Weariness

Take the highway south and not far down you'll hit Dingsheng Street. There was a pretty girl on Dingsheng Street, lived a little back from the western end. The autumn they laid the corn out to dry, her family opened a little shop. She'd flunked out of school at eighteen, so she stayed on to help, sitting in the doorway all day punching numbers into a calculator, wasting hour upon hour. This was twenty-one years ago.

Twenty years on, the girl was thirty-eight, long since married, her child doing well, taking after her father in looks. The child was home from university for the winter holidays and said, Ma, when are we going to go see my dad? I haven't seen him for years now. The girl looked up, unsure which father was meant. The real father was a good man; back then she'd been a fool, thought herself too good for him, and yet couldn't keep out of his bed. All these years he'd been good to the child and never said a word about the rest. She had wronged him; she had no face to see him. The other father had got himself killed driving drunk a couple of years back; the child, mostly away from home, had been turning the matter over and yet had never made it to his grave. She didn't know what to do.

The girl's eyes went blank, then refocused on this not-quite-fresh-faced girl in front of her, and she thought, when I was young I was a lot better-looking than this. It was autumn, they were drying the corn, how many years ago now? Fifty, must be. Twenty, said the child. Oh, right, twenty, look at this mouth of mine, no filter on it, whatever I think just slips out, twenty years, why does it feel like fifty have gone by, what were you saying, ah, Double Happiness, right, seventeen, here's your three back, what were you saying, if only I'd been as bright as you, how pretty I was in those days, the skin's all gone slack now, I did your father wrong, oh, you said you were going to go see your father, you go on, I won't, can't leave the shop with no one watching it.

The child looked at the mother, who hadn't said a word, and knew the old habit was back. Whenever something crossed her mind she thought she'd said it out loud, when in fact no one but she could hear a thing. The child went off to the bedroom to pack. What young girl doesn't want to be pretty? She'd been born plain though, into a poor family with no money to dress up with, not a boy ever gave her a second glance. The child knew the world wasn't fair, but what can you do about it? The kid from the next block over, sharp, got into a good university; the sharp kid was sweet on the big-eyed girl from the block past that; the big-eyed girl ran off after some out-of-towner all the way down to the southern edge of Yunnan, into some country or other, can't remember the name, anyway, she never came back. What can you do about it?

The child changed clothes, called out goodbye to the mother, and walked out the door, also never to come back. This was a year ago.

The girl is still there, selling things, barely scraping a few coins together. With the child gone and the real father gone silent too, the girl actually felt lighter, he wasn't on top of her anymore. One time in bed with you and you rode me for fifty years. Get off now, I've grown old. She picked up a mirror and took a look at herself. Really old. A person whose heart died long ago can still go on aging. What is it I'm waiting for?