by Yiyun Li
“Mama, why don’t you think of retirement?” Sansan says in a lower voice.
“Who will feed me then, a poor old widow?”
“I will.”
“You don’t even know how to take care of yourself,” her mother says. “What you need is a man like Tu.”
Sansan looks at her own shadow on the ground, and the fragments of eggshells by her leather sandals. The eggshells were her only toys before she befriended Tu from the next stall, the fruit vendor’s son. Tu’s parents have retired, living in a two-bedroom flat that Tu bought for them. The next stall now sells cigarettes and lighters and palm-sized pictures of blond women whose clothes, when put close to the flame, disappear. After a moment, Sansan asks, “What happened to Tu?”
“His parents came by yesterday, and asked if you wanted to go back to him.”
“Why?”
“A man needs a woman. You need a husband, too.”
“Is that what I am, a substitute?”
“Don’t act willful. You’re not a young girl anymore.”
“Why did he get a divorce?”
“People change their minds. Sansan, if you ask me, I would say just go back to Tu without questioning.”
“Is that what Tu wants? Or is it his parents’ idea?”
“What’s the difference? He’ll marry you if you want to go back to him, that’s what his parents said.”
“That would make it an arranged marriage.”
“Nonsense. We’ve seen you two grow up together from the beginning,” Sansan’s mother says. “Even in arranged marriages, people fall in love.”
Sansan feels a sting in her heart. “Sure, people fall in love in arranged marriages, but that’s not the love I want.”
“What do you want, then, Miss Romantic?”
Sansan does not reply. A romance is more than a love story with a man. A promise is a promise, a vow remains a vow; such is the grandeur of Casablanca, such is the true romance that keeps every day of her life meaningful.
Neither of them speaks. Sansan watches her mother pick up the fresh eggs with the ladle, and crack the shells carefully with a spoon so that the spices will soak the eggs well. When her mother finishes, she scoops up an egg and puts it into Sansan’s hands without a word. The egg is hot but Sansan does not drop it. She looks at the cracks on the shell, darkened by the spices and soy sauce like a prophet’s fractured turtle shell. When she was younger, she had to beg her mother for a long time before she was given an egg to eat, but when Tu was around, her mother always gave them each an egg without hesitation. Sansan wonders if her mother still remembers such things, the nourishing of their relationship long before she and Tu became lovers.
A FEW MINUTES pass, and then, across the street, two jeeps stop with screeching noises. Sansan looks up and sees several cops jump out and surround Gong’s Dried Goods Shop. Soon the customers are driven out the door. “What’s going on?” the vendors ask one another. Sansan’s mother stands up and looks across the street for a minute, and hands the ladle to Sansan. “Take care of the stove for me,” her mother says, and walks across the street with a few other curious vendors.
Sansan watches her mother pushing to the front of the store, where the cops have set up red warning tapes. She wonders why, after forty years in the marketplace, her mother is still interested in other people’s business.
Ten minutes later, her mother returns and says to the vendors, “You’ll never imagine this—they’ve found opium in Gong’s goods.”
“What?”
“No wonder their business is always so good—they add opium when they make their nuts and seeds so people will always want to go back to them,” Sansan’s mother says. “What black-hearted people they are!”
“How did the police find out?” the vendor across the aisle asks.
“Someone working in the shop must have told on them.”
More vendors come back. Sansan listens to them talking about Gong’s opium business, her palms wet and sticky. She was planning to go to Gong’s to buy more sunflower seeds before the end of the day; even the thought of the sunflower seeds makes her eager to go home and hide herself in a pile of cracked shells, letting the taste on her tongue take her over and carry her away to a safe place, where she watches over Tu and Min serenely. Is that what she is living on, a poisoned food, a drugged dream?
Sansan’s mother turns to her. “But let’s not talk about other people’s trouble. What do you think of the proposal, Sansan?”
“To marry Tu? No, I don’t want to marry him.”
“You’ve been waiting for him all these years. Don’t be silly.”
“I’ve never waited for him.”
“But that’s a lie. Everyone knows you’re waiting for him.”
“Everyone?”
“Why else do you never get married? Everyone knows he did this horrible thing to you, but men make mistakes. Even his parents apologized yesterday. It’s time to think about forgiveness.”
“What’s to forgive?”
“He had you, and then left you for another woman. Listen, it would not be that bad a thing if you went back to him. As the old saying goes—what belongs to someone will belong to him eventually. ”
“Wait a minute, Mama. What do you mean he had me?”
Sansan’s mother blushes. “You know what I mean.”
“No, I don’t know. If you mean sex, no, he’s never had me.”
“There’s nothing to be ashamed of. It was understandable, and it was nobody’s fault.”
Sansan, for the first time, understands the town’s tolerance of her, a pitiful woman used and then abandoned by a lover, a woman unmarriable because she will never be able to demonstrate her virginity on the snow-white sheet spread on the wedding bed. “Mama, I have nothing to do with Tu. We never had sex.”
“Are you sure?” Sansan’s mother asks, hopeful disbelief in her eyes.
“I’m a spinster losing my mind. If you don’t believe me, why don’t you ask the town to vote on my virginity?”
Sansan’s mother stares at her for a long moment, and claps her hands. “That’s even better. I didn’t know you loved him so much. I’ll go talk to his parents tonight, and tell them you’ve kept your cleanness for him all these years.”
“I did nothing for him.”
“But why wouldn’t you get married, if he never had you?”
Sansan does not reply. She wonders how much of the gossip about her lost virginity burdened her father before his death. She wonders why her mother has never confronted her all these years; but then, how could her mother, a proud yet humble woman of tradition, ask her daughter such a thing when they have never talked about sex in her family?
“If you can’t answer the question, it’s time to make up your mind,” Sansan’s mother says.
“My mind has been made up all along. I won’t marry Tu.”
“Are you going crazy?”
“Mama, why do you want to be the best egg seller in the world?”
Sansan’s mother shakes her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Mama, why do you put more spices in?”
“If I’m telling people I sell the best eggs in the world, I have to keep my promise.”
“But nobody cares about it. You’re keeping a promise that matters only to you.”
“Don’t talk to me like that. I’m an illiterate. Besides, what has that to do with your marriage?”
“I have my own promise to keep.”
“Why are you so stubborn? Do you know we’ll both end up as crazy women if you don’t get married?” Sansan’s mother says, and starts to cry.
ANOTHER TRAIN PULLS into the station with a longwhistle. Sansan listens to her mother chanting in a trembling voice, and wipes a drop of tear off. Indeed she is going crazy, hurting her mother so, the only person who loves her despite who she is. But she has no other choice. People in this world can discard their promises like used napkins, but she does not want to be one of them.
The man has to shout out the words twice before more people gather.
“What a crazy man,” an old woman says.
“An inventive way to beg, though,” another woman says.
“Why not just begging?”
“Who’d give him money? He’s a strong man. He should be able to find some work.”
“Young people don’t like to work now. They like easy money,” an old man says.
“What’s easy about hurting oneself?”
“Hey, what’s your story?” a young man asks. “Don’t you know you have to make up some really good tragedies to beg?”
People laugh. The man sits quietly in the middle of the circle, the blood dripping from his elbow onto his jeans, but he seems not to notice it. After a while, he shouts the words again.
Sansan’s mother sighs. She fumbles in her cash box and then walks to the man. “Here is ten yuan. Take it, young man, and go find a job. Don’t waste your life with this nonsense.”
“But there’s no job to find.”
“Take the money then.”
The man holds the blade between his two palms, and offers the knife handle to Sansan’s mother. “Here you go, Auntie.”
“Why? I don’t want to cut you.”
“But you have to. I can’t take your money without you cutting me. It’s written here,” the man says.
“Just take it.”
“I’m not a beggar.”
“What are you, then?” someone in the crowd asks.
“An idiot,” someone else says, and people break out laughing. The man does not move, still holding out the knife for Sansan’s mother. She shakes her head and lets the bill drop onto the cardboard. The man returns the bill to the foot of Sansan’s mother, and sits back at his spot.
Sansan picks up the bill and walks to the man. The man looks up at her, and she looks into his eyes. Without a word, he puts the knife in her hand. She studies his body, the naked skin smooth and tanned, and the wound that’s quietly bleeding. She touches his upper arm with one finger, testing and calculating, and then moves her fingertip to his shoulder. The man shivers slightly as her finger traces his flesh.
“Sansan, are you crazy?” her mother says.
The man’s muscles loosen under her caressing finger; after all these years, she finally meets someone who understands what a promise is. Crazy as they may seem to the world, they are not alone, and they will always find each other. Such is the promise of life; such is the grandeur. “Don’t worry, Mama,” Sansan says, and turns to smile at her mother before she points the knife at the man’s shoulder and slices, slowly opening his flesh with love and tenderness.
Son
HAN, THIRTY-THREE YEARS OLD, SINGLE, SOFTware engineer and recently naturalized American citizen, arrives at Beijing International Airport with a brand-new American passport and an old Chinese worry. He has asked his mother to stay at home; knowing she would not, he has feared, for the whole flight from San Francisco to Beijing, that she would be waiting at the terminal with an album of pictures, girls smiling at him out of the plastic holders, competing to please his eyes and win his heart. Han is a zuanshi-wanglaowu, a diamond bachelor, earning American dollars and holding American citizenship. But even when he was at lower levels—silver or gold or whatever he was—his mother never tired of matchmaking for him. At first Han said he would not consider marriage before he got his degree. Then it was a job, and then the green card. But now that Han has got his American citizenship, he is running out of excuses. He imagines the girls his mother has collected, all busy weaving sturdy nets to catch a big fish like him. Han is gay. He has no plan to marry any one of them, nor does he intend to explain this decision to his mother. Han loves his mother, but more so he loves himself. He does not want to bring unnecessary pains to his mother’s life; he does not want to make any sacrifice out of filial duty, either.
But to his surprise, what his mother presents to him is not a picture album but a gold cross on a gold chain. A miniature of Jesus is pinned to the cross. “I special-ordered it for you,” she says. “Feel it.”
Han feels the cross, his finger avoiding the crucified figure. The cross is solid and heavy in his hand. “Twenty-four-karat gold,” his mother says. “As pure as our faith.”
“That sounds like the oath we took when we joined the Communist Youth League. Our faith in communism is as pure and solid as gold, ” Han says.
“Han, don’t make such inappropriate jokes.”
“I’m not joking. What I’m saying is that many things are circulated and recycled. Language is one of them. Faith is another one. They are like the bills in our wallets. You can buy anything with them, but they themselves hold no meaning,” Han says. His mother tries to smile, but he sees the disappointment she cannot hide. “Sorry, Mama. Of course we can’t go on without the paper bills in our wallet.”
“You talk a lot now, Han,” his mother says.
“I’ll shut up then.”
“No, it’s good you talk more than before. You’ve always been a quiet child. Baba would be happy to know that you’ve opened up.”
“It’s not easy to shut up in America. They value you not by what’s inside you, but by what’s pouring out of your mouth,” Han says.
“Yes, of course,” Han’s mother says, quickly agreeing. “But Baba would say you have to learn to listen before you open your mouth. Baba would say the more you talk, the less you gain.”
“Mama, Baba is dead,” Han says. He watches his mother blink and try to find words to fill the vacuum arising between them, and he lets her struggle. For as long as Han remembers, his mother has always been a parrot of his father. The last time Han was on vacation, a few months after his father’s death, he was horrified to overhear his mother’s conversation with several neighbors. “Han says there’s nothing wrong for old people to wear bright colors,” his mother said of the red and orange T-shirts he had bought in bulk for his mother and her friends and neighbors. “Han says we should live for our own comforts, not others’ opinions.” It saddened him back then that his mother had to spend her life repeating her husband’s, and then her son’s, lines. But his sympathy must have been worn out by the seventeen hours in a crammed jet plane. “Mama, let’s get out of here. It’s getting late,” Han says. He picks up his bags and starts to move toward the revolving glass door.
Han’s mother catches up with him and makes a fuss taking over the biggest bag from Han. “Mama, I can handle it myself,” Han says.
“But I can’t walk empty-handedly with you. I’m your mother.”
Han lets go of the bag. They walk silently. Men in suits and women in dresses come up to them, talking to Han about the best hotel deals they have, and Han waves them away. Half a step behind him, his mother apologizes to the hawkers, explaining that they are going home. No, not too far and no need for an overnight place, she says when the hawkers do not give up their hope, and apologizes more.
It upsets Han that his mother is humble for no good reason. When they reach the end of the line at the taxi station, he says, “Mama, you don’t have to apologize to those people.”
“But they’re tr
ying to help us.”
“They only care about the money in your pocket.”
“Han.” His mother opens her mouth, and then sighs.
“I know—I shouldn’t be thinking about people this way, and money is not everything—except it is everything,” Han says. He takes out the gold cross he has slipped into his pocket earlier. “Look, even your church encourages you to buy the twenty-four-karat-gold cross. Why? The more you spend on it, the purer your faith is.”
Han’s mother shakes her head. “Han, come to the church tomorrow with me and listen to our pastor. Ask him about his experience in the Cultural Revolution, and you would know what a great man he is.”
“What can he tell me that I don’t know?” Han says.
“Don’t be so arrogant,” his mother says, almost begging.
Han shrugs with exaggeration. They move slowly with the line. After a silent moment, Han asks, “Mama, are you still a member of the Communist Party?”
“No. I sent my membership card back before I was baptized.”
“They let you do that! You are not afraid that they’ll come back and prosecute you for giving up your communist faith? Remember, Marx, your old god, says religion is the spiritual opium.”
Han’s mother does not reply. The wind blows her gray hair into her eyes, and she looks despondent. A yellow cab drives in, and Han helps his mother into the backseat. A good son she’s got for herself, the cabbie compliments his mother, and she agrees, saying that indeed, he is a very good son.
LATER THAT NIGHT, unable to sleep from the jet lag, Han slips out of the house and goes to an Internet café nearby. He tries to connect to the several chat rooms where he usually spends his evenings in America, flirting with other men and putting on different personalities for different IDs he owns, but after several failed trials, he realizes that the Internet police have blocked such sites in China. It’s daytime in America, and people are busy working anyway. Han sits there for a moment, opening randomly any sites that are available. He feels sorry to have upset his mother earlier, even though she acted as if nothing unpleasant ever happened, and cooked a whole table of dishes for his homecoming. She did not mention the service for tomorrow, and he did not mention the gold cross, which he slipped into his suitcase, ready to forget.