I spent the time when Hao wasn’t around condemning myself for my affair with him. Between this and his secret visits, a few months went by in no time. Then, one day while I was grading homework in the office, Small Uncle called and told me that Spring was in the emergency room of Suzhou No. 4 Hospital, more dead than alive.
“She rode a motorcycle into a tree.” Small Uncle’s voice was unusually slow. My mother, he told me, was north of the Yangtze River, on a vacation with Honor, but she had been contacted and was rushing back.
When I reached the hospital, it was completely dark. I found my way to the patient unit. As soon as the ominous smell of sodium carbonate pervading the hallway came to my nose, my muscles tightened as I remembered my own hospital visit, which suddenly didn’t seem so long ago. I stopped and took a deep breath.
I burst into sickroom number 3. I quickly glanced at each of the heads lying on the dirty pillows, searching for my sister’s familiar face. I didn’t see her. After thoroughly searching the other three sickrooms on the same floor, I still couldn’t find her. I ran back and forth down the dimly lit hallway several times, not knowing what to do. I felt like I was losing my mind, engulfed by the clamor of the busy nurses and the sick, sobbing patients.
Finally, in the corner of sickroom number 3 farthest away from the door, I spotted my father’s bent back in his old navy blue jacket. I ran toward him. On the bed he was standing next to, I saw my sister’s head, swollen and covered with wounds, almost entirely unrecognizable. I put my hand over my mouth. For a minute I stood there gasping at her distorted features, and then I started crying.
As I’ve said, I had never liked my sister when we were growing up. She was the little witch sent to torture me. I cursed her thousands of times as a child, this evil being who had taken everything away from me. But now, at the sight of her swollen, damaged face, I felt for her as I never had before.
I fell to my knees and clutched the edge of the bed. I saw her matted hair sticking to the blood on her face. She groaned but didn’t wake up.
Covered with charcoal dust, my father stood in the corner, mopping tears from the corners of his eyes with the bottom of his jacket. I couldn’t believe it. My father was crying. The zombie father who had barely talked to us for ten years was actually crying.
He did have feelings after all. I don’t hate you any more, Dad, I thought, no matter what you did before.
“Dad,” I called him gently, with tears in my eyes.
“That son of a bitch. I’m going to kill him.” He choked and couldn’t continue.
So there was a man involved. I wanted to ask him who it was, but I couldn’t speak either.
Soon it was midnight, and the hospital became quiet except for the sound of snores as patients fell asleep. My father and I sat on the floor in the dark, fully awake and alert. We knew the real storm was yet to come, as my mother would soon arrive on the overnight express train from the north. We didn’t exchange a word, longing for and yet dreading the pounding of those familiar footsteps down the hall.
Finally the door swung open. My mother entered with a travel-worn face and wide-open, panicky eyes. She spotted us and then flew to the bed like an arrow. In the moonlight shining through the windows, she looked at Spring’s face and immediately clamped her palm over her open mouth. She pivoted around and dashed back into the hall. I followed. In the corridor’s pale yellow light, I saw her throwing her head back and banging it hard against the wall, trying to muffle her crying by covering her mouth. But then she gave up and let out her hoarse wails.
“Why? Why did this happen? Why did I leave her alone at home?”
The doors of the sick rooms swung open and people stuck their curious heads out to watch. My mother was shaking and crying out as if she were the one who had almost killed my sister. I wanted to step forward, put my arms around her, and cry with her, but I stayed where I was. The enormous sorrow she was feeling echoed mine, but I was also full of anger, thinking about where she had been while her daughter was nearly dying.
My father appeared quietly in the hallway with red eyes. At the sight of him, my mother started throwing out accusations. “Why did you let her out, you son of a bitch? Why didn’t you keep an eye on her?”
“How could I know what she was doing? What kind of irresponsible mother are you? That son of a bitch sweet-talked her into riding the motorcycle at night,” my father swore angrily.
“That son of a bitch! O Buddha, why did this happen? That fool is married and has a kid. She’s only seventeen. How is she going to face the future, now that everyone knows she is a pair of broken shoes?”
They were biting at each other like two dogs again. I turned around and went back to Spring’s bed. I just wanted my sister to come back to life.
To everyone’s relief, two days later Spring, who at one point had been pronounced dead, twitched her puffy fingers and slowly opened her swollen eyelids.
“Don’t blame Jian. He’s not a bad guy,” she murmured immediately to my mother.
“You knucklehead. Is this the only thing on your mind, after a near brush with death?” My mother pointed her finger at Spring and reprimanded her loudly. “Don’t blame him? You idiot. He walked away with a few scratches, and so far even his soul hasn’t showed up at your bed. Who is going to pay for the hospital bill? How are you going to find a husband in the future?” Her scolding slowly turned into choked whines.
Spring lay in her bed and listened to my mother’s grieving quietly. Her silence absorbed all the noise and cries in the room like a sponge. You could hardly tell she was breathing.
“I don’t care if his father is a tycoon or what. I’ll settle accounts with him even if I have to crawl on my knees to the Villages Committee,” my mother declared.
I stepped back into the corner and hid my face, dreading what was to come. I realized that Spring’s accident was just the first shot of a bloody war.
Spring stayed in the hospital for almost eighty days, each one filled with my mother’s tears, swearing, and scolding. Soon after my sister limped out of the hospital gate with the help of a cane into the summer’s fierce heat, my mother’s long battle of appeals and sobs to the cadres in the Villages Committee began. She often stopped a cadre on the road and pleaded with him to help. She cried and begged them to talk to Jian’s father, who owned a factory, and to persuade him to offer us some financial compensation. The cadres always turned a deaf ear to her, since she was just an ant who dreamed of shaking a big tree.
Afterward, she would come home and sit in the cement front yard, scrubbing dirty clothes and crying and berating Spring for being such a disgrace and bringing so much shame to the family. The crying and moaning dragged on deep into the fall. One day, when the leaves were almost all on the ground, my mother finally came home with a thin stack of yuan in her hand.
It wasn’t just the money; it was the principle, she said. But for this thin stack of bills, she had shed so many tears, knelt down to the cadres so many times, and endured countless insults and so much ridicule. Life was so unfair to us because we were poor, lowly, and powerless. There was no such thing as justice.
Spring’s body was still swollen like a balloon, and her face was so puffy that her eyes were almost hidden. I hoped that the memory of the pain and numbness in her limbs was carved into her bones and would stop her from doing anything foolish again.
Bad things always come in pairs. The secret relationship between Hao and me was finally brought to the surface by Ms. Xu, who was in charge of every aspect of the lives of the female teachers at the school. There is not a wall in the world that air doesn’t leak through, people say. Apparently my activities were now fodder for gossip.
On a hot day in the summer, she stopped my bike as I was on my way home. She chatted with me, smiling, as we walked together, and I nodded to her occasionally.
Out of the blue, Ms. Xu said, “Little Shen, I heard a rumor that you are very close to a scoundrel in the town called Hao. Of course, I said this could
n’t be true, right?” She looked at my eyes, trying to sound me out. “You are a young, prosperous teacher. He’s married and a good-for-nothing. It’s not possible that you two could be together.”
I looked at her unflinchingly and laughed. “God, why do people make these things up? I’ve only met him a couple of times at the club.”
She kept looking at me expectantly. I raised my head and continued, trying to sound as sincere as possible: “How could that be possible? What am I, stupid? Wreck my future for such a rascal?”
Her over-powdered cheeks relaxed. “Good, good, Little Shen. I know you’re a good girl and wouldn’t make any political mistakes. Of course you know how important your reputation is for your future.”
Hao came that night, and I told him about my encounter with Ms. Xu. He listened quietly, taking a drag from his cigarette occasionally. While exhaling the smoke through his full lips, he said cheerfully, “No worries. I’m leaving for Shanghai soon anyway. My father is building a new factory there, and I am going to be the manager.”
“Oh, really?” I squeezed out a smile. “Congratulations!” I added flatly.
He doesn’t appear at all sad about leaving me, I thought bitterly. But then, what was I? I was just one of his mistresses. I should have expected this the minute he barged into my life. By now I should be used to men coming and going, I told myself, and I put on my happy face.
I didn’t see him again until the end of August, when he and a group of friends came to the town’s newly opened pub, where I was working as a cashier during the summer. I sat behind the cash register in the dusky light and stealthily watched the box with tall chairs and chiffon curtains where Hao was holding a girl in his arms and enjoying himself with his friends. My mood was as dark as the corner where I hid myself.
Just that day, Principal Chen had warned me: “I heard you are working at the pub. They don’t need you to collect money. Good people in the town never go there; only hoodlums hang around there. You are a teacher, a model to our future generations. You should pay more attention to the impression you make in public.”
I knew that he was right. Just half an hour earlier, a hoodlum had caught me and grabbed my chest. I didn’t know why I wanted to work in the pub, why I wanted to be close to hoodlums, why I wanted to be bad and why in the end I couldn’t be truly bad—truly bad people didn’t lash their consciences every minute of the day, as I did.
Hao was saying good-bye to his friends and promising to call them from Shanghai. He passed my cashier desk next to the door without stopping, without giving me a look or saying good-bye. He disappeared out the door.
Just like that, another man had gone in and out of my life as carelessly and breezily as an airborne feather. I was alone again.
As if a box of bees had been set free in my chest, I fluttered around the pub for the rest of the night. My shift finally ended. I walked out of the pub feeling restless. Frogs were singing gleefully in the rice paddies that lined the road.
I spotted Gold Hill, one of Hao’s best friends, sitting on his motorcycle smoking a cigarette. Hot-headed yet loyal, he was one of the town’s top hoodlums. He was very different from Hao. While Hao was stocky, reticent, and mysterious, Gold Hill was athletic, dauntless, and always on a rampage. I walked up to him and asked him whether he could talk to me. He looked at me with knowing eyes and smiled. Then he threw his cigarette away, pointed at the rear seat of his motorcycle, and told me to hop on. I saw his four-fingered hand, and for a second I hesitated. I knew how he had lost his index finger. It had been lopped off by a kitchen knife during a gang fight. But I got on the motorcycle anyway. It would cool my burning heart down just to talk to him about Hao, I told myself.
The moist but dusty summer breeze blew into my face as the motorcycle streaked down the small countryside roads. The night was so serene, the wind was so free, and finally the tears I had been holding in were flowing down my cheeks. I had feelings for Hao, I realized. I had thought I didn’t care any more, but I was wrong.
We stopped at a small cliff next to a rice paddy. I quickly got off and ran toward the stream under the cliff. I went into it, shuddering in the water and letting myself sink down into it, trying to extinguish the fire in my heart, not caring that I had never learned how to swim.
Gold Hill climbed down the cliff to the riverbank. He reached his hand out to me.
“I want to swim. Let me swim.” I smiled sweetly at him and stepped away from his hand further into the water.
He shook his head and then sat down on the ground. He crossed his legs, shrugged, and said to me, “Why are you doing this? You know Hao doesn’t care.”
His words hurt. I sank myself deeper into the chilly water. “Hey, you want to see me topless?” I asked half-jokingly.
“What are you doing?” he said with a baffled smile as he watched me taking off my clothes.
Though I hadn’t had a sip of alcohol that night, I felt as if I was drunk. Gold Hill waded into the water, pulled me out, and led me up the slope. I followed him like a lost child, and then, at the top of the cliff, I collapsed onto the muddy ground. I wrapped my arms around my knees and sat beneath the stars, shivering and crying.
Gold Hill sat next to me, held me in his arms, and started to kiss me. I sobbed dizzily while he caressed my body, this man who was more a hoodlum than Hao.
I took him to my room that night. We lay inside the mosquito net on my hard wooden bed, side by side. The usually talkative Gold Hill was quiet. Eventually, without saying a word, he rolled over and started to undress me. Surprisingly, despite his appearance, he was gentle and tender when he caressed me. Then he slowly entered me, and the physical pleasure brought by his movement gradually eased my pain. Afterward, I put my head on his chest, like I used to do with Hao, and closed my eyes. I didn’t tell Gold Hill anything about my family. He was nobody, I told myself, just someone I had grabbed hastily to fill in the spot left empty by Hao. At this point, I didn’t even care what kind of man I was with. I just wanted someone to hold on to.
Life continued as before, with only one difference—now it was Gold Hill, not Hao, who tapped on my window.
8
TIME PASSES QUICKLY in a small town where people don’t use their calendars except to note holidays. Soon it was the summer of 1995, and I had been at the school for two years. I was only twenty-one, but I didn’t feel young at all. On the contrary, I felt old and drained, like the sugarcane dregs kids dumped at the side of the road after sucking out all the juices. When the safflowers started to open their buds, in hopes of throwing off my depression, I decided to take a trip to Shanghai and to visit Paul, the horse-faced American consultant I had met at the Grand View Garden two years earlier.
I got up at dawn and crept off the school grounds. I trotted along the miry ridges, which smelled of soil and manure, crisscrossing the safflower fields and avoiding the main road leading to the bus station. Very few cadres rose this early to bike to their offices in town, but I still couldn’t take the chance that one of them might see me. Nor did I want to be seen by the gossipy farmers in towel turbans on their way to market with loads of fresh vegetables on their shoulders. I didn’t want my leaders to know about me going to Shanghai. “Keep your mind on your work, Little Shen,” I could picture Ms. Xu advising me sternly. “It doesn’t look good if people see female teachers from the middle school running around.”
I took a deep breath and let the chilly morning air fill my nostrils. I sighed heavily at the sight of the rows of village houses rising up beyond the fields. Two years—it had been almost two years since I had become a teacher in this town, a position I would have to hold—and a place where I’d have to stay—until the day I died. This seemingly benign town had unleashed a devil in me. That devil had turned my world upside down, and I didn’t know how to make him leave. I had allowed a married man to impregnate me. I had let Hao and now Gold Hill sleep with me. Why did I spread my legs to any man, like a whore? Surrounded by golden safflowers, I wondered why I felt
so worn out from my seemingly simple teaching life. It was as if I had slipped into a river two years ago and had since been flapping in the water, struggling to get out.
Two hours later, the bus entered Shanghai, one of the largest cities in China. It dropped me off under a huge overpass and then zoomed away, leaving a tail of black exhaust. Every car and motorcycle on the road seemed to be running toward me and everyone seemed to be honking at me. The passersby all gave me strange looks—what was this scared-looking country girl doing just standing around? I felt as if I had washed up on a desert island. I stood on the sidewalk, holding the piece of paper with Paul’s address on it, not knowing what to do. When the cars stopped before the painted white line in the road, I steeled my nerves and started to walk toward the bus stop across the street, praying that I had chosen the correct signal for “walk.” I hadn’t. Before I reached the middle of the road, I heard tires skidding and then strings of loud curses flying from car windows. “Are you looking to die, country bumpkin?” someone shouted. I stumbled across five lanes to the island in the middle of the road and took shelter there, frightened like a duck in a thunderstorm. I put my hand against a column to support myself.
I decided to do what I had seen on TV—get a taxi. I held out my arm to the flying cars. Luckily, the Shanghai taxi drivers would stop anywhere, even in the middle of a road. A red cab pulled up, causing a series of deafening honks. The cab started off again as soon as I had crawled into the passenger seat, and we soon merged into the traffic. The driver, his white-gloved hands holding the wheel steadily, didn’t move his head when he asked curtly, “Where?” Panting out Paul’s address, I realized this was my first time in a car. The experience would cost me a quarter of a month’s salary.
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