A Map for the Missing(63)

Wu Mei began to wail loudly. “What are you going to do?” she asked, during a brief break from her sobbing.

Hanwen did not know the answer to that question. For some reason, she couldn’t bring herself to cry as Wu Mei did. Her entire body was still in shock, stuck in some purgatory of feeling. She went into her dorm room and sat on her bed, staring blankly at the wall in front of her. She didn’t know how long she’d been there when Niannian sat down beside her.

“Is it possible there was a mistake on the test?” Niannian said.

Niannian’s cadence had become gentle again. Hanwen suddenly felt a chasm opening in her chest and swallowing her. She wasn’t going to college. She looked at the wall in front of her, papered with tattered posters of sent-down youth working alongside the villagers in the fields, cartoon people, smiles huge and false in a sun brighter than any she’d ever seen in real life.

“They don’t make mistakes like that,” Hanwen said. The very fact that they were considering reality as a mistake only meant that she didn’t want to accept what fate asked her to confront.

“You can take it again next year,” Niannian said. “You’re so smart! Even the villagers talk about you. This year must have just been a fluke. You’ll have no problem the next time around.”

The villagers did often say she was too smart for this place, but she knew that their words had no meaning. They had no education themselves, and their compliments weren’t any real measure of her. The test had revealed who she truly was.

She looked up at Niannian’s face. Her older friend had a scar, nipple colored and rippled, under her right cheekbone, the remnants of an accident from years ago, when a villager had swung a hoe backward onto her face. When Hanwen had first arrived in the village, she could not believe how long Niannian had spent here, but now she understood. The years could easily accumulate when there was no change on the horizon, their numbers only becoming pronounced when you looked back and they surprised you. Niannian was evidence, in fact, that time could change a person so much that they would no longer even notice the scar that marked them.



* * *



—

Sunday came. She couldn’t hold off meeting Yitian any longer. She’d been avoiding him all this time, though she knew he’d come to the dormitories asking for her. Each time, she’d told Niannian to pass on the message that she wasn’t feeling well. Yitian would have heard that she hadn’t passed by now, but she was still too embarrassed for the moment when she would have to acknowledge that fact out loud to him.

Before the results were released, he’d been coming to the dormitories to avoid spending time in his home, where his father wouldn’t speak to him or even acknowledge his presence. Hanwen had struggled to comfort him. She hadn’t known Yishou well, although he was one of the few people in the village who knew of their relationship. She’d never spoken with him much, because he seemed like one of those people for whom a simple acknowledgment was enough to establish feelings of warmth.

Her excuses in refusing to see Yitian became more and more implausible, until she knew there was no point in continuing to delay the inevitable. She arrived at the embankment earlier than he did that day and tried to compose her features as she would have to make them when he told her his good news. She smiled and squinted her eyes upward in a look that she hoped would appear bright, but she found it was difficult to remember what happiness looked like.

When she could make out his shape coming toward her, she had to blink away the mistiness in her eyes. The wind was blowing his hair around, and she waited for his face to come into focus. As another strong gust pushed his hair back, she was surprised to see that his eyes appeared puffy and downcast. She couldn’t keep that false look any longer. Her own face flattened as she watched him near.

They didn’t embrace as they usually did. He was close to her, so close that their thighs could touch, but even this diminished contact felt heavier than before. He looked fatigued, dark circles rimming his eyes, the tip of his nose swollen bulbous. He’d obviously been crying.

“What’s wrong? Aren’t you happy?” Her words came out choked, surprising even her. She’d dreaded having to confront Yitian’s joy at his accomplishment, but she hadn’t realized how much she’d depended upon seeing his happiness. He looked the same as he had every day since Yishou’s death.

“Stop looking so sad!” she cried, her voice high and desperate.

“I don’t mean to.”

“You have to be happy. You’re going to college! So many people would give anything—”

“It’s not that simple.”

Her face burned as if she’d been slapped. “What do you mean? You’re going, aren’t you?”

“Of course I’ll go. It’s not that.”

“Then what is it?”

“Yishou—and my father still angry at me. And you won’t be going with me.”

She was relieved he’d acknowledged what they both already knew.

He turned his face away—to hide his tears, she supposed. When he turned back to her, he said, “I thought it would be much simpler, but everything has changed. The acceptance letter I got was for the mathematics department. I didn’t know Yi—” His voice still could not make it beyond his brother’s name. “He must have chosen it for me when he registered me. I didn’t know what would happen to him, when I took the test.”