Like Spilled Water

by Jennie Liu

  Farther down the winding path, after we pass under an ornamental bridge, the crowd really thickens. Open umbrellas of every color are lined up on the ground on both sides of the walkway, each one with a single sheet of paper stuck on them. More sheets, some encased in plastic sleeves, hang off fencing and are laid out on the benches or along stone walls.

  Min stops and pulls out her camera. I squint over the heads to read one of the sheets.

  Male Taiyuan resident

  Born 1994

  Height: 175cm

  Profession: Accounting

  Income: 7,500/mo.

  Honest, doesn’t drink or gamble

  Apartment: Owns

  Looking for Taiyuan female with good temperament, at least 165cm

  “Those are stat sheets,” Min explains as she clicks on a lens. “Everything that matters about your future spouse.” She lifts the camera and begins to take photos of the crowd.

  While she works, I study other profiles. Some of them are handwritten, others are printed like professional resumes. Some of them feature photos of the intended, but hardly any of them talk about personality or interests. I wonder how many people have really found their true match at this market.

  The crowd shifts around me slowly. People are squinting at the stat sheets, taking notes, having urgent conversations. It’s almost as if they’re bargaining at the wet market over the quality and price of pork or mutton. I notice that almost everyone here is middle-aged or older. I nudge Min. “Where are all the young people?”

  She sniffs out a laugh. “It’s mostly the parents here, looking for their kids’ spouses. The kids probably don’t even know that their parents are out here trying to set them up.”

  I pull out my phone and snap a photo of a line of stat sheets strung between two trees. I text it to Gilbert, knowing he’ll be amused.

  Min asks, “How old are you?”

  “Nineteen.”

  “Ah! Prime age! You’d better watch out. They’ll be after you.” She aims the camera and begins to photograph two men showing each other photos on their phone. “And you go to vocational college? No aspiration for a PhD?”

  I shrug. I did have aspirations, although I never imagined anything as grand as a PhD. “I don’t know if I’ll be going back to college. After I take my baba home, I may have to go to work to help my family.” I don’t know why I say may have to, because I know it’s already decided.

  Min gives me a sympathetic look. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, my mama tells me the All-China Women’s Federation says, Pretty girls don’t need a lot of education to marry into a rich or powerful family. And, By the time you finish your MA or PhD, you’re already old, like yellow pearls.” I know she’s being sarcastic because she makes a face.

  “There you are!” A woman in a mushroom-shaped sun hat barrels toward us, pushing through the crush of parents. “Why are you pulling that ugly face? Stop it!” I assume it’s Min’s ma. There’s a lanyard around her neck with a large clear plastic sleeve. On the slip of paper inside, I see Min’s stats. “What are you doing with that camera? Put it away! And where’s your hat? Your face is going to get tanned.”

  Min lets her mother’s berating comments pass over her. Although she lowers the camera, she doesn’t put it in the bag. “Ma, this is Na.”

  Min’s ma notices me for the first time. She scrutinizes me. “How old are you?”

  Min chuckles. Her ma throws her a look of annoyance before turning back to me.

  After I tell her my age, she spins back to Min. “See! Already looking, and just nineteen. She has good sense! Why didn’t you have the good sense to start earlier? You’re twenty-six! Already almost leftovers!” She pulls a book out of her purse and pushes it at Min.

  Min and I both look at the title. You Should Marry Before You’re Thirty.

  Min gives a little shake of her head and closes her eyes briefly as if trying to summon up more patience.

  “Put that in your bag and read it at home,” her ma says. “You need to get serious about this, right now. No man will want you once you’re past childbearing age!”

  Min closes her eyes for another moment, her lips drawn out in a tight line. I find myself expecting her to make a joke or sarcastic comment, but her ma tears the lanyard from around her own neck, slips it over Min’s head, and tries to take the camera off of her. Min places her hand firmly on the strap until her ma releases it. Only after that does she stuff the book inside her bag.

  “You want to come with us?” Min asks me.

  “No!” Min’s ma says firmly. “We have to get serious. No good to have another girl around!” She pushes Min toward the crowd, instructing her to stay close, to smile, to be polite.

  Min twists around and raises a hand to wave at me. “Come see me again when you get back from your village.”

  I wave back and try to inch my way out of the crush. People, parents are beginning to examine me. One woman plants herself in my path and puts her face right up to mine. “How old are you?” she demands.

  I duck my head and swiftly exit the park.

  9

  The next afternoon, Baba and I are on the bus to Willow Tree Village. Bao-bao’s urn is in his lap, the gold strips between the enamel inlay glinting in the sun that streams through the window. Despite the heat, Baba is wearing a jacket—and tucked inside it is an old soda bottle filled with tea and baijiu, which he nips from occasionally.

  Before we left the apartment, he and Mama argued about whether Bao-bao’s urn should stay in Taiyuan or go to the village. Their voices were wheedling at first but rapidly grew heated, until Baba hissed that if Bao-bao stayed with Mama, he’d be left alone in the apartment all day while she and I went to work. Mama fell silent after that, with a muscle twitching at her jawline, as if she wanted to say more but knew that what Baba said was true. Baba calmed down then and promised to bring him back to her when he got better. I knew then that there’d be no funeral service for Bao-bao. Parents aren’t supposed to show respect to their child, the cremation clerk said.

  On the bus, Baba murmurs to the urn every now and then until he finally moves his unfocused eyes in my direction. “So you got a position?”

  I make a noise of assent and look down at my hands, my insides withering. Just this morning I went to the scrap metal plant with Mama, and her boss said he would have a place in the sorting room on the night shift in about two weeks.

  Mama was hoping he’d give me a better position, something more in line with what I’ve learned at school. But coal and scrap metal have little in common, and the boss said sorting was all he could offer right now. Mama says I can look for something better later in the year once we catch up on our debts, but it’s best to have something set for when I return from Willow Tree. At least I have two weeks to get used to the idea of working in the plant.

  “Good.” Baba’s head tilts back against the seat. “You went to the high school, and I thought that was more than enough, but your mama, she said it wouldn’t hurt to let you keep going to the college as long as we could afford it. Now it’s time to go to work.”

  He turns to look out the window, to the flat, barren landscape we speed past with the occasional dilapidated buildings near the highway.

  I turn away, trying not to think about the future, trying to suppress the flare of irritation at his tone, but Baba rambles on.

  “We’ve spent too much money on school for your brother.” His hand slips inside his jacket to bring out the baijiu-laced tea. He unscrews the lid and drinks deeply. “Better to work. You’re almost twenty. Soon you’ll find a boyfriend, get married.”

  My phone pings.

  Marriage market? It’s Gilbert, responding to the photo I sent him yesterday. He adds the frightened face emoji.

  Baba glances at the phone. I quickly tuck it under my leg before he sees the text. “Baba, do you want to put that”—I gesture to the urn—“between us?”

  Baba shakes his head. He clamps the urn between his knees, placing his
free hand on it protectively.

  I close my eyes and pretend I’m going to sleep. At least in Willow Tree, Nainai will be around to help with Baba. And Gilbert will be there, getting ready to start his new job as a mining operations associate in a neighboring township. I hope that he has time to see me. I’m sorry we missed our long bus ride home from college, the last one we would have had together.

  Soft snores rattle from Baba’s throat. He’s fallen asleep against the window.

  I pull out my phone and scroll back to the messages Gilbert sent me with links about students taking their own lives. I don’t want to see the video of the boy jumping out the window again, but I type in another search with similar keywords.

  I scroll through a list of articles once it finally loads. I click on one that mentions depression in the title. It’s written by a psychiatrist who talks about the role of depression and anxiety in suicide. It quotes a young woman whose cousin killed herself: I would visit her sometimes but I didn’t know she was so unhappy. I knew she had worries about money, her in-laws—like we all do—but she had a house, a husband. Sometimes she seemed quiet, but everyone is so busy, no one ever stops to consider if their feelings are normal. I know they call it depression now, but no one out here likes to talk about that kind of thing.

  The article goes on to stress that depression is a mental illness that can show itself in many ways, including by driving people to self-destructive behavior. It says that people suffering from depression may not have any specific reason for feeling hopeless, but that outside circumstances can exacerbate their illness.

  Bao-bao and I haven’t talked much these last several years. For the two weeks in February during the Spring Festival, if he wasn’t studying or sleeping in our room, he had his face glued to his phone or to the TV. Although Mama and Baba would chatter to anyone who stopped by to visit about his schedule and workload, he always ignored them, only greeting them when prompted. I thought he was spoiled and rude, but was he actually depressed?

  And what Min told me about Bao-bao—skipping school, not caring about his rankings, flouting our parents’ plans for him and doing what he wanted—does that fit in with depression?

  I don’t know. Like the woman who was interviewed for the article, I’m not used to thinking about this sort of thing. Mental illness. Back home it’s considered embarrassing at best, shameful at worst.

  The article says depression and anxiety are treatable. But I doubt my parents would have even noticed if Bao-bao was showing the symptoms of despair the article outlines. And even if they had, they would’ve had no idea how to help him. They would’ve simply urged him to pull himself together.

  I study Baba while he sleeps. His forehead is creased and a sharp line cuts between his brows as if he’s having a troubling dream. My hard feelings toward Bao-bao steal back in. He threw away all the opportunities our parents gave him, when I would have done anything for the same treatment. And now, what little I had is being taken away.

  Baba mumbles beside me. “Bao-bao, Bao-bao. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have . . .”

  Even in sleep Baba can’t escape the guilt he must be carrying for pushing too hard. My frustration at him fades, replaced with pity.

  10

  When we get off the bus in Willow Tree, I hire a tricycle cart to transport the two large polyethylene bags full of Bao-bao’s things to our yaodong at the edge of the village. I stashed some of the textbooks I wanted to keep in the apartment, but Mama couldn’t bear to throw out Bao-bao’s composition books and his clothes just yet. There wasn’t room for them in the new apartment, so I lugged them here.

  As the cart pulls ahead, I coax Baba to walk, wanting him to sober up as much as possible for Nainai. He drags along with his head down. We trudge down the paved main street, past the karaoke bar, the hair salon, and the internet café. Five or six streets make up the village center. It’s grown to almost a town. A mix of old and new buildings house the shops, billiards halls, and hole-in-the-wall restaurants, everything coated in the brown silt of the mountains.

  I’m sure Baba is hoping to avoid running into anyone we know, just like I am. Most of the residents are elderly people and children, along with a few men who still work the family lots. Everyone else has gone off to school or migrated to the cities to work. But with Baba holding Bao-bao’s fancy urn, the children stop in the street to stare, while the shopkeepers peer out the windows and doors.

  I steel myself for someone to say something, but we make it to the edge of the village without anyone grilling us. I wonder if Nainai or Gilbert has told anyone.

  The hilly dirt lanes that spread out to the surrounding fields are lined with crumbling brown-brick houses and yaodongs, the common cave-shaped homes dug into the hillsides. Brick and wood enclose the front of each dwelling with a door and a single window, both framed within the arch. Several white tile houses have been built in and around the village, paid for by families’ grown children who’ve gone away to work.

  Nainai lives just outside the village in a two-room yaodong. As we approach the low brick wall enclosing her courtyard, I see the bags have been delivered. I catch sight of her silvery head and rail-thin frame bent over as she tries to drag one of the bags inside. It’s way too heavy for her.

  “Nainai! Stop!” I shout.

  She squints out against the sun until she catches sight of us. Instantly she drops the handles of the bag and straightens up. Her tanned, lined face is instantly wet with tears. Seeing her cry makes my chest hurt, and Baba begins to choke out sobs. He holds out the urn as he walks up to Nainai, who is swiping away tears but doesn’t make any noise. She pushes aside the quilt tacked over the open doorway and ushers us into the house.

  The long, tunnel-shaped room is cool thanks to the surrounding packed earth. Nainai gestures to Baba to put Bao-bao’s urn on the kang, the hip-high brick platform that takes up almost half the room. Bao-bao and I used to sleep, eat, and study on it until Nainai got a table and stools to place near the brick stove that’s attached to the end of the kang.

  Baba collapses onto one of the stools at the table, and Nainai stands behind him, squeezing his shoulder and shaking her head in grief. I hang back, not knowing what to do with myself. Light from the large window reflects off the whitewashed curved ceiling, with electrical cords crossing to the hanging bulbs and old boxy TV set in the corner of the kang near the stove. Newspapers and pictures from old calendars cover the wall, and several large frames with family photos hang near Nainai’s padded chair. At the back of the room two large wardrobes section off the cot where Nainai sleeps.

  It all looks exactly as it always has, cluttered yet tidy, but it’s so strange to see Baba sitting at the table with his shoulders slumped, knowing he grew up here years before me and has now returned to be taken care of, indefinitely.

  I hear a voice calling from outside. I spin around and push back the quilt to see Gilbert. He’s wearing a button-down, short-sleeved shirt and has smoothed his bangs to the side. The wave of relief that washes over me is enormous. I beam at him as I let him in.

  His brows flash up above his glasses as he grins back at me, but he quickly rearranges his face. When he sees Nainai and Baba, he nods at them gravely and mutters, “I hope you don’t mind me stopping by. My grandma is so sorry for you. She wants to come to see you, and she sends you these eggs.” He steps over to thrust a box toward Nainai.

  Nainai takes it and sets it on the kang beside Bao-bao’s urn. “Yes. Okay. I . . .” She averts her eyes and stammers, “Tell her okay. Come see us. I didn’t know how to . . . couldn’t talk about it . . .”

  I swallow a lump in my throat as it sinks in that Nainai hasn’t told anyone, not even Gilbert’s grandma, who is probably her closest friend. She’s been alone with her heartbreak, probably ashamed of the suicide, afraid of the gossip.

  Baba stares dully at Gilbert.

  “Have you eaten?” I ask Gilbert awkwardly, trying to drive some normalcy into the situation. It works and Nainai moves t
oward the stove.

  “Yes, already eaten.” He lowers his voice. “Can you come out for a little bit?”

  I want to go, eager to be away from all the gloominess, but we’ve just gotten here. I start to say no, but Nainai flicks her hand for me to go ahead.

  Gilbert mumbles his goodbye. Baba doesn’t answer and we slip out the door.

  When we’re outside of the courtyard and a good distance down the path, Gilbert stops near a pile of large stones someone has collected for a wall. “Na! What the fuck! I don’t know what to say.”

  “Nothing to say. It’s terrible.” I pick up some small pebbles and chuck them over the hillside.

  He climbs up to the top of the pile and sits on the rocks. “How did it happen? I mean . . . that sounds macabre, I don’t mean how exactly, but . . .”

  “It’s all right.” So far, without anyone to talk to, I’ve been keeping everything bottled up. I’m glad to talk. “He swallowed rat poison.” The words are still a shock to my ears. Such an unimaginable act. I just hope that it was painless, quick.

  Gilbert shudders. “But . . . why? Was it really the gaokao?”

  “Mama’s neighbor said that’s what the authorities determined. My parents don’t talk about anything. They’re too upset. I read those articles you sent. I guess it was like what happened to those kids—too much pressure, maybe combined with depression. My parents are devastated, blaming themselves. Mama is silent, like an empty shell. She goes to work every chance she can. Baba, he’s been drinking and sleeping all the time. He can’t work. That’s why I had to bring him back.”

  I worry that I’m revealing too much, telling him things I shouldn’t, betraying my family by exposing their secrets, but I can’t hold back.

  “I just can’t believe it!” Gilbert says.

  “It’s all so unreal. I don’t believe Baba ever drank like this except at the Spring Festival. Maybe he did, I don’t know. And Bao-bao.” I shake my head. “It’s like I never knew him. I thought he was such a hard-working student. But I met a friend of his, an older girl who told me Bao-bao skipped school to play video games. He designed a tattoo for this girl. A tattoo! That she has on her shoulder. It’s like he was a completely different person than I thought.”