The Bathing Women (11 page)

Wu still went to see Dr. Tang, carrying her lunch box, offering Dr. Tang the food she cooked, and herself. One evening she left, and didn’t come home the whole night. It was on that night that Fan had a high fever. Having a fever, having a fever. Precisely the words Fan always used when she was playing the doctor-patient game. Her entire body was burning hot, her face all red, and her nostrils flaring. She said she was very thirsty and wanted Tiao to cuddle her. Tiao held her in her arms and let Fan’s fever scald her. She gave Fan water and orange juice, but neither could lower her temperature. Where was Wu? Both of them needed her. When Fan’s fever made her cry, Tiao cried with her. She patted Fan’s back with her small hand and said, “Let me tell you a story. Don’t you love to listen to stories?” But Fan was not interested in stories. She must have felt terrible. She kept coughing and threw up several times. Her coughing and vomiting made her sound both old and young, like an old man trapped in a child’s body. Tiao’s heart was broken into a thousand pieces; Fan’s suffering gripped her with pain. She hated Wu, thinking how she would shout at her when she came home. She held Fan in her arms all night long. Young and small as she was, she took on the responsibility of caring for Fan, who was smaller and weaker than she. She didn’t close her eyes the whole night, washing her face when she felt sleepy. She was determined to wait for Wu to come home with open eyes, letting Wu see for herself that Tiao had been waiting for her all night. At daybreak Wu opened the door and tiptoed in.

A big pillow flew at Wu as a welcome—Tiao had grabbed it from the bed and thrown it at Wu’s face. She didn’t know where she got the nerve for this rude behaviour, which should never be used to deal with adults and parents. But once the pillow was thrown there was no way to take it back. She stared boldly at her mother.

Wu’s mind went blank. Only when Tiao shouted at her that Fan was dying did she come to her senses and rush to Fan. Fan was half conscious with the fever, a pink rash covering her forehead and behind her ears. She probably had the measles.

Fan’s illness worried and frightened Wu. But she had no time for regret right then. She just picked up Fan and hurried out.

“Where are you going?”

“The hospital.”

Tiao asked which hospital, and Wu said People’s Hospital.

“You can’t go to People’s Hospital!” Tiao stamped her feet like a little lunatic.

5

Adults are still adults. Even if you throw pillows at their faces, these somewhat confused people remain in charge. Wu ignored Tiao’s stamping. She put Fan on the crossbar of her bicycle and pedaled directly to People’s Hospital. Tiao followed the bike, running all the way. In the emergency room, while the doctor on duty took Fan’s temperature, Wu went to the internal medicine ward and got Dr. Tang. It was not that she didn’t trust the doctor on duty; she just trusted Dr. Tang more. In this unfamiliar city, when she had trouble, a doctor with whom she had an intimate relationship would naturally become her protector, even though he was not on duty in the emergency room and didn’t know pediatrics. Tiao couldn’t stop Dr. Tang from appearing. She watched Wu and Dr. Tang bustle around Fan and had a feeling she had been deceived. Yes, she had been fooled by this pair of hypocrites, this man and woman. She felt angry and sad. She didn’t know the word “hypocrite” then. She wouldn’t find this word for them until she was an adult looking back. But right then she thought about her dad. She felt very sorry for Yixun. She decided to write him a letter. She wanted him to come and save her, and Fan as well.

Fan had measles.

At home, later that day, Tiao began to write to Yixun behind Wu’s back, using stationery with light green lines. In the upper right corner of the paper was a row of light green printing, the size of sesame seeds: Beijing Bus Company. They’d brought the paper along with them from Beijing when they moved. Tiao had bought it at a stationery store when she was still at Denger Alley Elementary School. At the time she never considered why the paper would have Beijing Bus Company on it. These light green words gave her a feeling that whenever she wrote, a bus would come to pick up the letter and take it far away, to the place where it belonged. Years later, when she worked in the Publishing House and saw all kinds of letters and manuscripts, she recalled her childhood, and the Beijing Bus Company paper she had used to write letters. She understood then it must be the letterhead from the printing house of Beijing Bus Company, but was still puzzled. Why would a bus company own a printing house? And why would its paper flood every major stationery store in Beijing?

On Beijing Bus Company paper Tiao wrote to Yixun.

Dear Dad:

How are you? I missed you very much today because Fan had measles. She had a fever, coughed very hard, and even threw up. I think she also missed you very much, but you were not there. Next, I’m going to tell you something about Mum; I must expose her. Ever since she came home, she hasn’t taken care of us at all. She either lies in bed sleeping or goes to the hospital to see a doctor. I told her about my school, how I was going to graduate from elementary school soon but haven’t joined the Junior Red Guards yet. Besides me, there are only four other of my classmates who are not in the Junior Red Guards. Two of them have landlord grandfathers and one has a father who wrote to the Nationalist Party in Taiwan. There is one other classmate whose mum used to be the vice president of a university here and had been denounced. I think I’m different from them. I believe you two are good people, but why can’t I join the Junior Red Guards? Is it just because I came from Beijing and have a different accent? I asked Mum and she said if I couldn’t join the Junior Red Guards then just don’t join. She also won’t allow me to learn the Fuan dialect, saying it’s an ugly accent. You see how backwards she is! Dad, you probably don’t know that we don’t have classes anymore. Our teachers take us to dig air-raid shelters every day, telling us that this is to protect us from the invasion of the Soviet revisionists. Since I’m not a Junior Red Guard, I work especially hard, much harder than those Junior Red Guards. How I wish the teacher noticed my performance! Once, I was so tired that I fell asleep at the air-raid shelter. I used the wet, sticky dirt as a pillow, and my head got full of dirt. The teacher didn’t find me until almost dark. She didn’t praise me; maybe she thought she should praise those Junior Red Guards first and I was a lower creature than they were. I was disappointed and wanted to tell Mum all about this, but every time I tried to talk to her, she always said, I know, I know. Mum is busy and doesn’t have time to listen to this … “Mum is busy” is what she says most often. What is Mum? Mum is “I know, I know, and Mum is busy.” Mum is busy. How busy she is! She is busy knitting a jumper for Dr. Tang. She originally said she was going to knit one for each of us, but she ended up knitting it for Dr. Tang. Dear Dad, I want to tell you that I’m disgusted by this Dr. Tang. I hate that he came to our house and I know Mum sometimes went to his place as well. Fan is a big fool. Every time Dr. Tang came, she would talk about the doctor-patient game with him. She also showed him her toys. Mum would ask me to cook with her for Dr. Tang. Dr. Tang is not a part of our family, but she gave him all her time, which I really don’t understand. Just a few days ago, on the night when Fan had measles, Mum didn’t come home all night. Where could I find her on such a dark night? Why didn’t she pay attention to us? Dear Dad, I am almost crying as I’m writing this. I remember when we lived in Beijing, you and Mum took us to the Forbidden City and the Beihai Park. You told us the Forbidden City was where the emperor lived. After a while, Fan saw a worker decorating the window in the palace hall, she ran back and told everyone mysteriously, I saw the emperor. The emperor was decorating the window. We also went to the Beihai Park to row the boats, eating barley buns and leaving the park after dark. It was you who carried me on your back the whole time. Mum held Fan. We fell asleep and I heard you tell Mum: Just look at how soundly they’re sleeping. Actually I was not fast asleep. I could have walked on my own but I pretended to be sleeping so you would carry me a little longer. Now I beg you to come home as soon as you read this letter. If this can be tolerated, what else cannot be?

      
I wish you health,

      
Your daughter, Tiao

It was a long letter sprinkled with political phrases popular back then, such as “If this can be tolerated, what else cannot be?” and “expose,” etc., a letter filled with accusation and tears. Continually looking up words in an elementary school dictionary, Tiao spent three days finishing the letter. At sad moments, tears soaked the paper, smudging some of the words and stippling the pages. Tiao wanted to copy the letter out again, but she was eager to send it. Besides, even though the letter was a bit messy, it did reveal her real feelings, after all. She wanted Yixun to see her true feelings and anxiety.

She found an envelope and carefully wrote down the names and addresses for both the sender and receiver. She then hid the letter in her backpack and threw it into the first postbox she saw on her way to school. It was a round, cast-iron pillar box that stood outside the gate of the Architectural Design Academy, only a hundred metres from Tiao’s home, Building Number 6 in the residential complex. She stood on tiptoe to throw the letter into the mailbox, and her heart felt relieved as soon as she heard the gentle
pa
sound as the letter dropped to the bottom of the box, as if the postbox liberated her right at that moment, setting her long-unhappy heart free.

When she came home in the afternoon, Wu had already cooked the dinner. It won’t taste good, Tiao thought, but she ate her fill. She believed Yixun was coming home soon and things would change. Nothing would be a problem. Her change of mood started after dinner. At the time, Fan was lying under the covers of Wu’s big bed with her eyes quietly closed, her fever down and her measles almost gone. Wu was leaning on the side of the bed knitting. This jumper was for Fan. She had followed Tiao’s suggestion and bought the rose-coloured yarn. Keeping vigil over Fan for several days in a row had made her thinner than before; her eyes were red and her hair slightly messy. She knitted with her head lowered for a while, then took a bottle of eyedrops from the nightstand and put a few drops into her eyes. The eyedrops must have burned, and she leaned against the pillow with her eyes closed, bearing it quietly for a while. Some liquid ran out of the corners of her eyes, which Tiao thought was a mixture of tears and eyedrops. She felt that the way Wu leaned on the pillow with her messy hair and teary eyes looked a little awkward and pitiful. How she clutched her knitting needles also touched Tiao with a kind of sadness that she couldn’t explain. The room was quiet and peaceful, as if no stranger had ever entered and nothing had ever happened. In those few seconds, just in a few seconds, everything changed.

Why did she have to write to Yixun? Was everything she put in the letter true? What would happen to her family when her dad came home? Why would she expose Wu? Wasn’t that a word that should be used only for enemies? All of a sudden Tiao felt pressure in her head as if a disaster were approaching—it must feel that way when a disaster approached. With the pressure building in her head, when Wu was not paying attention, she opened the door and sneaked out.

She passed several residential buildings in the Architectural Design Academy, going by the office building near the gate, the one pasted with all kinds of slogans and posters. In the daytime, the wind blew through layer upon layer of posters and tore them to shreds, making the building look like a giant wailing madman. Night silenced the madman and its body only made small monotonous rustlings, a bit lonely but not frightening. As soon as she crossed the pitch-black courtyard and walked out the gate, she saw the postbox, faithfully and steadfastly standing in the shadow of the trees on the pavement. She rushed straight at the letterbox with hands outstretched. She anxiously groped for the mail slot: a narrow slot, which immediately made her realize the pointlessness of her fumbling, since she had no way to slide her hand into it. By the dim streetlight, she could read the two rows of small words below the slot: “collection time, 11 a.m. and 5 p.m.”

Tiao clearly understood those two lines of words, but once again she reached her hands into the slot. She explored the narrow slot with her fingers one after another, hoping that a miracle would happen, that her small fingers could fish out a letter that was already gone. She had sneaked out of the house believing she could get the letter back as long as she found the postbox. Now she realized that this belief of hers was just a pathetic, self-deceiving fantasy. Up and down, she studied the ice-cold cast-iron postbox, taller and bigger than she was. She encircled it with her arms, holding its waist in hopes of pulling it up by the root, or pushing it over and smashing it. She wrestled with it, pleaded with it, and sulked at it; all the while she believed for no reason that as long as she kept working on it she could get that terrible letter back. She didn’t know how long she tortured herself, not stopping until she was utterly exhausted. She then threw herself onto the postbox and beat it wearily with her small fists. This seemingly faithful postbox had refused to serve her. She leaned against the postbox and started to cry, sobbing and beating it, not knowing where to find the letter that had gone. After a while she heard someone speak behind her: “Hey, child, what’s the matter?”

She was frightened and immediately stopped crying, staring alertly at the one who had asked her the question. Although much taller than she was, he was not an adult, but three or four years older than she was, or four or five at the most. He was one of those high school students who, of course, were adults in Tiao’s eyes because they normally treated elementary school students with arrogance, and liked to appear older than they actually were. That was why this boy addressed her as a child.