A Map for the Missing(88)

When they stopped to sit on a bench by the lake, he asked her, “You said everyone wanted to go to America. Including you?” He turned his head to seek out her face, but she was staring into the bushes beside them. They’d crawled into one of those crevices in the undergrowth two months ago and made love for the first time, joining the other students who came here for intimacy in a city where nothing else was private.

“I’ve never imagined going to America,” she said.

“What about now? Can you imagine it?”

She scrunched up her eyes. “Palm trees. Skyscrapers. Something like that?” She laughed, “I don’t know! I’m not a student in this great university, like you. You all dream about the future and all these places you’ll go. I wouldn’t even know how to think about something like that.”

He suddenly could not imagine going to America alone. When they’d begun dating, he’d supposed that her family was well-off by virtue of the fact that they lived in Beijing. He’d visited her home many times now, taking the bus from campus, and had learned her family lived in just one section of a narrow hutong home, small and cramped, multiple beds stuffed in a single bedroom they all shared. They shared a public toilet and wash facility with all the other families in the alleyway. Neither she, nor any of her siblings, had even considered going to college. She’d fought for her independence by living away from her parents, even though they had a home in the city and she could have ridden the bus each day. The cramped secretaries’ dormitory wasn’t so different from their hutong, but she liked the small collection of her objects on the shelf above her bed, the sense that she owned a small piece of the world for herself.

He knew women who wouldn’t have given him a second glance before would chase after him, now that he had this opportunity to go to America. He didn’t blame them, but neither could he say he wanted to marry a person like that. He was relieved that Mali hadn’t even brought up the possibility. He would think about it later, on his own. So much had happened in one day.





Thirty-three


AUGUST 1985


Mali invited her entire family to the wedding: her parents, two brothers, and three sisters.

“We’ll have to get your parents here from Anhui. And your brother, too, right?” she asked him.

He’d only ever mentioned his brother in passing to her; she would have assumed that he was still alive.

When he told her that Yishou was dead, she gasped, “I never knew. When did he die? I’m so sorry.”

He mumbled through the barest of details, that the death had happened long before he’d met her. Even though many years had passed, saying the words still made his voice shake. Perhaps because he’d barely spoken about Yishou in all this time, the death never had the chance to congeal into a truth he could hold steadily in his mouth.

She said, “So young! What a life he could have led. You must have been very sad.”

“Not as sad as my father. He cared for my brother the most, more than anyone.” He’d never said this aloud before, but now that he did, he was sure the words were true.

“What happened? How did he die?” She had so many questions. He was suddenly irritated. He didn’t want to share this part of his life with her. He’d only ever known her in Beijing, long after Yishou’s death and after he’d stowed the event away into the compartment of his life before. He wanted to keep these parts of his life separate, far enough away from each other so that they would never touch.

“An accident. A sudden sickness.”

“What kind?” When he did not respond, she put a hand under his chin and brought his face to hers. “Tell me,” she said, but he turned his face away. He pretended to go to his bookshelf to examine a spine. He could hear her crying. He felt sorry for her, but still he couldn’t make himself tell her what had happened or even give her comfort. He left the room, letting the lock of the door click gently after him, walked down the hallway, and fled to the lake.

They rarely argued, and this was the first time he’d made her cry. If they ever disagreed, it was because she said he was closed off and secretive, a mystery to her. Her reaction scared him, the height of the emotion she’d felt when he refused to say more. He didn’t want to lose her, but this was a threshold they could not cross together.

But when he returned to his room, she called his name. “Yitian, I managed to get us a discount on the banquet room,” she said.

She never brought up his brother again, and he felt enormously grateful to her for pretending that the conversation never happened.



* * *



—

Yitian told his mother he’d asked a woman from the city to marry him. He assumed that she would be surprised, as she hadn’t even known he had a girlfriend. He wasn’t prepared for the letter she sent back, detailing the immediate preparations she’d make for the wedding in the village—the meeting space she would reserve, the extended family to invite, the fireworks they’d purchase for the wedding procession through the streets. Yitian wrote her back, explaining they’d already booked a small private room in a roast duck restaurant in Beijing and invited all the guests—although of course his mother could invite others, if she wished. Most of the guests were Beijingers Mali knew from childhood or his classmates from university. Weddings like this, in midgrade restaurants, were popular among young couples who married in the city, and they wanted to be like their peers. They’d set the date for three weeks before he was due to leave for America, so that when he arrived he would be able to quickly apply for a spousal visa for Mali.