A Thousand Years of Good Prayers: Stories (13 page)

At the end of the dinner that evening, Ruolan’s father brought up the topic of a divorce. He had submitted an application to his and her working units, he said. In a few days they would expect the welfare officials from both factories to come and dissuade them, but if they could agree on the divorce, the officials would sign the application so they could go to the county courthouse to replace their marriage certificate with a divorce certificate.

Ruolan’s mother did not reply. She dipped the head of a chopstick in the soup and drew linked circles on the table. Her father’s eyes followed the strokes of the chopstick. He looked older than Ruolan remembered; his hair, at fortyfive, was more gray than black.

“What if I don’t agree?” her mother said finally.

“We’ll have to go to the court,” her father looked at his own palms and said. “But why do we have to make it hard for us?”

“For you, you mean? Why should I agree to save you the disgrace of going into the court?” Ruolan’s mother said. “You’re the one to keep a mistress.”

Her father looked at Ruolan and said, “Go out and play, Ruolan.”

“Let her stay. She’s a woman now. She should learn from my lesson of how to keep a man.”

It was not about keeping a man; it was a lesson on how not to become an ugly woman. Ruolan felt a revenging joy of seeing her father leave her mother. She was ready to desert her, too.

Ruolan’s father opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, her mother cut him off. “Don’t say anything. I won’t agree to sign,” she said, and stood up. “I won’t let you off the hook so easily,” she said before she banged the bedroom door closed. The venom in her words made Ruolan shudder. She looked at her father, tired and crestfallen, his lips quavering. “Baba,” she said in a low voice, “are you going to take me in after the divorce?”

“I’m sorry, but Mama needs you more than I do,” Ruolan’s father said, still studying his palms. “She’s ill.”

“I’m not her medicine,” Ruolan said, choked with disappointment in her father.

He looked up at her, but his eyes were empty, his mind already floating to another place. “Am I your daughter, Baba?” Ruolan asked.

Her father looked at her for a long moment and said, “No.”

“Am I Uncle Bing’s daughter?”

“No,” her father said, and picked up the suitcase that he had not unpacked. “You’re your mother’s daughter,” he said, and ran away into the night street before she could ask more questions.

The next morning, Ruolan’s mother did not wake her for the medicine pot, and Ruolan got up late for school. The door to her mother’s bedroom was closed. For a moment, Ruolan imagined her mother hanged from the ceiling with a broken neck and a long, dangling tongue. She shivered and pushed the door; it was bolted from inside. “Mama,” she said. When there was no reply, she hit the door with a fist and started to cry.

After a while, her mother opened the door. “What are you wailing for the first thing in the morning?” she said and shoveled the medicine pot into Ruolan’s hands. “You think I would kill myself and let your father get away so easily?”

Ruolan wiped her tears dry. Halfway to the crossroads, she changed her mind and walked back. Her mother’s bedroom door was closed, and Ruolan dumped the dregs by the door. She unloaded all her books onto her cot and put her clothes, a few pieces altogether, into her book bag. She took the old textbook from underneath her mattress and counted the bills, enough for a day and a night of bus ride to Shanghai, she imagined; but when she reached the ticket window at the bus station, she lost her courage and asked only for a ticket to Uncle Bing’s village.

TWO HOURS LATER, Ruolan got off the bus, and, aftergetting lost a few times, she found the mud shack that served as the classroom for the village school. About twenty boys and girls, of all grades, sat on wooden benches, reading together a story about a tadpole looking for his mother. Uncle Bing was walking around, patting the younger kids’ heads while reading along with them.

Ruolan walked away before Uncle Bing saw her. Across the yard there was a smaller shack. She pushed the door ajar and entered. It was dark inside and it took her a few seconds to see the cot and the desk covered with workbooks and papers. At one corner of the shack was a stove, on which a huge pot of millet porridge was simmering. Ruolan sat down on the stool in front of the stove, and out of habit she took up the ladle and stirred the porridge. The handle of the ladle had been broken and fixed with a pair of chopsticks bound together. She stroked the chopsticks with a finger, and imagined living her life in this shack, cooking for Uncle Bing, waiting for him to finish work, loving him like a good woman.

The door opened and Uncle Bing came in. Ruolan saw his expression change from surprise to worriment. “Is there something wrong?” he said, and clutched Ruolan’s shoulder. “Is Mama all right?”

“She’s fine,” Ruolan said.

“Ah, Ruolan. You’ve scared the soul out of me,” Uncle Bing said and let go of her. “Why are you not in school today?”

“Uncle Bing, the porridge is ready,” Ruolan said.

“Ah, yes,” he said. “Let me get it to the students first. They must be hungry now.”

“Do you cook for the students?”

“Otherwise I wouldn’t have more than half of them,” Uncle Bing said, and explained that for many students, the porridge would be their only meal during the day, and they came to school because of that.

“Baba came home yesterday and asked for a divorce from Mama,” Ruolan said, cutting off Uncle Bing.

“So he told me. He came by last night,” Uncle Bing said, and went out of the shack with the porridge. Ruolan sat down on the cot and looked at the pillowcase, torn at a corner and in need also of a good wash. She remembered Uncle Bing’s scent left on her pillow.

When Uncle Bing came back with the empty pot, Ruolan had found the sewing bag in a basket underneath the cot, and was mending the pillowcase. The needle was rusted, and she wiped it on her hair from time to time. Uncle Bing watched her work for a moment and then said that he had canceled the afternoon’s class. Ruolan looked out the window and saw the children chase one another off. “Let’s catch the next bus home,” Uncle Bing said and walked to the door. “Mama must need comfort now.”

Ruolan checked the stitches without replying. He had only one person in his heart, and Ruolan was disappointed that it was not she. “Don’t worry,” she said finally. “Mama won’t die before everyone she knows dies first.”

“Ruolan,” Uncle Bing said disapprovingly. “She’s your mother.”

“Is she really?” Ruolan said, looking up at Uncle Bing. “Baba said I wasn’t his daughter. How could I be her daughter?”

“She brought you up.”

“She did it only to have someone to torment.”

“Ruolan.” Uncle Bing raised his voice, and she stared back. “She’s in a bad mood because she’s ill. You need to help her feel better,” he said.

Ruolan did not reply, and started sewing again. When she finished, she broke the thread between her teeth and ran a finger to smooth the stitches. She patted the pillow into a good shape before putting it back on the bed. “Why do people all expect me to be her medicine?” she asked.

Uncle Bing sat down by the stove. “You’re the only one she has now,” he said.

Ruolan sneered. Uncle Bing hesitated, and said, “Perhaps it’s time to know their story so you’ll understand her.”

“There’s nothing for me to understand,” Ruolan said.

Uncle Bing ignored her words. He poured a bowl of water into the stove to put out the leftover fire, and said, “I’ve known your mother all my life, since when we were small children. She was a beautiful girl. She was loved by many boys my age, and she was proud and happy about it, but when we reached eighteen, something changed. The proposals that many of us sent with the matchmakers to her parents were rejected, and she became less happy. Her parents must be holding on to her for an offer better than any of us could afford, the townspeople said; look how the greedy parents are wasting her youth for money, the townspeople said. Soon many boys found other girls as wives, but year after year, there was no sign of marriage on her side. They must have some unspeakable and dirty secret in the family, the townspeople said, and then had wild guesses. Your mother became very sad and pale.

“The year when we were twenty-seven, her parents suddenly married her off to your father, who lived two counties away. After the wedding, the couple moved to a new town even farther away. I was the only boy who hadn’t married then. A fool stricken by love, people said about me, and perhaps I was. When she left, I moved too, to the town where she lived with her husband. I thought I would be satisfied if only I could see her in the street from time to time, but a few days after the wedding, rumors started that every night the bridegroom was heard sobbing in the yard. People talked about the scandal that the bridegroom’s family must have hid his mental disorder from the bride before the wedding, and when your mother’s family did not show up to denounce the cheating, people looked down upon her, too.

“For the first year of their marriage, I was your mother’s only friend, and she came to talk to me every day, until there were rumors about our affair. I thought it would only make her life more miserable, so I planned to leave her for good. When your father learned that I was leaving, he came to visit me. I thought he was coming to fight me; I told him your mother and I were innocent, but he only smiled and brought out a bottle of liquor. We drank for the whole night like a pair of old friends, and he told me his story. He had been in love with a widow twelve years his senior since he was fifteen, he said. His family thought a wife would cure him of his infatuation with the older woman, so they arranged for him to marry a girl from out of town and arranged for them to move away so nobody would know his history. But on the wedding night, your mother told him that she could not become his real wife.”

“Why?” Ruolan said for the first time since Uncle Bing started the story.

Uncle Bing hesitated for a moment, and said, “Your mother—she is a
stone woman.
”

“A
stone woman
?”

“It’s something you’ll understand when you’re older,” Uncle Bing said.

“How does one know if she’s a stone woman?” Ruolan asked. She wondered if all the medicine her mother drank in the morning year after year had turned her into a solid rock. Ruolan wondered if she herself would be poisoned, by the years of breathing in the bitterness from the dregs, into an ugly and cold woman like her mother.

Uncle Bing did not reply, his eyes looking past Ruolan into a distant past. “She told your father to either live with the fact or divorce her; she said she didn’t mind because her only goal was to get married and leave her hometown so people would no longer talk about her. Your father was shocked that her family had cheated in the matchmaking, but he could not tell this to anyone, including his family. I asked him why, and he said a husband was a husband no matter what was missing from the marriage, and it would be unforgivable if he attacked his wife’s name even with the truth. Besides, he said, they deserved it because they had planned to deceive, too. Your father, he’s one of the good people in the world. There was nothing wrong with his mind. He was in love with an older woman, that’s all, but he was willing to be thought a crazy person and stay in the marriage to protect your mother’s name.

“After that night, your father and I became close friends. I helped them to adopt you. We—your father and I— thought it would make their marriage better if they could raise a child together. To make you their own child, they moved farther away, to a different province—where we live now—so that people would not know anything about their past. I did not move at first; I thought I would let them live in their own marriage, and it seemed that things were fine for a while. But after three years, your father came to visit me again. We had another night of drinking, and he confessed that he could not help going back to the widow from time to time. Your mother was very upset when she found out about it, and she refused to leave her bed. I moved again to be close to your mother. I came to take care of her and you when your father was away to live with the other woman. He stuck to his words and came home as a husband for the year-end housecleaning and celebration. The rest of the story you’ve known. Believe me, Ruolan, your parents are good people. They’ve tried all these years; they’ve tried very hard.”

“Why does he want a divorce now?”

“The other woman—she used to work as a nanny for people—she’s sick now, and he wants to marry her so he can take care of her, and help with the medical bills.”

Ruolan thought about her father and the other woman, and she pitied them. “Why didn’t you get married, Uncle Bing?” she said.

Uncle Bing smiled. “I’m one of those fools who puts a magic leaf in front of his eyes and then stops seeing mountains and seas.”

“Would you marry Mama if their divorce goes through?”

“What difference would a marriage make now?” he said.

Ruolan was relieved but unsatisfied. “Don’t marry her,” she said. “She’s poisonous. Look how she’s already destroyed half of a life for Baba. You don’t want her to destroy your whole life.”

“Ruolan!” Uncle Bing raised his voice.

Ruolan looked at the dark veins on his forehead. He looked unfamiliar, ferocious even, but she did not recoil. She had seen two men poisoned into sad and sheepish beings by her mother, and she wanted to correct the mistake. “What’s good about her? She’s lazy, ugly, bad-tempered,” Ruolan said. “Whatever she does, I can do a hundred times better.”

“Ruolan?”

“Think about it, Uncle Bing. We’re not related to her. We can leave her, and make a new family ourselves. I can cook. I can sew. I’ll do all the housework. I’ll find a job after middle school. When you are too old to work, I’ll earn money and support you. Why do you need her if you have me?”

Uncle Bing watched her with a sad, tender look. “You’re too young to know what you’re talking about,” he said.

“I’m old enough to tell what’s good for you,” Ruolan said, and felt something soften inside her. She was not a
stone
woman,
after all. She walked to where Uncle Bing sat on the stool, bent down, and put her hands palms down on his knees. “Uncle Bing,” she said in a whisper, looking into his eyes the way she imagined a seductive woman would do. “Have you heard of the saying that what a mother owes, a daughter pays back?”