A Map for the Missing(91)
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They didn’t see the video from their wedding day until their second month in America. The tape arrived in a bulky brown envelope bearing stamps suggesting a long journey. Inside, there was a letter from Xie Han explaining that he’d waited to send the tape so that it could welcome them to their new country.
They watched. Her cousin’s hand, shaky and drunk, scanned the smoky banquet room with the video camera, focusing on details that Yitian only now remembered. Piles of sunflower seeds picked over by the guests, duck bones licked so clean they shone, asymmetric spills of Coca-Cola on the white tablecloth. One by one, images came into the frame, at first out of focus and then sharp and defined. Then, suddenly, Xie Han dropped the camera. It landed loudly on the table. Xie Han cursed, but the camera was still filming. The lens settled on the crumpled napkins piled upon the lazy Susan, and then on Yitian’s mother in vignette on the old tape. While the shouted glee around her continued, she looked directly at the lens, curious at its glossy eye, her own expression unreadable. She was completely alone. Her face looked smaller than Yitian had ever remembered it.
Those days after they first moved to America were the darkest and most difficult. Sometimes he felt so lonely that he purposefully bought groceries in increments, buying a shaker of salt one day and then waiting the next to go back for the matching pepper, just so that he could have an excuse to go to the store once more and feel people walking around him in the aisles. When they watched the video and he saw his mother’s solitary figure, Yitian imagined her on her own wedding day, an event he’d only ever been told about through stories. She’d just turned eighteen when she married. He wondered if, entering the home-to-be with her husband for the first time, she’d felt as lonely as he did in this new country.
Part 5
δΊεεε²
The Twenty-Four Histories
Thirty-four
1993
When he was a child and knew he’d done something wrong, he would run through the fields to hide from his mother. His feet pounded through the furrows and deepened them. He ran until he couldn’t hear her voice any longer and the crops gave way to the hillside and the only sound remaining was of the wind whispering through grass.
Now he wanted nothing more than to run, to put as much distance as he could between himself and Hanwen. Kissing her earlier that evening, he’d felt light, that he could close himself off from every other thing tying him to the world and see only her face. What a lopsided bargain that had been, exchanging the ease of a few moments for this aftermath.
That night he didn’t sleep. He paced his hotel room, glad only for the movement. When the worn tread of his footsteps in the carpet no longer seemed like enough, he went downstairs. He roused the night clerk, asleep at the desk, and asked to make a call.
The phone rang for so long he became sure she already sensed what he’d done and was refusing to answer.
“Hello?”
Mali’s voice, at last.
He could hear the loud sizzling of a pan in the background. It would have been around lunchtime, she cooking a meal to eat alone.
“It’s me,” he said.
The line suddenly gave over to a sudden burst of cracking, making it impossible to hear her response.
“What?” he repeated the question, louder this time. The lobby clerk glared at him through bleary eyes. He understood now why his mother had always yelled across the phone, because of how uncertain the connection sounded. He could read so many things into that silence.
“I turned off the stove. Is that better?”
“A little.”
“I asked why you were calling so late.”
“I couldn’t sleep. Listen, I want to come home.” As soon as the words tumbled from his mouth, he was sure that they were his deepest, most primal urge, the one that he would whisper to a stranger in the dark if he could.
“What about your father?”
He grasped for any excuse.
“I feel bad for leaving you for so long.”
“Oh, you know that I can take care of myself. This thing with your father is important.”
“I don’t know anymore if I’ll be able to find him here.” He was startled to feel a sting behind his eyes.
“You’re sure? Well, of course I miss you,” she said.
“Then I’ll come back,” he answered immediately. He was awash with relief. Earlier in the week, he’d been irritated by her eternal optimism, but now there was nothing he wanted more than to return to that more brightly tinted version of life.
“Can you help me book a ticket back? In three days? I need to go say goodbye to my mother.” He felt grateful for the disguise the distance of the phone enabled. He could turn his head as he said these words, would not be forced to subject every sentence to her gaze.
After he hung up, he returned to his room and packed his bag as daylight slowly warmed the sky. He had hardly taken anything out, and found himself to be a person easily cleaned up and stowed.
At the lobby, as he returned his room key, he wondered briefly if he should call Hanwen to tell her. No, he wouldn’t want to wake her this early. Their last departure from one another had been marked by silence, she slipping out the door. This was simply their way.