by Lucy Tan
These other girls at school assumed that attractiveness had everything to do with sweetness and docility. Lina was starting to learn that it wasn’t enough to give men what they wanted. You had to give them what they didn’t expect. But even as she shocked the girls with some of the things she said (Oh, let them look in the windows! They see us naked in their dreams anyway), Lina knew she was a fraud. Her whole attitude was adopted, an experiment in modernity. She could pretend to be as loose, fashionable, and freethinking as she wanted, but only because it was so easy to appear the opposite of what young, marriageable women were supposed to be when you had a fiancé waiting for you back home.
Fall turned to winter. There were seven students in each dorm room, and every morning, one of the seven would rise earlier than the others, dress in multiple layers, and walk to the dispensary to fetch five gallons of water for the dorm mates to share. If a girl had a sweetheart, she and her beau would sync their shifts so that they could complete their duties together. He would carry his five gallons of water in one hand and her five in the other, and she would tuck her hand into the woolen nest of his pocket as they walked the fifty meters back to the dorms. Whenever Lina woke early, she watched these couples come and go down the snow-covered paths and felt very lonely.
What she was doing with Qiang—sending letters every week—might be crossing the line, but she couldn’t bring herself to stop. Early on, she had written to Wei too, but his responses felt too formal, too composed for her to develop any kind of honest communication with him. Qiang’s letters were never forthcoming (she suspected that there was a lot about his life he wasn’t saying), but they were full of details that teased her imagination.
Lina,
Fall comes easy. We live four to a room—Brother Gao, Jian Hua, Cloudy, and me. It won’t be that way for long, Brother Gao says. He has relatives coming and we are building a family here in Beijing—one that will expand to other cities so that wherever we go in the future, we will have a home. But for now, it’s just the four of us. We work for the restaurant below our quarters, a big canteen-style eatery where Cloudy does the cleaning and the rest of us man the cook stations. My favorite job is roasting the locusts that we skewer and serve daily. You should see them jumping in their bags when they come in from delivery. Sometimes I hold the bag up to my ear to hear them speaking to one another. I imagine them saying their last words. Do you remember the day I showed you the silkworms at the factory? I miss those worms more than I miss my family—is that strange? I wish I could show you everything I see here too. After work, we explore the city. It’s full of lights, even late at night. Some parts of the city are so bright, you forget there’s even a moon.
I think of your letters often and sometimes when I serve a customer, I like to imagine that it’s one of your professors or new friends. I take my pretending so far that I give them free treats—some sticky rice or a small bowl of hong dou soup. My way of sending love to you.
The four of us are lucky that we’ve got a room together, and it’s warm above the kitchens. It might be worth it to stay here through winter. For now, send letters to the address below.
Yours,
Qiang
Was she in love with Qiang? For the other girls at school, the idea of love was tied to marriage in a way that made the whole thing seem as rich and pure as a piece of European chocolate. They could not imagine how confused Lina felt about the matter. None of them had ever been promised to the most eligible boy in her hometown. None of them had ever woken up with the voice of that boy’s brother echoing in her head.
Qiang hadn’t come back to Suzhou during any of the summers she was home from school. In his letters, he always claimed to be tied up with “business in the north,” and Lina knew better than to ask too many questions. Although they had never spoken about it, Qiang knew not to write her at home, and so there were long summer months when they did not exchange any news. But Lina could not separate him from thoughts of summer any more than she could separate summer from the sun, or the lake, or the heat. During school breaks, Lina spent time with her high-school friends and dined at the Zhens’ home. Afterward, she went on walks along the river with Wei.
“Lily-face!” Wei called out whenever he saw her. Once, she had worn the flower in her hair and Wei had poked fun at her by saying that it was almost as big as her face. Every now and then he would wrinkle his nose in pretend distaste and claim that the ghost of the lily was still there, that the flower had liked her so much its smell stayed with her always. Wei could be playful, but that didn’t hide how serious he was by nature. She had never met someone so grounded and ambitious at the same time. During these summers of courtship, he had spoken about their future together, and she was impressed by the way he had the details of their life planned. He knew how much an apartment would cost in Shanghai. He knew the average salary levels in different cities. And he spoke about the possibility of living and working abroad in concrete terms. There were programs that funded students like him, and loans available. These conversations were in a different league than Qiang’s offhand dreams of traveling to Africa and the UK.
While Lina could not quite imagine herself sharing a life with Wei, she felt flattered to be included in the plans of this local celebrity. He spoke about the world as though he could control it the way he did a basketball game with his friends, and that made Lina feel secure with him—so secure that she let him kiss her. Because the summers were long and Lina felt curious about sex, it had gone even further than that. There was some clandestine fumbling in the dark, propelled on her part by, if not lust, then a lust for lust. “Lily-face,” Wei whispered into her neck. “You smell even better up close.”
In her final year, Lina became more focused on schoolwork. She had registered for English as a second major, which fit her new image of herself as a world citizen. Deng Xiaoping had just opened China’s doors to economic trade, and Lina associated the ability to speak English with the ability to walk through those doors. By the time she came across The Second Sex, at a bookshop, she was ready to have a hand in the things that would happen to her, to live a life less planned out than her own. After all, One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.
For the first time, Lina considered the possibility that her match with Wei wasn’t her best option. Not because she wanted to marry Qiang, but because she wanted time and space to claim these decisions as her own. Even Mao himself had said, “Women hold up half the sky.” Before getting married, she wanted at the very least to travel, as Qiang had, and to furnish her inner world with memories to last her the rest of her life. She meant to talk the matter over with her father each trip home, but had always found some excuse to put it off. And then, one day in the spring of her last year at school, she received a letter from home.
Lina,
I wonder if Wei has written you the good news. He applied to the prestigious University of Pennsylvania for graduate studies in mechanical engineering, beginning this fall. Last week, he found out he was accepted with a full scholarship and stipend. The university will be supporting him to live and study in America for the entire length of this program.
Lina’s heart lifted—how long would it take to complete a graduate program? Perhaps it would be years before he came back, years when she might be able to travel or stay in Hubei or move to Suzhou to work on her own. She read on.
We have never spoken in any concrete terms about your marriage or future with Zhen Zhiwei. It’s time now that we do. Your mother and I feel it would be best for the two of you to marry this summer and for you to move to America with Wei.
His opportunity is perfectly suited to your own studies. Not only is the scholarship enough to support the both of you, but the school offers education to the spouses of grad students. If you go with Wei, it is likely that you also will be able to pursue a master’s degree, free of charge. Your education in English will be even more useful to you in America than it would be to you here. If you thrive and build a life there, we will be so
happy for your success. If you decide to come back to settle, what you will have gained both in terms of language skills and worldviews will be incomparable to others in your position. These plans are sudden, of course, and we would hate to be separated from you for an indeterminate length of time. But it is also an opportunity too great to be hoped for. When these sorts of opportunities present themselves, it is not up to us to say no.
Please write Wei your congratulations. We are planning for a July wedding and look forward to your arrival in a few short months.
With love and pride,
Ba
Lina stared at the words. Marriage. America. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise, and yet it did.
How could two things that represented such different experiences—one a limitation, the other an adventure—be wrapped up in one? Lina reread the letter and set out to write a response to her father, but the words wouldn’t come. She tried to write to Wei instead, as her father had suggested, and while this seemed straightforward enough, she found she couldn’t do that either. How could she congratulate him on his scholarship without also addressing their plans for marriage and expressing excitement for it—excitement she didn’t feel?
The person she finally wrote to was Qiang, and her note consisted of a single line: Are you coming home this summer?
And then, long before she was ready, her time at university was over. Bags packed, hands held and squeezed, and one last walk around the department corridors, the English majors yelling, Good-bye! Good luck! to one another in their new Continental accents. It seemed like just yesterday that she’d boarded the train that smelled of grease, sweat, and urine to go to Hubei for the first time. When she climbed aboard that final summer to return to Suzhou, she was already used to the odor, and as the train started to move toward home, she wondered if even this was a thing she’d come to miss.
On the night before her wedding, Lina lay in her childhood bed, staring at the familiar shapes of the branches outside her window. During sleepless moments in her youth, she had watched the shadows of these branches grow or retract, depending on the time of day. With night now thickly upon their village, she could barely make out the tree her father had planted years ago, with its split-neck trunk growing in opposite directions. Summer wasn’t nearly over yet, but the humidity had begun to dry up and cool air was already sweeping down the country, working its way through the open window next to her bed.
Lina turned on her side and looked around the room in the dark. During the months when she was at school, her mother had kept her desk and bed covered with a thin floral sheet. Each time she came home for summer break, she unveiled the furniture by flinging the cover off, sending dust particles swirling in the sunlight. As they settled, and as she took in the parts of her room that had been blurred in her memory of home, she would be overcome with memories of her childhood—especially those of the summer by the lake with Qiang before university began.
She liked Wei. She could imagine loving him too, for all the reasons she knew were important, but which she had only been able to appreciate so far in an abstract way—his intelligence, for example, and his determination. Sometimes, at school, she had missed his kind, questioning face. Plus, you didn’t say no to America. What if her feelings for Qiang were only temporary? Would she shed them once she left Suzhou, the way she had left her docility behind when she went off to college? There were moments when she wished she could fast-forward through the wedding, their departure from home, and their move to America to arrive at a place where she could belong fully to Wei. If a life with him was to be her fate, she wanted to skip the hard parts.
Except she had seen Qiang. A week ago, she heard from Zhen Hong that his younger son was coming back to town for the wedding, and the next day, there he was, sitting across the dinner table. She couldn’t stop her face from turning red and her collar from sticking to the back of her neck. The two said nothing to each other, and when it came time to gan bei, she was even hesitant to touch her glass up against his.
He looked different. His face was angular, more watchful, his skin a shade darker than she’d expected it to be. His letters had made it seem as though he and his friends worked indoors all day at restaurants, retail stores, or warehouses, and their real lives happened at night. That was when they went out to explore the city, but what they did precisely, Lina didn’t know. Gambling, she suspected, was the least of it. Qiang had written to her about his business prospects in other cities, but he did not elaborate on what he considered “business.” He didn’t spend much time describing his present life, and yet he wrote pages and pages about the places he planned to go.
It wasn’t just that he looked different; he was different. He no longer belonged to their little suburb of Suzhou. He was mannered, for one thing. Deferential. At dinner, he had gone so far as to spoon shrimp into everyone’s bowl. From the looks on the Zhens’ faces, Lina wasn’t the only one surprised by his behavior. After four years, it was Qiang who seemed like the newest addition to the Zhen family home, not her.
Lina sighed and got up from her bed. Barefoot, she crossed the room and walked down the hall, feeling the coolness of the dirt floors against her feet. She had intended just to walk to her parents’ bedroom and stand outside their door for a moment, thinking their proximity would calm her. But as she passed the kitchen, Lina happened to turn her head. She almost jumped.
In the dark was a cloudlike apparition; at first, she thought it was a ghost. And then she smelled the cigarette smoke. She moved closer to the window until she could see where it was coming from. Just outside the kitchen door, Qiang was sitting with his back to the house. He hadn’t seen her looking, and Lina took the chance to study the changes in his face that she had been able only to catch glimpses of during dinner. His jawline had grown sharper. Viewing him in profile, she saw his nose had acquired a small bump halfway down the bone. Five or six cigarette butts were littered by his feet, which meant he’d been sitting there for some time.
Lina left the window and moved toward the door. Qiang must have heard her approach the moment before she opened it, because he was no longer on the steps.
“You scared me,” he said, stepping out of the shadows.
She shut the door behind her.
“What are you doing here?”
“I guess I—I came to say good-bye,” he said.
But if he had come to say good-bye to her, he would have come to her window. He’s not here to say good-bye to me, she realized. He was here to say good-bye to this stoop, the place where they’d had their first conversation.
“I’m not going anywhere yet,” Lina said.
“Yes, but it feels like I’m giving you up.”
Lina’s chest tightened as she looked at him. The face he had grown into was unfamiliar and somehow more familiar—as if deep down, she’d always known this was the face he was meant to have.
“You never said anything before.”
Qiang bowed his head and rested both hands on his hips, looking down at the ground. He kicked the butt of a cigarette with his foot. This was as close as they had ever come to admitting that their feelings for each other went beyond friendship.
“What good would it have done? I know what you’re going to say—” He stopped Lina before she could respond. “What good does it do now to say it? But you knew, right?”
The look he gave her was pleading, almost desperate. If she told him yes, she would be admitting responsibility too. If, years from now, she was still unable to forget him, it would be her fault just as much as it was his that things had not worked out. But wouldn’t it have been her fault in any case? She did not want to give him an answer.
“I’m not a match for you,” he said, resigned.
“Then why are you here?”
“Because,” he said, “when I saw you yesterday—when you came to our house, I looked at the way the two of you sat next to each other, and for the first time I thought, Maybe he’s not a match for her either.”
&nb
sp; If Qiang could see it too, it must be true. Just like that, Lina’s last bit of hope for falling in love with Wei disappeared.
“Is he?” Qiang asked when she didn’t respond.
“My father thinks so.”
She almost cringed as she said it. Deferring to the opinion of her father? It was as though she had not changed at all during those four years away at college. One is not born, but rather becomes…She couldn’t even finish the sentence in her head.
“I have prepared for this marriage my entire life, and it still feels too soon,” Lina said.
His eyes were still, his mouth ajar. She wanted to touch him—to lay a hand on his, just once, in a way that wasn’t sisterlike. His nose was running, and he used the back of his hand to wipe the snot away. When the hand came back down to rest by his side, she took it. They looked at each other for the thin edge of a second. And then they kissed.
It was soft, and sweeter than she’d thought it would be. It lifted the tension in her heart and sent it coursing through her blood to the outermost reaches of her body. It was the warmest feeling she had ever had. When it was over, she pressed her head into his neck, and he wrapped his arms around her shoulders. A lifetime passed. No time passed at all. The minutes bloomed like a flower, closed back up into a fist. She knew then that it was love, because what else could have such a multiplying effect? The whole world had opened up around them in duplicate. She felt the breeze on her shins, but the rest of her was numb with pleasure, and she wondered if she was standing up by herself or if he was holding her upright.
“Well?” she whispered. “Aren’t you going to ask me not to marry him?”
Qiang pulled back from her, and she felt her weight shift back onto her feet. He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. And that’s when she knew something was wrong. He wasn’t trying to come up with his answer. He knew his answer. He was just putting off saying what he needed to say.