A Map for the Missing(39)

“I’ve never seen you before,” the girl said, squinting at his face, as if his features would become suddenly familiar to her. “Are you from one of those villages over there?” She pointed down the other direction of the hill.

“I’m from this side. Tang Family Village.”

“That’s right next to my production team. Are you sure? I’ve never seen you there before.”

“I go to school in the township most of the time. But I haven’t seen you before, either.”

“I see. Well, I’m one of the sent-down youth.”

That explained why she’d asked him immediately about his book. Now that he could see her up close, she clearly didn’t look like any of the village women. He didn’t know any of the sent-down youth personally, but he knew they were all from educated families in Shanghai and that his learning and interest in books were probably meager compared to the real educations they had. He was sure that if he ever spoke to them about his studies, they would expose him for his true ignorance, and so he avoided them if he could.

“So you’re in high school?” she asked.

“Yes. I’m finishing this year.”

“You look young to be about to graduate.” She examined his face, but not in an unkind way, he thought. “How old are you, anyway?”

“Oh, the same as me,” she said when he told her.

“I started school late,” he explained.

There was a long pause as they both looked at each other. She seemed to be waiting for him to say something else, but he was sure he’d already used up every interesting thing he had.

“I was actually just about to leave. My mother needs me to help her with some chores.” He was eager for this unexpected encounter to end. He was noticing with every moment how pretty he found the girl, and growing more and more nervous.

He rose and brushed the dirt off his legs. “It was nice to meet you.”

“Wait,” she said, just as he was about to sprint down the hill in relief.

“You forgot this.” She held his book in her hand. Her grip lingered on the cover when he reached out to take it from her, and he felt a little tug between them.

She looked down at the title. “I’ve read this novel before, many years ago. It’s all right. I thought the author’s depiction of the father was unrealistic.”

He nodded. Moments previously, he’d thought the book was one of the best he’d ever read.

“If you like to read, I have some books I can lend you,” she said.

“Oh, please don’t bother yourself with that,” he said. He had to stifle the surge of excitement he felt at her offer. It was so difficult for them to get books here, and he could only imagine what an educated person from Shanghai might have.

“It wouldn’t be a bother. No one else is reading them.”

“Really, don’t worry about it.” He worried he wouldn’t have access to this sanctuary alone any longer. “I keep some books here. Just for myself. Please don’t tell anyone,” he added.

“I won’t. Are you sure you won’t stay? You looked like you were in the middle of something. I hope I didn’t interrupt you.” The expression on her face was curious, but he didn’t return her smile. He put the book back into a crack between the broken tiles of the well and then ran all the way back down the hill, no longer afraid of the scolding from his mother. Chores suddenly seemed preferable and harmless—they were completely decipherable, at least, unlike that girl.



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—

After that he avoided the hilltop, though there were many more afternoons when he desperately craved quiet. The memory of meeting her bothered him so much that he could hardly even think about their encounter without a prickly sensation crawling up his body.

It didn’t matter that he didn’t go to the hill again, because the very next week he saw her with the women in the calabash vines, snipping gourds from their spiky stems. He turned away from their direction, hoping not to meet her gaze. Then he saw her again, two days later, squatting and weeding in the rice paddies. Yitian wasn’t superstitious like his mother, but it seemed a trick of God.

His classroom was separated down the middle into boys’ and girls’ sides, and he would have had no idea of how to speak with her, even if he’d wanted to. Sometimes her face would come to him at night when he was trying to fall asleep, making his entire body feel hot at the thought. He wondered again what books she would have given him if he’d allowed her to. He’d met other girls whom he thought pretty before, many of them, in fact, at the high school he’d attended in the township. “Don’t even think about it, little brother.” Yishou smacked his head. “Those girls would call us country bumpkins.” And he’d been right—it wasn’t until those years of high school that Yitian became aware of the fact, really known, that he possessed a body and a face. His old clothes and pimples and gangliness became solid in the world through the ways others looked at him. And so he tried to fold himself into the smallest, least noticeable shape possible.

But the girl on the hillside hadn’t made him feel that way at all. Her curiosity had made him curious, too. He wanted, despite himself, to know how he looked through her eyes.



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