by Fan Wu
My train home was at six o’clock in the evening, the day of my eighteenth birthday. My parents had called earlier and said they would pick me up at the station. They had also asked me not to buy gifts for them so I could travel light. In the past week I had received birthday cards from my parents and a few classmates from middle school and high school. One of them said she would organize a birthday party for me to celebrate my reaching adulthood.
Yesterday I received a letter from Ar Yu. He complained about the blizzards in Michigan. He said he missed me and missed Guangzhou, though he had begun to make friends there. He also said his aunt was stricter with him than his parents. “I have to go home right after my language school and every night I have to watch English news for two hours. The English tutor she has hired for me is older than my grandma and meaner than the headmaster in my primary school. There ’s no chance for me to meet girls. One piece of good news is that I can finally decorate my own room. I bought two big posters of Michael Jackson last week.”
The results of the finals came out. I got a C–in Gao CK’s “Shakespeare and His Sonnets”—the only C–in the class, the lowest score despite my past record as his top student. I wouldn’t qualify for a “Top Student” scholarship for the coming year because it required that scores in all subjects be B+ or above. At first Pingping and Donghua were indignant for me, saying Gao CK was too narrow-minded and revengeful, then they said I was lucky that he hadn’t reported what I had done in his class to the Dean. I was actually relieved and happy—for the first time being a top student didn’t mean so much to me.
The cold wind that had been gusting for a few days finally stopped the day before my departure. Around noon the sun came out from behind thick black clouds. After lunch I took down my mosquito net and immersed it with all of my dirty sheets and clothes in a big basin full of detergent. I left the basin in the washroom to let the detergent soak in. When I was in my room packing, the speaker crackled with Dama’s voice: “301, Chen Ming. Somebody is waiting—” Then Sang Wei’s panting: “It’s me. I must speak with you.”
Both Pingping and Donghua looked at me.
“Boyfriend?” Donghua grinned.
“Oh no, just a friend,” I said. “A guy from my hometown and he…he wants me to take something home to his family.”
It was not a successful lie. Pingping laughed. “Why is your face so red?” Donghua giggled, too. I excused myself hastily and said I needed to go down to get the stuff this guy had wanted me to take to his family.
I walked to the other side of the hallway and looked at the duty room from behind a pole. There he was, pacing back and forth. It was the first time he had come to the dorm to visit me. Since the night we had parted he had written me three letters, each neatly folded and placed inside a sky-blue envelope, but I hadn’t opened them; I had put them away with the textbooks I no longer needed. I didn’t want to hear his explanation. What could he say about his past with Miao Yan anyway? On the other hand, I couldn’t deny my feelings for him.
I stayed hidden behind the pole until Sang Wei left. Afraid that Pingping and Donghua would grill me about him, I went directly to the washroom. As I was doing my laundry I became anxious. Why didn’t I dare to see him? Had I fallen in love with him? How terrible was it to fall in love with your best friend’s ex-lover!
I washed my clothes so vigorously that I could feel the material squeak in my hands. I hung up the clothes and mosquito net on the wire outside my room. They were dripping and quickly wet the hallway. I looked up at the sun and hoped it would stay for another few hours to dry my things.
When I went back to my room Pingping and Donghua were gone. A hard-covered book was on my desk: Emily Dickinson’s Complete Collection—Dama must have asked Pingping or Donghua to pick it up for me. I opened the book and saw a little card between the cover and the first page: “My train is leaving in a few hours and I’m off to the station now. It’ll be one month before I come back to the university. I don’t write romantic love poems. I only hope you can accept me. After all, the past is the past, isn’t it? Nobody can afford to live in the past.”
I decided to visit Miao Yan. The door to her room was wide open. She was alone, folding clothes. I knocked on the door. She put down a pair of jeans and smiled brightly. “I knew you’d be here. Come right in,” she said.
She wore an ankle-length gray sweater-dress, its buttons unfastened and the waist strap untied, slippers on her feet. Under the dress she was wearing a wrinkled T-shirt, fat and long like a rice bag. She seemed to have lost a lot of weight, her fleshy cheeks now sunken. Her bed had only a bamboo mat left on it and the once colorful wall decorated by her suits was now white; all the nails were gone. I looked at her desk—it was bare where her piles of books had been.
“I donated all my suits and books to a foundation for minority students,” she said happily.
“What’s going on?” My heart jumped insanely.
“Let’s talk on the rooftop. I haven’t been up there in ages.”
I followed her through the dark hallway and up the dimly lit stairs. The moment I stepped onto the rooftop I had to shade my eyes—the sun was strong, intensified, and reflected by the bare cement.
It was the first time I had visited the rooftop in the daytime. For some reason I didn’t understand it had never occurred to me to visit it other than in the evenings or at night. After my eyes had adjusted to the brightness I lowered my hands. In the broad sunlight the once mysterious rooftop—the rooftop that reminded me of the attic in my parents’ house—seemed to have lost its dramatic ambience and become normal, even ugly, like a clown without stage makeup and costume. The rusty pipes along the walls, the bare cement, even the sky all looked unreal.
“Want to sit where we met for the first time?” She walked toward the corner and sat down, taking off her slippers. When I stood in front of her she grinned and moved away from the corner a little.
I wedged myself between her and the wall, my left arm holding her right arm. She leaned her head on my shoulder. I wanted to cry.
“You didn’t put perfume on today,” I said.
“You didn’t play the violin, either.” She smiled. “I miss your playing.”
“You were packing. Where are you going?”
“My train leaves tonight. I’m sorry I can’t celebrate your birthday with you.”
“Where are you going?” I stared at her.
“Yunnan, my hometown. After I get off the train I’ll take a long bus ride to Zhaotong, then another bus to the tiny town where I went to school. It’s in the northeast part of Yunnan, at the foot of the Wumeng mountain range. Other minority groups are there, like Yi, Hui, Bai, and Buyi. They have their own languages and customs. When my grandparents were alive we lived in a thatched hut under the mountain and ate a lot of maize and buckwheat. The hut was made of mud-plastered bamboo strips. I cut my fingers so many times when I helped them split the bamboo. We spoke the Miao dialect at that time. My grandma taught me how to do embroidery, wax dyeing, and paper-cutting. She often told me that we Miao women are the prettiest and hardest-working in the world. She made all my and my brothers’ clothes. During the holidays the men in my village would play the lusheng. Have you ever seen a lusheng?”
I shook my head.
“It plays the most beautiful music I’ve ever heard. It ’s made mostly of reeds and has six pipes. It varies a lot in length, from ten inches or so to over ten feet. You play it with your mouth, as you do a trumpet. We Miao play it for holidays, funerals, or other special occasions. Sometimes a group of players play their lusheng together and the sound is bright, pleasing, and pure. Hearing that kind of music, you forget all your worries and troubles. On those days we also sing and dance all night long. Women wear their most beautiful costumes, jewelry from head to toe, and sing love songs to the men they admire. Miao women are never shy about expressing their love. Men sing, too, wooing the girls they have fallen in love with. My grandma and grandpa actually met after such a courtship. Wh
en my grandma was old she had terrible teeth but she still sang like a lark.”
I was completely engrossed. “Did she teach you how to sing?”
“She did but I don’t remember any of the songs now. After my grandparents died, my parents moved away from the mountain and became city dwellers. We no longer sang.”
“What a pity!”
“I decided to go home two days ago and a guy from my hometown got a train ticket for me through a ‘back-door’ deal. Don’t frown. He really is from my hometown. If I’d had to buy the ticket myself I might have had to wait in line a whole day. I’ve been here almost four years now and have never been back. I miss my family, my parents and brothers.”
“How many brothers do you have?”
“Two. One ’s two years older than you. His twentieth birthday was yesterday. He’s smart but didn’t get a chance to go to college. He works in the factory my ba used to work in as a bench worker. He’s the handsomest guy there and is always surrounded by girls. My other brother is only fourteen and in middle school. He ’s mature for his age and always writes, asking me to take care of myself. His biggest dream is to go to Qinghua University in Beijing to study engineering.” She smiled, looking up at the sky as if her brothers were up there waving at her.
“I heard your ba is paralyzed from a stroke and has to stay in bed.”
“He’s doing just fine.” She looked at me with narrowed eyes. “Who told you that? I don’t remember having said a word about it.”
“I just know. Does your ma have a job?”
“Yes. She ’s a cashier at a local department store.”
“Does she make enough money to support the family?” There were so many questions I wanted to ask.
“I send money back every month. My ba’s factory also gives him money from time to time. Don’t worry so much. I’m twenty-four years old and I’m the oldest. With me around my family will always be okay.”
“Just tell me if you need more money. My parents send me an allowance every month and I can also get part-time jobs. I also get scholarships every year.” I didn’t want to tell her about that C–.
“I’ll certainly borrow money from you if I need any.”
“When are you coming back?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll get married in Yunnan and never come back. I like Yunnan guys. They’re nice and honest, much better than the guys around here.”
“Who will you marry?”
“Haha, you’d better believe in me. Surely I can find a husband, can’t I? I’m pretty and I’ll have a college diploma. If the governor’s son doesn’t want to marry me, I’ll marry a mayor’s son. If I can’t marry a mayor’s son, there are dozens of bureau officers’ sons waiting in line for me.” She laughed aloud.
“You’re joking, right? Don’t marry those playboys. They won’t take good care of you. Marry a man you love who’s also nice to you.”
“You sound like my grandma. She used to tell me that.” She rubbed my nose playfully. “I’ll ask you to phone-screen the candidates. How does that sound?”
“What did you say earlier? Did you just say you might never come back?”
“Don’t worry. I’ll come back to visit you as soon as I settle down. If you had a good job in Guangdong and made lots of money you could send me plane tickets every year.” She laughed again.
“If you don’t come back next semester, how can you get your diploma?” I didn’t laugh with her.
“I forgot to tell you that my adviser loved the dissertation you wrote for me. He said he’d send my diploma.”
“Even if you don’t come back for the next semester?”
She nodded.
“Why did—?” before I could finish, Miao Yan put her hand over my mouth, a mischievous look on her face.
“I should call you ‘Miss Why.’ Don’t think about things that don’t make sense to you, will you, my poet?”
“But…but you said that you’d tell me everything as soon as I was eighteen years old. I’m turning eighteen tomorrow. You can’t leave me like this.”
“What do you want to know?”
“I want to know…about everything.” I gestured with my hands to help me think. “I want to know…about men and women, love and sex. I want to know how to date a guy. I want to know about you. You can’t leave me without telling me anything.”
“Ming,” she said, then fell silent. She put her chin on her knees, looking puzzled. “I really don’t know any more than you do. I thought I knew, but I don’t. I—”
“That’s not what you said before. I’ve been waiting for you to tell me about the secret of becoming a woman. I’ve been trying to figure it out all these months. I thought that if I was a woman, like you, you ’d like me more and tell me everything about your life. I was even trying to get a boyfriend. I thought that if I had a boyfriend you’d talk to me about things like men, women, and love and would treat me equally. I don’t want to be a girl anymore. How am I supposed to grow up without you around?” I stood up, afraid that tears would pour from my suddenly flooded heart.
She stood up as well, but only to press me back down.
“Listen to me. You’ll be all right. You might even have a better life without me around. I’m a bad influence and a selfish person. After I leave you’ll have time to go to the library, date, get to know other people. What do I know? I don’t know about men and women. I don’t know what I want. I don’t even know much about myself. What can be worse than not knowing about yourself? Don’t blame me, Ming. I’m not a good person to teach you anything about men and women. For a long while I was confused, I just wanted to punish men for what I had suffered. When I finally fell in love with Du Sheng I couldn’t even make him love me. I’m such a failure.”
“If I was a guy I’d marry you, so you wouldn’t go back to Yunnan and wouldn’t marry someone you might not like. So we would stay together and be best friends until forever. I don’t know if my life would be the same if you weren’t around. I don’t know if I ever want to make love to a man or ever want to get married.” These words came out of my mouth so strongly that I knew I had always wanted to say them. I grabbed her hands, much more tightly than either of us expected.
She stared at me, her lips quivering. I let go of her hands, wondering what she would say. She put her hands on my cheeks, her palms warm and moist—she had never touched my face before, not with both hands, not with such seriousness. I studied her—her eyes, her nose, her mouth, her freckles, every inch of her face. I didn’t blink.
She kissed me on the forehead. The kiss, my first kiss from someone other than my parents, was tender, like a breeze. “Silly girl. You’re such a silly girl. You’ll marry someone you love, who loves you. You’ll make love to the man who’s destined to appear in your life. It’s as inevitable as the fact that you’ll be eighteen years old tomorrow. You’ll become a woman before you know it.”
“Why do girls have to become women?”
“It’s not up to us. Every girl will become a woman sooner or later, in her own way.”
I didn’t want to believe it but I knew it was silly not to. “Do you have cigarettes with you? May I smoke?” I said.
“Of course,” she said, but she didn’t move, her hands still on my cheeks. We stared at each other, face to face, and neither of us said anything.
“Oh yes, the cigarette.” She lowered her hands. She took a pack of Salem and a lighter from her pocket. “You can never change yourself much. I’ve tried so many brands in the past few months but still went back to the same brand and even the same lighter.”
She inserted a cigarette between my lips and struck the lighter.
I inhaled deeply but instead of exhaling, I swallowed the smoke. I coughed severely and Miao Yan had to pat my back to help me cough the smoke from my chest.
“So you’ve never smoked before.” She laughed.
“I don’t like the brand,” I said, my face red after I had stopped coughing. “Why don’t you smoke with m
e?”
“I quit. Weren’t you always at me to quit? There was only one cigarette in this box and it was for you. Look! It’s empty.” She threw the empty box up, caught it with both hands, and tore it open. “Look! It’s empty.” She laughed loudly.
I frowned, stared at her incredulously, and laughed with her. We laughed so hard that tears came to our eyes. I hadn’t laughed so heartily for a long time.
She held my hand and we walked to the other side of the roof. In front of us was a vista with red-roofed buildings, green trees, and glittering lakes. “How I love this university!” she said. She took a deep breath and opened her arms slowly, eyes closed. When she opened her eyes again she asked, “How do you want to celebrate your eighteenth birthday?”
“No plan yet. I’ve always wished that something unforgettable would happen that day. Something I’d remember my whole life. I mean, something big and significant that would tell me that from now on I’m an adult. But it looks as though nothing will happen.”
“It’s too early to say. The most magical things always take place at the last minute.” Suddenly she looked concerned. “Can you promise me one thing?”
I nodded.
“Can you promise me that you’d never deny someone because of me?”
“Like whom?”
“Just promise me.”
“Okay. I promise.”
I thought immediately of Du Sheng. Somehow I felt she was referring to him. I hadn’t heard from him since the last time he told me on the phone to keep an eye on Miao Yan.
“How’s everything between you and Du Sheng?” I asked.
“There’s nothing left between us now, not even friendship. We aren’t meant for each other,” she said candidly.
“But you love him, right?”
“I don’t know. I thought so. I’m not sure anymore. For a while, I desperately wanted him back. I went to Shenzhen to see him so often, hoping he’d change his mind. I read books he liked. I even tried to quit smoking. I never thought I’d love a man like that. But sometimes I asked myself whether it was really love or more of a reflection of my fear of being hurt again. Since I started at university, I ’d been gripped by the fear that I would have to go back to my hometown. I wanted to escape Yunnan, my family, my own memory. I ’d been wanting so much for somebody to protect me. I finally thought it through when I was in Shenzhen, when I was lying on the operating table: you can never forget the past unless you face up to it.
