandfather's and now it belonged to my uncle and his
wife and children. My own mother was dead, so I and my little sisters
and brothers lived with them and I helped with my sisters and our
little cousins. Your Great-aunt Lucy in Ohio now was one of my
sisters. Do you remember visiting her when you were two?

"Yes."

"But you never met the others," Grandma added regretfully.

"And what about your father, Grandma, when you were small?"

"He was never at home."

She grew silent and sad. "Go on, Grandma," I reminded her. She
rallied and said, "This nice whitewashed wall reminded me of the
shadow-images I used to create to entertain the littler ones. I was
good at it. Now watch!"

She placed herself where her shadow fell on a wall and it danced
there as the candle-flame started flickering. She put her hands
together palm-to-palm and at once a shadow-dog reared on the wall. It
had a very long neck - really dragon-like - and there was fluffiness
beyond. (Her long sleeves had fallen back and her forearms were now
bare and formed the dog's neck).

"Woof, woof!" said Grandma, and her shadow-dog barked. "Hush, Beulah,
don't laugh so loud or you'll disturb your parents."

I henceforth giggled quietly. Grandma was creating lovely pet shadows
for me that would put the nasty ghosts behind to flight, maybe.

Our shadow-dog's tongue came forth and it was panting. A small bright
hole appeared for an eye, for the animal was shown in profile.

"I want to try!" I cried. "Teach me how." I leaped out of bed and
tried but didn't achieve anything.

"It takes practice," she explained. "And you won't have a chance.
Tomorrow the electricity will be turned on. This is our only chance,
except when there'll be storms and they turn the light off at the
Power Station. But then one forgets to play this game because of the
noisy thunder and the flashing lightning. And now," she went on,
"Here's a cat." I got back into my bed to watch.

The wonderful Shadow Show went on and on till I suddenly grew too
sleepy to attend. She then blew out the light and we climbed into our
own beds. A knocking began at one windowpane from without. I looked
up. It started up at the next window-pane. I glanced there and the
knocking moved to the third window.

"What's that, Grandma?" I asked.

"Probably a bird."

"It jumps around awfully fast, Grandma."

"Yes," she had to agree. The room was not dark - the electric lights
hanging above the road below us sent up their flickering illumination
- a soft half-light. At the windows no outline of any bird could be seen.

"Beulah," said Grandma. "Please now, say the other prayer: `Gentle
Jesus, meek and mild'! Say it right in bed. You needn't climb out to kneel."

My sleepy voice responded:

 "Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,
 Look upon a little child,
 Pity my simplicity,
 Suffer me to come to thee.
 Fain would I -"

Grandma emitted a soft snore so I stopped reciting it, but then she
woke again and said to me quite sharply, "Never, never open a window
when you hear such a knocking. And never, never say `Come in'! Talk
to your Jesus instead - He'll take care of you."

I promised and she relaxed and was soon back to sleep. I though it
over. The knockings at the window-panes had fallen silent. ("The were
waiting." I would not reply.)

She had said "Talk to your Jesus", but I had chiefly borrowed my
"Jesus" from the image Grandma had painted of him for me. I liked
him, trusted him, but he had a bit of uncertainty, for in some parts
of the story she herself grew vague. Mother's "Jesus" was simpler -
not a whit different from the Gospels' account save that Paul's
visions of a "Christ" had been sort of "tacked on" as best she could
manage it. My father's "Jesus" was terribly sad, but then - ever
since his typhus when I was tiny - he too had been mostly a
melancholic person save when he fought the tendency and tried to be
cheerful; as he managed usually.

I didn't like the "Jesuses" of many a missionary who in turn
disapproved of me. But it didn't matter - I placed my hands folded
below my pillow to look nice "if I should die before I wake", and so
fell asleep contentedly.

The situation seemed a bit uncertain, those first few nights at
Dah-Shin-Fong. Territories were being staked out, battle-fields
selected. Normal people if forced to rent some haunted house due to
straitened circumstances would enter such a place either fearfully,
belligerently, or even placatingly in some case. We evinced none of
these attitudes: we marched in determined to take full possession. My
mother had no doubt of the ultimate victory: Jesus would win, even if
we evoked him by his Chinese name Yasu or Yesu. Grandma, who'd lived
longer, and seen and faced more, knew it wouldn't be that simple. My
father, instead, who never could erase from his brain the nightmares
he'd undergone during typhus, faced here Satan direct (as he'd met
him during the high fever back in 1917) and depended on his Pansy to
send the foul fiend packing each time. But it invariably returned to
haunt him anew. So he was not fit for the ordeal ahead, and yet being
a "never-say-die-Britisher" he would not accept defeat but go down
still fighting if need be.

As for myself, I came there simply trying to understand, and -
understanding - resist: hate: ignore if necessary.

It was clearly evident that the attic was "unsafe"; the courtyard was
unexplored-as-yet territory; the stairway a dangerous No-man's land.
As for the back half of the house, occupied on the lower floors by
two sensible realistic Chinese and on the upper floor by Grandma
(very level-headed) and myself, as her understudy, the ghosts could
not penetrate in there but only knocked from the outside at the
window-panes when there seemed an opportune moment by night sometimes.

The downstairs front chapel (soon to have its benches, and a box of a
pulpit in front) was no place for ghosts to put on a show. There were
soon to be too many drunken Russians sleeping off their binges on its
floor, as also defeated Chinese soldiers taking refuge on the benches
so as to be fed by us and given thus shelter. They slept in their
ragged padded garments and wandered in and out as they willed.
Beancurd and rice became our staple diet at such times, so there'd be
enough for them all too.

My parents' front room was like a penumbra between darkness and
light, if we term the chapel below (where Jesus was preached) a place
of light and the attic overhead a place of darkness.

A three-tiered Christian battle was being waged thus in the front
half of the building (chapel, my parents' room, and attic) between
darkness and light. That was one sector of the Battle. But there was
- beyond the No-Man's lands of stairwell and airwell - the other
Domain, where "we heathen" dwelt at the rear. And if we were
protected it was by Buddha, and the Kitchen God of our Amah which she
still venerated privately though without visible iconography. Grandma
had mentioned on our first night at Dah-Shin-Fong China's beneficent
dragon that continued trying to defend its Chinese people against the
White Man's invasion, but without much success.

Dragon...Kitchen God...Buddha... And across from us, Yasu versus the
Attic Walker, lurking beyond the void, that No-Man's domain yawning between!

Who would win at No.1 Dah-Shin-Fong? And how long would it take?
Truces were sometimes declared, so all concerned could lick their
wounds and continue surviving, during the years ahead. But by 1927 we
were thrust forth from Dah-Shin-Fong forever, at last, and not by the
ghosts but by a civil war being waged all over Chapei and right under
our windows. We managed, after being marooned within for three days
behind the high walls and closed gates of the Lane, and barricaded by
our stout window-shutters, to escape in a moment of calm, never to
return to live there again - we settled instead in another unhaunted
old place just inside all the barbed wire.

But the leading facet of the Dah-Shin-Fong place was ever the
stairway. It occupied so much inner space, as it crowded itself away
from the huge airwell, coiling around that well as if to grant the
Void plenty of room for unseeing entities to manoeuver in. The
stairway's serpentine zigzags, especially at their turning points,
where the landing led into the solitary rooms, did seem like ladders
to other dimensions. But not to Heaven as in the "Jacob's Ladder" Old
Testament tale.

It wasn't long before I demanded that the attic door be unlocked so I
might see what lay within. My parents didn't want to do so but found
no convincing excuse to say "No". However, they followed me in while
watching me closely. Had I mediumistic gifts or not? What would I do
in here?

I found the room dark and bleak and somehow icy in a way that made
the flesh crawl, so I cried,

"Open the window, please!"

There was just the one dormer window opening high above the front
lane. It tried to stick fast but my father flung it open and warm air
blew in. I hurried over to look out and found that a comfortable
window-seat was available, so I say upon it before my mother could
even cry,

"Let me dust it off first!"

"Too late," said Grandma. "Now her skirt is full of dust, but it
can't be helped."

There was another side alcove, the one towards the outer region above
the cobbled road far beneath. Within this dark and windowless alcove
we'd already stored a lot of junk - boxes, boxes, bundles, a broken
chair or two waiting to be fixed. (And, when some travelling Chinese
carpenter came to the back lane's kitchen door, Dah-Shi-Fu would stop
him and bring down whatever needed mending, in the usual way.) But
meanwhile, the alcove with its sharply sloping ceiling, was like a
shadowy lurking-place at my rear and I simply ignored it.

I was studying delightedly the wonderful view from the dormer window.
My myopic vision showed me a great and blurry expanse of brilliance
and as my eyesight adjusted I distinguished curling grey rooftops
stretching away as far as I could see like "hills", with an
occasional outcrop of greenery that must be some old tree in a
private courtyard afar.

"I like it here!" I informed my wondering parents and my anxious
Grandma. (She knew that a psychic strain ran in her side of the
family, dating back to the start of her clan's stories of life in the
New World, and she feared I'd inherited a big dose of it.)

"Can I have it as my playroom?" I further asked. "This corner, I man,
by the window?"

My parents stared at each other. The didn't say "No" and they didn't
say "Yes". They didn't know what to answer.

Grandma came up and studied my expression closely. Was I going into a
trance? No, I was simply blissful to have discovered such a view.
There'd been nothing like it in our rooms back at the mission, where
my focus of attention had been a fascinating alleyway just
half-a-floor below us, where life was going on at a hectic rate from
dawn till dark each day. I couldn't see thing clearly but I learned
to distinguish shapes by their movements, and sometimes by the
"prickling of my skin".

But there was more to that dormer window than the view. There was the
attic behind it. Could I conquer this space for myself? Here was
Loneliness and here was Infinitude, reach far out beyond the confines
of Space-Time. Here I would find solace from the frantic pursuit of
"salvation" going on in the chapel and my parents' room all the time.
I could think cool thoughts and seek reasons here for all I
contemplated and tried to understand - even the ghosts, hateful
things who must be sent packing, certainly, for I did not like the
stench of evil, which I sensed here psychically.

Right then, of course, it was a real-life smell that filled the place
from top to bottom-floor of the house. The carpenters had come and
were putting up the flimsy wooden partitions as planned. They were
now painting the structures (that didn't reach much higher than the
height of a person) with Ningpo varnish which is mixed with tung-oil
and pigs' blood. Some white folk are allergic to it, but we weren't.

Pigs' blood for milleniums had been poured into trenches so the
ghosts might lap, following the yearly sacrifice of a sacred pig
representing "a year elapsed", the world over. (And then the
worshippers feasted on the pig - usually a boar specially prepared in
advance.)

But sometimes sacrifices were carried out by throwing pigs (or even
"long pigs" or humans) over a precipice, to mark a year's ending too,
and such rituals can be traced in survivals also found the world over.

So the stink of tung-oil and pigs' blood filling our place will have
placated even the "Walker" as I came to think of the Attic Ghost.

Grandma continue to study me warily as I sat at the window-seat
admiring my airy domain afar.

"Hmmm!" she said at last, looking at my parents.

"She's just admiring the scenery!" cried my mother. "Aren't you,
Beulah?" (My mother had been a gifted painter until she married.)

"Yes mama. The roofs are hills and the big trees are mountains. I'm
pretending it's so."

"She's a poet like me!" beamed my father very proudly. "She's a
level-headed little Britisher - the scenery is all she sees...or
feels either."

"She's a level-headed American like `me!" said my Grandma
indignantly. "As for her being a fanciful poetess, that's from you,
Benjamin, certainly! But she's also practical. And that's from me."

"And from me!" put in my mother hopefully.

"I think it skipped a generation," declared Grandma firmly. "Pansy,
dear, you are far too spiritually inclined to be as practical as one
must become, simply to survive."

"Oh, mother!" protested my mother, very displeased, for she was very
practical in managing our finances and running our home, always, and
wasn't that sufficient?

"Well!" said Grandma briskly. "This attic is full of dust! And, till
it's swept and the floor washed and the cobwebs all removed - and if
possible the walls and ceiling whitewashed - you can't stay here,
Beulah. Don't you agree, Pansy?"

"Oh, certainly. I'll ask Dah-Shi-Fu to attend to it as soon as he has
time. Come along, Beulah, we're closing the attic up again."

"But why do you have to lock it from the outside?"

"Because the door swings open all the time, otherwise."

"Like our windows when we leave them open?"

"It's the wind!" said my poor mother unhappily.

(Never had she had to lie so much to me in the past. And it is also
true that old words for "wind" can signify "spirit" too, or ghost. So
she wasn't really lying!)

The front half of the house had been roofed over by Chinese grey tiles
and they sloped in several directions: down towards the cobbled road
on the outer side; down a little towards the front lane where the
dormer windows jutted all the way down the row of houses; and there
was an upward slope in the other direction that went as far as the
entrance to the flat drying-roof that topped the back part of the
house - the separate sector with no connection but the stairways to
the front half.

My parents and Grandma and I now stood clustered together on the
upper landing while the attic door was being locked. Instead,
however, of turning to descend the short flight leading direct to the
next landing outside the room that was Grandma's and mine, I turned
to contemplate three more fanlike steps leading up to the hanging,
sloping balcony with the roof sloping over it in a confining sort of
way, it was so near. You could walk up there without actually bumping
the head if you were a grownup, but the roof would be only an inch or
two away, above you. It just looked snug to me.

"I like it here too," I said, contemplating that sloping balcony
ahead of us to our right. It hung over the airwell and the lower
stairs as if defying gravity. It had no visible supports, but of
course it must be attached by pegs to the side wall and the walls too
of the front and back portions. It just hung there airily.

"I don't like the way it hangs without visible support!" said Grandma.

"It's kept itself up for the past fifty or so years so it will
probably outlast us all," said my father, and to demonstrate his
theory he went up the fanlike steps onto the balcony and walked
across it to the terrace door. The wooden boards of the balcony
creaked and groaned and even squealed a bit. He threw the outer door
open onto the back drying-roof and at once a blaze of daylight poured
in and lit the balcony's wooden floorboards with blood-red brilliance.

"That varnish looks like new!" observed my grandma suspiciously. It
certainly seemed both dustless and also highly polished. There'd been
dust on the upper stairs as yet and we'd left footprints. But not up there!

"Dust settles lower down," said my mother. "It's just too high up to
collect dust, that's why."

"It's out of reach," I explained.

"Now, what do you mean by that?" asked my Grandma, and I could not
explain save that I knew that this top balcony overhanging the entire
place was "safe". The Attic was as high as the Ghosts could reach. No
further could they ascend.

"Aren't you coming up?" called my father, now standing outlined by
the brilliant daylight at the terrace door - himself just a black
shadow like that of a stranger. "There's lots of air up here!"

I ran up the fanlike steps and on along the sloping red-varnished
boards of the balcony, and emerged with my father together onto the
flat roof. Grandma and my mother followed us distrustfully.

Grandma came up to me saying, "I wanted to warn you. Don't ever lean
against the balustrade of that balcony. It hangs outward a bit and is

probably not securely fastened at all. Treat it as you do the
stairway's railings all the way up."

I said I would.

"And don't lean against this parapet either!" cried my mother,
studying the brick and cement parapet that enclosed the
drying-terrace above the back lane and the cobbled street, and the
third side overlooked the outdoor airwell. The fourth side of the
flat roof was fenced in here by old upright wooden slats, dividing us
from the next door drying-terrace.

My father made the same remark he's made earlier about the balcony -
"It's kept up for the past fifty or so years so it'll probably
outlast us all!"

And Grandma added, "The brickwork of this entire row of houses is
just as old and shaky, from top to bottom. But now that you `are here
- and have signed a contract for a year so you're stuck with it - for
Heaven's sake stop fretting, Pansy, and `trust in God' just as you
always say. What else can you do, anyway?"

I leaned against the parapet and announced, "It doesn't even shake.
But the scenery is boring!"

I meant, from this terrace one saw lots of godown roofs, factory
chimneys, and walls of tenements across the road that were almost as
high as our own house. And no trees! As for "curling rooftops", the
attic window had framed that view so nicely and I found myself
disappointed with this other view. Besides, I couldn't anyway see it well.

My mother and grandma were studying the terrace itself, its cemented
floor space covering the same area as our bedroom and - of course -
the two back rooms lower still. The house was really built in tiers,
and we were now standing on the highest tier - this terrace was
higher than the rest of the house including the front attic.

"We'll make it nice here," said my mother.

"I'll give you some money," said my grandma, "and please tell
Dah-Shi-Fu to buy a few plants from the next street-hawker who passes
by selling blooms. I suggest a dwarf palm - I've always wanted one
myself. They add a ring of fronds each year but they never do grow high."

"Beulah and the palm can grow up side-by-side," agreed my mother,
already visualizing the future. And indeed that dwarf palm we'd
acquire and call always "Grandma's palm" grew up with me, and when we
moved we took it with us everywhere. And it never grew beyond my own
height. It kept me company, and at last - in my teens - it glorified
a really nice downstairs courtyard we'd eventually have, in a newly
built place we'd rent nearer to Jessfield Park at the other end of town.

My father was testing a structure composed of wooden upright and
crossbeams overhead. "They must have had a pergola here years ago,"
he said. No trace of it remained save for the uprights and the
crossbeams. My father considered the central beam that was fastened
on one side to the roof itself, testing it to see if it was strong.
Rusty wires hung from the two crossbeams over head and had no doubt
been used long ago for hanging out the washing. Even criminals
sometimes change their clothes!

"We've some strong rope," said my father. "We can hang a swing from
this middle beam. I'll ask Dah-Shi-Fu to hunt up a bit of wood for
the seat. Would you like that, Beulah?"

"Oh, yes," I cried enthused. Grandma and my mother went over to study
the solidity of the structure too, and agreed it seemed "solid
enough"; and, they added, "Even if it collapsed, she wouldn't fall
far. It's right in the middle, almost."

(They didn't think of the pendulum effect I'd learn how to achieve,
that permitted me to swing right over the parapet! Regularly!)

"It'll keep her form moping in the dark attic," said my father to my
Grandma, and they visualized me "safe on the swing" in the open here.

"Benjamin," said my Grandma, "I wish Pansy showed as much sense as you
do, sometimes." He looked pleased.

There's the scene in Job where God asks Satan: "Whence comest thou?"
and Satan answers: "From going to and fro in the earth, and from
walking up and down in it."

And in the Book of Daniel, this prophet is told: "Many shall run to
and fro and knowledge shall be increased." (at the last time).

In Zachariah it's four chariots that come forth from between two
mountains of brass, and they're the four winds of heaven going "to
and fro through the earth", by God's command.

And, in our haunted Dah-Shin-Fong the ghost walked to and fro,
confined to the high Attic, while I swung far higher triumphantly and
a little mockingly, to and fro also, flying through the open air
under heaven. My speed grew tremendous - the ghost could not match it
no matter how it stepped up its own tempo. I scorned thus all the
ghosts of Dah-Shin-Fong, under the bright sunlight which I carried
within my own sould by night too. And they feared the Light. Not I!
I'd visited its source when I was tiny, though no longer could I find
my way there. I too was captured meanwhile at Dah-Shin-Fong, with the
ghost.

Just as my grandfather years earlier had presented his baby Mary to
the dragon's effigy in Huchow, in a playful mood (and to transform an
angry crowd into a friendly one), my parents had presented me
similarly (and with equal ignorance of what they did - but no humor
was present now) to the Ghost or Ghosts (Legion dwelt at
Dah-Shin-Fong!).

There I was, stranded up near the top by night in my lonely back
room (once Grandma was gone), with a short flight leading higher
across the chasm to the ghost's own domain, the Attic which I never
managed to win over for long, despite occasional attempts on my part.

But on this side of the icy locked attic door was my bright red
balcony with the wide-open door leading to the terrace outside. And
my flying chariot awaited me there each day, that wonderful pendulum
of a swing. Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum", which I'd years later
read, might chill the veins just to visualize it. But `my Pendulum
severed and swept away only nasty things like ghosts (at least
temporarily).

In Crete girls also had their swings, as little images of girls on a
swing from Cretan excavations show.

Normally speaking, it is wrong of parents to move into a horridly
haunted house with their little children. Those who've read James'
THE TURN OF THE SCREW may remember such a tale of children presented
to two diabolical figures by ignorant parents.

But I came already equipped with "the whole armor of God" though no
missionary was aware of it and often mistook my freedom of spirit as
evidence that I must be demon-possessed. I'd not studied the items of
the armor consciously, and only wore the "girdle", which I came to
recognize visibly years later. (I dreamed then of a wide golden belt,
utterly plain but solid, fastened in front with a clasp that no one
could undo but myself. I wore it on a simple white cotton frock
flecked with tiny sprigs of lavender - I'd had such a dress when
Grandma sent the material from the U.S.A. when I was in my teens. In
the dream my feet were clad in white cloth sneakers - I wore no
socks. I was walking through the rooms of a large unpleasant building
and behind me officious figures kept sneering: "Take off the golden
belt. It doesn't go with such a cheap dress." They couldn't touch me
as long as I wore that belt. I replied airily, "I like it," and kept
on going and left them behind. The next day I looked up the reference
- "Stand, therefore, having girded your loins with Truth" goes the
text in Ephesians. Or in a Good News translation: "So stand ready:
having truth for a belt tight around your waste". It makes you invulnerable!

Yes, I desperately loved Reality, Fact, Truth. I demanded clarification
of just everything I came across and tried to be as clear in my own
thoughts also, and as honest as possible (but this aspect was tricky
as I'd gradually have to recognize).

But at least with the Ghosts of Dah-Shin-Fong I honestly hated them:
There could be no compromise. I wanted them ousted. I wanted the
house rendered bright and beautiful.

But it could not be done. Not while we dishonestly continued to keep
our chapel going, right over those unshriven skeletons we chose not
to face or try to have them decently buried at last elsewhere, and
the place cleansed.

Ghosts have their rights too, and so did those in the Pigs of Legion
(given "abut 2000 years") in the Gospel story, as I may one day
explain in more detail, when discussing my language studies separately.

I had a job to do, ahead in my present life - till today as I
approach my 73rd birthday. It was to do God's will. Yes, I know that
sounds pretentious. I'll re-phrase it. It was simply to accept God's
will and never demand my own way. Never demand anything. Accept.
Trust. I was his child from infancy as I always knew. A pity my
freedom of spirit thus acquired seemed "diabolical" to many a
missionary of my childhood. It hurt me deeply. I could not speak
their language, which bordered all too often on the domains of mere
cant. And they resented this in me. I would not compromise.

My parents sought to do God's will and they were utterly sincere
about it; but how timid they were. A fearless follower is needed too
by our Source!

At Dah-Shin-Fong I learned daring. I dared face the icy dark when I
had to do so, alone. For my parents were no protection. They were so
fearful themselves, fearful of the very dogmas preached by their
peers (who painted God so grim!).

Animals mark out their territories with their own urine. Our word
"ammonia" goes back to Egypt's god Ammon (or Amen). Outside his
temple in the desert hordes of camels congregated, bringing pilgrims
from afar. The sands were drenched with camel's urine. It was
collected for the ammonia. Hence the word goes back to those days of
the god Ammon.

`Who would mark my territory? I sat safe on my bright red balcony in
the airy shadow, high above the swirling dust motes of the stairwell
lit at three at that bright noon-hour. From the high up open terrace
door the light descended vertically, from that lower pane of the
courtyard wall more or less two floors high; it spread out
horizontally; and lastly from the windows of the downstairs
passage-way it filtered forth in a dimmer form. I ruled on high, in
full control, aided by all the brilliance, and the Attic Ghost was
silent and fearful behind the locked door.

I soon had a little friend, several years my junior, a blue-eyed
golden-haired child. Her parents lived further in, in one of the
houses of our same Lane. They were Latvian refugees and felt
themselves a cut above most of the white and Eurasian folk of that
same Lane; so they only allowed their little girl to play with me
occasionally.

Harta Bloom was the child's name. She used to bring her doll with
her, golden-haired like herself. I had a beloved doll of papier-mache
with a broken (missing) nose, and that's why my mother could get it
for me at a discount, for Christmas. I'd asked especially for it, for
it looked so sad, flung away on a bargain counter, and I lived it a
lot. Harta's parents would later give me a doll like her own, but its
porcelain head soon got broken by children of missionaries who came
to play occasionally with me.

We sat there, she and I, on the blood-red balcony so proudly with our
dolls, totally fearless; then, when it wasn't so hot, we went out to
take turns with the swing. We were very close friends, sharing as we
did our task of being "mothers" to our dolls.

Now, it happened that mine was the only swing on all the twenty-odd
contiguous flat terraces on top, at the long building's rear. Each
terrace was separated from the adjoining one by those rows of ancient
upright wooden slats. They'd been painted white years ago but were
very weather-worn and easy to break down. Children had done so, and
these neighboring hooligans kids had treated the entire row of
terraces as a place to run and climb and leap. When my swing
appeared, they considered it their swing also, whenever I wasn't
visibly anywhere around (the outer door being shut at such times).

When Harta was visiting, we swung very decorously. I did not
initiate her into the fierce, fast style of swinging I'd learned to
achieve. As we took turns there contentedly, some neighborhood
children - four little girls - who lived in a house further in,
appeared on the roof next to our own and asked very nicely for
permission to swing, so we welcomed them.

However, when we wanted our turns on the swing they refused to give
it up and we began to argue. I insisted we had a right to our turns:
they let me know that "might is right" and they now possessed the
swing and meant to hold on to it.

Exasperated, I shouted: "Go away! It's `my swing!" (My father's
Northumberland temper was coming out in me, and I quite forgot my
Grandma's persistent training to "turn the other cheek", "give thy
cloak also", and so on.)

After much shouting back and forth, they produced their final insult,
coupled with the threat: "We'll pee on you."

I thought this was a physical impossibility and told them so. "Ha,
ha!" I derided them. "You can't."

The girls thought over their anatomical disadvantages somewhat
glumly. I'd spoken the truth. How pee on Harta and myself if we
didn't stay put beneath them in the process? Then the biggest girl in
an inspired moment cried, "We'll put our pee in bottles and throw it
at you!"

With great rejoicing they ran off and squeezed through the broken
slats in all the fences between their rooftop and ours and vanished
from view.

Harta and I banished the girls from our thoughts and continued our
contemplative slow swinging, turn by turn. Utterly contented, we
enjoyed the sunny day and the not-too-"clear breezes", for flecks of
soot always drifted in, as well, but one learned not to mind.

Suddenly Harta (who had good eyesight) warned me - "They're coming
back carrying bottles. And there's something yellow inside. Do you
think it's pee? Let's run inside and lock the door!"

Me? Turn tail and flee from an approaching enemy? Never! "I'm not
afraid," I assured Harta. "Besides, if it looks yellow it's tea not
pee in their bottles."

"How do you know?"

"Because you can't pee in bottles. The bottle's mouth is too tiny, so
you have to use a pot. And pots are not easy to pour out of so they couldn't."

Harta had to agree, and felt braver thanks to my confidence. "You're
sure it's tea?" she asked me nonetheless.

"Of course. They must have asked it from their mothers."

The three bigger girls - and a fourth tiny girl who also carried a
tiny bottle, but peeless (one presumes she'd not managed the
necessary feat though she may have tried and a drop did seem to lie
at the bottom) - now stood on the other side of the slats between our
terrace and the one of No. 2.

"Let's go near to look," said Harta.

We approached warily until we were right on the other side of the
fence and the girls lifted their bottle to display the full yellow
contents. The little girl lifted her almost empty bottle hopefully
too - we were supposed to admire - but the older girls patted her
aside, not wishing such a "failure to fill a bottle" to catch our eyes.

I studied the bottles up closer now, and - though still blurry enough
to my eyes - the sun made the bottles flash with light and the yellow
liquid shone with interesting reflections.

Was tea or pee? By an act of faith I'd turn bottled pee into harmless
tea. Or at least Harta believed it possible. What I said was always
true. She had total faith in my integrity. I studied the bottles
intently. Simultaneously, my faith increased in the "goodness of all
humanity" including these girls. They seemed so friendly, displaying
their offerings thus. They were obviously going to perpetrate a
harmless joke on us both. `Tea was in the bottles; they'd asked it
from their mothers. They were nice girls. Obviously they'd never do
such a nasty thing as they were threatening - to throw pee on us
instead. At worst, a bit of tea would do us no harm.

"It's tea!" I announced aloud, determined to believe still in their
good will.

"It's pee!" they shouted, deeply offended. (They did not lie. They
`said "pee" and it `was "pee"!)

My truth was now in conflict with theirs.

"Impossible," said I.

"Possible."

"How did you get it in the bottles without spilling some?"

Harta meanwhile pointed to the littlest girl and said to me "Her
shoes are splashed!" (The poor tiny child had not managed to get much
liquid into the bottle when she made the attempt.)

Our "enemies" were growing annoyed. This revelation embarrassed them
and should not have been pointed out.

"We'll show you how we did it!" they offered, ready to defend their
truth against mine, and prove it too.

The situation was getting out of hand. How would I deal with it if
the four of them suddenly squatted and showed how one could focus
one's urine into bottles with such narrow mouths? It would be
undignified. I'd be embarrassed for their sakes and for Harta's, for
she was so young and trusting she'd be shocked.

"No, no!" I cried.

They in turn were offended because I not only did not take their word
for it but refused to let them demonstrate their truth.

"But - " I went on. "I don't believe you. I'm sure it's tea." I kept
clinging to the tatters of my faith. I wanted them to see I'd caught
the joke. By faith I was certain they were joking for they'd seemed
real nice girls even if we had just had a little fight.

"It's pee!" they shouted triumphantly, prepared to provide the
necessary evidence anyway. "And we're throwing it at you right now!"

Before we could step back, they did just that. Like a well-trained
little army that fires when the leader shouts the command, the bottle
were presented with the mouths focussed in our direction and - swish
- there arced three streams (plus a little added splash) right onto
our light dresses and onto our white socks (in Harta's case) and
stocking (in mine), and our shoes.

We were drenched.

The four of them shouted with laughter and turned and ran and
vanished with their empty bottles down the row of terraces, their
ammunition spent.

Living by faith is tricky sometimes, even for a Faith missionary's daughter.

Harta looked up inquiringly at me. I must render a verdict and she'd
accept it trustingly, as I knew. Was it tea or pee? We smelled our
skirts to make certain.

"It's pee," we had to agree, sorrowfully.

I should have gone down a notch or two in Harta's esteem. But she
was that loyal, she went right on trusting me.

"Our mamas will be angry," she said sadly. "What shall we do? We need
to change our dresses."

"Yes," I agreed. "And our mamas will say: `How did you get all that
pee on your dresses?' And if we say, `Some girls put pee in bottles
and threw it at us', will our mamas believe us?" (We hardly believed
it ourselves!)

Harta looked dubious. "What can we do?"

"First we start drying ourselves out like washing in the sun. Then
we'll decide."

So we stood side-by-side presenting our faces and dresses' fronts and
stockings and shoes to the afternoon sun, aiming at it the liquid on
our outspread skirts. We stood there poised like a pair of frozen
ballet-dancers trustingly. The smiling sunshine went to work at once
and soon we were dry.

"What do we do now?" asked Harta. "We still smell awful."

I hesitated, uncertain of what to say. But right then a nearby
chimney sent up a merciful shower of cinders like a "Blessing from
the Lord", (and there is a hymn requesting "Showers of Blessing").
The soot soon covered us just as it already covered my mother's new
flowering plants in their wooden packing-crates on the terrace.

We were now nicely camoflaged. When our mothers would ask: "How did
you get so dirty?" we need not lie. We would answer, "A chimney
suddenly smoked." And when they scolded, "You should have run indoors
immediately", we could honestly answer, "We didn't notice it in
time." (We hadn't realized it was bottled pee in time to escape.)

My longing to practice total honesty was being thwarted by my
inability to talk sense to grownups, who always misunderstood
everything. So let them misunderstand!

Soon after that, a missionary family came visiting us and sent up
their little boy with Harta and me to play on the swing, while the
grown-ups sat around the oval dining table below and talked or prayed
or argued, or whatever they did.

I hoped for my father's sake the Attic Ghost would not start walking
right over their heads to embarrass my poor parents. The visitors
would then start issuing instructions on "how to exorcize ghosts" and
when night fell my parents would get it in the neck. Their bed would
start levitating and they hated it. (Mine never did, but then I had
another way of "resisting evil", simply by loathing and scorning and
ignoring its presence when possible. Not concentrating on fearing it
or trying to exorcize it by some approach suggested by visitors, or
even thought up on one's own.)

The boy swaggered up to the swing and took it over. After a while, I
announced "Now it's our turn. It's Harta's turn next."

He'd been studying us with scorn. "You're just girls" he informed us
as if we didn't know.

"Anyway!"

"Try to take it from me," he challenged but we knew that if we tried
wrestling he'd win. He'd like it. We would not.

I got angry. "Get off - it's my swing!"

"It's mine while I want it."

I wanted to fight with him physically, I was so angry - tear his
hair, twist it also. But Grandma before she sailed away so recently
hah had several years of bringing me up so conditioned I was unable
to practice physical violence any more.

Anyway, I was so angry I was shouting at him, "It's `my swing, it's
`my swing!" (forgetting Grandma's instructions to "give thy cloak
also" when they take away your coat).

He got angry. He leaped up. Harta was about to grab the swing when we
saw what he planned to do. He was going to pee on us. He had already
pulled out his "puppy dog's tail" (as Grandma called it, when quoting
that poem: "What are little boys made of?" and the answer is "Toads
and snails and puppy-dogs' tails").

We recognized he didn't need a bottle to transfer his urine onto our
garments. We screamed and fled all the way down to my high bedroom
and slammed the door. Cowering behind it, we whispered together,

"Will he try to push in?"

"Will he `do it' even here, on us?"

"We'd better lock this door!" said Harta

"I'm not allowed to!" (though the key was on the inside in its lock).

"What shall we do?"

"We'll push the door shut and lean on it together when he tries to
push in," I replied.

After waiting a while, our curiosity got the better of us and we
opened the door a crack and spied out. Soon we saw him descending
from the upper landing past the attic door. He was properly buttoned
up again but he was coming down slowly and looked forlorn. We
screamed and slammed our door shut and leaned against it; but he made
no attempt to push in.

He merely went on down to the living-room to interrupt an exorcism
just started by his parents and mine. In a loud voice he complained
that we wouldn't let him "use the swing"! We listened now from above,
the door ajar. We were indignant.

Giving up the attempt at exorcism right then, the grownups got back to
their feet, getting up from their knees, and the boy's father said to
my father, "What a notoriously unsociable child your daughter is!"

"I'll punish her," promised my father.

"A good spanking would help."

"Yes!" agreed my father, shouting up at me to "come down at once".

Harta and I arrived hand-in-hand, for she wasn't going to abandon me
in my trouble. She clung to me loyally.

"You can go home now, Harta!" said my mother.

"My mama told me I'm to stay here till she fetches me," said Harta
stoutly. (This was the truth.)

"Then stay!" said my father ungraciously. "But we're angry with you,
Beulah. If you won't loan your swing to everybody I'll have it taken down."

The little boy smirked. He'd had his revenge.

"I'll be good next time!" I promised, anxious not to lose my swing.

"Say `sorry' to the little boy."

"I glared at him. "Sorry," I said grimly, simply to keep my swing.

"Forgive her!" his mother prompted him then.

"No," he said, which left her in turn at a loss. They took their
leave and went away.

What a lot of missionaries used to come visiting when we first moved
to Dah-Shin-Fong. They were curious to see how we were managing. And,
by daylight, even if the Attic Ghost began to walk above their heads,
it wasn't terrifying, just pleasantly titillating, really - an
adventure from which they could safely escape before the night set in.

Everybody agreed we'd been "crazy" to rent such a haunted place. And
they all wanted to find out how we were managing, since we hadn't
escaped hastily, defeated. Had we come to terms with the ghosts? We
obviously had not exorcized them.

But they never remained past the hour of tea, which we always served
them though we never had tea when on our own. (Just an early
Chinese-style supper, as usual, then "Early to bed", around 9 p.m.)

No busses or trams passed our place, though half-a-block further up
our cobbled street a railroad line lay, and trains between nearby
Kiangwan and Woosung circulated daily. Once, we went to visit
acquaintances at Woosung who had a spyglass and loaned it to me to
peer through at a passing steamer that looked so tiny and blurry afar
on the yellow wide river's mouth. The shock to see it looming nearby
so suddenly and clearly, I didn't like it at all. It seemed downright
spooky to me.

On another occasion we took the train in the opposite direction to
Kiangwan where my mother had friends she thought it would be "nice to
visit" and I'd "get some fresh air".

A rich Chinese woman had converted to Christianity and donated a huge
property there to some missionaries who were of a higher echelon than
my parents. Such a Chinese woman would never have selected my parents
for such a donation. My father would only have told her to give `all
her money to the poor as we now did and learn to walk by faith. She
still kept a lot of wealth back for herself, and it wasn't "the poor"
she was attending, but the more cultured type of Chinese, with the
aid of these lady missionaries, my mother's friends, who'd do the
running of the new establishment.

She'd been very enthusiastic: in this huge old edifice with its
spacious grounds, there'd be a Woman's Bible Academy. Not content
with that, she'd tried to bring order to the abandoned garden; but
the grass grew faster than any lawn-mower could cope with it, so it
remained knee-high with noxious-looking weeds, outracing her
ministrations. The rank weeds grew everywhere and old hedges stuck
their `arms' out in all directions; while here and there towered some
ancient tree about to hurl its branches (and its trunk as well) at
passersby in any storm. I never saw a place more abandoned.

In her eagerness to provide her students with "Prayerful Pathways" as
she called them, she'd created gravel walks between the weeds, that
led down to a large rectangular pond she'd had dug "for
water-lilies". Water-weeds and algae, however, maintained their right
to the place.

The resulting earth had been piled up high nearby and looked like
some huge ancestral gravemound, many meters high, with steps up to
the top. Probably there were real gravemounds under the heap which
could not be safely removed without triggering Buddhist curses.

At any rate, the added earth disguised the burial mounds, and the
hillock was now topped with a fancy little shrine or summer-house,
open on its sides to non-existent breezes where hordes of mosquitos
found shelter.

My parents sat around indoors discussing ghostly problems with their
hostesses, for this was a haunted old mansion as well. The pupils,
girls in their late teens, took me for a walk while we chatted away
in Chinese.

The teenaged girls and I seemed to have a lot in common. They told me
funny stories about the teachers and how scared they were of the
ghosts. I laughed and told that we had a "Walker" in our attic that
made a nuisance of itself and frightened my parents too.

"And you?"

I shrugged. "What can one do? I snub it."

"That's what we do with the ghost here. It prowls about the upper
verandas with the old screens that let in the mosquitos. But we
pretend it's not there and it gets annoyed and goes away."

We walked down the prayerful pathways and I asked them how they liked
their studies.

"Bible lessons are boring!" they confessed.

"My Grandma knew how to make them interesting, but she's gone back to
America," I said.

"When we're very bored," they went on, "we take our Bibles so they
let us go there and we climb up to the prayer-house on top of this
big mound so we can chat, with nobody near. Nobody but the ghosts, of
course! But `they don't mind and don't bother us there."

We felt very brave, nonetheless, as we climbed the cement steps
leading up to the Prayer-House and stood slapping at the mosquitos
and studying the ugly scum coating the rectangular "lily-pond" below;
and we wondered about the dead members of the ancient family who used
to live in this place and whose bones now lay beneath our feet.

"They don't like white folk but they won't mind you," they told me.
"You're almost a Chinese, aren't you?"

I happily agreed.

"Do your parents try to pray away your ghosts?"

"Yes, all the time."

"Do they manage it?"

"Not yet."

"They've not managed it here either. They think we don't know. We
pretend we don't know there's a ghost."

"How can one make the ghosts go away?"

"You have to give them a good reason, like proving you've more right
to the place than they. Some people use firecrackers to frighten them
away, but Christians don't, of course."

We agreed: "All you can do is ignore them!" And we added, "What else
can you do?" And we left it at that.

But ghosts aren't always so easy to ignore, and when the sun was
covered by looming clouds, the ghosts were better of than we were.
And that was a particularly grey day.

I shan't attempt to describe every soul who entered out Dah-Shin-Fong
premises, but will evoke now a typical pair with their children, out
for an adventure, who have decided to drop in on us unexpectedly.
I'll call the man Wilbur and his wife Freda, though I'm not selecting
any one particular couple now to describe.

We might follow them in from the safer International Settlement,
where the artery of Szechuen road runs all the way from Soochow Creek
to Hongkew Park. There are no trams or busses where we are, and the
family has decided to walk, not to take rickshaws. They stroll down
Darroch Road between the weed-grown gardens and the European-style
houses in such an advanced state of decay. The trees are so dried out
they scarcely acquire new foliage even in Spring.

Long ago, Darroch Road must have been beautiful and green and
inhabited by an elder class of Shanghai's white community...forever
coming and going, in their spanking carriages with well-groomed
Chinese servants eager to satisfy their every whim.

But they were gone now and not even their ghosts lingered. They'd
gone in search of "home", back to their starting-points in foreign
lands; but had no graves there where they might rightly linger longer.

But their shattered "selves" had left a mark upon this present
mournful site, and brushed lightly against the spirits of Freda and
Wilbur and their children, reminding them: "Your Shanghai will vanish
too as did ours, and a new China will make you unwelcome."

Our visitors walked on and came to the sandbags and barbed wire
barriers now standing open as yet, where Darroch Road was replaced by
cobbled "Off-Darroch Road" that went winding off in a big curve then
straightened to plunge towards deeper Chinatown beyond the railway
track. But Dah-Shin-Fong itself was located half-a-block before you
reached the track.

They entered now a region that stank of oldness and decay. Back when
Darroch Road had been a nice place of summer residences, with the
country-side around and only a few disgruntled Chinese ghosts still
roaming - evicted from their properl