A Map for the Missing(19)

Even had she still been in Shanghai, she would not have been able to afford tutors. She knew that her family was ordinary, in both their connections and what they had suffered during the Cultural Revolution. It was exactly this ordinariness that had led her to this village—if there had been something more special about them, if they’d either been better connected or her mother had been deemed to have suffered enough, she could have avoided being sent down.

On the day she graduated from high school and received the notice she was to move to a village in Anhui Province, her mother was enraged. She spent that entire evening muttering to herself, angry at everyone and no one in particular.

“Wasting my only child’s chance to get a good education! What could the peasants possibly have to teach you?” she said, sweeping the house, so angry that she didn’t notice her voice had elevated above a whisper and was in danger of being overheard by the neighbors.

“Ma,” Hanwen said. She motioned numbly for her mother to quiet. The news about being sent down was bad, but the punishment for her mother could also be awful if a neighbor heard and reported her.

Perhaps she’d been too late in warning her mother, or else their neighbor, Auntie Feng, a barren woman who spent her time observing and passing news on all the longtang children, had been listening with a cup to the wall, as she’d been known to. A few days later, Hanwen’s homeroom teacher asked if she could stop by the next evening—for a heart-to-heart, she said. Both Hanwen and her mother knew what this would mean, the language of hearts reserved for when their loyalty to the Party was supposed to outstrip concern for their own well-being and propel them to cast rationality to the side.

Her mother devised a plan. She suggested to Teacher Ma that she come for dinner that night instead, as a token of gratitude for all the hard work she’d put into teaching Hanwen. That morning, her mother was the first person at the government grocery store, having scrimped and traded so she could buy a larger cut of pork than the paper-thin, mostly fatty pieces they were normally able to afford. As soon as she got home from work that evening, without even washing, she braised the meat, which she later set as the shiny centerpiece of their small table, on which she’d also placed sautéed loofah and egg, and a delicate Shanghai-style stir fry of potatoes, mu’er, and carrots, picked to showcase how neatly her mother could chop when there was a person to impress.

When Teacher Ma arrived, clutching her unbuttoned book bag to her chest, glasses askew and with hair sticking out in tufts from her braid, it was to the sight of Hanwen’s mother harried, skin damp from the stove and still smelling of the vinegar they used as cleaning solution. Still, as soon as their guest entered, her mother was busying about, offering tea and pouring out sunflower seeds, all of which Teacher Ma refused.

“Auntie, you didn’t have to do all this,” she said. “I just wanted to come and talk about Tian Hanwen. Don’t worry too much about all the food, just come sit, please.”

Her mother obliged, but not before taking out their three nicest bowls and pairs of chopsticks and placing them out on the table.

“Please eat,” her mother said, using her chopsticks to force a piece of pork onto Teacher Ma’s plate. “It’s our honor to host you for dinner.”

Teacher Ma nibbled politely around the bone of a piece of roast pork. Hanwen had always liked her. She seemed to care. She’d stopped by their home before, much to Hanwen’s fear, but when she’d expected some scolding, instead Teacher Ma had praised Hanwen’s dedication and diligence. “I know it’s not easy, in an environment like this,” she’d said. “It shows you’ve raised her well, Auntie.” Once, when she’d handed back an essay of Hanwen’s, she’d whispered, “It’s such a shame,” but when Hanwen had asked her what she meant, she shook her head and said never mind.

“You must know why I’ve come tonight, Auntie,” Teacher Ma said now. She put down her half-chewed bone and chopsticks. “It’s really the best thing for Tian Hanwen to do.”

Hanwen could see her mother trembling with anger, but there was a limit to what she could say aloud. She said, through clenched teeth, “All her hard work in her studies—what will that do in the countryside? You said it yourself. She’s such a good student.”

“She is, but . . . this is the best thing for her.” Teacher Ma bit her lip, and the gesture flooded Hanwen with sadness. Teacher Ma didn’t even believe in the words she said; she was no more than an actress, performing without a glamorous stage. Hanwen could better stand it if only they could tell the truth of the misfortune.

“Look,” Teacher Ma continued, “if she behaves well in the countryside, is enthusiastic about her work, maybe she could get a good position there.”

“As a cadre in a rural village?”

“It’s a desirable position, Auntie.”

“They’re saying all the students are going to be sent to Anhui, is that right? That rural backwater? Look at her, she’s only a young girl! Much too young to go that far, alone. A single young girl, with all those country men.” Her mother shuddered.

“You should feel grateful—many students are sent all the way to Inner Mongolia. It could be much worse. She’ll still be able to come home for the New Year.”

“And some only get sent to the suburbs of Shanghai. Why does she have to go so far?”