A Map for the Missing(92)

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The bus station was crowded with men whom he imagined to be laborers in the city, polystyrene bags strapped crooked to their slouching backs. They counted out money for their tickets slowly and using the smallest denominations of coins. Filled with passengers, the bus ambled slowly and heavily out of town. He was squished against a window as he watched the tall constructions of the city once again give way to the low fields and vastness of the countryside surrounding them, the terrain that he would always see as the real truth of this place.

His mother dropped and shattered a clay plate when he stepped back into the home.

“I had no idea you were coming back,” she exclaimed. “I would have prepared something for you, I’m sorry . . .”

Her face was even more weary than it had been when he’d left her, and he could see her struggling to rearrange her expression from the unwitnessed state of a person alone.

Again she hurried to make breakfast, just as she had a few days ago on the morning of his first return. It was almost as if he’d rewound the videotape, except this time all his ideas of what would happen on the trip had already shown themselves to be delusions. He looked back on his self of only a few days past and couldn’t believe how childish he’d been to believe he’d find his father or prove his worth. All he could hope for now was that the time he’d spent back in the country wouldn’t entirely undo the life he’d made.





Thirty-five



Is it because you’re angry at me?” his mother asked, when he told her about his plans for departure.

“No,” he said truthfully. He found it easier to speak to her after she’d revealed the secret she’d hid. He’d always been ashamed over Yishou, the ledger of her wrongs so empty in comparison. The unconditional weight of her forgiveness finally seemed more measured, light enough for him to accept.

Now that there was nothing else to do for his father, Yitian fidgeted in the home. The breakfast of noodles had already been cleared away and there were still hours to go until lunch. He didn’t know how he’d spent so many hours in this blank space when he’d been young. Time was a different feeling back then, stretching and endless, a truth of the world rather than something to work against and make efficient, as it was in America. Suddenly and absurdly, he wished for the television he’d seen in the villager’s house earlier that week. He was sure that the village’s sense of time would change now that they had the TV programs.

He felt overcome by the restlessness in his limbs as he watched her, sweeping the same spot over and over in the corner. One moment he thought he’d done the right thing by making plans to return to his wife, and in the next he saw his mother there and how alone she would be once he left without fulfilling his obligation to his father. If she were to directly admonish him, even that would be more manageable.

“I’m going to go for a walk, Ma,” he said. This was how he’d relieved himself of his mother’s watchful eye when he’d been younger. She didn’t ask to accompany him. The gulf beyond accusation from which she stared at him reminded him of how little claim she had on his life now.

He’d done what he could, he told himself as he walked down the small alleyway behind their home, past the embankment, and then onto the wider dirt road leading to the fields. In another season there would have been lines of rice seedlings jutting from the wet paddies, but at this time of year the trenches were dry, and the only remnants of the harvest were weeds, overgrown and yellow.

He walked down the slope into the depression of the paddy and deliberately stepped on the blunted stalks, savoring the sounds of their crunch under his feet. He allowed the toes of his sneakers to dig into the frost collecting in the dirt. He went through one column of the paddy this way and then turned around to continue onto the next, as an ox might during plowing.

Soon, he heard the crunch of another’s footsteps moving through the fields. He looked up to see Second Uncle walking slowly toward him.

“What are you doing here?” Second Uncle asked.

“I just wanted a walk,” Yitian said lamely.

“So, I hear you’re leaving us again, huh?”

News traveled so quickly here. He scuffed the toe of his shoe into a stem of dead grass to avoid looking at Second Uncle. He dreaded another conversation about his life in America and his return.

“I figured you would. Some of the other villagers were saying, maybe he’s come back to stay, but I told them of course not! Why would he come back to stay here forever when he could live in America instead?”

The thought of remaining in the village had never crossed Yitian’s mind. He hadn’t known that the other villagers thought that a possibility. In all his time in America, he’d never heard even a single story of someone returning to live in their village after they’d made it so far out.

“Just be sure to take care of your mother even after you leave,” Second Uncle said. “Don’t forget about her, alone here. She’s a strong woman, but she still needs your help.”

“I will.” Yitian didn’t even have it in him to find a curt response. He turned his head back toward the ground, hoping Second Uncle would leave of his own accord.

Instead, he stretched his arms before squatting down into the grass. He cleared his throat. “Listen, Yitian. You understand why we didn’t tell you about your father—”