"Why aren't you talking?" Sally asked. "Did you break your mouth too?"

"Yeah," Billy said. "Did the fall make you stupid or something?"

"Billy, stop teasing," Auntie Gal said. "She's resting. She has too much pain to talk."

Ruth wondered whether this was true. She thought about making a little sound so small no one would even hear. But if she did, then all the good things that were happening might disappear. They would decide she was fine, and everything would go back to normal. Her mother would start scolding her for being careless and disobedient.

For two days after the fall, Ruth was helpless; her mother had to feed, dress, and bathe her. LuLing would tell her what to do: "Open your mouth. Eat a little more. Put your arm in here. Try to keep your head still while I brush your hair." It was comforting to be a baby again, well loved, blameless.

When she returned to school, Ruth found a big streamer of butcher paper hanging at the front of the classroom. "Welcome Back, Ruth!" it said. Miss Sondegard, the teacher, announced that every single boy and girl had helped make it. She led the classroom in clapping for Ruth's bravery. Ruth smiled shyly. Her heart was about to burst. She had never been as proud and happy. She wished she had broken her arm a long time before.

During lunch, girls vied with one another to present her with imaginary trinkets and serve as her maiden-in-waiting. She was invited to step into the "secret castle," a rock-bordered area near a tree at the edge of the sandbox. Only the most popular girls could be princesses. The princesses now took turns drawing on Ruth's cast. One of them gingerly asked, "Is it still broken?" Ruth nodded, and another girl whispered loudly: "Let's bring her magic potions." The princesses scampered off in search of bottle caps, broken glass, and fairy-sized clover.

At the end of the day, Ruth's mother went to her classroom to pick her up. Miss Sondegard took LuLing aside, and Ruth had to act as though she were not listening.

"I think she's a bit tired, which is natural for the first day back. But I'm a little concerned that she's so quiet. She didn't say a word all day, not even ouch."

"She never complain," LuLing agreed.

"It may not be a problem, but we'll need to watch if this continues."

"No problem," LuLing assured her. "She no problem."

"You must encourage her to talk, Mrs. Young. I don't want this to turn into a problem."

"No problem!" her mother reiterated.

"Make her say 'hamburger' before letting her eat a hamburger. Make her say 'cookie' before she gets a cookie."

That night LuLing took the teacher's advice literally: she served hamburger, which she had never done. LuLing did not cook or eat beef of any kind. It disgusted her, reminded her of scarred flesh. Yet now, for her daughter's sake, she put an unadorned patty in front of Ruth, who was thrilled to see her mother had actually made American food for once.

"Hambugga? You say 'hambugga,' then eat."

Ruth was tempted to speak, but she was afraid to break the spell. One word and all the good things in her life would vanish. She shook her head. LuLing encouraged her until the hamburger's rivulets of fat had congealed into ugly white pools. She put the patty in the fridge, then served Ruth a bowl of steaming rice porridge, which she said was better for her health anyway.

After dinner, LuLing cleared the dining table and started to work. She laid out ink, brushes, and a roll of paper. With quick and perfect strokes, she wrote large Chinese characters: "Going Out of Business. Last few days! No offer refused!" She set the banner aside to dry, then cut a new length of paper.

Ruth, who was watching television, noticed after a while that her mother was staring at her. "Why you not do study?" LuLing asked. She had made Ruth practice reading and writing since kindergarten, to help her be "one jump ahead."

Ruth held up her broken right arm in its cast.

"Come sit here," her mother said in Chinese.

Ruth slowly stood up. Uh-oh. Her mother was back to her old ways.

"Now hold this." LuLing placed a brush in Ruth's left hand. "Write your name." Her first attempts were clumsy, the R almost unrecognizable, the hump of the h veering off the paper like an out-of-control bicycle. She giggled.

"Hold the brush straight up," her mother instructed, "not at a slant. Use a light touch, like this."

The next results were better, but they had taken up a whole length of paper.

"Now try to write smaller." But the letters looked like blotches made by an ink-soaked fly twirling on its back. When it was finally time for bed, the practice session had consumed nearly twenty sheets of paper, both front and back. This was a sign of success as well as extravagance. LuLing never wasted anything. She gathered the used sheets, stacked them, and set them in a corner of the room. Ruth knew she would use them later, as practice sheets for her own calligraphy, as blotters for spills, as bundled-up hot pads for pans.

The following evening, after dinner, LuLing presented Ruth with a large tea tray filled with smooth wet sand gathered from the playground at school. "Here," she said, "you practice, use this." She held a chopstick in her left hand, then scratched the word "study" on the miniature beach. When she finished, she swept the sand clean and smooth with the long end of the chopstick. Ruth followed suit and found that it was easier to write this way, also fun. The sand-and-chopstick method did not require the delicate, light-handed technique of the brush. She could apply a force that steadied her. She wrote her name. Neat! It was like playing with the Etch-A-Sketch that her cousin Billy received last Christmas.

LuLing went to the refrigerator and brought out the cold beef patty. "Tomorrow what you want eat?"

And Ruth scratched back: B-U-R-G-R.

LuLing laughed. "Hah! So now you can talk back this way!"

The next day, LuLing brought the tea tray to school and filled it with sand from the same part of the schoolyard where Ruth had broken her arm. Miss Sondegard agreed to let Ruth answer questions this way. And when Ruth raised her hand during an arithmetic drill and scrawled "7," all the other kids jumped out of their chairs to look. Soon they were clamoring that they too wanted to do sand-writing. At recess, Ruth was very popular. She heard them fussing over her. "Let me try!" "Me, me! She said I could!" "You gotta use your left hand, or it's cheating!" "Ruth, you show Tommy how to do it. He's so dumb."

They returned the chopstick to Ruth. And Ruth wrote quickly and easily the answers to their questions: Does your arm hurt? A little. Can I touch your cast? Yes. Does Ricky love Betsy? Yes. Will I get a new bike for my birthday? Yes.

They treated her as though she were Helen Keller, a genius who didn't let injury keep her from showing how smart she was. Like Helen Keller, she simply had to work harder, and perhaps this was what made her smarter, the effort and others' admiring that. Even at home, her mother would ask her, "What you think?" as if Ruth would know, just because she had to write the answers to her questions in sand.

"How does the bean curd dish taste?" LuLing asked one night.

And Ruth etched: Salty, She had never said anything bad about her mother's cooking before, but that was what her mother always said to criticize her own food.

"I thought so too," her mother answered.

This was amazing! Soon her mother was asking her opinion on all kinds of matters.

"We go shop dinner now or go later?" Later.

"What about stock market? I invest, you think I get lucky?" Lucky.

"You like this dress?" No, ugly. Ruth had never experienced such power with words.

Her mother frowned, then murmured in Mandarin. "Your father loved this old dress, and now I can never throw it away." She became misty-eyed. She sighed, then said in English: "You think you daddy miss me?"