Lisa See - The Interior

Each time he looked back, Suchee was rocked by memories of the young couple together. She recalled how Miaoshan and Tsai Bing had liked to walk out across the raised pathways that divided the fields. Their laughter had drifted on the air, so sweet in the early spring months. Recently they had looked as happy as when they had been small children, not the usual wariness they had shown to each other during the early period of their betrothal.

Once Tsai Bing was out of sight, Suchee stood there dumbly as the policemen, sweating in their wrinkled khaki uniforms, walked around the shed and poked at Miaoshan's bruised neck with their rough fingers. When they said that suicide was a wrong, that Miaoshan would never take her own life; nor was she foolish enough to have caused her own death by accident. She told them again and again, but they would not hear her. "Girls," Captain Woo said, "they can be temperamental. They are too emotional. And Miaoshan… I have known her since she was a little girl. I am sorry, but she was a wild one. You never could control her."

Then the police put away their notepads and got into their cars. Just before driving down the rutted red dirt road, Captain Woo rolled down his window. He was not a man without sympathy, and he called out politely, "Ling Taitai, you don't need me to tell you this is hot weather. There is little time to waste. Miaoshan needs to be taken care of and soon. We are going back to the village. Would you like to ride with us?"

But Suchee shook her head, went back inside the shed, sat down again next to her daughter's body, and lifted the girl gently into her arms. She looked at Miaoshan's lifeless face and thought of her stubbornness. As a caring mother, Suchee should have made her daughter marry Tsai Bing long ago, but Miaoshan had resisted, saying, "An arranged marriage is old-fashioned. Besides, I do not love Tsai Bing. He is too much like a brother to me." Still, the mothers had persevered, and two years ago the parties had settled the terms of the bride price even though the two children were below marriage-certificate age.

Despite the engagement, Miaoshan had begged her mother again and again to be allowed to work at the new American toy factory that had opened in the area. "I can make more money as a worker, and I'll be less of a burden to you," Miaoshan had said. This had been only partly true. She could indeed make more money, but Suchee always needed Miaoshan's help watering and working the land. Still, Miaoshan had persisted with the same willfulness that she had shown since the age of three, when all Chinese children begin to show their true personalities. "The local ginger is not spicy enough for Miaoshan," neighbors often said, meaning that she always had her eyes on the horizon, thinking that things were better beyond its unseen edge. So when Miaoshan repeated her request to go to the factory, Suchee, despite her regret at losing her daughter as a helper and companion, had let her leave six months ago in the darkest month of winter. Never, never, never should she have let this happen.

When Miaoshan came home for her first visit, she had changed. Underneath her same old jacket she wore a store-bought sweater and American nu zai ku-what were called "cow boy pants." But what really shocked Suchee was her daughter's face. Miaoshan had always been considered plain. When other mothers had seen her as a baby, they had shaken their heads in sympathy, which was one reason that Suchee was so relieved when Tsai Bing's mother had sent the matchmaker. But upon her return from the factory, Miaoshan's cheekbones, which had always looked angular and pale next to the perfect round faces of the neighbor girls, were tinted pink. Her lips were painted a rich ruby color. Her eyes were outlined with black, and her lids were heavy with a deep gray. She looked like the famous movie star Gong Li. No, she looked like an American movie star. Suchee saw that even in death her daughter looked beautiful, Western, absolutely foreign.

Every time that Miaoshan came home, Suchee grew increasingly disturbed by the changes in her daughter. But during her last visit she had said something that made Suchee go cold inside. Miaoshan had been talking about a meeting she'd had at the factory with some of the other girls. "The right information is better than a bullet," she had said. "With it, you can't lose. Without it, you won't survive." Then she'd laughed lightly and changed the subject, but the memory of those words stayed with Suchee, because she could remember back many years to when people who recited slogans like that were punished. And now Miaoshan had been… destroyed.

She smoothed the hair away from Miaoshan's face, feeling how the warmth of the day was seeping into her skin instead of out. Captain Woo was right. Suchee could not let her daughter rot here in the summer heat. Suchee put aside her grief and temporarily covered the private hard purpose that was already growing inside her like a seed after a fresh spring rain, and began to plan her daughter's burial. She was a poor woman, this was true. But she was also a widow, and during the ten years since her husband's death she had conserved a little here, a little there, always thinking that the future was uncertain. One could never tell when there might be a drought, an illness, a political upheaval, a funeral.

She carefully set Miaoshan's body back on the ground, stood, stared for a moment at the motionless form, then went outside for a shovel. She walked along the route that she alone had memorized. Suchee found her spot and dug until the shovel hit the metal chest where she kept her savings and her important papers. After taking the money and once again burying the box, Suchee was sweaty and dirty, but she did not stop to splash water on her face or clean her arms and legs. Instead she simply replaced the shovel and set off down the dirt road.

Her first stop in town was with the local feng shui man. The diviner promised he would weigh, as thousands of years of custom dictated, the attributes of feng shui-wind and water-to find the burial location that was most propitious for the new spirit. To that end he would also examine Miaoshan's horoscope and contemplate the political backgrounds of her parents. After that he would go to the cemetery and consult with the spirits who already resided there. All of this he explained to Suchee, but when she placed a larger number of bills in his hand than was usual he finalized his decision. Miaoshan would be buried on a slight rise in the cemetery where she might face the warmth of the south for all eternity. Leaving the feng shui man, Suchee hurriedly did her other errands. But how difficult it was for her now to walk down the main street of this village. She saw the familiar faces-the woman who sold dishes decorated with gaily painted enamel flowers, the man who filled gallon cans with kerosene for lanterns, the old man who fixed broken bicycles. News traveled quickly in Da Shui Village. As she walked past these people, their faces darkened with sympathy and they bowed their heads in respect, but Suchee registered none of it.

Instead her mind filled again with images of Miaoshan in life. As a toddler in split pants. As a girl dressed in a faded blue padded jacket who was devoted to her studies, diligently practicing her Chinese ideograms and reciting her English. As the young woman she had recently become who sometimes seemed such a stranger. "One day I will earn enough money that we will leave this place," she had often said with such conviction that Suchee had believed her. "We will go to Shenzhen, maybe even America…" Silently Suchee pulled at her hair, trying to drive away her dream-ghost daughter. Silently she screamed, How could this have happened?

From the dry-goods store, Suchee purchased paper in assorted colors so that tonight she might cut them into offerings, which would be burned at the grave. In this way Miaoshan, who was so poor in life, would be accompanied to the afterworld with clothes, a car, a house, friends. To distract Hungry Ghosts from Miaoshan's funeral belongings, Suchee would cook up a pot of rice to sprinkle on the bonfire. When the flames died down, her daughter would truly be gone forever.