A Map for the Missing(66)

The room was lit by a single cloudy bulb hanging on a wire in the center of the room. Someone was holding a spoonful of warm soup to her lips.

Hanwen smelled and felt her mother before she saw her—the sharp scent of vinegar on her hands, and the feeling she associated with it, of cleanness.

“Ma,” she said.

Her mother, seated on a wooden stool beside the bed, shushed her. “Drink,” she said, prodding the ceramic spoon at Hanwen’s lips.

Hanwen recoiled. The liquid was hot and bitter.

“It’s medicine. You need to build your blood back up. Drink.”

Hanwen opened her mouth reluctantly.

“You were so sick. They kept sending me telegrams from the county hospital.”

“How many days have I been home? They let me take leave?”

“You’re much too weak to work.”

“But when will I have to go back?”

“Have I raised you to be so diligent?” her mother murmured. She pressed a hand against Hanwen’s forehead and smoothed the wisps of hair that had drifted from her temples, just as she had during all her childhood illnesses and fevers.

“You won’t have to go back for a long time. Maybe never.”

Hanwen slouched back under the covers and burrowed her arms underneath the lumpy cotton. She was in her mother’s bed, she realized. She looked around to see her mother had made a makeshift pallet near her feet. Past that, Hanwen saw the square dining table in the corner where she’d eaten and copied all the characters she now knew; the jugs and rice buckets neatly stacked beneath its legs; in another corner, the single wooden dresser with the trousseau chest on top, containing all the valuable items her mother had ever owned. A white cloth doily covered their chipped ceramic bowls, stacked upon a wooden shelf above the dresser. The portrait of her father under the shiny glass. It was so strange, after spending years in the countryside, to be surrounded by this quaint architecture of domesticity in the city once again. Just a few months ago, she would have given next to anything to be back here. Now it seemed a place as ordinary as any other.

Pinned onto the wall was a faded portrait of Chairman Mao, next to a calendar that appeared much newer. She squinted to make out the text. It was 1978. Her mother had crossed off all the passing days with a pattern of Xs. She counted all of them, and looked at the current date, surprised to find that the next day would be the New Year.





Twenty-five



Yitian’s mother tied one last string around his nylon duffel bag. In the course of his packing, a small split had formed along one side of the checkered plastic, so old that the material had stiffened and cracked. Unable to get anything else to store his things in at this last minute, she’d resorted to tying meters of string around the bag in case it broke during the long journey to Beijing.

“When you get on the train, make sure to put this right above you so you can see it at all times. If you fall asleep, tie it to your arm so you’ll feel if anyone tries to steal it.”

He couldn’t imagine that anyone would try to steal his sad, small bag, but he didn’t say this aloud to his mother for fear his words would embarrass her. She’d already apologized so many times because she hadn’t been able to get him new clothes or shoes or any extra spending money for when he arrived in the city. As it was, she’d only just been able to scrape together money for his journey to Beijing, passing the slight bills to him secretly in small increments whenever his father was out of the house. His father had let him stay the past few weeks only at his mother’s pleading. In that time, he didn’t speak to Yitian once, and refused even to sit at the table if Yitian was there. On the New Year, Second Uncle had taken Yitian in so that he didn’t have to spend the holiday alone.

His father’s anger at him made the departure easier in one way—Yitian did not have to worry anymore about disappointing him.

His mother was the only person to send him off. Hanwen was gone. After he’d learned of what happened to her, he’d written letters and letters to her house in Shanghai, telling her to respond in care of his university in Beijing. It occurred to him now that he’d never once tried to console her after her gaokao score, and he apologized for this in every letter he sent. After all Yishou had done for him, he slipped into his selfish habits again. He half hoped that she would have forgiven him by the time he arrived in Beijing, and there would already be a stack of letters from her waiting.

He and his mother walked to the village entrance, where he’d arranged for a truck to pick him up on its route into the township. He was so nervous that, for the first time in his life, he’d risen before his mother and was already dressed before she awoke.

There was a single red pine tree at the village entrance, next to the dirt road. The villagers had nicknamed it the welcoming pine for its crooked branches, curving to the left as if bowing in welcome. Could the tree also bow in goodbye? He looked at his feet, unsure of what more there was to be said. There, imprinted in the road, were his and his mother’s feet, swaddled in their plain black cloth shoes. For the first time in his life, he noticed how they stood the same way: both with their feet pointing outward and weight shifted against the right hip.

“Don’t speak to any strangers. If anyone asks you for money, just ignore them.” His mother reached her two arms up to his neck, but only managed to get up to the fleshy part below his shoulders. “If you lose anything, I won’t be able to send more to you. You can’t be absentminded out there, like you are at home. People will take advantage of you.” The heat of his mother’s breath formed in plumes against the early dawn cold.