Ken Liu - Broken Stars

She understood this better than anyone else at this moment.

“You don’t know what you’ve done!” The pale woman sobbed uncontrollably.

“I know what I’ve done. Almost, almost I believed you. This morning was the first time I’ve ever believed that I might deserve happiness after all.”

My name is Tang Jiaming.

My mother is insane.

Dad told me that when I was four, my mother died coming home on a ferry. I didn’t understand why Dad told me such a story until I was much older.

Not long after my mother’s death, Dad and I moved into our current home. Dad is an architect; he spent a lot of time renovating our new home. Our new home didn’t feel as spacious as it looked, but it was plenty big for us. Later, I went to school like other kids. One night, I dreamed of the pale woman. She had a sheet of paper filled with strange symbols, and she told me that the paper told her the future. I didn’t believe her. Although I dreamed about the pale woman every night after, I never believed her predictions, the words of the stars.

Until I met Zhang Xiaobo.

Because I wanted love.

That’s humanity for you.

He opens the door and is surprised to find me sitting on the sofa. “You’re home?”

“Sorry. I know we said we’d go out for dinner. I forgot it was tonight.”

“No big deal.” He takes the Sarah Brightman CD out of his briefcase. “For you.”

No matter what I want, he always tries to get it for me. No matter how disobedient I am, he never disciplines me. None of the other fathers are like this.

He doesn’t ask about the bruises on my face. He’s been like that since I was little. If I got bullied he always pretended that he saw nothing.

“That’s why you have to be smart and take care of yourself,” the pale woman had said.

“Did you get out of work early because you wanted to tell me something?”

“No. I just wanted to have a good meal with you. Aren’t you going to get in trouble for skipping study hall tonight?”

“Don’t worry about it. Since you’re back early and I’m not going to study hall, why don’t we sit and chat a bit?” I get up and dim the living room lights.

The living room has never been so dim in my memory. Day or night, the lights and the TV have always been kept on.

“What are you doing?”

I walk in front of the mirror facing the TV. I press against the glass and look in. I see what he doesn’t want me to see: the pale woman and her prison cell.

“One-way glass?” I stare at him. “Daddy, I guess our living room isn’t so small after all.”

My name is Tang Jiaming.

My mother is insane.

My father is an excellent architect. He built a secret chamber into our living room, where he has imprisoned my mother for more than a decade. The pale woman has never been a dream. It took me a long time before I understood this, but I continued to insist that she was just a dream. Like the story he told me about her drowning.

Before we lie to each other, we always have to successfully lie to ourselves.

“When did you find out?”

“When I realized that I always felt extra sleepy after drinking the milk you gave me.”

My father doesn’t know that although the drugs could put me to sleep, they couldn’t stop me from waking up in the middle of the night to find the pale woman. No matter how soundly I slept, sometime during the night I’d be awakened by some force, and, like an object in midair tumbling to the ground, I’d come to be by the side of the pale woman.

If you didn’t want others to know that you had a mad wife, why didn’t you just seal her inside solid walls?

If I asked him this question, he would surely reply that he did it for me. He didn’t want others to know that I had a mad mother.

I don’t think so. I’m not going to let him get a chance to say this.

“Drink this. You haven’t been getting enough sleep.” I bring out a glass of warm milk from the kitchen and put it in front of him. I look at him solicitously.

He drinks it down. I knew he would. No matter what I had put in it, he would have drunk it.

Anything would be better than having to face me like this.

“When did she start to say those crazy things?” I sit down in front of him, my hands gently covering his trembling knees.

“She was always different, even when we first met. She said she heard strange voices. She was always very interested in the exact time and place of people’s births. She disliked some people for no reason at all. I just attributed those to harmless quirks. But then you were born, and she—” He looks up at me, and continues only with some effort. “She calculated your fate by the astrolabe, and said that you were a child destined to alter the talk of the stars; you had to be protected. She became more and more deranged—”

“You got scared.”

“I don’t know if she’s really crazy. Some things have come to pass the way she predicted. No, I wasn’t scared of her. But you didn’t see how others were looking at us.”

He knows I’m not crazy , the pale woman had said once. I remember her expression as she said it. I remember other things, as well.

Before he closes his eyes, I ask my last question. “Did you stop loving her a long time ago?”

“No, not at all. I love her. Always have.”

That is the worst of all possible answers.

Thanks to that glass of warm milk, he falls asleep before he could begin to cry uncontrollably. Of course he loves her. For her, he had installed the one-way glass so that she could watch that TV in the living room, always left on. More important, the pale woman could see me through that mirror.

But Daddy, you really have given me the worst answer.

My name is Tang Jiaming.

I don’t have a father, and no mother either. I can change the talk of the stars; that is, I can change fate.

Tomorrow morning, I’m going to get to school on time. I’ll continue to pretend to be a student as if nothing has happened. I’m not going to pretend to be like the others, and I’ll never allow anyone to hurt me again. I’m going to be myself, completely. Once you know how to change fate, this is not difficult.

The pale woman should be happy. I believe her, and I’ll fulfill her prediction. I’ve copied her astrolabe, and I’ve tried to move her stars. As my first experimental project, she died. I didn’t want her to die, but I don’t need an excuse to absolve myself. There’s no question I killed her. Still, she should be happy.

Zhu Yin will make up with me. That’s what her stars say. The stars also say that she wants many other things.

At the next full moon, nude pictures of Lina will appear in the inbox of every student. That night, Lina’s stars will become utterly fragile. She’ll want to die; she’ll hang herself from the tallest pole in the school, where her nubile body will swing in the wind like a leaf.

On that night, the fragrance of her feminine body, the smell of death, and the stench of her excrement will attract Zhang Xiaobo to her corpse. He’ll be like some lost worker bee, confused by the smells, hovering around the dangling girl. Even death won’t be able to completely stop the cinnamon aroma of her body. She’ll be so entrancing. Especially then. Serene, calm, a chocolate sea calling to him.