Like Spilled Water

by Jennie Liu

  Down farther below ground. For a moment I’m speechless, with a smothering sensation in my chest. Cheaper, smaller, darker? I’m sick that they have to live like this. I don’t want to mention Mr. Zhang now, but I’m afraid not to. “Mama, the rent collector was here.”

  “I know. I saw him in the lobby.”

  “He said you’re two months late. Will he let you move when you owe so much already?”

  “I gave him some money. We’re okay for now. At least with the rent. But we have some other debts.” The muscles at her jaw twitch, then tighten as if she’s trying to compose herself. She grabs my hand and pulls me over to sit on the bed. “Listen, Na . . .” She trails off when she notices the scratch on my face, and she runs her finger under it. “What’s this?”

  “Nothing. It was an accident. When Baba . . . got sick.”

  “Baba did this?” A look of horror comes over her.

  “Mama, it’s nothing! You saw how he was. I was just trying to get him to sit, and he . . . stumbled. He has that long pinky nail. It was an accident.” I’m blathering, but I just want her to stop worrying.

  Her hand slides off my cheek. “An accident.” The distant, hollow Mama is back.

  “Mama.” I grip her forearm and shake it gently. “What were you going to tell me?”

  She blinks several times before she focuses on me again. “Baba has to go home. To Willow Tree. He’s not able to work like this. You have to take him home. I’ll finish moving us down to the new apartment while you’re gone. After you get Baba settled, then you have to come back here. We’ll get you a position. Na, with the debts and Baba not working, we need you to help out now.”

  “Of course,” I say, nodding vigorously. I want to help all I can. “If I take Baba this week and come back right away, I can start looking for something. I’ll have six or seven weeks to work before school starts up.”

  Mama cocks her head and looks at me for a long moment with the saddest expression. “No, Na.” She shakes her head mournfully. “There’s no more school for you.”

  7

  When Mama tells me that I’m not going back to school, that I have to go to work, I swallow the news like bitter medicine. Parents make the decisions, and we must go along with them. They allowed me to go to high school and one year of college, but now I’m needed to ease their burden. It’s another unexpected blow, but of course I can’t argue, or protest, or even try to come up with other alternatives. Not after everything that’s happened.

  We clean up the apartment in silence, both us working in sort of a daze. As I make dinner, eat, and try to sleep, the words No more school for you rise up like a lump in my throat again and again, but I gulp them down. My self-pity is blunted by the image of Baba sick and raging, the picture of him cradling Bao-bao, and the sight of Mama moving around like a dreamwalker during the day and tossing around sleepless at night. The situation is tenuous here and my own disappointment is paltry in comparison.

  On Sunday, Mama gets Baba installed in the front room drinking tea so I can start packing up Bao-bao’s things. She is going to work again, another extra shift, although I try to talk her out of it.

  “I need to work!” she snaps at me. Her hands fly to her temple and she squeezes her eyes shut. “The money . . .” she starts to explain, shifting to a softer, placating tone, but I know that she must be trying to bury herself in work. She takes another deep breath and collects her purse. “When you start work, I’ll cut back,” she promises.

  She leaves, and I’m left with Baba and the awful feeling of resignation. Baba is sitting up in the bed with his legs stretched out and his eyes closed. I can tell he’s just dozing because his hands are wrapped around his jar of tea. My hand goes up to my cheek where he scratched me. I can barely feel the line of it.

  I take two of the boxes Mama brought in last night and enter Bao-bao’s room. His urn is on the desk. The golden edging that snakes between the colored enamel glints in the circle of lamplight, and the white oval where Bao-bao’s photo should be seems to follow me like a great unblinking eye.

  I turn my back to it and begin to sort the textbooks and notebooks. Mama mentioned selling them, but I want to keep some of them for myself, especially the history and English language ones. Perhaps in the evenings after my workday, I’ll have time to study and read. There won’t be much room in the second sublevel apartment Mama showed me last night, so I’ll have to lug some of them to Willow Tree Village. I work rapidly to put them into the boxes. I avoid looking at the urn, but even so, I sense its presence. For a moment I consider moving it out to the front room, but I don’t want to do anything that might disrupt Baba’s mellow mood.

  The stuff on the wall comes down next. The school certificates, the calendar, posters. On the wall near the low iron footrail of the bed, there’s a sheet of red paper with a quote in English.

  I untack it and hold it closer to the lamp. Freedom is a strange thing. Once you’ve experienced it, it remains in your heart, and no one can take it away. —Ai Weiwei

  Ai Weiwei is a famous artist and political activist. I don’t know much about him other than that he was one of the primary designers of the Bird’s Nest Olympic Stadium and has been in trouble for being critical of the government. I’m surprised to see the quote here on Bao-bao’s wall. Although Bao-bao was interested in art once, I always thought he quit after middle school. The words are hand-painted in yellow, the streaks of the brush visible like slashes. Bao-bao must have painted it himself, as if the line held a powerful meaning for him.

  It remains in your heart, and no one can take it away. The statement is hopeful and defiant. I try to imagine Bao-bao lying on his bed, staring at the words, trying to draw strength from them.

  But the boy I see is hopeless and sad. Someone who has given up. I didn’t know the struggle he was going through, and I don’t understand how he scored so poorly on the test, but the shame of it, of failing our parents, anyone can understand that. Even if his reaction still seems staggeringly drastic.

  I slip the little poster between two notebooks and then start to strip the bed. On an impulse, I bend back the thin mattress, thinking of where I keep my English notebooks and workbooks at school.

  My heart skips a beat when I see a folder lying on the grid of wire that holds the mattress. I pull it out, let the mattress flop back into place, and sink down on the rumpled sheets. As soon as I open the folder, I inhale sharply. Inside is an image of a proud, pointy-nosed fox with nine tails swishing out behind him in fiery shades of red-orange, tipped in white. I’ve seen it before. The girl in the courtyard had this exact image tattooed on her shoulder.

  I pick up the sheet to hold it closer to the light and find that there’s another drawing in the folder. This one’s a portrait, a headshot done in pencil. Right away, I recognize the girl in the courtyard. The lift of her chin and set of her open mouth are drawn so deftly, there’s no mistake. Her hair flows from her face like rays of the sun. Did Bao-bao draw these? I wonder who she is. Clearly, she meant something to him. Was she his girlfriend? But he was only seventeen, and I would guess she’s a few years older than me, probably in her twenties.

  I plop down on the bed, examining the portrait. That Bao-bao would even know an older girl this striking, with a tattoo, fractures my mind. All these years, Mama never mentioned Bao-bao’s friends, and the way she explained his schedule, it seemed that he didn’t have time for any. Obviously, she didn’t know about this girl, since she paid no attention to her when we passed her in the courtyard and the lobby.

  And when did Bao-bao find time for drawing? These illustrations are so well done, so beautifully styled, they suggest that Bao-bao probably kept drawing all through high school. When we were left behind together in Willow Tree, he drew trees, animals, even insects. Even back then I was struck by his talent. Nainai and I admired his drawings until she had to say, Now get back to your homework. Sometimes when Bao-bao balked at having to study I’d tell him I would write a story while he did his work, and th
en he could draw the pictures for the story when I was finished.

  I smile, remembering how that always worked.

  ***

  Mr. Hu comes to stay with Baba so I can start to clean the new apartment and move some things. I go down alone with a broom, a dustpan, and the trash can. Mama has given me a key. I let myself in and yank on the string attached to the caged bulb in the center of the low ceiling.

  The room is dank, smelling of dead mice, and the previous tenant has left the floor littered with newspapers, rags, and cigarette butts. I sweep, trying not to let the walls close in on me, trying not to sink into despair about my shrinking future here in this room. I keep the broom swishing and speed through the cleaning, desperate to get out of here.

  Twenty minutes later I’m out in the passageway, locking the door. I hear the flap of slippers, and I squint in the low light to see someone in a red tank top and shorts stop at the end of the hall, letting herself into an apartment. It’s the girl from the courtyard.

  I dash back upstairs, nod at Mr. Hu, and grab a box of Bao-bao’s textbooks. The drawings in the folder I found are tucked in with the books. Baba’s awake and staring at the ceiling. He doesn’t even look my way when I leave.

  Downstairs, I put the books in the new room, remove the folder with Bao-bao’s drawings, and carry them to the girl’s apartment. I knock. She swings the door open, holding a phone to her ear. Her brows lift and I know she recognizes me, but she stays on the phone.

  A tinny voice screeches through the line, “If you’re not there I will come over and pick you up!”

  “Okay, Ma, okay,” the girl answers, “I’ll meet you. I’ll see you there.” She clicks off and gazes at me expectantly.

  I open the folder and show her the portrait. “Is this you?” I ask.

  She takes it. Her face seems to melt as she examines it for several moments before she looks back to me with a pained expression. “I’m Min. You’re Bao-bao’s sister?”

  I nod. “Na.” She opens the door and gestures at me to come in. I see her room is even smaller than ours down the hall, but it has the same low ceiling and naked bulb overhead. Strings of colored lights are draped over the shelves and across the room. A desk with a laptop on it is crammed against the bed, and shelves overloaded with clothes and books are fastened to almost all the wall space.

  “You look just like him.” Her two forefingers trace a heart in the air, indicating the shape of the face Bao-bao and I shared.

  “How did you know him?” I ask.

  “He used to come to the internet café I go to.”

  I blink back my surprise. “Internet café? Why didn’t he just use the internet at school?”

  “He hung out there often. Started coming with his basketball friends to play League of Legends. Then he started coming over more and more—skipping classes!” She shakes her head like he was a silly kid, so I know there was no romantic interest. At least on her part.

  “I go to the café to work.” She flips her hand toward her laptop and the shelf over the desk with camera equipment. “The internet is so slow down here. He always wanted to see the photos I was working on. After we talked about what we would want if we ever got tattoos, he drew this.” She holds up the illustration of the nine-tailed fox against the twin image tattooed on her shoulder. “I liked it so much, I actually got it done.”

  I’m speechless, picturing this Bao-bao. I’ve only ever heard about how Bao-bao was studying, choosing his education track, practicing English. This guy who played basketball and video games, designed tattoos, skipped classes, I’ve never known. And our parents? Did they know?

  “I’m sorry about what happened,” Min says. She pushes the desk’s rolling stool at me.

  I nod dumbly and move to sit down, wanting to ask her more, but it’s almost too much to take in. No wonder he scored so poorly on the gaokao.

  “They must be so devastated,” Min says. “I heard it was rat poison. I just don’t . . .” She trails off with a doubtful curl to her lip. “I can’t believe it,” she murmurs. They’re the same words I’ve said to myself dozens of times, but coming from her they seem to carry more weight. She knew Bao-bao, whereas I did not.

  “Was he unhappy?” I ask.

  She smooths the black comforter covering her bed and sits down, the folder open to the portrait beside her. “I didn’t see that he was.”

  “But with all the pressure of the gaokao? My parents?”

  She hikes her shoulder in an uncertain shrug. “He didn’t let it bother him so much. He seemed very casual about the bad grades. Your parents berated him and nagged him, but somehow he could just let it roll off.”

  “I never knew about any of that.” I’m stunned by what she is saying. “Mama never said.”

  “For a while, he was practically addicted to video games. It got to where he would hardly even stop to talk to me when he got up to get a Red Bull or snacks. Your baba came there last year and dragged him home. But he didn’t stop coming even after your baba tried to keep him from it. He said they had you. That you could be their little emperor for a while.”

  I’m taken aback. Bao-bao talked about me, thought about me? And the remark seems to have a tinge of contempt, resentment. But not at me, surely. I know about resentment, and Bao-bao certainly had no reason to envy me.

  All this is too much swimming in my head. I thank Min for talking to me, tell her I have to go, and head back upstairs.

  8

  After Mr. Hu leaves I move a few more boxes and get Baba some lunch. All the while my mind is on Bao-bao, this rebellious Bao-bao, the one who had to be dragged away from the internet café. I just can’t believe that Mama never let on about any of it. It rankles that she never told me. I don’t know why she didn’t, but I know I can’t ask her now.

  My curiosity to know more gets the better of me, and as soon as Baba falls asleep after lunch, I slip back down to Min’s.

  “I have to meet my ma at the park,” she tells me when she answers the door. She’s now dressed in a pencil skirt, flats, and navy boat-neck shirt as if she’s going to work in an office. Her tattoo is completely covered. “Come over tomorrow night?”

  “I can’t.” Her friendliness is a balm to the last grim days, and I’m disappointed that I can’t go. “I’m taking my baba home to our village tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Walk to the park with me, then. It’s not far. You can turn around when we get there, be back in thirty or forty minutes.”

  I want to go but I dither, anxious about Baba. He did have several gulps of baijiu just before he moved back to the bedroom and fell asleep, and I did leave the bottle on the desk beside him, adding some water to it like Mama instructed. The impulse to leave the basement overcomes me, so I agree.

  We proceed along the poorly-lit corridor, surface up in the lobby and step outside. The air is hot and thick with the ever-present fug of the city, but it comes as a relief.

  The courtyard is buzzing with hovering parents and children pedaling their tricycles and scooters. It’s almost festive with the voices rising above the noise from the highway overpasses. Because it’s Sunday, many of the factories are closed and there’s much less traffic thrumming overhead.

  Min walks at a brisk pace even though she’s wearing heels. I thought I wanted to ask about Bao-bao, but at the moment, it’s like I’ve shed a great heaviness, and I can’t bear to bring up anything sad.

  We don’t talk for several blocks. I have to work to keep up with her. Her camera bag hangs across her shoulders and bounces on her hip. Her hair is smoothed and pulled back tightly. The eyeliner she wears is blue but otherwise, her appearance is professional, almost conservative.

  “Have you ever been to the Marriage Market?” Min asks.

  I shake my head.

  “Got a boyfriend?”

  I shrug. There’s Gilbert, but not really.

  She raises her eyebrows at my vague answer but doesn’t pry any further. “My ma goes to the Marriage Market almost every week to
look for my perfect match. She hounds me to go with her, constantly after me to get married. Are you dating? Do you have a boyfriend? When are you going to bring someone home? She started it all up as soon as I finished college.” She snorts in annoyance. “Never wanted me to have anything to do with boys while I was in school, then expects me to get married the moment I graduate.”

  “You haven’t met anyone yet?”

  “Not at the Marriage Market! I’ll walk around with her, looking at the profiles, getting drilled by parents with questions. How old are you? That’s always the first question. What’s your position, how much money do you make? I hate it! There’s no way I’m going to pick someone based on their stats—how much money they make, their apartment, their car.”

  “But you go?” A mother’s will is always strong, but Min seems so different than the girls I go to school with.

  “Yes, I go.” She bows her head, miming the attitude of a good daughter. “But only a couple times a year. Enough to keep her somewhat satisfied. And actually, today, I’m going because of a project I’m working on.” She pats her camera bag.

  “You’re a photographer?” I’ve never met anyone who did that for a living. It certainly isn’t a track of study at Linfen Coal Economic College.

  “Yes.”

  “You make money doing that?”

  She laughs. “Yes. I do a lot of pre-wedding photos, but I also do a lot of commercial work, styling for photo shoots and some other things. I’m working on an art installation and video now. It might not make me any money, but it should help with my business. My parents are very upset that I quit my communications job last year.”

  Her confidence isn’t something I’m used to and I wonder what communications work entails. I want to ask her, but we’ve reached the park. The wide, paved path is crowded with old people and strolling couples. Hawkers run battery-operated toys and spinning tops right in the path of children and parents, driving the foot traffic into the grass despite the signs that order people to stay off.