Like Spilled Water

by Jennie Liu

  When Bao-bao went to live with Mama and Baba, I turned my resentment to my school work. I studied and studied and studied, finishing middle school with the highest rank. I knew education was the best way out of the countryside, the best way to avoid menial labor. I wanted to go on to high school, then to university. After that anything was possible. Mama and Baba said it all the time to Bao-bao.

  But high schools are costly, and there wasn’t one in the village anyway. Mama and Baba’s finances were stretched with Bao-bao’s education and with the cost of living in the city. They talked about me going out to work in a factory.

  I wanted to leave the village, live in a city. Everyone did. But not to work in a factory.

  Now with the crumpled book cover in my hand, I suddenly remember all the money Mama and Baba won’t be spending on Bao-bao anymore. It occurs to me that Baba and Mama might direct some of that money toward me now. It’s a self-serving thought, I know, but my heart races, wondering what that would mean for my education, my future.

  My phone dings and I jump as if I’ve been caught in some guilty act. I quickly stuff what’s left of the book into the bottom of my bag.

  Are you kidding?! The text is from Gilbert.

  Me: No. I type out the big-eye-short-mouth emoticon.

  Gilbert: How?

  I hesitate, then type the horrible word. Suicide.

  After I hit send, I instantly regret it, knowing Gilbert will probably tell his family and soon the whole village will know and Nainai, all alone out there, will be even more distressed. Maybe people will be sympathetic, or maybe they’ll think our family is unlucky and avoid her, but they will certainly gossip about us.

  I add, Ma and Ba can’t talk about it. Too sad.

  Gilbert: Why?

  Me: ?? Bad score on gaokao.

  Gilbert: @#!!4&*! Are you okay?

  No one has asked me this. And in truth, the question strikes me as wrong, misdirected, as if, because of the distance between Bao-bao and me over the years, I have no claim to anyone’s sympathy. Shock is the only thing I can convey.

  Me: I can’t believe it.

  I grope for something else to say, but nothing comes to mind. I don’t want the conversation to end. This stuffy, cluttered room and Baba’s closed door are too grim.

  Gilbert: Wanted to save face?

  Me: I’m not sure what to think.

  Gilbert: Depressed?

  Me: I didn’t know him at all.

  The conversation stalls because I can’t express the feelings roiling inside me. How could Bao-bao have scored so poorly after everything our parents did to help him, all the money they spent on him, rather than on themselves or me? He could have tried harder, or at least tried again next year. He threw away everything they invested in him. And then he threw away his life.

  It seems so wrong to be angry at my own dead brother, even selfish. But wasn’t he selfish to kill himself and make our parents suffer so much? I chew on the idea of dialing up Gilbert to talk, but Baba is just in the next room, and talking about everything out loud seems even more overwhelming.

  My phone dings again. Gilbert has sent me a link. Tragic Consequences for Gaokao Takers. I click on the article and read about two separate incidents of students who’ve killed themselves due to exam stress. A disturbing pattern each year in June… Competitive job market . . . future prospects . . . entrance to a top university is the first step to upward mobility . . .

  Another link pops up from Gilbert. This one is a YouKu video. Student Leaps to His Death from School Window. The video is a classroom monitor showing the students at work at their desks. It’s been edited to fade out everything except one boy in the front row who stares blankly ahead rather than poring over his books. Suddenly, he rises, takes three steps to the left, and throws himself out the window. I gasp and slap my hand over my mouth to smother my horror. The newscaster narrating the video rambles on about enormous pressure.

  Pressure.

  I always thought Bao-bao was the perfect high-achieving son who got all the attention, but I suppose Mama and Baba were always telling him what to do, pushing him to study, looking over his shoulder. I never considered how stressful the long hours of study and the intense competition must have been for him.

  I picture him scrolling down to his score, falling back against the chair, despondent at having failed Mama and Baba. Did he sit there numbly like the boy in the video until he rose and swallowed the poison in a daze? Or did he jump up and pace his room, tearing at his hair, until the idea of eating the poison sprang into his head?

  I chew my fingernails, wondering if there’s a news article about his death. I consider searching, but I hear a tap on the door.

  When I open it, a man wearing thick glasses and a button-down short-sleeve shirt is standing there.

  “Who are you?” he asks.

  I tell him my name.

  “Ah, the daughter? You haven’t come to live here, have you?”

  People are always so nosy, but it’s clear he knows my parents so I try to be polite. “Why are you asking?”

  “I’m the rent collector. Is your ba or ma home?”

  Baba is in the bedroom, of course, but he’s probably drunk, and I don’t want to wake him. “No,” I lie. “They’re working extra shifts. They’ll be home tonight.” I have no idea what time Mama will be home, so I add, “Late. Or tomorrow.” I hope Mama doesn’t go to work on Sunday.

  The rent collector glances at Bao-bao’s door and purses his lips. Baba’s snoring is loud through the thin walls. I hear the cot creaking as he shifts.

  “My brother,” I say stupidly.

  The rent collector gives me a look that is both withering and pitying. He shakes his head slightly. “I know what happened to your brother.”

  I bite my lip, embarrassed I’ve been caught in a lie. “Baba’s sick. It won’t do any good to talk to him now,” I say.

  “Sick?” He eyes me in a questioning, doubtful way that infuriates me, but I don’t show it. I just want him to leave.

  “Yang!” Baba roars out Mama’s name from the other room. “Yang!”

  “No, Baba, it’s just me!” I call over my shoulder. I have the urge to slam the door in the rent collector’s face.

  “Yang!”

  I bolt to the other room, hoping to calm him, but Baba is already lumbering up to the door. “Who’s out there? Who’re you talking to?”

  “It’s no one. I’ll—”

  “It’s me, Zhang Chu!”

  I twist around and give the rent collector a murderous look.

  Baba pushes past me, still in his good clothes, but they’re wrinkled. “Rent’s due already?”

  Mr. Zhang nods. “Yes. And you’re already two months behind.”

  Two months behind on the rent? My stomach plummets to my feet.

  I edge in to stand beside Baba. Creases from sleep are etched on his face. He looks dumbfounded by this news and he pats at his pockets as if he’s searching for his wallet. I know he doesn’t have any money. He spent it all on Bao-bao’s urn.

  His head swivels, scanning the room, as if he’s trying to find something to focus on. “My wallet . . . Na, have you seen . . .” He staggers. I grab his arm and try to lead him over to the bed.

  “No!” Baba jerks his arm out of my grasp; his long pinky nail scratches my cheek. I gasp and reach up to touch the wound, but Baba doesn’t notice because he is yelling.

  “I have to get this bastard his money!” He shambles across the room, swatting aside the damp clothes on the line. He grabs the basket and begins to toss out the laundry I haven’t hung up yet. It’s as if he doesn’t notice that they’re wet. He doesn’t know what he’s doing.

  “Baba!” I’m scared and frozen in place. My mind scrambles to the baijiu hidden in my bag.

  “Have to get his money so he’ll go away,” Baba roars. “So he’ll GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!” He twists around and narrows his eyes at Mr. Zhang, utter disgust scrawled on his face. “After a day like this! Do
n’t you have any kind of soul?”

  Mr. Zhang’s chin is pulled back. Baba’s made him angry but he doesn’t say anything.

  “Mr. Zhang.” I force myself to be polite and swallow my embarrassment for Baba, for lying. “My mama handles all the money. I would really appreciate it if you’d come back tomorrow.” I’m desperate to get him to leave. I almost consider playing on his sympathy about Bao-bao, but that would shame us and Baba would probably fly apart.

  Mr. Zhang’s mouth is small and tight. I see him eyeing the scratch on my face. I cover it with my hand.

  “Tell your ma to come to my office first thing tomorrow,” he says.

  I shut the door after he leaves. Baba is jerking down the wet clothes and slapping them into the basket and muttering, “Where’s my wallet, where’s my . . . Bao-bao.” He doubles over and heaves. Nothing comes out at first, but he heaves again and thin vomit shoots from his mouth into the basket of wet clothes.

  “Baba!” I cry out. I grab the plastic dishpan and thrust it under him. He retches and retches. The sour smell has me gagging.

  The door opens and it’s Mama, carrying several empty cardboard boxes. She drops the boxes and darts over to take the dishpan from me. I scuttle over to a stool and press one hand over my mouth and the other hand against my seizing gut, trying not to throw up myself.

  My eyes are squeezed tightly shut, but I can hear that Baba’s retching has slowed. He’s sobbing, moaning, “Bao-bao, my boy, my boy, my boy is gone!” Mama says nothing.

  I open my eyes and see tears running down Mama’s cheeks. Their anguish kills me. There is nothing more frightening than to see one’s parents cry.

  6

  I press a washcloth to the scratch on my cheek to stanch the thin line of bleeding while Mama tries to calm Baba, first scolding him for how he’s acting, then telling him to settle down and go back to bed. Her voice is soft but flat, and she glances at me as she searches out the baijiu. Her look of weary trepidation makes me turn away and toss the washcloth into the basket of newly-soiled laundry.

  The scratch doesn’t hurt. I know Baba didn’t mean to do it, and I don’t want her to fret about one more thing. My cheek is still damp from the wet cloth and I resist the urge to swipe at it with the back of my hand until she goes into the other room.

  The clothes Baba pulled down are all over the place, but I have to take care of the dishpan and the laundry basket first. I cover them with a towel before I carry them out of the apartment.

  In the laundry room, I rinse the dishpan and clothes in the sink, then throw the clothes into the washer for another short cycle. As I lean against the machine to wait for them, I can’t help but wish I was back at college with my roommates, chucking sunflower seeds at Xiaowen as she lip-syncs songs playing on her phone, or even sitting in the classroom as the teacher lectures about steam turbine generators and air quality control systems.

  Hard to believe I was there just two days ago, happy to be done with my first year of college. Linfen Coal Economic Vocational High School and College isn’t anyone’s dream school, and coal production technology would never have been my first career choice, but I’ve been content there because it’s certainly better than toiling away in a factory.

  It was Gilbert who saved me from the factory when I was fifteen. During the Spring Festival of my last year of middle school, when our parents were visiting each other, talk came up about our futures. I was stuffed in my coat, lined up with Nainai, Bao-bao, and our parents on Gilbert’s family’s couch.

  Gilbert’s ma and ba perched on stools, sipping tea while Baba patted Bao-bao’s leg and reported on Bao-bao’s first year in Taiyuan with them. Then Gilbert’s ma, with her tight curls of permed hair wobbling, jabbered about how she wished Gilbert, who was enrolled in vocational high school in Linfen, found more time to practice English, called home more, and ate more vegetables so he wouldn’t get so many stomachaches. Gilbert sat at the table out of his ma’s sightline. He took his glasses off, rubbed his face, and rolled his eyes with exaggerated exasperation, trying to make me smile.

  When Baba said he was going to help me find a position in a factory, Gilbert dropped his funny expression. He pushed his glasses back on and raised his eyebrows at me. I blinked back grimly. Baba and Mama had already told me this several times on the phone over the previous year.

  Gilbert pulled a face that said, Ugh!

  I couldn’t help but let out a laugh—at his look, not about working in the factory, which seemed like a life sentence.

  All the parents looked at me. I immediately clamped my lips together and rearranged my expression.

  Gilbert’s ma turned to Mama. “Why are you sending Na to work? She’s smart, the highest ranking in her class, isn’t she? Gilbert wouldn’t have passed his English for the high school entrance exam if she hadn’t helped him, and she was two years younger! She’s going to score well on the entrance exam! Much better than Gilbert did.”

  My pulse quickened. I looked down, feigning modesty, although inside I was gloating that she was bragging about me.

  “Really, she’s like that girl in the book, Anne of Green Gables. Competitive about her grades!” Gilbert said. I sniffed out a laugh. Our textbooks in English class had only featured excerpts focusing on Anne’s determination to make the best scores. I had given Gilbert his nickname after Anne’s rival. The name stuck even though he really wasn’t that studious. Gilbert had found a complete copy of the novel in Linfen earlier in the year and sent it to me. I found out that Anne is also a high-spirited, imaginative girl who wants to be a writer and gets into all kinds of trouble. In the end she wins a scholarship, but passes it up to stay home and help out her family when her father dies.

  Mama sighed, and Baba leaned forward in his seat to flick his ashes into the ashtray on the table. This was his cue to complain about money, how much everything cost—everything I had heard from them so often. I tuned it out.

  “But the fees for some of the vocational schools are really low.” Gilbert got up from his chair and went around to the other side of the table to perch on the edge of it. He had shot up in the last year, taller than both our fathers. “Much less than regular high schools, only about 350 yuan. And a person can continue straight into the technical college after high school. That’s what I plan to do.”

  Baba leaned back in his chair, crossed his legs, and began joggling his socked foot. “Well, our expenses are already so overloaded.” He directed his comments to Gilbert’s ma and ba, ignoring Gilbert. “And with college coming up for Bao-bao in a few more years, Na’s going out will really help the family.” He and Mama both gave me regretful smiles that pulled down the corners of their mouths. “You want to help out the family, eh Na? You’re a good girl, eh?”

  It was my turn to receive a couple of pats on the leg from Ba. I stiffened, my jaw tensing to hold in the sourness churning in me.

  “Na can get a more skilled technical position if she goes to a high school like Coal Economic,” Gilbert said. My eyebrows shot up and I couldn’t help but grin. He was being almost rude by speaking up to my parents, but I was grateful to him for doing it when I couldn’t.

  Baba waggled his head irritably and reached forward to stub out his cigarette. “By the time she finished all that school, then it would be time for her to get married, and then poof, she’s gone from us. Having a daughter is like spilled water.”

  Everyone laughed except Gilbert and me, and Bao-bao who raised an eyebrow my way.

  “Ah! It’s not like that anymore!” Gilbert’s ma clicked her tongue. “The children now all go away anyway and live where they have to for the best job. And you have two children when so many people have just one. If you can afford to do well by this one too, you should do it. Besides, Huan will be there to help her out.” She cocked her head, pointed her elbow out toward Gilbert, and smiled meaningfully. “Maybe something will grow from that. If Na marries someone from Willow Tree, she’ll always come home here.”

  I turned flame red an
d Mama was quick to state, “No dating! They’re too young to think about that!” But she covered her smile with her hand and Baba’s eyebrows arched speculatively as his eyes danced from Gilbert to me.

  Somehow, Mama convinced Baba that they could afford it. I was thrilled to go to Linfen, even though it was an industrial city—much dirtier than living in the countryside, but slightly less provincial. At least the little I saw of it, since the school was on the outskirts and we didn’t leave campus often.

  The high school had a lot of rules. No dating, a regimented schedule, a strict curfew. But the classes weren’t too hard and I didn’t have to work as much as students in an academic school. I spent my free time with my roommates or reading. I also kept my English language workbooks from middle school under my mattress and flipped through them sometimes, quietly scribbling vocabulary and mouthing the words for practice. The college level gave us a little more freedom, but mostly I’ve kept on with much the same routine. Only two days gone from all that, and I’m already longing to get back to my old normal life.

  Now in the washroom, the laundry is done. I pile the wet clothes in the basket and go back to our apartment. Baba has quieted down, and Mama comes out of the bedroom as I start to hang up the rinsed-out clothes. Her hair is wild and her shoulders, mouth, and eyes slump downward so heavily I can almost see the burden of grief sitting on her. She stumbles over to the bed to sit beside me and presses her hands against her cheeks.

  “Mama, lie down,” I say. “I’ll make us something to eat.”

  She shakes her head, gets up and begins to collect the rest of the laundry that Baba threw around.

  “Mama! Let me do that!” I rush over and grab the clothes out of her hand. She stands in the center of the room looking at the mess that Baba made. Her gaze lands on the boxes she’s brought in.

  “Na,” she says, “we’re moving downstairs. I need you to help pack up the apartment tomorrow.”

  “Downstairs? But you’re already in the basement!”

  “There’s another sublevel below this one. The rooms are even cheaper there.”