A Map for the Missing(46)
Later, this was the way that Yitian would remember Yishou—the crooked smile on that easygoing face that everything seemed to roll off, until the day it didn’t.
Yishou began to work full time in the fields, just as all the adult men did. At the time when Yitian studied, his older brother looked over his shoulder and tried to read his writing. He read some characters correctly, but frequently he was wrong, mistaking one radical for the other and ending up with another word entirely.
At moments, Yitian caught a glimpse of his older brother far away in the fields, his outline flashing in the dusty glimmer of a horizon line as he brought his hoe down to break up a clump of dirt. Yitian would imagine he saw Yishou’s eyebrows furrowing or a tightness in the body that indicated some concern, but when he walked closer to Yishou, he found what he’d seen had only been an illusion of the shimmering heat. His brother’s face remained as open and unmarked as ever.
How rude he’d been to Yishou, to everyone. His pain had made him small minded. He would never allow himself to be like that again, he decided. He would never forget all the people who’d sacrificed to help him.
* * *
—
The next morning his body felt more awake than it had in weeks. As he dressed and splashed water onto his face, his mother looked up, surprised at the quickness of his movement.
“Even if you don’t take the exam, there are things to look forward to in life, see?” she said. He nodded and smiled.
He looked out for Hanwen’s figure in the fields that day, waiting to approach her when she was alone.
“I’m very behind in studying. You must have made so much progress without me,” he said quietly. “There aren’t many days left until the exam, and I definitely need your help.”
Her brow furrowed in an expression he’d never seen her wear before, which he was sure was the beginning of an anger unfurling.
“Where have you been?”
“I’m sorry for not coming. Can we study together this Sunday? In our old place?”
“Yitian, I waited for you. I didn’t have any news of you at all. You didn’t even come talk to me.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
She looked at him, wanting an explanation, but he didn’t say anything more. He regretted that she’d been hurt, but he didn’t see what else he could have done. If he’d told her about his father, what good would have come?
Around them they could hear the sounds of others returning to work. The break was ending.
“Yitian?” She took a last look at him, shook her head, then walked away.
* * *
—
But she was there that Sunday. He’d gone just in case. She came down the embankment, later than usual, and he looked at her apprehensively. He waited for her to say something sharp, but instead she reached into her knapsack and pulled out a folded piece of paper. It was the study plan she’d made for them.
“Here’s where I am,” she said, pointing to a date far ahead of where she said he was. “You’ll have to catch up to me.”
She sat down next to him and took out her notebooks without another word.
They continued to meet until the days became too cold, after which they moved to an old barn next to her dorm, where they stored old tools and pesticide during the slack season. They shared an old desk with a wobbly leg that Yitian had found and carried home from the local primary school. They kept the door of the barn open so they wouldn’t be accused of doing anything inappropriate. Gusts blew in often. By the time he left each day he could barely feel his hands, made cracked and swollen by the cold. The fingers he interlaced into hers were spotted with crushed ink, and when he looked at them, he thought they belonged to someone else.
They largely worked without talking, her head bent over a Chinese textbook while he moved his lips silently to memorize the formulas for the area and circumference of different shapes. Then they would trade and she would double-check that she’d remembered the relationships between parts of a triangle while he would go over lists of proverbs. The turning of pages and pens scratching sounded sharply against the deadening winter air. At intervals, he snuck a glance over at her, her lower lip caught between her teeth as she flipped between one page to another, and a gentle trust lapped over him. He wondered if she did the same when he wasn’t looking.
As winter approached, sometimes a sudden gust of wind blew through the barn door and sent their papers flying everywhere, and they shouted and ran after them, afraid their careful notes would be lost into the wind outside. They laughed loudly, collapsing after they’d saved the notes. Then he looked over at her and wanted to postpone the date of the test forever. He could already feel the pang of loss of this moment, when hope had appeared and grown on its own, uncurtained yet by its resolution.
Sixteen
DECEMBER 1977
Apatch of his knee was soaked, a casualty of the rain that had fallen ceaselessly since that morning, the kind so steady in rhythm that the patter had already begun to lodge in Yitian’s mind. He pulled at the tarp, trying to steal more for himself, but was met almost immediately by the twin motion from the passenger next to him and the ensuing tightening of the slick fabric. At least his knapsack, with his notebook and pens, was safely tucked underneath.
When he looked over, his neighbor pushed his kneecap against Yitian’s. The boy had already been on the truck bed, its sole occupant, when Yitian and Yishou boarded at the township. When Yishou, jovial as they set out, asked where he was from, he’d haughtily replied, “Well, I’m from Shanghai, but I was sent down to Bi Shan Village. I guess you guys are locals?” Yishou had glared at him for the rest of the ride.