by Yiyun Li
Han is not surprised that his mother has become this devout person. In her letters to him after his father’s death, she writes mostly about her newly discovered faith. What bothers Han is that his mother would have never thought of going to the church if his father were still alive. His father wouldn’t have allowed anyone, be it a man or a god, to take a slice of her attention away; she wouldn’t have had the time for someone else, either, his father always requiring more than she could give. His father’s death should be a relief for his mother. She should have started to enjoy her life instead of putting on another set of shackles for herself. Besides, what kind of church does she go to, and what god does she worship, if the whole thing exists in broad daylight in this country? Han remembers reading, in The New York Times once, a report about the underground churches in China. He decides to find the article and translate it for his mother. If she wants to be a Christian, she had better believe in the right god. She needs to know these people, who risk their freedom and lives going to shacks and caves for their faith. Han remembers the pictures from the report, those believers’ eyes squinting at the reporter’s camera, dispassionate and fearless. Han respects anybody leading an underground life; he himself, being gay, is one of them.
But of course the website of The New York Times is blocked, Han realizes a minute later. He searches for the seminaries and organizations referred to in the article, and almost laughs out loud when he finds a report about the Chinese Christian Patriots Association, the official leader of all the state-licensed churches. The association is coordinating several seminars for a national conference, focusing on the role of Christian teachings in the latest theories of communist development in the new millennium. God on the mission to help revive Marxism, Han thinks.
AFTER TWO HOURS of sleep, Han wakes up, and is happy to find the printed article in his pocket, black words on white paper. He walks into his father’s study. His mother, sitting at the desk, looks up from behind her bifocals. “Did you have a good sleep?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“I’ve got breakfast ready,” his mother says, and puts down a brochure she is reading. Han takes it up, reads a few pages, and tosses it back to his mother’s side of the desk. It’s a collection of poems written by different generations of believers in mainland China over the past century.
“In your spare time—I know you’re busy in America— but if you have some time to spare, I have some good books for you to read,” his mother says.
Han says nothing and goes into the kitchen. He has accepted, in the past ten years, handouts and brochures and several pocket-sized Bibles from people standing in the streets. He lets the young men from the Mormon Church into his kitchen and listens to them for an hour or two. He stands in the parking lots of shopping centers and allows the Korean ladies to preach to him in broken English. He goes to the picnics of the local Chinese church when he is invited, and he does not hang up when people from the church spend a long time trying to convert him. He is never bothered by the inconvenience caused by these people. Once he was stopped outside a fast food restaurant in Cincinnati by a middle-aged woman who insisted on holding both his hands in hers and praying for his soul. He listened and watched a traffic cop write a ticket for his expired meter; even then he did not protest. Han finds it hard to turn away from these people, their concerns for his soul so genuine and urgent that it moves him. Other times, when he sees people standing in the street with handwritten signs that condemn, among many other sinners, homosexuals, he cannot help laughing in their faces. These people, who love or hate him for reasons only good to themselves, amuse Han, but it’s because they are irrelevant people, and their passion won’t harm him in any way. He imagines his mother being one of them; the mere thought of it irritates him.
She follows him to the kitchen. “You can always start with reading the Bible,” she says and puts a steaming bowl of porridge in front of Han. “Purple rice porridge, your favorite.”
“Thanks, Mama.”
“It’s good for you,” Han’s mother says. Han does not know if she is talking about food, or religion. She sits down on the other side of the table and watches him eat. “I’ve talked to many people,” she says. “Some of them didn’t believe me at first, but after they came to the church with me, and read the Bible, their lives were changed.”
“My life’s good enough. I don’t need a change,” Han mumbles.
“It’s never too late to know the truth. Confucius said: If one gets to know the truth in the morning, he can die in the evening without regret.”
“Confucius said: When one reaches fifty, he is no longer deceived by the world. Mama, you are sixty already, and you still let yourself be deceived. Wasn’t your communist faith enough of an example?” Han says. “Look here, Mama, I have printed out this lovely message for you. Read it yourself. The church you go to, the god you talk about—it’s all made up so people like you can be tricked. Don’t you know that all the state-licensed churches recognize the Communist Party as their only leader? Maybe someday you will even come up with the old conclusion that God and Marx are the same.”
Han’s mother takes the sheet of paper. She seems not surprised, or disappointed. When she finishes reading, she puts the printout carefully in the trash can by the desk, and says, “No cloud will conceal the sunshine forever.”
“Mama, I did not come home to listen to you preach. I’ve been in America for ten years, and enough people have tried to convert me, but I’m sitting here the same person as ten years ago. What does that tell you?”
“But you’re my son. I have to help you even if they’ve failed.”
“You could have helped me before. Remember, you burned my Bible,” Han says, and watches her body freeze. He knows that she has forgotten the incident, but he has chosen not to. The Bible was a gift from his best friend when they were thirteen. They were in love without realizing it; innocent boys they were then, their hands never touching. Han did not know what made the boy seek out the Bible, a tightly controlled publication that one could never see in a bookstore or anywhere he knew, as a birthday gift for him. He did not know what trouble the boy had gone through to get the Bible, but he knew, at the time, that it was the most precious gift he had ever got. It would have remained so, well kept and carried along to each city he moved to, a souvenir of the first love, except that his mother made a fire with the Bible and dumped the ashes into the toilet bowl. She did not know the hours he had spent with his best friend after school, sitting together and reading the Bible, finding a haven in the book while their classmates were competing to join the Communist Youth League. They had loved the stories, the bigness of the book that made their worries tiny and transient. When their classmates criticized them for being indifferent to political activities, they laughed it off secretly, both knowing that the Bible allowed them to live in a different, bigger world.
The Bible was discovered by Han’s father and then burned by his mother. Afterward, Han was no longer able to face his friend. He made up excuses to stay away from his friend; he found fault with his friend and argued with him for any trivial reason. Their friendship—their love—did not last long afterward. It would have been doomed anyway, a first love that was going nowhere, but the way it ended, someone other than himself was to be blamed. “Remember, it’s you who burned the Bible,” Han says.
“Yes,” his mother says, trying hard to find words. “But Baba said it was not appropriate to keep it. It was a different time then.”
“Yes, a different time then because it was Baba who gave out orders, and it was the communist god you both worshipped. And now Baba is gone, and you’ve got yourself a new god to please,” Han says. “Mama, why can’t you use your own brain to think?”
“I’m learning, Han. This is the first decision that I’ve made on my own.”
A wrong decision it is, but Han only smiles out of pity and tolerance.
LATER, WHEN HIS mother cautiously suggests a visit to the church, Han says he will accompa
ny her for the bus ride. It won’t hurt to go in and listen, his mother says, but Han only nods noncommittally.
West Hall, the church that Han used to ride his bicycle past on his way to high school years ago, remains the same gray nondescript building inside the rusty iron fence, but the alleys around were demolished, and the church, once a prominent landmark of the area, is now dwarfed by the surrounding shopping centers. Han watches people of all ages enter the church, nodding at one another politely. He wonders how much these people understand of their placing their faiths in the wrong hands, and how much they care about it.
A few steps away from the entrance, Han’s mother stops. “Are you coming in with me?” she asks.
“No, I’ll sit in the Starbucks and wait for you.”
“Starbucks?”
“The coffee shop over there.”
Han’s mother stretches and looks at it, no doubt the first time she has noticed its existence. She nods without moving. “Mama, go in now,” Han says.
“Ah, yes, just a moment,” she says and looks around with expectation. Soon two little beggars, a boy and a girl, run across the street to her. Brother and sister they seem to be, both dressed up in rags, their hands and faces smeared with dirt and soot. The boy, seven or eight years old, holds out a hand when he sees Han. “Uncle, spare a penny. Our baba died with a large debt. Our mama is sick. Spare a penny, please. We need money to send our mama to the hospital.”
The girl, a few years younger, follows suit and chants the same lines. Han looks at the boy. There is a sly expression in the boy’s eyes that makes Han uncomfortable. He knows they are children employed for the begging job, if not by their parents, then by relatives or neighbors. The adults, older and less capable of moving people with their tragedies, must be monitoring the kids from not far away. Han shakes his head. He does not have one penny for such kids; on his previous vacations, he even fought with the kids, who grabbed his legs tightly and threatened not to loose their grip until they were paid. Han is not a stingy person. In America he gives away dollar bills to the musicians playing in the street, quarters and smaller change for homeless people who sit at the same spot all day long. They are honest workers according to Han’s standard, and he gives them what they deserve. But child laborers are not acceptable, and people using the children deserve nothing. Han pushes the boy’s hand away, and says, “Leave me alone.”
“Don’t bother Uncle,” Han’s mother says to the children, and they both stop chanting right away. Han’s mother takes out two large bills from her purse, and gives one to each child. “Now come with Granny,” she says. The children carefully put the money away and follow Han’s mother to the church entrance.
“Wait a minute, Mama,” Han says. “You pay them every week to go to church with you?”
“It can only benefit them,” Han’s mother says.
“But this is not right.”
“It doesn’t hurt anyone. They would have to beg in the street otherwise.”
“It hurts my principles,” Han says. He takes out several bills from his wallet and says to the boy, “Now listen. I will pay you double the amount if both of you return the money to her and do not go to the church today.”
“Han!”
“Hold it, Mama. Don’t say a word,” Han says. He squats down and flips the bills in front of the children’s eyes. The girl looks up at the boy, and the boy looks up at Han’s mother for a moment and then looks down at the money. The cunning and the calculation in the boy’s eyes infuriate Han; he imagines his mother deceived even by such small children. “Come on,” he says to the boy, still smiling. A few seconds later, the boy accepts Han’s money and gathers the bill from his sister’s hand and returns the two bills to Han’s mother. “Good,” Han says. “You can go now.”
The children walk away, stopping people in the sidewalk and repeating their begging lines. Han turns to his mother with a smile. “What did this tell you, Mama? The only thing that matters to them is money.”
“Why did you do that?” his mother says.
“I need to protect you.”
“I don’t need your protection,” Han’s mother says.
“You can say that, Mama,” Han says. “But the truth is, I’m protecting you, and it’s my duty to do this.”
“What right do you have to talk about the truth?” his mother says, and turns away for the church.
HAN TRIES TO convince himself that he is not upset by his mother’s words. Still, he feels hurt. He is his mother’s son. The boy who accepted the money from him is a son, too, but someday he will become a husband, a father, maybe sending his sons and daughters into the street to beg, maybe giving them a better life. Han will never become a father—he imagines himself known to the world only as someone’s son. Not many men would remain only as sons all their lives, but Jesus is one. It’s not easy being a son with duties, Han thinks, and smiles bitterly to himself. What right does he have? His right is that he lives with his principles. He works. He got laid off, struggled for a few months, but found work again. He pays his rent. He greets his neighbors. He goes to the gym. He watches news channels but not reality shows. He sponsors a young girl’s education in a rural province in China, sending checks regularly for her tuition and her living expenses. He masturbates, but not too often. He does not believe in long-term relationships, but once in a while, he meets men in local bars, enjoys physical pleasure with them, and uses condoms. He flirts with other men, faceless as he himself is, on the Internet, but he makes sure they talk about arts too. He loves his mother. He sends two thousand dollars to her every year, even though she has said many times that she does not need the money. He sends the money still, because he is her son, and it’s his duty to protect her and nurture her, as she protected and nurtured him in his younger years. He saves up his vacation and goes home to spend time with her, but what happens when they are together? A day into the vacation and they are already hurting each other.
Han walks across the street to the Starbucks. He feels tired and sad, but then it is his mother’s mistake, not his, that makes them unhappy, and he decides to forgive her. A few steps away from the coffee shop, there is a loud squealing noise of tires on the cement road. Han turns and looks. Men and women are running toward a car, where a crowd has already gathered. A traffic accident, people are yelling, a kid run over. More people swarm toward the accident, some dialing the emergency number on their cellphones, others calling their friends and family, reporting a traffic accident they are witnessing, gesturing as they speak, full of excitement. A man dressed in old clothes runs toward the crowd. “My child,” he screams.
Han freezes, and then starts walking again, away from the accident. He does not want to see the man, who must have been smoking in a shaded corner a block or two away, cry now like a bereaved parent. He does not want to know if it’s the young girl with the singsong voice, or her brother with the sly smile in his eyes, that was run over. Traffic accidents happen every day in this city. People pay others to take their driving tests for them or buy their driver’s licenses directly from the black market; cars do not yield to pedestrians, pedestrians do not fear the moving vehicles. If he does not look, it could be any child, a son, a daughter, someone irrelevant and forgettable.
But somehow, Han knows it’s the boy. It has to be the boy, ready to deceive anyone who is willing to be deceived. The boy will remain a son and never become a father. He will be forgotten by the crowd once his blood is rinsed clean from the ground; his sister will think of him but soon she will forget him, too. He will live on only in Han’s memory, a child punished not for his own insincerity but someone else’s disbelief.
Han sits in Starbucks by the window and waits for his mother. When she finally walks out of the church, the street is cleared and cleaned, not a trace of the accident left. Han walks out to meet his mother, his hands shaking. Across the street she smiles at him, hope and love in her eyes, and Han knows she has already forgotten the unpleasant incident from two hours earlier. She
will always forgive him because he is her son. She will not give up her effort to save his soul because he is her son. But he does not want to be forgiven, or saved. He waits until his mother safely arrives at his side of the street, and says without looking at her, “Mama, there is something I want you to know. I’ll never get married. I only like men.”
Han’s mother does not speak. He smiles and says, “A shock, right? What would Baba say if he knew this? Disgusting, isn’t it?”
After a long moment, Han’s mother says, “I’ve guessed. That’s why I didn’t try matchmaking for you this time.”
“So you see, I’m doomed,” Han says. “I’m one of those— what did we say of those counterrevolutionaries back then?—stinky and hard and untransformable as a rock in an outhouse pit.”
“I wouldn’t say so,” Han’s mother says.
“Admit it, Mama. I’m doomed. Whoever your god is, he wouldn’t be fond of people like me.”
“You’re wrong,” Han’s mother says. She stands on tiptoe and touches his head, the way she used to touch his head when he was younger, to reassure him that he was still a good boy even after he did something wrong. “God loves you for who you are, not what others expect you to be,” she says. “God sees everything, and understands everything.”
Of course, Han wants to make a joke. Her god is just like a Chinese parent, never running out of excuses to love a son. But he stays quiet when he looks up at his mother, her eyes so eager and hopeful that he has to avert his own.
The Arrangement
UNCLE BING CAME TO VISIT RUOLAN AND HER mother when her father went away on business trips. Ruolan’s father worked as a salesman for a tea factory, so every year in late spring, he traveled with samples of new tea to Shanghai, Nanjing, Beijing, big cities Ruolan dreamed of visiting when she grew up. Earlier on, he had come home before summer, but each year he traveled longer, and by the time Ruolan was ten years old, he did not show up until late December, when he was home just in time for the end-of-the-year housecleaning and the holidays. He sent postcards but not often. He brought Ruolan gifts from the cities, too: a doll with blond, curly hair and blue, deep-set eyes, fragrant rubber erasers in the shapes of little bunnies, dresses with laces and shining decorations that were too fancy for the town. Her mother put the dresses away in a trunk and never let Ruolan touch them. After a while, she learned not to ask. She wore passed-down clothes of her mother’s to school, gray blouses and blue pants, faded and too big. Gray-Skinned Mouse, the boys in school nicknamed Ruolan, but even that had stopped bothering her.