by C Pam Zhang
The pay Ba collects seems only to increase. Two months pass, the family fortified by meat. Ma’s belly domes and she coaxes the garden into sprouting. Ba takes extra shifts at the mine and stays out late every night. Lucy, happily, and Sam, reluctantly, go to school.
Later, Lucy will blame the meat for what happens in the schoolyard. The meat makes Sam’s skin and hair brighter, a shine that won’t be dulled by dust. Lucy will blame the meat, and even later she’ll blame the cost of that meat, and the long desperate days worked to pay that cost, and the men who set that price, and the men who built mines that paid so little, and the men who emptied the earth and choked the streams and made the days so dry, and the claiming of the land by some that leaves others clutching only dusty air—but think too long and Lucy grows dizzy, as if sun-stunned on the open hills. Where does it end, that hard golden land that haunts her?
In any case, thinking comes later. The end of Sam’s schooling dawns on a sunny, treacherous day. Heat makes the schoolhouse an oven, hottest where Sam sits at the back. Sam undoes her braids, lets down that shining hair.
Maybe, if they’d shared a desk, Lucy would have kept an eye on Sam as she was bid. Maybe she would have rebraided Sam’s hair. But Lucy is last to leave at the day’s end, when kids kick and shove to be free. All day tempers have itched at their clothes.
By the time Lucy gets outside there’s already a circle.
It looks like a game of Cowboy and Buffalo. The kids playing Cowboy are gathered around. In the middle, playing Buffalo, is Sam.
The Cowboy who steps up to lasso is the redheaded girl. Instead of a grass rope, she holds scissors. Instead of throwing, she seizes Sam’s hair. The redhead turns to the crowd to make a joke or declaration. In that moment, Sam gives a yell she fancies for Indian war cry. Sam grabs the scissors.
The circle tightens. Lucy can’t get past the bodies. Can’t see what’s happening inside. The way the game usually ends is with the Buffalo lying dead on the ground.
But when the circle reopens, Sam still stands. A thick black rope lies in the dirt. No—a snake. No—a piece of Sam’s hair. Sam still holds the scissors, Sam who cut a hunk from her own head.
“You can have it,” Sam is saying. “It’s just dumb hair.”
Ma would scream, but Lucy laughs. She can’t help it. An ordinary game, and yet Sam’s cut and shaped it for her own. Look at Sam’s shine. Look at the girls who gasp and clutch their own braids. Only Lucy understands that this is Sam’s victory.
Then Teacher Leigh is striding across the yard. The redhead sees him and drops to the ground. She holds her stomach, writhes in the dirt, points at Sam. The scissors sharp in that chubby hand.
For the first time, Sam looks uncertain. Sam steps back, but again the circle tightens, entrapping. Boys scramble up the dead oak. Their arms laden. They throw. A meaty flower opens on Sam’s cheek. Not fruit: the tree bears rocks.
Plum
A plum, Ba says tenderly as he studies Sam’s face. Though the bruise on Sam’s cheek, swelling from the cut that just missed Sam’s eye, bears little resemblance to the fruit Sam loves.
Lucy, sickened, turns away. Ba grabs her chin. Forces her to look.
“Didn’t I say?” Ba asks. “Stick by your family. I didn’t raise you this way. Not as a coward. Not as a girl who—”
Ma puts herself between them. Her belly, against Ba’s stomach, saying: The baby. Today Ba won’t be silenced.
“I told you,” he says, glaring now at Ma. “School’s no place for Sam.”
“Bu hui happen twice,” Ma says. “Sam will be a good girl now, won’t you? I’ll speak to the teacher. There’s value to be had from schooling. Kan kan Lucy. How well she’s doing.”
Ba pays Lucy no mind. He’s looking at Ma. A deadly hush falls once more in the room. It seems to seep from a place older and deeper than Lucy and Sam. From out of that place, Ba says in a peculiar, cold voice, “Didn’t you learn your lesson?” As if Ma isn’t Ma but a little girl like Lucy. “I figured the two hundred would rememory you against thinking you know best.”
The words mean nothing to Lucy, or to Sam, who returns her confused gaze. Two hundred is a nonsense number. Yet Ma clutches the table. For all her regained weight, she looks sick once more.
“Wo ji de,” Ma says, pressing her hands to her face. Hard, as if she means to push through to bone. “Dang ran.”
Though Ba’s won this argument, he looks even worse than Ma. The juice has left him. His bad leg wobbles. Sam rushes to him, and Lucy to Ma, and once more the house is split.
That marks the end of Sam’s schooling.
* * *
—
Sam’s wish comes true. The red dress is laid away, a shirt and pants cut down to size. Boys get paid more, Ba says, and Ma doesn’t argue, though she draws the line at cutting Sam’s hair. It’s braided to hide the missing portion, tucked under a cap.
Ma’s been awful quiet since the fight. A distance in her eyes. She startles when Lucy speaks, as if surfacing from a shaft.
“I want to stay home today,” Lucy repeats.
“School?” Ma says, blinking. She turns away at last from the oilcloth window, where she’s been staring at the smudge of horizon.
“Teacher Leigh said not to worry.” He came wading among the Cowboys, crying, Desist, you little beasts! He took Sam’s scissors and helped the redhead up. Go home, he said to Lucy. And don’t worry about returning tomorrow.
Lucy’s grateful for the pardon. Thing is, the teacher forgot to mention when she should return. A week passes with no word. Sam’s plum grows backward: black to purple to blue to unripe green. Ba still won’t look at Lucy. Ma won’t look at Ba. The shack more stifling than usual. Come Sunday, Lucy can bear it no longer. With Ba and Sam at the mine working a spare shift, she decides to visit the teacher. Weeks ago he mentioned extra lessons, and told her where to find his house.
To her surprise, Ma’s eyes uncloud. Ma insists on going along.
* * *
—
A ways down the main street on the South side of town, a sign reading LEIGH points them up a narrow path. The teacher lives on a road that is his alone, which starts out dirt and becomes gravel. Soon neat rows of coyote brush rise on either side, their tops trimmed and even. The dusty leaves hide the rough backsides of the stores, the view of the miners’ half of the valley. And they hide the people that look at Ma even sharper than they look at Sam.
When they arrive at the teacher’s house with its two stories and stone chimney, its porch and eight glass windows, its accompanying stable with a gray horse that must be the teacher’s Nellie—a house so orderly it makes Lucy’s heart beat fast—Lucy finds that she wishes Ma far, far away.
Easy enough to tell tales of Ma to the teacher. In the flesh there’s no hiding Ma’s bare feet, slick, one toenail cracked. And for all that Ma disguises her belly under a skirt, her rough hands under gloves, nothing can disguise her voice. Next to history, Teacher Leigh’s favorite subject is elocution. There’s wrongness in Ma’s speech. Her lilt. Her way of swallowing some sounds and lingering too long on others.
“I want to talk to him alone,” Lucy says. And then, to stop Ma from protesting, “I can do it myself. I don’t need you.”
Ma doesn’t smile so much as bare her teeth. “Kan kan. You’ve grown up.” She takes a step back, then swoops close to Lucy’s ear and says, “Nu er, you remind me of myself at your age.”
A part of Lucy has waited her whole life to hear this. There’s a warm whoosh in her ears, her heart riding high in her chest. If they were alone on the trail she might well whoop into the dusk, and never care who heard it. Here she’s mindful of the glass windows, the dignified hush of the coyote-brush lane. She keeps still. She waits for Ma to step back against the wall, hidden from sight. Only then does Lucy knock.
“Sir,” Lucy says when the door opens. “I’m here, pleas
e, for the extra lessons.”
The teacher frowns, as if at a slow student. “Lucy. You must know it’s poor manners to come visiting uninvited.”
“I’m very sorry. That’s the thing, sir, there’s so much I don’t know. I’d be honored to learn from you.”
“I enjoyed teaching you. You’re a smart girl, and so unusual. It’s a shame—what a sensation you would have made back East had I included your development in my monograph!” Lucy starts to smile. Teacher Leigh puts his hand on the doorframe. “But that little tableau of violence was unacceptable. Savagery runs in your blood, and I can’t have my other students disturbed. I must think of the greater good.”
Lucy holds her smile, though it’s leaden now. “I wasn’t fighting, sir.”
“Lies don’t flatter your intellect, Lucy. I saw you in that circle. And I heard from the other students how Samantha instigated the affair. No—results don’t matter. I saw your intentions.”
The teacher lets go of the door as Lucy says, “I’m not like Sam. I’m not.”
Lucy could shove her arm through the gap, could grab for what she wants so desperately. That would only prove what the teacher suspects.
And then Ma grasps the knob. Teacher Leigh looks at her gloved hand, indignant. Up her arm, her shoulder. Into her face.
“Thank you for teaching Lucy,” Ma says.
That husky voice, unexpected against Ma’s smoothness. Ma who skins rabbits still twitching, who hauled the mule from a sinkhole. As if in answer, Ma speaks slower. A knife dragged through honey.
“We’ve walked a fair piece. May we come in for a glass of water?”
Ma gives Lucy the piercing look that says, This is our secret. Then she’s smiling at the teacher, the smile sweetened like the voice is sweetened. Nothing changes. Everything changes. The teacher steps back, holding the door wide open. Some power leaves him and moves to Ma. She steps through.
* * *
—
Ma sinks into the teacher’s horsehair couch as if she’s sat there every day of her life. Her skin glows against the open window. She belongs here, of a piece with the lace curtains, the honeyed wood, the thin white teacups with their gold rims.
Lucy looks away, looks back. A thrill runs through her each time. Ma set in the center of that parlor like a picture in a frame. To judge by his face, the teacher feels that same thrill.
He pours tea and sets out cookies with dark, oozing centers. “The jam is made from cultivated hothouse plums. Not like these sour, wild trees in the West. My folks back East send the jam by train and then wagon, but once you taste you’ll see it’s well worth the extra cost.”
Ma refuses, giving Lucy another look. Don’t be beholden, Ma likes to say. Her gloved hands stay tidy in her lap. Miserably, Lucy leaves the cookies alone too.
“Tell me about yourself,” the teacher says.
Light shifts down the couch, down Ma’s body as the hours pass. Illuminating one piece at a time: the soft cheek, the long neck, the crease of an elbow, the ankle peeping just above the skirt. The shadows of Sam’s wildness are vanquished from this room—Ma proof that decency lives in Lucy. Teacher Leigh and Ma discuss where she came from, the latest news from back East, the cultivation of plants and gardens, Lucy’s reading, and how Ma taught her.
“And yourself?” Teacher Leigh says. “Where did you learn to read?”
Lucy’s heard the story half a hundred times. Your ma was a poor student, Ba starts. And Ma jumps in: Poor teacher, more like. Your ba couldn’t sit still. Together they recount how Ba taught Ma to read, interrupting and joking, silly as children.
Ma smiles. Looks down at her teacup, so that her lashes scatter shadows on the porcelain. “I picked it up here and there.”
“And where was that?”
Ma gives a tinkling laugh that fits this room. No kin to her other laugh that crackles. Roars. “I think Lucy should be the one to answer your questions. She’s a smart girl. I know she’d love to be in a classroom again.”
Who could refuse Ma?
* * *
—
As they leave, Ma dips her head to Lucy and asks if she is happy.
Sunset leaves a glaze on the coyote brush. The world looks good enough to eat. Teacher Leigh’s hair is corn silk as he waves from the porch, Ma’s lips marrow-dark.
“I’m happy. But, Ma? Why didn’t you tell him about learning to read?”
The house disappears from view. Rather than answer, Ma shucks her glove. Her fingers root in her pocket and emerge dirt-speckled. “Try this,” she says, reaching for Lucy’s mouth.
Lucy catches a hint of sweetness. Cautiously, she licks.
“From all the way back East,” Ma says, pulling a handful of plum cookies from her pocket. “Fang xin, Lucy girl. Did you see how many he ate? He won’t notice. He’s a good man under his ruffles. Ying gai accept those extra lessons.”
Lucy abstains as Ma eats. The sweet fades to sour on her tongue. “But why did you lie, Ma?”
“Don’t whine.” Ma wipes her fingers. “Ni zhang da le. Old enough to know what’s a lie, and what’s better left unsaid. Remember I taught you about burying? Well, sometimes truth needs burying too.”
The cookies, and all traces of Ma’s gluttony, are gone. Her face has a cat’s satisfaction. So neat and clean that Lucy asks, meanly, “Like the two hundred?”
Later, Lucy will wonder what might’ve been different had she been kinder. Less selfish. Or as smart as Ma believed her to be, capable of reading what was written on Ma’s trembling lip. Ma says, so softly, “I’ll tell you when you’re older. Xian zai help me out, Lucy girl. Don’t tell your ba about this visit, or your lessons. Hao bu hao?”
Lucy wants to ask, Why not now? What’s older mean? But Ma smiles again, a smile Teacher Leigh didn’t see, because this smile has no place in that light-filled parlor. And Lucy is reminded that what makes Ma most beautiful is the contradiction of her. Rough voice over smooth skin. Smile stretched over sadness—this queer ache that makes Ma’s eyes look miles and miles away. Brimming with an ocean’s worth of wet.
“I won’t tell,” Lucy promises the woman who keeps her secrets.
Ma takes her hand and they walk in silence back down to the main street, coyote brush receding as they leave the teacher’s land. The town reappears.
And they see the clouds.
Strange clouds, too low and too early—the wet season is months away. Men spill from the stores, the saloon. They stare at the swift-moving clouds rushing from the direction of the mine, risen up from the ground to darken the sky. Ma squeezes so hard that Lucy yelps.
They last saw clouds like this a year ago on the trail. Mistook them for locusts till a boom lit the horizon orange. For three days fires raged, a distant mine burning. And Ma—Ma who braved storm and drought, who once set her own broken finger—Ma sank her head to her knees and shivered. Didn’t look up till they were long past. She doesn’t like fire, Ba said brusquely when Lucy asked. Shut that big mouth.
Now Ma hitches up her skirt and runs, dragging Lucy along. Other women are running too, barefoot women, a flood of miners’ wives heading home. Flashes of calf and thigh; the ragged pant of breath. Nothing ladylike about this dash. Ma, eyes wild, doesn’t appear to notice.
Ma stumbles crossing the creek. In the space opened up by her falling body, Lucy sees that the clouds have overtaken the sun.
Ma twists. Her shoulder hits the ground in place of her stomach. Darkness stains her dress—but it’s only plum jam.
“Ni zhi dao, Lucy girl, what happens to bodies in a fire?” Ma says as Lucy drags her up. Now they pass the other miners’ shacks. Lanterns glow within; the open doors punch yellow into the false night. “I know.” Women and girls stand outside, looking toward the clouds. “Fire leaves nothing to bury.” Lucy hums, as if soothing a panicked mule. “The haints yi bei zi follow. They never let y
ou go.” Ash begins to fall. The bigger pieces like moths, which Ma always hated. She claimed that moths are the dead come visiting.
* * *
—
But there are no ghosts in their shack. Just Ba and Sam, the table set, a waft of good cooking.
“You’re filthy!” Sam says with glee.
Ba stands, holding two plates. “Lai,” he says. “Wash up after you eat.”
At the table, legs swinging, Sam hums Ma’s tiger song.
Ma steps back. “Where were you?”
“The mine.” Ba steps forward with a plate. Ma steps back again. “Right, Sam? Tell your ma.”
“We worked hard,” Sam says with a full mouth.
“When?” Ma says.
“We got back not long ago. Must’ve just missed you.” Ba frowns at the stain on Ma’s dress. Reaches. Ma twists away as if dancing, though there’s no humming now, no music in the silent room. Sam’s head turns like a wary creature to track Ma. “What happened to you?”
Ma slaps Ba’s hand aside. The plate falls, doesn’t break. Spins round and round, whining.
“Leave it,” Ma hisses as Ba stoops. His outstretched hand is as clean as his face, the nailbeds pink. How long since they were black with coal? Lucy can’t recall. “Where were you?”
“The mine.”
“Fei hua.”
“Might be we stopped along the way to explore. Can’t quite remember—”
“Liar.” Ma rips the dirty oilcloth from the window, and the eerie horizon shows.
“I can explain,” Ba says, staring out. “We left early. Ting wo—”
“I thought you were dead.”
“We’re safe, qin ai de.” Ba moves to hug her.
Again Ma says, “I thought you were dead.” She steps back. Her shoulder meets the door. And Lucy sees for the first time how Ma’s eyes could be what the kids say: small, unlovely, mean. Ma studies Ba as she studies food gone rancid. Judging what good is left, and what to toss out. “I thought you were dead.” Three times she’s said it now, flat and strange, like a spell. “What’s real, then? Na ge outside is real. Ni ne? What does that make you? Some kind of haint?”
