Spilled Water (2 page)

Chapter Four

Your Heart is Filled
with Stone

Uncle Ba was my father’s brother. He was ten years older than my father. He had helped their mother to bring up my father
when their father had died. I didn’t like Uncle much. I thought he was bossy, and he didn’t smile very often. He was always
interfering in our lives, telling Father that he should go and work in a factory to earn more money, that he spoilt me, that
I should go to a minder so that Mother could find work.

Father would chuckle and say, ‘Your heart is filled with stone, my brother,’ but I knew that he was bruised by such words
of disapproval from someone he loved. I once overheard him tell my mother that Uncle had been the most devoted brother to
him when they had grown up together, and that he would forgive my uncle anything. He admitted, however, that Uncle had changed
since wealth and position had come his way.

Uncle Ba lived in a large house on the other side of the village, though we were never invited to visit. He caught a bus every
day to travel to a factory two hours away. He had been a farmer like my father, but had been delighted to give up such gruelling
work. He had never married. He used to say that he felt himself incapable of devoting enough time, energy and affection to
one person to make them happy, especially having spent so many years looking after my father. Once, when Father wasn’t listening,
Mother said that Uncle had become far too selfish to invite anyone into his life and how fortunate that was for womankind.

Uncle was family, though, and family was important. Both my father’s parents were now dead, as were my grandparents on my
mother’s side. Father would do anything for his brother, and regularly took him the pick of his vegetables and his prize catch
of fish. He invited him to eat with us at least four times a week, even when we were short of food for ourselves. Uncle would
sit there telling us about his new life and how much money he was making, how respected he was now and how he expected one
day to be able to run his own business.

‘Just think, brother,’ he would often say, ‘if you were like me, you would be able to dress your wife in fine clothes, and
she would be able to serve up a meal fit for an emperor instead of a pauper.’

Mother would bridle with anger and reply, ‘He is not like you, and I have no desire for fine clothes.’

‘Nonsense,’ Uncle would insist. ‘Every woman yearns for fine clothes.’

‘We are happy as we are,’ Father would say quietly. ‘People are all different in their needs.’

Mostly, Uncle ignored me, except to criticise my table manners, or my behaviour, or, being a female child, the burden I imposed
upon my family. I didn’t understand what he meant by that at the time, but I knew that he didn’t think much of me. Once, when
Uncle spent a whole evening telling me not to put my head in my food, not to lick my chopsticks, not to jig up and down, not
to hum, not to speak unless I was spoken to, I kicked him under the table, hard on the shin, and pretended it was an accident.
He didn’t believe me and demanded that I be sent out of the room. My parents resisted, certain that I would never do such
a thing on purpose, and I stayed. Uncle went home, furious. I was triumphant. Father looked at me and said, ‘I hope you didn’t
kick your uncle on purpose,’ then he winked and turned away without another word.

Chapter Five

A Silk Swallow and a
Handsome Tiger

I was six when my baby brother was born. I remember Mother disappearing into the bedroom and Father boiling water in a pan
and fetching clean cloths. I remember women from the village arriving and lots of hushed whispers and one of them sat me on
her knee. I remember my mother screaming and my father, ashen-faced, telling me not to worry. I remember a small strangled
cry and the village women cheering and my father hugging me and hugging me. I remember going into the bedroom with him and
feeling his boundless joy and seeing my mother, her black hair damp with perspiration, holding the tiniest little baby I had
ever seen. I remember my mother saying, ‘You’ve got a little brother, Si-yan. Isn’t he beautiful?’, and I remember holding
his tiny hand and thinking I was the luckiest girl in the whole of China to have such a beautiful baby brother.

Uncle Ba arrived just then and congratulated my parents loudly, before muttering quietly to my father – but I heard him –
‘Your wife got it right this time, at least, but there can be no more.’

A shadow of anguish fell across my father’s face of joy. I tried to puzzle out what my Uncle meant, as he brushed past me,
demanding to hold my little brother. Then I wanted to stop him because I didn’t want him to go anywhere near.

‘He’s not yours, leave him alone!’ I heard myself cry.

My father knelt down and held me close.

‘It’s all right, my little swallow,’ he soothed. ‘Uncle Ba won’t harm him.’

I watched, ball-fisted, as Uncle picked up my little brother and rocked him in his arms. I saw his face soften and his eyes
grow moist. I wished I knew what I had done to upset him that he couldn’t be like that with me. When Uncle had put my brother
down again, he turned to my father and said, ‘Another mouth to feed, how will you manage?’

My father gripped my shoulder. ‘We’ll manage,’ he said, ‘just as we always have.’

Uncle Ba raised his eyebrows.

‘You may have to change your mind about that factory job,’ he warned.

‘I don’t think so,’ replied my father.

When Uncle Ba had gone, my mother fell asleep. Father picked up my little brother and laid him in my arms. I gazed down at
his apple cheeks and shock of black hair, the way his eyelids quivered and his lips sucked together. I loved him there and
then, wanting him to open his eyes, to look at me and love me too.

‘Do you like the name “Li-hu”, Si-yan?’ asked my father. ‘That’s the name your mother and I are thinking about.’

‘Lu Li-hu,’ I tried out. ‘Lu Si-yan and Lu Li-hu, Lu Si-yan and Lu Li-hu,’ I sang. ‘A silk swallow and a handsome tiger. I
hope the tiger doesn’t eat the poor swallow.’

‘When he is old enough, my handsome tiger will protect and treasure my beautiful silk swallow,’ laughed Father.

‘Perhaps your silk swallow will protect and treasure your handsome tiger,’ I giggled.

Li-hu quickly flourished from a plump, gurgling, contented baby into a sturdy, boisterous toddler. I watched, entranced, as
he fed from my mother, smiled his first smile, wriggled across the floor on his bottom, and took his first steps. I jiggled
him up and down on my knee, pushed him in a wooden cart Father had made for me when I was little, helped him to eat his first
proper meals, and sang lullabies to him at bedtime.

When Father played the same games with Li-hu as he had played with me, sometimes I minded a bit, sometimes I felt jealous,
but most of the time I watched and laughed and urged him on. If Father wasn’t there, I played the same games and took his
role, grown-up as anything. Father and I still had our own special moments, especially after Li-hu had gone to bed, doing
things that my little brother was too young to join in with or understand. Father said I was his big girl now, which made
me feel very important.

I started to go to the village school. Father wanted me to learn to read and write, and one day to go to university.

‘You shall have every advantage that we didn’t have,’ he declared. ‘Anyone who still thinks that women have no need for education
is living in the dark ages. Go and learn and make me proud.’

I worked hard at my lessons, for I wanted to make Father proud. I came home each evening and we sat down and he would ask
me what I had learnt that day. It was only as I began to be able to read and write, and Father questioned me in detail about
particular words, studying their shape and the way different strokes were added, that I realised he could barely read and
write himself. Then he became my pupil and I loved teaching him.

Uncle called him an old fool for even thinking that he could learn at his age, especially from me.

‘It’s a waste of what precious little money you have, sending this girl-child to school,’ he tutted, ‘and it’s a bigger waste
of your precious time to sit with her believing she can teach you anything but nonsense.’

‘The journey of a thousand miles starts from beneath your feet,’ Father quoted, and, though I struggled to understand what
he meant, I could see from the brightness of his eyes that our lessons touched his soul.

‘Your father is like a young child with a new toy,’ Mother smiled.

‘This young child will never grow tired of his new toy,’ Father laughed back.

He was right. He didn’t grow tired of it. He didn’t have the chance to. Father died, and the sun went out of our lives.

Chapter Six

To Market

‘Questions, always questions,’ muttered Uncle Ba.

Before I could pursue my question, and I was determined he should answer me, a boy pulled out on his bicycle right in front
of the bus. The bus driver stamped hard on his brakes, throwing us out of our seats. The bus screeched and shuddered to a
halt inches from the cyclist. Then the driver opened his window and let out a torrent of abuse, accompanied by a pantomime
of rude gestures, as the boy recovered his bicycle and disappeared down a dusty track. Uncle shouted something about ‘stupid
simpletons’. For the next few minutes he and the driver engaged in a loud exchange about the stupidity of peasant farmers
and their offspring.

From my window I saw that we were leaving behind a barren stretch of rocky countryside to enter a colourless old town. Steep
and winding alleyways spidered off from the road above and below us, crammed all along with dilapidated wooden shacks. These
gave way to grey apartment blocks, their balconies hung with washing, dried meats and plaits of garlic, and so close together
that their occupants could shake hands across the passages in between. The road was now lined with shopfronts, their goods
spilling out on to the pavements, where chickens pecked at anything they could find and dogs ran wild. A little boy waved
at me as we went by, and I wanted so much to be back with Li-hu and Mother.

I was about to ask Uncle again when we would be going home, when I suddenly noticed that a number of young girls were walking
all in the same direction, up the road. Several of them were on their own, but others were holding hands with men whom I assumed
to be their fathers. They all looked thoroughly miserable. Where were they going? I wondered. Why were they so unhappy?

The bus drew level with a girl of about thirteen. She was two or three paces behind a man and was looking nervously around
her. Just at that moment, she threw her bag to the ground, turned and ran off down the road. I stood up to watch as the man
she was with tore after her. He caught up with her and slapped her hard round the face, before dragging her back up the road.
I was so shocked that I slumped back into my seat and burst into tears.

‘I want to go home,’ I spluttered. ‘Please let me go home.’

‘It’s too late, I’m afraid,’ replied Uncle quietly. ‘We’re here now.’

Chapter Seven

All You Have is
What You Grow

I was nine when my father died. It was very sudden. One day he was there, the next day he wasn’t. Mother didn’t tell me very
much. She couldn’t. She hugged me and she hugged Li-hu and we hugged each other and cried together, hour after hour, but she
couldn’t speak. I don’t think she could bring herself to say the words that bore the truth of what had happened – words that
meant that Father was never coming back.

Uncle Ba said that my father had been hit by a taxi which had swerved to miss a child. He had died almost instantly and wouldn’t
have felt much pain. He had begged the people who tended him to ask Uncle to look after us. He had left us his undying love.

For days afterwards, our friends from the village visited us to offer their sympathy and support. They made tea, brought us
meals, washed our clothes and worked on the farm. Mother seemed to perk up while they were around, but, after a week, Uncle
asked them to stay away, saying that we had to learn to fend for ourselves and that the time for mourning was over. He told
my mother that she must be strong for her children. He told me that until my brother was old enough I must take on my father’s
role. We weren’t ready, though. Our grief was too crippling.

Everything reminded me of Father. His old rickshaw sat rusting in the yard. No more bump, bump, bump, but Mother couldn’t
bear to part with it. His jacket hung by the door as though waiting for him to struggle into it, just as he had every morning
after breakfast. Our mahjong set sat on a shelf gathering dust. Li-hu kept asking when Father was coming home. He was too
young to understand.

I tried. I tried so hard. I took Li-hu with me to help feed the ducks and hens, and turned collecting their eggs into a game.
I carried slops out to the pig and spread clean straw across the yard. I loaded Li-hu’s wooden cart with some of the turnips
Father had stored in his shed and pushed it to the village, Li-hu riding on top. I exchanged the turnips for rice or tea or
noodles. Back home again, I prepared our meals and tried to make Mother eat. She sat in a chair, gazing out of the window
down towards the river, scarcely saying a word. Li-hu clambered on and off her lap over and over again. She would stroke his
hair, he would suck his thumb, but she wasn’t able to give him the comfort he needed, so he would pull himself abruptly away
and demand my lap instead. We would snuggle up together and he would ask me when Mother would stop being sad. For a while
I felt that I had lost not only my father but my mother too, and I felt the chill of suddenly being all alone.

Uncle kept away during those early days. I was glad because I didn’t want to hear him say anything bad about my mother.

He arrived one evening, unannounced, and claimed that business matters had taken up his time, and that in any case we couldn’t
expect to rely upon him.

He walked all over Father’s terraces, then sat down to eat with us.

‘How are you going to survive?’ he asked bluntly at last, cutting through the silence that had even claimed my brother with
its awkwardness.

Mother shifted uncomfortably on her chair, her meal untouched before her.

‘All you have is what you grow,’ Uncle continued, ‘and yet already you are neglecting your lifeline, the lifeline my brother
left you. How can you dishonour his memory in this way?’

I watched the despair spread across my mother’s face.

‘And look at you, sister,’ he said more gently, but his words were harsher. ‘Look at your shrunken body. Look at your dirty
clothes. Look at your filthy house. Look at your ragamuffin children. When are you going to come to your senses?’

I couldn’t bear it any longer. ‘Leave us alone!’ I shouted. ‘We’re doing our best. Can’t you see we’re doing our best?’

‘Then your best isn’t good enough, madam,’ retorted Uncle. He stood up from the table and walked out of the house.

When he had gone, Li-hu crawled on to my lap, thumb in mouth. I sat for some time, my thoughts too wretched to air. Then Mother
rose, as though from a dream, put her arm round my shoulder and kissed me gently on the forehead.

‘Why does Uncle Ba have to be so cruel?’ I asked.

‘Your uncle is hurting, Si-yan,’ my mother replied.

‘For all his harsh words, he loved your father and misses him terribly. They went through so much together when they were
young.’

I was astonished at what she said. If Uncle loved my father, he had a curious way of showing it.

‘And perhaps your uncle is being cruel to be kind,’ she added. ‘He is right. I must pull myself together, for all our sakes.’

I threw my arms round her waist, happy that at last my mother had come back to me.

‘Thank you, Si-yan, thank you for keeping things going,’ she said then. ‘We’ll do this together from now on, you and me and
little Li-hu. No more tears. We’ll make your father proud of us.’

She picked up Li-hu, kissed his fat cheeks and squeezed him tight. Li-hu hugged her back, making up for the days when she
had neglected him. He refused to let go until I put on Father’s jacket and gave him a pocket ride round and round the yard.