The Interior (21 page)

“Right next to the building?” she inquired. “On the steps? Up against the wall?”

“No, she was on the dirt. I’d say seven to ten feet from the building.”

“And how did she look?”

“How do you think?” he asked impatiently. “Her head was flat. There was lots of blood.”

Hulan closed her eyes and slouched back in the chair. “On her side? Face up?”

“Face up.”

Her eyes still closed, Hulan nodded grimly as if she’d seen the body herself. “Do you know what Peanut said?” she asked. “She said that Xiao Yang—Little Yang, that’s the dead woman—wouldn’t be coming back. I thought she was joking. At the time I thought she meant that Xiao Yang’s injuries were so bad she’d have to go home. But now I see Peanut meant something quite different.”

“Don’t read anything into this, Hulan.”

Hulan slowly opened her eyes and stared at David. “I’m only responding to what you saw.”

“I saw a woman who jumped from a building and died.”

“Look at it with me: A woman gets her arm half torn off. She loses a lot of blood. She’s probably in shock. She can’t walk off the factory floor—”

“Aaron Rodgers said he carried her to his office, but that doesn’t mean she couldn’t walk.”

“
I’m
telling you she couldn’t walk.” Hulan waited for David to challenge her again. When he didn’t, she continued, “He takes her somewhere—”

“His office…”

“And goes for help.” David nodded, and Hulan went on. “Now, you’re suggesting that Xiao Yang gets up, climbs a set of stairs, somehow finds her way onto the roof, goes to the edge of the building, and jumps?”

“That’s what happened.”

“David, think about that building. If you were on the second-floor roof and you jumped, do you think you would die?”

“Probably not, might break an ankle, though.” He smiled, but Hulan would have none of it.

“So you’d go feet first?”

“Yeah, I suppose.”

“Then how do you explain the fact that Xiao Yang landed ten feet from the building, with her head crushed?”

“What are you suggesting?”

“Someone threw her off the building,” Hulan said gravely.

David disagreed. “If you jump, your body’s going to have a forward trajectory. Even if she landed on her feet, she’d have to fall forward or backward. If the circumstances are right, the momentum could be enough to cause that damage.”

“Three weeks ago Miaoshan supposedly kills herself. Today Xiao Yang also kills herself. Doesn’t that seem strange to you?”

“Look, it’s terrible what happened to Miaoshan, and it’s sad what happened to that poor woman today, but you’re seeing murder where there’s only suicide. These things are tragic, but that’s all they are.”

On another day, maybe in other circumstances, Hulan might have heard these words differently. Instead she filtered out everything except for what she took to be his condescension.

She stood and put her purse on her shoulder.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“I’m not sure yet.”

“You’re not going back to the factory.”

Hulan’s eyes flashed. “Are you telling me what I can and cannot do?”

“You said a day, Hulan. You were in there two days.”

She looked at him in anger and disappointment. “You’re a lawyer. You’re supposed to look at things logically. Where is your
brain
, David?”

“You say that just because my interpretation deviates from yours?”

Hulan shrugged indifferently.

David didn’t know where his next words came from and regretted them the moment they left his lips, but he said, “I forbid you to go.”

Her eyes were cold as she said, “You’re not my father.” Then she left the restaurant.

12

W
ITHOUT THINKING, HULAN GRABBED A TAXI AND ASKED
to be dropped at the bus stop for Da Shui Village. When the driver said that the last bus had already left for the day, she asked if he’d take her. Speaking into the rearview mirror, the driver said, “You’re a Beijinger. Why do you want to go there?”

“You look at me and see only my face and my clothes,” Hulan said. “Since that is the case, you know I also have money.”

That seemed a good enough answer for the driver. He made a U-turn, stepped on the gas, and headed out of town. Soon the city lights were left behind them, and only the taxi’s headlights illuminated the deserted road. Hulan stared out into the darkness. Again and again she went over the words of her argument with David. How could he tell her what to do? How could he see Siang and Peanut and Mayli and Jingren all as faceless, uneducated peasants? How could she be with someone like him? She felt as trapped as she had the day David and Zai had discussed her activities as though she weren’t at the table with them.

At the crossroads, Hulan pointed left. Soon after, she asked the driver to stop. She got out of the car and paid her fare, supplementing it with a tip. But he waved away the extra money. “I have seen this on American television shows,” he said. “And they say tips are now given in Beijing, but I cannot accept.”

“Please take it,” she said. “I was rude before, and tired. I hope you’ll forgive me.”

“Ha!” he said. “I thought you were just showing your city ways. So we are both mistaken.” He looked out into the black fields. “You’re sure this is where you want to be?” When Hulan nodded, he said good night, then sped away. In the far distance she could see the glow of Taiyuan’s lights. In another direction Da Shui’s electricity provided another smaller proof of civilization. But other than these two gentle luminescences, the night seemed an opaque blanket. Hulan walked along the road for a short way, then dipped down onto a raised pathway. Eventually she came to Ling Suchee’s small compound.

She entered the tiny courtyard and was surprised to see Suchee sitting on a low-slung bamboo chair talking to a man. He looked very much at home as he sat on the metal cover of Suchee’s well. Suchee introduced him as her neighbor, Tang Dan, and Hulan as an old friend.

“I’ve met your daughter,” Hulan said, trying to camouflage her distress with the usual pleasantries.

Tang Dan gave a customary response. “She is disobedient and ugly.” He regarded Hulan frankly, and she returned his stare. His eyebrows were bushy over dark eyes. A few white whiskers jutted from his chin. His stomach pressed against his shirt. His sandaled feet were callused and rough. The only family resemblance between Tang Dan and his daughter was in the strength of their jaws.

“She’s at the Knight factory,” Hulan said. “Siang is safe.”

“I wasn’t worried,” Tang Dan replied. “When she comes home this weekend, I will make her see sense. By Monday morning all obstacles will be removed and she will once again obey.”

The words “When a daughter, obey your father” ran through Hulan’s mind. Then she thought of Siang’s headstrong ways, her stubbornness, her sense of entitlement, and wondered which of the two—father or daughter—would win in this contest of wills.

With a grunt Tang Dan heaved himself to his feet. His legs bowed out under him. “Good night, Ling Suchee, Liu Hulan.”

“See you tomorrow,” Suchee responded.

As soon as Tang Dan left the courtyard, Suchee beckoned Hulan inside.

A few minutes later, Hulan sat at the small table in Suchee’s single room, sipping tea. Etiquette prevented Suchee from asking her guest what she was doing here this late at night, so she went back to an earlier chore of making shoes. Silently she took some paste made from flour and water and applied it to sheaf after sheaf of cut newspaper, taking pains to press the sheets together so that there were no bubbles or uneven areas. Wordlessly Hulan watched her friend, remembering back to the days of the Red Soil Farm and how she herself had spent long evenings making the papier mâché soles, then dying them red in a vat tinted with soil, and sewing on scraps of cloth to create the tops.

“I’ve told you about David,” Hulan said. Suchee nodded and continued her work. “Many years ago in America I left him with no explanation. It was cruel and unforgivable. All those years since that time I’ve been lonely. Of course, there were other men, but they meant nothing. Then, when David came back into my life, I wanted nothing more than for us to be together again. I thought we could be happy together, but I don’t think we can.”

“Because…”

“Because since he’s come here, I don’t know who I am,” she said. “I act one way, he acts another. He’s said terrible things.”

“What terrible things were those?”

“That the women in the factory are uneducated, that our country is corrupt, that the people who run the factory are honest…”

“Ah, so it is a political disagreement.”

“That, and he thinks he can treat me like a woman, like a
taitai
.”

“Don’t you want to be his wife?”

“It is a word that, like so many in our language, is a prison to me.”

“I don’t understand.”

“
Mama, baba
. Separate words for older brother and younger brother—
gege
and
didi
. Separate words for older sister and younger sister—
jiejie
and
meimei. Yeye, nainai, bofu, shushu
,” she rattled off the words for paternal grandfather, paternal grandmother, oldest paternal uncle and younger paternal uncle. “All these are different than the words for their maternal counterparts, and
those
words connote a lesser meaning because the female side is seen as unimportant.”

Suchee picked up another piece of newsprint, coated it with the paste, and pressed it to the growing sole. “You aren’t telling me anything I don’t know.”

“My whole life I’ve known exactly where I fit in the family tree. Even when I lived in America, I felt the pressure of that. No, not pressure, the weight, the sense that I could never truly be myself.”

“But our words are a comfort,” Suchee said, glancing up from her work. “They tell us who we are. They are what make us Chinese.”

“No, they are what keep us locked to the past,” Hulan countered. “When a daughter, obey your father; when a wife, obey your husband; when a widow, obey your son,” she said, completing the proverb she had thought of when talking to Tang Dan.

At this Suchee put down her work. Once again Hulan was struck by how much her friend had aged in this harsh environment. But Hulan was doing just what she had accused David and the taxi driver of doing, judging Suchee by her face. Behind the rough skin and tragic eyes, Suchee was as she’d always been—gentle, kind, and astute.

“It is sad, Hulan. You have not changed since you were a girl. You were always running away, even when you first came running to the countryside all those years ago.”

Hulan disagreed. “I was sent to the Red Soil Farm.”

“Yes, but even then you ran away from the truth of you.”

“I don’t understand.”

Suchee’s eyes narrowed as she appraised her girlhood friend; then she asked, “Do you want me to say this?”

Suddenly Hulan wasn’t sure, but Suchee went on. “Here is what I remember about you: Unlike most of the girls sent here, you were happy to be away from your family. Oh, you said you were lonely, but no one ever saw you cry, no one ever saw you write a letter. When they had struggle meetings, you spoke out the loudest and said the worst words. No one wanted you on their team, because at any time you could turn against an individual person or the entire group.”

“I know all this,” Hulan said. “I’m sorry for the things I did.”

“Are you sure? Because what I remember is that your words kept you safely alone.”

“You think I spouted those slogans and reported on people’s infractions because I didn’t want friends? You’re absolutely wrong.”

“Am I?” When Hulan didn’t answer, Suchee said, “If you couldn’t run away from people physically, then you could distance yourself by being politically superior.”

“I never treated you that way.”

Suchee raised her eyebrows. A dark silence settled on them.

Finally Hulan said, “It was against the rules to have sex. That was the worst infraction.”

“I was your friend,” Suchee said. “You didn’t have to report us.”

“But everything worked out. Ling Shaoyi was able to stay here with you. The two of you had a life together.”

Suchee shook her head. “Do you think a day goes by when I don’t wish that you had never seen us on that day, that I had never married, that I had never given birth to a daughter? Shaoyi was sixteen and I was twelve when your train arrived. You remember how I loved him from afar? That was the love of a farm girl for a city boy. Two years later, he finally saw me, but we were not looking to spend our lives together. We both understood our differences. Like you, he was from a good family. They had always planned for him to go to university and become an engineer. But you said your words and then you ran away.”

“I didn’t run away. A family friend came to get me. Do you think I was happy about what happened next? I was made to say more terrible words and then was sent into exile in America—”

“Even after you left, Shaoyi was punished,” Suchee pressed on. “There were more struggle meetings. He was called a counterrevolutionary, a revisionist, a cow demon. They made him write self-criticisms. The brigade leaders instructed us to get married. But what kind of a ceremony was it? We both wore dunce caps. We were paraded through the compound. We didn’t have a wedding banquet, but people did throw rotten fruit at us. We didn’t enjoy a wedding night. Instead I was sent back to my family and Shaoyi was put in the cow shed. I heard later that they kept him there for three months and only brought him out after he contracted pneumonia. I thought I would never see him again, but I was wrong. When the others went home, Shaoyi had to stay behind. When he came to my parents’ house, I didn’t recognize him. He had lost much weight and his color was that of a dead man. He looked sixty, not twenty.”

“Everyone suffered in those days,” Hulan said, echoing the words that Peanut had said earlier today. “Is there anyone in our country who wasn’t affected by the Chaos?”

“Your words are true,” Suchee said. “But many people were able to retrieve their old lives. Shaoyi was not one of them, and neither was I. Like most girls, I had been betrothed almost since birth. I know this is a feudal idea, but even in those dark times customs didn’t change that much in the countryside. Naturally, the family heard of the cause of my mock marriage and called off the engagement. My parents tried to find another match for me, but who would take into their family a broken piece of jade? When Shaoyi came to our door, my father decided to accept him.”

Hulan understood the devastating implications of what Suchee was telling her. In China a daughter was never considered to be a member of her birth family. She was raised as an outsider—someone who consumed valuable rice until she went to the family of her husband. Upon marriage the bride’s family had to provide a dowry, while the groom’s family had to pay a bride price. A poor family such as Suchee’s might have anticipated a few bride cakes, a few slivers of pork, and maybe a
jin
or two of rice. But as a broken piece of jade—a girl who had lost her virginity—Suchee was effectively worthless. No family would pay for her, and her parents couldn’t afford a larger dowry. However, Shaoyi too had been worthless. He no longer had access to his family. He certainly had no ties to anyone in Da Shui or any of the other neighboring villages. By being taken into his wife’s home, Shaoyi lost his identity. He traded in his last name and took on Ling as his new surname.

“At first I was happy,” Suchee continued. “Then I saw the way he suffered. You city people do not understand hard work. Do you think a man who’s supposed to be an engineer is capable of chopping down trees for firewood, of plowing the fields with an ox, of using a long-handled hoe to work the land all day, every day, year after year? Even my father felt sorry for Shaoyi. Sometimes my father would say to him, ‘Go help Mama and Suchee with their work.’ And Shaoyi would have to obey, because he was no longer a true man. What could we give him to do? He couldn’t cook. He didn’t know how to patch clothes or”—and here she gestured to the work before her—” make shoes. My mother taught him how to shuck corn. Day after day he would sit outside stripping the cobs of their kernels, or separating seed, or cleaning the rice. Neighbor men saw him doing this work and ridiculed him.

“Every year Shaoyi wrote to his family in Beijing, hoping that they would be able to get him assigned to a work unit in the capital and get him a residency permit. But when the government saw he had a wife and child in the countryside, they ignored the applications and even the bribes. To our government he had become a country bumpkin like me. Each year he became thinner and quieter. He developed ulcers and arthritis. Every winter I wondered if his lungs, which had been so damaged during his confinement, would finally fail. I made him tea with ginger and onions. I held his head over steamed vinegar to clear the congestion. But every night he coughed. When his sputum turned from green to red, I knew there wasn’t much time left. The barefoot doctor prescribed a tonic, but he died anyway. For too many years he had eaten bitterness.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry is not the word I want to hear,” Suchee said.

“Then what do you want? For me to make it up to you? I’m trying…”

“I’m glad you came for Miaoshan. And yes, that will help me. But I’m thinking of something else tonight. Despite all that happened, I know we were good friends. As I look back over the years, I can remember others. Madame Tsai on the next farm has always been free-spoken with me. Tang Dan’s wife was also good and funny when we worked in the fields. She is dead many years now, but I will always remember her. But you were my closest friend.”

“I feel the same way,” Hulan admitted. “I have not had other friends since you.”