Like Spilled Water

by Jennie Liu

  We amble on. We reach the top of a rise that looks down on terraced fields of kaoliang. Gilbert fidgets, marking the dirt with the toes of his shoes and kicking at stones. I sense that he’s preoccupied. “Are you worried about something? Your job?”

  He doesn’t say anything at first. I notice he’s sweating. He swallows, making a small noise in his throat. This is nothing like the easygoing Gilbert I know.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “Na, I think . . .” The catch is back in his throat and he clears it again. He looks so uncomfortable and timid in a way I’ve never known him to be. “I think we should get married.” He peers at me uncertainly.

  I stare at him, not certain I heard right.

  “I mean, will you marry me?”

  My mouth flies open. His grandma really has wasted no time.

  “You see, Na, now that I have a good job, I’m well positioned to get married and start a family.” He looks almost as if he’s going to be sick.

  “Loufan is only an hour away, so we can live here with my grandparents, and I can commute to work. You’ll be close to your nainai and your baba—if he stays here.” His speech tumbles out in a nervous rush, his gaze jumping around to the ground, off to the distance, glancing off me.

  “But I want to finish school.” The words pop out before I remember that I’m not going back to college. “I mean, I’m supposed to go to work.”

  “I know. We can just get engaged for now. You can work a few months while I get settled in my position.” He rushes on, “Maybe we can register the marriage during the Spring Festival. Won’t you be twenty by then? I’m sure your parents will agree, because you’ll be able to help your ba and your nainai too.”

  Gilbert’s grandma talking to Nainai, what Baba said on the bus—I have the prickly sensation that plans about my future have been swirling around for quite some time without my even knowing about it. An odd, nervous fluttering is growing inside me. I don’t know if it’s excitement or uneasiness.

  “Na”—Gilbert’s tone shifts almost back to normal—“I know this is unexpected and maybe it’s the wrong time to ask, but I wanted to speak before any more plans get made. We’re both at new starting points in our lives. And we’ve always gotten along so well. My ma and my nainai have always liked you. They’ve been encouraging me to propose.”

  Encouraging. Pressuring is more like it. If older girls like Min get pressure from their parents, guys from the countryside suffer too. No one wants to move to the countryside, and with there being so many more men than women, finding any woman who is willing to marry someone out here, even if he has an education, is almost impossible.

  “And I like you,” he adds. “I’ve always liked you.”

  My heart pounds, my mind reeling to what the girls always said about Gilbert being my boyfriend. All these years, I wasn’t sure how he felt. I hoped, but I never wanted to admit to them that I didn’t really know.

  Gilbert steps in and leans down to kiss me, but I startle, and his lips land on my jaw.

  We both laugh. I cover my mouth to hold in my giddy disbelief.

  “Just think about it,” Gilbert says.

  14

  When I get home, Nainai flashes her brows at me inquisitively, but I turn away without saying anything. I don’t know what to think. In less than a week, I finished my first year of college, my brother killed himself, my parents have fallen apart, I’ve accepted a low-paying job, and now I have a proposal of marriage. I’m bewildered. My mind can’t grasp it all. All the things Gilbert said were completely sensible, but the idea of getting married when we haven’t even really been a couple—I can hardly digest it.

  Still, it’s nice to be wanted. And Gilbert is a good guy. I want to hold this close for a while, even though Nainai obviously knows.

  The very next day, Gilbert’s grandma is sweeping past the doorway quilt and calling out for Nainai. My stomach drops. Nainai’s gone to the market, but Baba is sitting in Nainai’s padded chair in the back shadows of the room, smoking and nursing a cup of tea.

  She sees me first, moves inside, and clasps my hands, squeezing them with eager little pulses. A broad smile lights her face.

  “Hello!” Baba calls out to Gilbert’s grandma in an overly loud voice. He puts the tea down on the floor and starts to stand.

  Gilbert’s grandma releases my hands and rushes over to Baba. “Don’t get up!” Her face clouds with concern as she urges him to sit. “You’ve had a horrible shock! Aiyo!”

  Baba drops back into his seat while Gilbert’s grandma takes a stool from the table and moves to sit in front of him. Her face twists in sympathy, and she sways her head, making compassionate clucks. “I don’t know about young people these days. The bitterness you’ve eaten for your boy. And he does this!”

  Baba woke this morning with a numb look, the best I can hope for these days, but now his expression begins to grow long.

  “But you still have Na, ennh?” Gilbert’s grandma charges on. “Otherwise you’d be a shidu parent, with no one to take care of you in your old age.”

  Baba’s mouth trembles as he sucks on his cigarette. His gloom seems to be building, so I rush to make a clatter with some mugs and ask Gilbert’s grandma, “Have you eaten?”

  “Yes.” Gilbert’s grandma jumps up and comes toward me. “Don’t bother.” She gestures at the tea. “I just couldn’t wait any longer to come over.” She is back to beaming at me so hard, my face warms. “Gilbert says the proposal went well.”

  I really blush now. I glance at Baba because I haven’t said anything to him. Gilbert’s grandma catches the look. “But you haven’t told him?”

  “Told me what?”

  Gilbert’s grandma wheels around. “Such good news! It’s time for Huan to get married, and he’s asked Na!”

  “What?” Baba bolts upright in his seat. “What’s this?” The stub of his cigarette slips out of his fingers and falls to the floor, still glowing red at the tip.

  “Yes. Just yesterday!” Gilbert’s grandma steps over and stamps out the butt. “You know he finished college and has gotten a good position not far from here. They can live with me here in the village!”

  A look of utter surprise is on Baba’s face. “Na?”

  “Yes, he’s just asked me,” I say helplessly. “Nothing’s been decided!”

  Baba and Gilbert’s grandma look at each other. Baba has forgotten his misery for the moment, and Gilbert’s grandma looks smug with her eyebrows raised high on her forehead. She nods indulgently at me before turning back to Baba. “It’s fortunate you decided she should quit school. It’s better to marry well than study well. A little education helps, but now the girls get ambitious about their education and careers and wait too long to get married and have children.”

  Baba pulls a face. “But if I remember, you all were the ones who pushed us to send her to school.” There’s a touch of reproach in his voice.

  “Yes, yes! But you see how going to the same school has developed their friendship!” She rocks back on the heels of her plastic slippers with her hands clasped at her middle, clearly pleased with herself.

  Baba turns to me and sighs, “Having a daughter is like spilled water.”

  “Not this time!” Gilbert’s grandma says. “She’ll be living right here at home with us. She can come over here and help your ma when you go back to work.”

  “And Huan—this means he won’t be a bare branch, eh?” Baba remarks.

  Gilbert’s grandma doesn’t seem to notice that Baba is being snide. “Isn’t this the perfect kind of marriage? Matching doors and matching windows. Two people from the same background, and from the same village—it couldn’t be more fortunate.”

  I feel both self-conscious and strangely absent as they talk. Baba peers at me, as if he sees me in a new way, while Gilbert’s grandma eyes me like the perfectly ripe fruit ready to be plucked from a tree. I suddenly wonder if Gilbert even actually wants to marry me. He didn’t say anything about love.

 
When Gilbert’s grandma is ready to leave, Baba gets up and follows her to the door. The sun beats down on his face as he watches her cross the courtyard. When she’s out of sight, he turns to me, still regarding me with that changed look. He slowly begins to nod. “It would be a good thing. Yes, really, the best thing for us.”

  15

  Over the next week, Gilbert comes over most days. We’re awkward with each other at first. Having never really had a boyfriend before, I’m not sure how to act. We don’t talk about the proposal, though it’s certainly on my mind.

  When I have a moment to myself, I try to imagine myself as Gilbert’s wife, living with him and his grandparents in their two-story house. Gilbert will be at work five or six days a week, plus the hour-long bus ride each direction. What will I be doing? Cooking, working the fields, cleaning? Those were all the things I used to do in the summer with Nainai when I came home from school.

  The thought of the old arrangement, of being out here in the countryside, makes me sober, as if I would be going backwards. In past summers, I could always look forward to going back to school. I never felt I was stuck here forever.

  I try to brush the unease away. If we marry, Gilbert would come home to me every night.

  Gilbert doesn’t push me for an answer to his proposal. Instead we’re just glad to be together. There isn’t much to do here. He asks me if I want to go to karaoke or shoot billiards in the village, but because of Bao-bao, it doesn’t seem right to play.

  As we take walks with the heat beating down on our heads in the isolated hills or pick vegetables for our grandmas from the terraced fields, we talk about school, about Bao-bao, about our new jobs, and my self-consciousness evaporates. Still, beneath my composed surface, I’m filled with wonder that Gilbert is actually my boyfriend and that we might really get married.

  Bao-bao’s death is still fresh in everyone’s mind, and even Baba and Nainai don’t bring up the potential marriage. I’m pleased that Baba always comes out to greet Gilbert and chats a little with him for a few minutes, even if he’s a little unsteady. Although Baba continues to have very bad nights, his days are less tortuous. He’s taken to sitting outside in the morning before the air becomes hazy with pollution blowing over from the coal mines. It seems clear that the prospect of my marriage has helped Baba, and he’s making an effort to pull himself out of his despair.

  ***

  By the end of the week, I agree to accompany Gilbert to the village so he can get a haircut and do some shopping before he starts work on Monday. The hair salon is a tiny cluttered shop with one swivel chair in front of a mirror and another one in front of a sink. Posters of hairstyles and boards with tassels of hair in different shades cover the wall not blocked by the shelves of bottles and styling tools.

  Because I always have my hair cut by Nainai or one of my roommates, I don’t remember when the shop opened. The stylist seems to be about my ma’s age, considerably younger than most adults living in Willow Tree. I wonder who gets their hair cut here besides Gilbert.

  “Well, now it starts,” Gilbert groans over the buzz of clippers when he’s settled in the chair with a haircutting cape draped over him. “Work on Monday.”

  “You’re not looking forward to it?” I say, standing behind him and the stylist, watching through the mirror as she works.

  He frowns. “It has to be done, right? The money will be nice. I’m excited about that. But it’s so odd not going back to school.”

  I take a sip of the warm Coke I’m holding and nod, knowing just what he means.

  “We had so much freedom there, didn’t we, once we made it to the college level? If you’d gone to an academic college you’d have been buried in writing papers and studying.”

  The stylist swivels him around to make the final clips around his ears. He gazes out through the window of the salon to the street. There’s no one out in the heat, and the village seems lifeless and torpid.

  He heaves a sigh. “Those days of playing badminton, arcades, hanging out with friends—all that’s over.”

  I’m a little surprised to hear about this. Gilbert and I texted often, shared our bus rides to and from school twice a year, and occasionally saw each other at the canteen—but we hardly spent any time together when we were at school, even once I reached the college level and had a little more leeway since there were fewer restrictions, less supervision. I always assumed that his course load was heavier in his final year and that he didn’t have much free time.

  “Done!” The stylist spins him back to the mirror and whips the cape off from around his shoulder.

  Gilbert twists and dips his head, studying the cut in the mirror. It’s buzzed shorter on the sides and longer at the top, acceptably conventional, except his bangs are clipped to be slightly jagged, edgy. “Good!” he declares.

  After he pays we head down the street. Gilbert’s satisfaction with the fresh haircut is short-lived. He says wistfully, “Now our youth is all over.”

  “You’re making me melancholy,” I say just as we reach the double-stall shop that sells groceries and household items. Gilbert’s phone rings right before we duck under the rollup doors.

  He looks at it to see who’s calling and a smile spreads over his face. “I have to take this.” He rushes across the street to stand in the narrow shade of a building, well out of hearing range.

  I enter the shop to get out of the sun. Products are stacked to the ceiling all around the walls and tower on the two long tables in the center. A narrow aisle loops around the tables, but a man in a sweat-yellowed undershirt—the owner, I assume—is sleeping on a mat on the floor, blocking the aisle at the back of the shop where it U-turns around the tables. An electric fan is positioned to blow on him and also to catch his wife, who sits on a stool nearby, fanning her leathery face with a folded newspaper.

  I stay near the front, waiting for Gilbert, watching him as he laughs and smiles into the phone, kicking pebbles on the ground.

  I’m nicked by jealousy to see him so suddenly enlivened, chatting away to some friend. For a moment, I wonder if it’s a girl. But I quickly erase the thought. I have no cause to imagine that; the friends I’ve seen him with on campus are all guys. And the only rumor of Gilbert having a girlfriend had to do with me. Still, it stings that he’s asked me to marry him, yet he seems to have a longing for his former life.

  He finishes his call and walks back. His step is light and a smile plays on his face. He catches my eye and his expression flickers, as if he completely forgot I was there. He slips the phone into his pocket and crosses into the store.

  “Who was it?” I ask.

  “My friend from school, Guo-Rong. You met him last summer, remember? He rode home with us and visited for a couple of days before going on to his village. He’s got a position in a town a couple of hours away.” Gilbert grabs a plastic shopping basket and begins to scan the table piled with spicy gluten snacks, QQ gummies, and dried cuttlefish.

  “That’s great!” My jealousy is swept away. “So you’ll have a friend not too far away.”

  “Yes. It will help.”

  “Friends make all the difference. Even on the hardest days in Linfen, when the air burned my throat and the lectures were as dry as the dust, I was happy because of my roommates,” I say.

  “Are you disappointed that you can’t finish college?” Gilbert plucks some Want-Want crackers from a mound on the table and drops them into his basket.

  I don’t like that I can’t finish what I’ve started, and that I won’t get to see my friends anymore and didn’t even get to say goodbye. It’s like realizing I’ve left a half-read novel on a bus as it drives away, but I don’t want Gilbert to get any more maudlin than he already is. I pull up a smile. “Eventually the girls will graduate and scatter. Everyone will go their own way in the end.”

  Gilbert has moved on to the grooming items. His hand hovers on a pack of razors, but he’s noticed something else and is looking past me outside. I twist around to see what he’s looking at.<
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  Baba’s on the far side of the street, sauntering in the shade of buildings. His arms are wrapped around Bao-bao’s urn and a bottle of baijiu, and he’s blinking in the way that tells me he’s already drunk, struggling to stay on course.

  Before I can do anything, the owner’s wife comes up the other aisle and plants herself in front of the shop. “Look, there’s Chen Kou,” she says back to her husband over her shoulder.

  The shopkeeper, rising from his nap, cranes his neck to see from the back of the stall. “He’s carrying his son’s ashes.” He smacks his mouth and slips his hand under his singlet to scratch his belly. “It’s the worst when white hair has to send black hair first.”

  I’m rooted to my spot, my stomach turning, as Baba shuffles down the street. Gilbert and the shop owners stare too, as if we’re all watching a funeral procession.

  “They say the boy killed himself because of a poor score on the gaokao,” the wife adds.

  “Such a waste!” The shopkeeper hoicks up a wad of phlegm and spits it on the aisle floor. “That generation doesn’t know how to deal with disappointment. They can’t take any hardship!”

  “A thing like that—the family is cursed now.”

  Blotches of heat spring up on my neck, my face.

  Gilbert opens his mouth as if to say something to them, but I catch his eye and shake my head.

  My whole face is burning, but I elbow my way past the shopkeeper’s wife and hustle to catch up with Baba.

  16

  Gilbert starts his new job and doesn’t get home until after seven-thirty. Over the next week, we only see each other briefly in the evenings because he’s exhausted and his nainai nags him to rest. The days feel long without his company. I help Nainai in the fields, do the cooking and housework, try to keep Baba company. Except for the part about watching Baba, it all seems like when I was little, waiting, waiting for something to happen.