Spilled Water (13 page)

Chapter Twenty-six

A Voice So Strange
and Quiet

I drifted in and out of sleep for what seemed like days after that. Shadowy figures hovered on the fringes of my consciousness
each time I came to, only to disappear again before I could identify them. I feared that one of them was Mrs Chen, another
Yimou, another Zheng Yi. I seemed to have lost my ability to decipher what was real and what was imaginary. When Uncle appeared
fleetingly from nowhere, I screamed until my cough took my breath, then I flailed my arms around to keep him away. Behind
him, my mother clawed the air as though trying to pull me towards her. Even when Uncle seemed to have gone, Mother stayed
there reaching out to me, but I couldn’t run to her, couldn’t run to her. Uncle’s tight grip around my wrist was holding me
back. I screamed at him to let go, kicked out at his invisible presence, and when at last he did let go, I fell back into
a bottomless sleep.

I woke at last, late one morning, to dazzling sunlight spilling across my bed from a window opposite. Through the window I
could see that the sun was high in a pale blue sky feathered with clouds. I blinked in confusion, trying to remember where
I was, who I was.

Little by little, my shadow world fell away as other beds came into focus and uniformed figures bustled to and fro between
them. I had no idea how long I had been there, and I was too weak to move, but I felt somehow safe and would have been happy
just to lie there for ever and watch.

A small movement to my left made me turn my head. A man was sitting by the side of the bed, head bowed, hands clasped, as
though lost in contemplation. He became aware of my gaze and looked up. The minute he did, I turned away. It was Uncle Ba.
I wasn’t safe. The nightmare wasn’t over.

How long had he been there? How had he found me? What did he want?

I heard him stand up and clear his throat. I waited for the usual words of criticism, words of scorn, knowing that after what
I had been through they would have no power to touch me.

‘How are you feeling, Si-yan?’ Uncle said at last, in a voice so strange and quiet that I almost thought it had come from
someone else. The question hung tantalisingly in the air. How did he expect me to feel? I lay there motionless, the fraught
silence begging me to have my say, but no words found their way out. I sensed Uncle shifting uneasily. Let him suffer.

‘I have come to take you home, Si-yan.’

My heart skipped. More silence.

‘I have been trying to find you these last four months. There was a letter from Mrs Chen’s mother-in-law to your mother saying
that you were on your way home. But you never arrived. And then, when I tried to retrace your steps, it was as though you
had disappeared.’

I might as well have done, Uncle Ba, for all you cared.

‘I have travelled a thousand miles to find you, Si-yan. I had all but given up when the hospital made contact.’

Why so much effort, Uncle Ba? I turned towards him. He looked shrunken somehow, and haggard. He avoided my gaze and sat back
down in the chair. Then he leant forward and tried to take my hand. I pulled it away sharply. How dared he?

‘Si-yan,’ he said. ‘There is something I have to tell you.’ His voice quavered in its reluctance to speak. ‘Si-yan –’ he said,
and paused again.

I stared at him and despised his sudden weakness.

‘It’s your mother, Si-yan.’

The air grew taut.

‘What about my mother?’ My own voice frightened me. ‘Where is my mother?’ I tried to sit up, wanting to challenge the man
I hated to say anything against her.

‘Your mother is dead.’

The words struck me like daggers, though they were spoken in the smallest whisper. I screamed then, over and over again, ripping
the air into shreds. Uncle tried to calm me, but I hit him with all my might.

‘She’s not dead, she’s not dead! How can she be? Why are you saying such things? I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!’ I screamed.

Nurses came running, I heard Li Mei’s voice. Nothing could stop me, though. My pain was devouring every ounce of my body and
threatening everyone else around me. I fought against the comforting words and restraining hands, fought against the efforts
to make things better. They couldn’t be made better. It was Mother’s job to make things better, and she had gone.

I screamed until my cough robbed me of my breath and I succumbed to a drug-induced sleep.

Li Mei was sitting by my bed when I woke again. The news of my mother assaulted me afresh and I began to sob.

‘Tell me it’s not true, please tell me it’s not true.’

Li Mei held me tight, quietly stroked my hair, and her silence told me again what I didn’t want to believe.

‘Where’s Uncle?’ I asked at last.

‘He’s asleep on a bench outside.’

‘It’s his fault, Li Mei, I know it’s his fault.’

‘He says it was pneumonia, that your mother was too weak to fight it,’ Li Mei said gently.

‘Too weak because of him,’ I countered.

‘He blames himself terribly, Si-yan.’

‘Am I supposed to feel sorry for him?’ I howled. ‘He sold me, Li Mei, sold me like a bucket of pakchoi, just because we owed
him money. All he ever thinks about is money. And now he’s killed my mother because of his meanness.’

Li Mei held my hand. ‘He wants to make amends, Lu Si-yan. The way he treated you can never be excused, but there are things
he has told me that you may not know.’

I looked at her angrily. ‘What sort of things? He’s just trying to get you on his side, Li Mei. You don’t know him like I
do. He’s always been mean, always selfish, always finding fault when we were doing our best. Father loved him, but all Uncle
could do was criticise him. And he’s always hated me. Always, always, always.’

She told me, then, what she had learned from Uncle while I was asleep. I knew already that Uncle had helped to bring up my
father after the death of their parents. I didn’t know quite how bitter that had made him at the loss of his own childhood.
I didn’t know that even when Uncle was a simple farmer, he had helped Father to establish his own farm. I didn’t know, and
neither did my mother, that when I was born, by which time Uncle was working in a factory, he had made payments to my father
whenever times were hard. When Li-hu was born, Uncle had at last seen a time in the future when he would no longer have any
responsibility for us. Li-hu and Father would share that responsibility. Then Father had died, and suddenly he was more responsible
than ever.

‘When your father died,’ Li Mei continued, ‘your uncle supported your mother more and more, but he became increasingly embittered.
You bore the brunt of his bitterness because, like many men of his generation, he considered you good for marriage and little
else.’

‘But I tried so hard,’ I protested.

‘It wouldn’t have mattered how hard you tried. It wouldn’t have made any difference once he had made up his mind to reduce
his burden by settling your future elsewhere.’

‘By selling me, you mean.’

‘He says he chose your future in-laws very carefully.’

‘Not carefully enough,’ I snapped. ‘I’m sure he just sold me to the highest bidder. Nothing matters to Uncle except money.’

‘He is paying a terrible price now for his actions. He has seen what harm it caused to your mother and to you. He has to live
with the knowledge that he allowed his own bitterness to split his family apart.’

‘Let him pay the price then, why should I care?’ I sobbed. ‘He took my mother from me, and I’ll never forgive him.’

‘He needs you, Si-yan, and so does your brother.’

‘I am just a girl-child,’ I said bitterly. ‘How can he possibly need me, except to cook his meals and run errands for him?
Don’t you see, Li Mei? We’re more of a burden than ever now.’

‘You and your brother are all the family your uncle has left. Go home and give him a chance, Si-yan.’

The emptiness I felt inside was worse than the pain I had endured before. I had nothing to look forward to any more. My survival
over the past few months had been built upon the belief that, one day, I would go home and be with my mother. What was there
now? I wandered back through the paths of my childhood, tried to grasp hold of the happy times and not let them go. There
was Father singing in his rickshaw, bumping his way to market; Mother sitting on the river bank laughing with the other village
women; Li-hu chasing hens and yelling with delight every time he found an egg. Little Li-hu, my apple-cheeked baby brother.
Nearly a year had gone by since I had left him behind in my mother’s arms. He would have grown. I might not even recognise
him. Would he know me? How was he coping without Mother?

Suddenly, more than anything in the world, I wanted to be with him, wanted to hold him, wanted to make things better for him,
wanted to take away his pain, wanted to tell him that I loved him. ‘When he is old enough, my handsome tiger will protect
and treasure my beautiful silk swallow,’ my father had said. But he wasn’t old enough. He was only six. ‘Perhaps your silk
swallow will protect and treasure your handsome tiger,’ I had laughingly replied. Well, I would protect him. I would be mother
and father and sister to him. And I wouldn’t resent it. Not for one moment.

‘I want to be with my brother,’ I said.

Li Mei squeezed my hand and left the room. She returned with Uncle, who hovered by the door, all his self-assurance gone.
I noticed the dark circles under his eyes before I turned my head away, unable to cope with his uneasiness on top of my grief.
He stepped forward and spoke.

‘I am not asking you to forgive me, Si-yan, just for a chance to repair some of the damage I have done. My selfishness has
nearly destroyed this family, I see that now. I want to give you and your brother a home. I don’t want you to be a mother
to Li-hu, it is too much to ask of any child. I want you to go back to school, Si-yan, to make something of yourself. Li-hu
too.’

I looked at him. Did he really mean it? Had he changed so much? I had changed, I knew that.

‘I am not the child you sent away ten months ago, Uncle. I will come home with you for the sake of my brother, and for the
sake of my mother and father. But I cannot forgive you, and I will not be your servant.’

Uncle nodded. ‘You have come a long way,’ he said, ‘and so have I.’

Chapter Twenty-seven

Let it Be Somewhere
Better

It was another week before I was strong enough to leave hospital. Uncle came to see me every day. We were so awkward together
at first that I almost dreaded his visits. He tried hard to make things right between us. They couldn’t be, though, not just
like that, not for a very long time.

Uncle talked frankly about Mother and how, when she had fallen ill, she had begged him to find me and bring me home. A letter
had come from Mrs Hong saying that I was on my way, but when I hadn’t arrived Mother’s condition had worsened. Uncle had set
out to look for me, but had been called back as my mother’s life failed her.

He talked about Li-hu, how he had grown, and how much he looked like our father. I could see that Uncle adored my brother,
that my brother had unlocked his heart. I doubted Uncle would ever feel like that about me, and feared that it would only
ever be guilt that made him accept me back.

Mostly, I just listened. I grasped at little bits of information that helped me to build pictures of my mother and Li-hu at
home without me: Uncle playing with Li-hu; Mother struggling to cope; Mother lying ill; my brother without Mother at home
with Uncle. They were uncomfortable pictures, but I needed to see them. I watched for signs that would show the old Uncle
was still only just below the surface, ready to re-emerge. I studied him hard, trying to work out whether or not his regret
was honest. Part of me wanted to believe it because, apart from Li-hu, Uncle was the only family I had left. The other part
of me fought against such belief, because I wasn’t ready to take his side.

Li Mei disappeared during that week, saying that she had something to sort out and that she would visit again before I left.
She returned one afternoon with a big smile on her face and clutching a brown envelope.

‘This is for you,’ she said triumphantly.

‘What is it?’

‘Open it and see.’

I unsealed the envelope and pulled out a wad of notes.

‘It’s the money the Wangs owed you, and I managed to extract some extra,’ she grinned. ‘They were worried that your uncle
might report them for employing underage children and other illegal working practices. Mr Wang was extremely friendly and
very happy to pay you what I demanded.’

I laughed at the thought of the obnoxious Mr Wang humbly doing what Li Mei told him.

‘Will you go back?’ I wanted to know.

‘I don’t think they’d have me, somehow,’ chuckled Li Mei, ‘but with the extra that Mr Wang insisted I too deserved, I’m going
home as well, Lu Si-yan, and then I shall find work somewhere else.’

‘Somewhere better,’ I said. ‘Let it be somewhere better.’

Chapter Twenty-eight

Fragments of a Song

As soon as I was well enough to travel, we began the long journey home. Uncle called a taxi early one afternoon and helped
me into the back. Li Mei sat alongside me, her own journey home taking her part of the way with us. I soon fell asleep, my
head bouncing up and down on her shoulder. I woke when we came to a halt. It was dark outside, but I could hear the eerie
sounds of distant engines and horns.

We had come to a river. A huge ferry was moored at the end of a jetty. Men with wicker baskets on their backs were walking
down to it, bent double under the weight of oranges and vegetables. Others had long poles slung across their shoulders, at
the ends of which were buckets full of fish. Two men were pushing a cart piled high with meat.

‘Are we going on that enormous ferry?’ I asked.

‘For the next two days and five hundred miles,’ said Uncle.

Uncle carried me aboard. I was still too weak to walk very far. He took me to the cabin I was to share with Li Mei, settled
me on one of the beds, then left us to go and find something to drink. I pulled back the curtains to look at the river, but
all I could see was the dappling of reflected light across a blanket of black. I turned to Li Mei.

‘While I have been away, I have believed that as long as I could see the river, any river, one day it would take me home.
Yet so often it has disappeared from sight or been shrouded in black. Now, at last, the river is taking me home, but still
it is hidden from me, and my dream has been smashed.’

I began to weep and Li Mei rushed to my side. There was nothing she could say, but her presence was a comfort and I was so
happy to have her with me for a little while longer.

After we had eaten, we both fell asleep. I woke the next morning alone in the cabin. I had no idea what time it was, but from
the noise of the engines I could tell that we were moving. Sunlight was smouldering through the curtains. I opened them on
to a pure blue sky. I gazed in fascination as the river bustled by, sparkling and frolicsome. Another ferry drew level with
us and its passengers waved. I waved back until I could no longer see them. I made up my mind then to dress and go up on deck.

It took all my willpower to climb the steps and make my way to the front of the ship. Ahead of me, Li Mei was facing forwards,
leaning against the railings, the wind streaming through her hair. The wind carried fragments of a song, which knitted together
as I drew closer. It was Li Mei’s song, her beautiful song about mist and mountains, rivers and waterfalls, a cormorant fisherman
sailing quietly along in the golden light of an evening sun. I stood by her side and began to sing with her. Then, as I looked
all around me, I saw Uncle on the deck below brushing a tear from his eyes.

‘The journey of a thousand miles starts from beneath your feet’ was one of my father’s favourite sayings. Where was I now
on my journey? Or was this a new journey about to begin?