by Fan Wu
“What are you thinking about?” I asked.
She didn’t hear me until I asked again.
“Oh, nothing special,” she replied, assuming a lively expression almost instantly. “What were you thinking about?”
“About the farm I grew up on. Though my parents suffered there, it was like paradise to me.”
“What did you like about it?”
I told her about the attic where I liked to read or play with my toys.
“That’s unusual. Weren’t you afraid of the darkness?”
“Guess not. We had power failures all the time so I was used to darkness. Actually it was more exciting to be in the dark. You can imagine things more freely. Once, during spring sowing time when my parents were helping the local peasants prepare seeds one evening, I sneaked out of the house to find them. I was probably nine at the time. Halfway there I dropped my torch in a ditch filled with water as I was trying to catch a grasshopper. Not wanting to turn round, I decided to keep walking. The road ran between two big cotton fields and it was so dark that I could barely see my hand in front of my face. To keep myself company I began to talk to myself. I told myself the sky was a piece of light blue paper, stained by a naughty angel. I also told myself the cotton fields were blossoming with big pink flowers now and the only reason I couldn’t see them was because they were sleeping under black blankets. The more I talked to myself, the more I believed that at that moment the sky was actually blue and the fields pink. It was such a wonderful experience. Next day I even visited the cotton fields again to see if there really were pink flowers there.”
“I wish I had that kind of imagination.” She held the railing with both hands and leaned backward. “I don’t like darkness. Big city, bright lights, busy streets, that’s my kind of life. That’s probably why you can write poems while I can only file documents.” The stern look on her face made me uneasy, but before I could say something to cheer her up, she smiled. “Maybe someday you can write a poem for me. I ’d like that.”
“Certainly. I’ll write more than one for you.”
“Really?” She smiled broadly. “Just be sure to make me young and pretty in your poems. I can’t stand the idea of being ugly or old.”
“You bet!” I said, still a little confused by her sudden shift in mood.
We walked to the stern of the boat, hand in hand. Her hand was cold but when I asked her if she wanted to go inside the cabin she said no. Most passengers had gathered on the stern because it was less windy there—a young couple with a baby, some students talking about a soccer game, and a few tourists sharing their plans for the coming days. The old couple we had seen earlier had gone inside and were visible through a big window. The woman had fallen asleep, her head tilted. The man was reading the Guangzhou Daily, his hand slowly stroking his wife’s head.
“What was your childhood like?” I asked Miao Yan when we walked back to the bow. “Did you grow up in a Miao village? I heard Miaos are good singers. Do you know how to sing a Miao song?”
“It was so long ago, I don’t remember now.” To make her reply more believable, she added, “I don’t have a good memory like you.”
From her tone and expression I could tell she didn’t want to talk about it.
During our return trip, we spoke little. She sank into a trance once more—this time her eyes were closed. From time to time she bit her lower lip for a long moment, as people do when they are trying to control their emotions. How I longed to know what was on her mind!
It was nearly one o’clock when we got off the ferry. On the way to West Five she was back to her normal self—telling jokes and laughing for no particular reason. I was happy, too, till I saw the locked iron gate of West Five.
“Let’s see if anybody is in the duty room,” she said.
We clung to the windowsill and looked into the room. The light was on but nobody was there. We knocked on the window a few times. No response.
“Maybe we can squeeze in between the bars of the gate,” I said. But there wasn’t enough room. Moreover, the squealing from the iron chain lock was particularly piercing in the quiet evening.
“We should have come back before curfew.” My heart sank.
“We can always climb.” She looked quite at ease.
I pointed at the sign—“climbing prohibited”—written in alarming red paint on the brick wall above the window of the duty room. But she began to climb even though the gate was at least five meters high. Despite her high-heeled shoes, she climbed over in no time and waved at me from the other side.
“How did you do that?” I said with admiration.
“Practice. Your turn.”
Under her guidance, I began to climb. I stayed as close to the wall as possible. I gripped the iron bars tightly, pushing my weight forward until the door opened up to the maximum extent the chain lock permitted, so I wouldn’t make a lot of noise.
She held the door for me. “Trust me,” she said. “You won’t fall.”
Once I almost lost my balance. The door swung under my weight, which caused the chain lock to rattle. Luckily nobody jumped out from one of the rooms. As I swung my left leg across the top, my right foot slipped and I almost fell. After regaining my balance, I climbed down. When both my feet touched the ground I could feel the muscles in my thighs trembling. But I had made it! The spirit of adventure and camaraderie filled my heart in a way I had never experienced before.
During our frequent walks over the next few weeks, Miao Yan began to share with me the rumors about her class and department, along with many of her love stories.
“I can tell he’s a womanizer just from his eyes, you know. Those eyes like a wolf’s in the darkness,” she said to me one day. She was talking about her class counselor, a married man with two kids. “He always finds all kinds of excuses to inspect the sanitary conditions in the female dorms and manages to stay as long as he can to flirt with the girls.”
“Does he bother you?”
“What do you think? I’m the prettiest in the class.”
“You don’t flirt with him, do you?”
“Not him. He doesn’t have power. And he’s ugly. He has double chins and a bald head and the lines on his forehead are as deep as ditches.”
“If he had power—”
“Don’t try to trick me.”
We were sitting on a stone bench in the woods near the Violin Lake, which had acquired its name from its shape and was the most beautiful lake on campus. It was a starry evening and we could hear crickets chirping in the grass.
“The Big Dipper!” I said, pointing at the sky.
“Where?”
“There! See the Milky Way? The Big Dipper is on the right. One, two, three…see the seven stars?”
“Who taught you about stars?”
“My ba. There wasn’t much to do on the farm in the evenings. When it was warm, people would move their bamboo beds outside and sleep there. My ba would let me lie next to him, telling me the stories from Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales. He was often too tired and would fall asleep halfway through telling a story. If I wasn’t sleepy, I’d count stars. Sometimes the sky was so black that you could see even the faintest ones. I remember one night I counted to more than five hundred. I’d also connect some stars in my mind to draw all kinds of animals. Once I got an elephant. The eyes, the legs, the body were all there.”
“You’ve got a nice dad.” Miao Yan raised her fingers to check the red lacquer on her nails.
“He wasn’t always like that. Most of the time he talked little and looked preoccupied. Farm life was very depressing to him. Nowadays, we don’t talk much, other than about study or books.”
“Do your parents love each other?”
“Of course.” I stared at her, a little irritated by her question. “They went through a tough time together. They suffered so much during the Cultural Revolution.”
“Did you ever see them hugging and kissing?”
“Don’t be so obscene.” I opened
my eyes wide. “Did you see your parents hugging and kissing?”
“I like teasing you.” She laughed, then asked, “Now tell me what kind of boys interest you?”
“I don’t know yet.” I felt uneasy. It was the first time I had been asked such a question.
“You must know something about it. You’ve read so many books.”
So after some pondering I told her. “Intelligent, athletic, doesn’t wear glasses, a little shy and nerdy. We ’d go to the library together every day after dinner and we’d talk about books and writers.”
“Good luck, little sister. Athletic guys don’t hang out at the library every day; you’ll be lucky if they read at all. Likewise, brainy guys usually wear thick glasses and the only exercise they’re interested in is mental.” Miao Yan mocked me. “Tell me more about this superman.”
I ignored her sarcasm and continued—it seemed that the image of my soul mate had been stored somewhere in my brain for a long time. “His hair isn’t too long, but not too short, either. Mature, good-humored, but not foolish. His eyes are bright, thoughtful, yet a little pensive. His forehead is broad, indicating his generosity and endless wisdom—”
Miao Yan erupted with a raucous belly laugh. “Are you talking about a boy or Confucius?”
I refused to acknowledge her interruption. “He doesn’t need to study literature but he likes reading and he writes when he’s inspired. He doesn’t need to dress like a movie star but his clothes always fit him perfectly, with style. He doesn’t talk much but when he does he says something brilliant, something that makes other people listen attentively. He’s understanding and…” I blushed as I was rushing into a long list of seemingly conflicting characteristics.
“You’ve got it all figured out, haven’t you?” Miao Yan kept laughing. “Now I know why you don’t have a boyfriend. He doesn’t sound like anybody I know. But if you run into a guy like that, do tell me. Maybe we can share him. He goes to the library with you and goes dancing with me.”
“Well, I ’m not in a hurry. I can wait.”
“I bet you have to wait for a long time,” Miao Yan said, drawling the word “long.”
We sat quietly, both looking up at the sky. Then I heard Miao Yan say, “Want to hear a story about me?”
“What about?”
“About me ruining a man’s life.” She pulled a hangnail from her finger.
“Did he die?”
“Close.”
“Tell me.”
“Promise you won’t tell anybody else.”
She wouldn’t tell me until I swore with my hand on my heart that I would keep it to myself.
“It was in middle school. You know, many years ago,” she said. “I was only thirteen. He taught math, my weakest subject. I was afraid that I wouldn’t pass an important exam, so one day I went to his office after class, late in the afternoon when the other teachers had gone home for the day. I knew he was a workaholic and always stayed late in his office. I also heard his wife was an unattractive countrywoman a few years older than he was—”
“You seduced him!”
“I didn’t! Don’t use that word.” Miao Yan stood up and walked along the brick road, her unusually high heels making a rhythmic sound—dense and forceful. I followed her.
“Sorry,” I said.
“Maybe you’re right,” she said. “Anyway, before going to his office, I changed into a blue miniskirt and a tight, short-sleeved white blouse. Instead of wearing a tank top like I normally wore underneath the blouse, I wore a thin pink bra that I borrowed from one of my cousins, who was ten years older than me. She was also the one who taught me how to dress. You should have seen the way the teacher looked at me when I walked into his office. He had to pretend to pick up a piece of broken chalk to cover his nervousness. He agreed to let me pass the exam as soon as I asked him. Before I walked out he asked me if he could kiss me. He looked so funny, trembling, sweating, breathing heavily, and all that. I let him kiss my forehead. That was it. He didn’t even know how to kiss. After leaving his office, I had to scrub my forehead really hard to get rid of the saliva he’d left there. I never knew he’d be so serious about a kiss. The same night he told his wife he was in love with me and asked her for a divorce.”
“How ridiculous!”
“I agree. Maybe he thought kissing somebody was the same as proposing to them. Next day I became the most famous person in the small town I lived in. His wife came to my parents’ house and called me a whore. I still remember how badly my ba beat me when he found out about the whole thing.”
“If I did something like that, my ba would—” I stopped. I simply couldn’t imagine what my father would do in such a situation.
She snapped a handful of leaves from an evergreen bush with so much force that the whole bush rocked. “He ordered me to take off all of my clothes before beating me. Of course he was drunk, but…I don’t know why I’m telling you this story. He also called me a whore when he swung his belt at me like a madman. I didn’t duck or cry. It was like the belt was falling on someone else. I was just confused about who I was. And when I heard the word ‘whore’ from his mouth, I knew the answer.
“From that moment on I wasn’t a girl anymore. I became a woman. A thirteen-year-old woman. Also, from that moment on I could no longer love my ba but feared and distrusted him. The weird thing was that I got my first period the night I was beaten. It must have been part of the punishment. When I saw the blood on my panties I thought it was because of internal injuries the beating had caused. I thought I was going to die. I lay on my bed silently, waiting for death to fall upon me, till my ma saw my bloody panties in the morning and rushed to a store nearby to buy me some sanitary pads. When she showed me how to put on a pad she looked so ashamed, like I’d been raped or something. Maybe she thought I was too young to have a period, or maybe she just felt I was dirty. Funny, isn’t it?”
“My ma didn’t tell me either until it came,” I said, wanting to make her feel better.
“Believe it or not, the kiss I got from the teacher was the first kiss I’d ever received. It wasn’t a great experience and it had a haunting effect on me. You don’t know how I hated being kissed for the longest time after that. From that day on, I knew I’d never be serious with men in my whole life.”
“What happened to your teacher?”
“His wife divorced him and he lost his job. No school would hire him, so he had to sell boiled eggs on the street to make a living. I once saw him riding a bike with a basket of eggs behind him. He had a beard and wore a dirty shirt. I called out to him but he pretended not to hear. He once tried to commit suicide but was saved. After that, he left our town and no one knew where he went.”
I sighed, not sure how to comment on such a sad story.
“Do you despise me now? Do you think I’m a bad girl? Do you still want to be my friend?” She put her hands on my shoulders and spoke eagerly, her eyes dark and fathomless.
“Of course I’ll be your friend,” I assured her. I was suddenly overwhelmed with protectiveness, guilt, and intimacy toward her. Protectiveness because I felt she needed me. Guilt because I wished I had been there to console her when she was suffering. Intimacy because nobody had confessed such a private experience to me before.
Miao Yan grinned and immediately started to tell a joke about one of her roommates who often ate only fruit to keep slim. I could tell that she was disturbed by her confession and wanted to shake the memory from her mind. But I could no longer concentrate on what she was saying as she went on with her banter. I was too preoccupied with my own mixed feelings for her.
Then I started thinking about her teacher. To him, kissing Miao Yan must have been an unfaithful act, adultery; otherwise he wouldn’t have been so silly as to propose a divorce to his wife. Living in a remote small town almost all his life, he might never have kissed a woman other than his wife. Or maybe he had never even kissed his wife—it was possible that his marriage had been arranged and that he had never loved h
er.
As for myself, I had never kissed any boys, nor had I dared to wear a bra but instead wore thick tank tops as underwear until I came to university. There were twenty girls in my high-school class and only three wore a bra under their thin tops in the summer. They were secretly mocked by the other students and called “women” behind their backs—for us girls at that age, nothing was a bigger insult than being called a woman. It seemed that being called a woman was a mark of shame, as though to say we were no longer cute or pretty, or our purity and innocence were somehow in doubt. As if cursed by this label, none of the three girls went to college and one got pregnant right after high school.
I shall never forget the next day, which engraved itself on my mind as it unfolded like a Chinese ink-brush painting. At six in the morning I heard a gentle knock on my door. Pingping and Donghua were still asleep and I could hear their soft, even breathing. They had played poker until two in the morning.
“It’s me. May I come in?” Miao Yan whispered outside the door.
I hesitated, but said, “Come in.” I kicked away the blanket and sat up on the edge of the bed with my bare legs hanging in the air.
She pushed open the unlocked door, scanned the room quickly, and tiptoed up to my bunk.
“Like my new clothes? I bought them a few days ago. Thought I’d show you first,” she whispered.
She wore a grass-green blouse and white bell-bottom pants that reached all the way to her pointed leather shoes—also in grass-green. Her long, braided hair, bound by a green elastic band, hung over one shoulder and the hair below the band was loose. Her forehead was half hidden under a narrow-brimmed straw hat with a palm-size golden yellow sunflower decorating one side.
“Very nice,” I said under my breath.
She quickly glanced at Pingping’s and Donghua’s beds and shushed me, then took off her shoes and hat and put them in the doorway.
