February Flowers

by Fan Wu

  “Is that so? Who are you to me? Are you my parent? No. Are you my sibling? No. Are you my boyfriend or lover? No. I know how to take care of myself. Please do me a huge favor and stay out of my business.”

  “Don’t you worry, I’ll stay out. I just want you to answer one question. Do you go to bed with him just for money?”

  She narrowed her eyes to slits, like a cat before it pounces on a mouse. “Little sister, what are you going to do if I’m the kind of person you good girls despise?”

  It was not the answer I was expecting, though I was not really expecting any answers. Everything about this conversation was so dramatic, so fake, it was as though we were rehearsing our lines for a stage play. I felt my heart sinking. I wanted to end the conversation. I was feeling sick and wanted to throw up. The glaring light penetrating every corner of the store was upsetting my stomach, making me want to rush out for fresh air.

  “If you’re that kind of person, then…then we’re not friends anymore,” I said eventually, but the words were weak and didn’t match the seriousness of the message I had wanted to deliver. They sounded like a joke. I stared at her. I didn’t move my eyes from hers until she began to speak.

  “Really? Sounds good to me.” She leaned back against the wall, her arms crossed over her chest, her knees relaxed. She ran her fingers through her hair exaggeratedly all the way to the back of her neck, then shook her head to make her hair fall like a black wave. She looked stunning with her silky hair and luminous skin.

  I was standing only a few feet away, so close that I could see a few tiny, reddish pimples on her forehead above her left eyebrow. I looked at her, my spine stiff as steel. She towered over me, either because she was wearing a pair of absurdly high-heeled shoes or because the blue suit flattered her figure so perfectly that I had to bend back to look up at her. Then it seemed she was moving away from me inch by inch. Her blue figure became blurry as I looked at her and I felt I would never be able to touch her again.

  I swallowed hard, turned, and walked determinedly toward the elevator. The moment I turned, tears filled my eyes. Before they streamed down, I erased them with the back of my hand. I heard a voice from my heart. “Be brave! Don’t be afraid of breaking up with her!” Then other thoughts ran through my mind. What a fool I was! Why was I even attracted to her? She didn’t like books, she knew nothing about literature, she was flirtatious and materialistic, and she wasn’t even honest with me. How much did I know about her? She had told me almost nothing about her family. I didn’t even know if she had any siblings. While I, the biggest fool in the world, put aside my homework and reading plans to stay with her, to write her dissertation. So many nights I’d worked on it until the small hours. Where was she on those evenings? She must have been out fooling around with those rich men, like the ugly and vulgar man with the red BMW, flirting with them, even going to bed with them. What a fool I had been!

  I thought of the magazine pictures of naked people. She’d have her pictures printed in that kind of magazine if she got paid. I trembled with disgust. Thinking back, I felt that I had been deceived since the first day I met her and that every single day thereafter had been nothing but lies and dishonesty between us.

  Standing in front of the elevator, I managed to compose myself. I even felt like laughing. I began to feel the whole thing was my own fault. I met her on the rooftop and without knowing much about her I decided to devote my friendship, trust, and loyalty to her. She was everything to me, while to her I was nothing. All she cared about was her vanity and desire for money. I was the one to blame and to be laughed at. Now I understood why her expression had been relaxed. She must have felt freed. I had discovered her secret, the dark truth. Now, in front of me, she never needed to put on a mask.

  The mall was closing in another ten minutes. A dozen people were waiting at the elevator. When the door opened I walked into the crowded elevator without looking back. The remaining space was filled in no time. Before the door closed, two people with shopping bags squeezed in forcefully, triggering a roar of complaints. Standing in a corner, face against one wall, weight on my toes, I had trouble breathing. I turned around, finally, to face the elevator doors.

  The elevator moved slowly. Looking at the different shapes of people’s heads from behind, listening to their heavy breathing in different rhythms, I thought of the day when I first left my hometown to go to university in Guangzhou a little over a year ago.

  Back then, no trains went directly from Nanchang to Guangzhou. Between the two cities, the only trains that stopped at Nanchang came from Hangzhou and stopped there only three times a week. Since many people wanted to go to Guangdong to make money, these trains were always packed—not only were all the seats taken but the aisles were crowded with people standing. There were even people on the baggage racks and under the seats. In Nanchang, almost no tickets with assigned seats were sold through the ticket office. Even if there were such tickets, they were sold at the black market at a much higher price or bought through “back door” deals. In peak season, when the train pulled in, the porters wouldn’t even open the doors for fear of not being able to control the crowd. People wanting to get on the train had to climb through the windows.

  I didn’t fight my way onto the platform until twenty minutes before the train’s departure. My parents and uncle were carrying my luggage for me. I had never seen so many people in my life. The whole station was full, all the way to the street. People were everywhere, pushing each other forward and backward. A few times I had to grab somebody’s clothes to keep myself from falling. I saw the train at last, with no doors open. Even the windows were closed tightly because the people inside feared the train might break down if more people got on.

  “Not good. Too many people,” my uncle said to my parents. “But Ming can’t afford to delay her trip to the university. I’ll try my best to get her on the train. You wait here. I’ll push her in through a window.”

  My father sighed and nodded. Arthritis had been troubling him these days and he couldn’t walk fast. It was a disease he’d developed on the farm.

  As my mother handed me a bag of fruit and combed my straggling hair with her fingers, she said, “You’re leaving home for the first time to start your life in a strange city. I hope you’ll become more mature and take good care of yourself.”

  She put her hands on my shoulders and looked at me for a few seconds. I could tell she was trying hard to hide her tears. Then she said calmly, “When you’re out alone, you need to learn how to make decisions for yourself. Don’t always expect other people to understand and approve of your choices in life.”

  Before I could react, the train whistle sounded, meaning that it would pull out in ten minutes. I had only a brief moment to turn my head and say goodbye to my parents before my uncle, a tall and heavy man, held me by the arm and pushed forward into the crowd. He was half a head taller than most of the people around, which helped. Soon we were next to the train.

  One hand dragging my two big suitcases, the other knocking on the windows, my uncle shouted at the top of his lungs: “Please open the window. My niece is going to college in Guangzhou. The classes start in two days. She can’t afford to miss the opening of school.”

  The windows remained shut. Through the dirty glass I could see people shaking their heads: no. Finally, one window opened a small crack. From inside came a man’s voice: “Climb up here.”

  My uncle released a long breath. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” He lifted me up as if I was a lifeless object and squeezed me in through the narrow crack. Two or three people sitting near the window grabbed my hands and pulled me inside. My head went through the crack first, then my chest, behind, and legs followed.

  The people in the luggage racks and under the seats craned their heads to see who the newcomer was. I was embarrassed and offended by the attention, but I could only close my eyes tightly—I was still up in the air, pushed by my uncle from outside and pulled by a few strangers inside. Finally my feet to
uched something solid. I opened my eyes and found myself standing among a bag of oranges, food wrappers, empty bottles, and a few crumpled hand towels on a table. Two middle-aged men lifted me down to the floor. On the way down, I unwittingly kicked the back of somebody sleeping on the floor, his head on his tightly drawn-up knees. He raised his head and looked at me with half-opened eyes, then dropped his head and went back to sleep.

  From the platform, my uncle was handing up my luggage through the window. I heard him say, “Sorry for the trouble. My niece has never left home before. This year is her first at college. Most of her luggage is books. Please take care of her on the train. She’s only sixteen and has never left her parents before. Thank you, thank you.”

  After that came a roar of shouts, scoldings, and complaints. I looked back over my shoulder—several people on the platform were trying to climb in through the half-opened window. All the passengers sitting next to the window stood up. Two forcefully loosened the hands clutching the sill and others pulled the window down. People were calling out inside the compartment. One person on the luggage rack said, “Don’t let them in. There ’s no more space. Not even room for a fly.” Another said, “Definitely not this compartment. Tell them to try other windows.” Still another said, “The train’s about to pull out. They might get injured. Don’t be so cruel.” Then came a hysterical shout from the platform: “Son of a bitch. You’re all sons of bitches. How could you be so vicious as to push people down—” The rest of his words were cut off by the window, which was now completely shut, and the train began to lurch forward.

  I hadn’t said goodbye to my uncle but it was too late. Through the dirty window glass everything looked blurry. As the train gathered speed, I saw the sea of people still on the platform, a few poles passing by, dilapidated houses along the railroad, then fields—infinitely expanding fields of green or yellow. The whole trip lasted twenty-four hours and I stood in the same spot throughout. I might have napped briefly, standing, or leaned against the table in the compartment to rest my feet, but I didn’t eat, drink, or go to the toilet during the whole trip. I also remember what the table looked like. It was rectangular, with a green plastic top. Its original yellowish wood showed beneath the peeling paint around the edges.

  What I didn’t remember were the faces of the other people in the compartment or any conversations among them. All I could think about was what my mother had said to me before my uncle took me away. She was never a person to talk about general principles. My brain was like a phonograph and it kept repeating: “Don’t always expect other people to understand and approve of your choices in life.”

  For a few days after our argument in the department store, I thought I wouldn’t want to see Miao Yan again and I would be perfectly fine without her companionship. I told myself that she was not a worthwhile person and that nothing could save our friendship. It was perhaps a good thing that I no longer needed to see her. I could catch up with my reading. I could go back to my peaceful student life. I no longer had to worry about being her friend or being intimate with her. I could meet other people and make new friends.

  When I hadn’t heard from her in over ten days, though, I began to regret my actions. I blamed myself for driving her away by calling her a whore. Why was I so foolish as to have used this taboo word? There were a million other words I could have used to make her feel bad about herself without hurting her so much. I knew perfectly well that nothing was more painful to her than thinking about her past. If I had just given her time to explain how she got the money and if I had just calmed down enough to have a rational discussion with her, maybe we wouldn’t have ended our friendship.

  Then I recalled how her cold hand had gripped my throat and how she had stared at me with fire in her eyes. My heart broke. It seemed she didn’t care about me at all. I was a nobody to her, like a piece of clothing she could dispose of at will.

  I spent hours and hours on my bed, in the library, in classes, thinking back and forth about Miao Yan. Sometimes I thought I knew how to get her back and would do whatever it took. Often I was lost in endless self-questioning and self-blame. Other times I thought I would be better off without her. After all, the world I had enjoyed before—the rooftop, the violin, and my books—was so much easier and simpler.

  Another week slipped by. I could no longer maintain my pride. I went to Miao Yan’s room but she was not there. Her roommates told me she had gone to Shenzhen. I asked when she would be back and was told that only God knew the answer.

  I still went up to the rooftop to play violin some evenings and stayed there late. Every time I passed the corner Miao Yan used to sit in, I would stare at it for a few minutes and pray in my heart, wishing she would magically appear there, smiling at me.

  It was late November. The winter break was only one month away. I didn’t hear anything from Miao Yan—no phone calls, no letters, nothing.

  Without Miao Yan as a distraction, I went to classes punctually every day, though I spent most of the time daydreaming.

  One Wednesday afternoon, windy and freezing cold, I went to a class called “Shakespeare and His Sonnets,” one of the two courses on foreign literature that semester. I sat in a window seat in the back row. From there I could see the over-cast sky, a cluster of red-brick buildings far away, and the heavily dressed passersby.

  I didn’t like the teacher. He would start the class with a roll call and boast about his overseas experience whenever he could. His name was Gao Jie. Seven or eight years our senior, he was already an assistant professor, the youngest in the department. He had been sent to the U.S. as a visiting scholar for a year and a half. Afterward, his title changed from lecturer to assistant professor. But we never addressed him as Professor Gao. We called him Gao CK, since after he returned he told everyone that his favorite fashion brand was Calvin Klein.

  After calling the roll and noting absent students, Gao CK began to read aloud a sonnet in English and asked us to repeat it after him. When he spoke English, he emphasized all the syllables and drawled every vowel. I didn’t read after him; instead, I scribbled on my notepad to kill time—I had forgotten to bring a novel with me. A few of my classmates in the same row were reading their own books, using the textbook as a cover. I quickly lost interest in scribbling and decided to draw something, though I was terrible at drawing. I’d always had difficulty passing my drawing exams in primary school.

  I drew a big circle and five smaller circles around it—all together, a flower. Then a long stem, a few leaves, and some intersecting lines on the leaves as veins. After studying my drawing for a few seconds, I added more layers of petals to the flower; I didn’t stop until the five-petal flower became a huge sunflower filling the whole page.

  At that moment I thought of Miao Yan. I thought of her hat decorated with a sunflower—the one she had worn the day she danced in my room. I thought of the morning light pouring into my room as she whirled before me, the morning light so soft and transparent, like her gentle eyes.

  I decided to draw a picture of her. I flipped to a new page and drew a half-circle. Miao Yan had an oval-shaped face. She always said she had too much fat on her cheeks and needed to lose weight. Sometimes, examining herself in the mirror, she would inhale deeply to suck in her cheeks, then tilt her head back and ask me to look at her—implying that if her cheeks were less fleshy she would be an absolute beauty.

  Then her hair. Her hair was dense and curly on the sides and she often piled it high on top of her head to make a chignon, using a big hairpin to secure it. When she wanted to be cute, she would braid her long hair and tie it with hairbands—the color of the band depended on the color of the clothes she was wearing. But the hairdo she wore most often was the free-fall style, with a part in the middle. That was the hairstyle I was drawing. I spent at least five minutes drawing the hair. Gao CK was now talking about those seminars he claimed to have attended at Stanford University with first-class scholars from all around the world.

  Her eyes. The first time I saw
them they seemed twice as big as normal people’s. When she put on makeup, she would use eyeliner and mascara, which made her eyes look even bigger, like those of the characters in Japanese anime films. The two things that most satisfied Miao Yan about her appearance were her five-foot-nine height and her enormous eyes; she was least satisfied with her 34A cup size. She collected ads for breast enlargement and said she would have the surgery someday if she could get the money.

  I felt uncomfortable and guilty when I thought of Miao Yan’s bra size. I pushed open the window behind me to let in fresh air. Miao Yan never hesitated to change her clothes in my presence. Even when removing her underwear she would hardly turn her body away. When she saw me cover my eyes with both hands she would sometimes ask me to scratch her naked back or massage her bare shoulders. Once, with her bra unfastened, she asked me to look at the few rice-size moles between her breasts and near her navel. The more embarrassed I was the more excited she would become. “Why not look at me? I’m just a girl like you. You have everything I have on my body.” She would mock me. I was often too embarrassed to know how to act and what to say.

  I drew eyebrows, ears, nose, and mouth. Now the drawing didn’t look like Miao Yan anymore. I was disappointed but continued to work at it. I added two parallel vertical lines under the head—the neck—then drew the torso, hips, arms, legs, and a pair of high-heeled shoes. She always said she wanted her hips to be fleshier, so I widened the hips and made the thighs thicker. Despite all the work, everything below the neck looked deformed—the arms were too thin and too long, the torso too short and too thick. The whole drawing seemed to have been done by a toddler.

  I held the drawing up and examined it. Something was missing. Apart from the long hair, no other features indicated that the figure was female—she had no breasts. I twiddled my pen over the paper, then remembered the porn magazine Pingping had shown me. I had never talked about that night with Miao Yan, fearing that she would make fun of me. I rapidly drew two big circles on the person’s chest and penned in dots in the middle of each circle as nipples. When I was done, I could feel my heart beating faster.