Yiyun Li - Kinder Than Solitude

It comforted Moran that many things could be done, and they would be done without complications or difficulties. Sixteen years earlier she had come to this country with two suitcases, in which she had packed everything she had imagined necessary to begin a new life: clothes, a quilt and a pillow pressed and bound tightly to make space, two bowls, a pair of chopsticks, a folding knife, a meat cleaver, two tins of tea leaves, an umbrella, two packs of sanitary napkins, and a Chinese-English dictionary. What she could not fit into her luggage — her Sony Walkman and her many cassettes, her books, a few girlhood diaries, and the single photo album her mother had put together, containing pictures and snapshots from different stages of her life — those her mother had promised to keep safe until she came home the next time. But she had not gone back to reclaim them— people rarely reclaim what they have lost , somewhere she read that; they only replace them . Her parents, when it had become clear that she might never do so, had brought with them the photo album and the diaries on one visit to America. Moran had put them away without taking a look inside.

After the divorce, Moran moved again with the same two suitcases and an even smaller collection of things. All that had mattered she’d left behind. Her ring she had returned to Josef; the thought that he had two pairs of rings to discard, or to keep, made her heart ache, yet she did not know what to do — nor did she want — to alleviate her own pain, as it must have hurt Josef more. The wedding photos and the snapshots taken on their honeymoon — a week off the coast of South Carolina (Josef had proposed the Bahamas, though Moran’s Chinese passport at the time had made it hard to travel anywhere outside the States) — she had asked Josef to keep with his family pictures. You travel so lightly, he had said when he dropped her off at the airport, his blue eyes filled with gentle sadness, though what he had meant, what had really let him down, was that she took everything so lightly. Blame that on the mental state of an immigrant, she had said, a ready excuse she had used again and again as she continued to live in a state that in Josef’s and other people’s eyes should have been transitory but had acquired a permanency over the years. To be able, at any moment, to pull up roots minimally put down, to be able to exit without being noticed or missed — these things gave her an odd sense of virginal freedom. Anything concerning the heart leaves it in confusion ; she had found this motto in one of the Buddhist books she had read after Shaoai’s poisoning; to desire nothing is to have no vulnerability .

But how many hearts could truly succeed in keeping themselves immune to all that would make them susceptible? With discipline Moran had lived in unperturbed calm since the divorce; no, even in her marriage she had longed for nothing but placidity. But peace like that was only a locked gate, and more than anyone, Josef had been gently pointing it out to her, not pushing it, yet not pretending he hadn’t seen it, either. Was that why she had broken her wedding vow? Moran had married Josef for all she could inherit from his past — his friends, children, and grandchildren — so that she would not have to build a life of her own; she had thought the crowdedness of his world would allow a young wife to exist quietly, and his first marriage, long and happy, would provide enough of a sheltering shadow for her to be nothing more than a replacement. Yet she had been proven wrong. Josef had not taken marriage as lightly as she had. Life, fair as it is, unexpectedly so at times, sets up trapping webs for even the most inconspicuous creature: Moran, panicked at the predicament in which she had found herself — love offered where she had asked only for kindness — would not have spared a limb or two in her scrambling to get herself untangled, and in doing so she had left a few scratches on Josef’s life, too. Any wound deeper than that she would not allow herself to believe. The thought that she could be ruthless was too much for her to bear: ruthlessness was a trait she associated with Boyang, and before him, Ruyu; before her, no one, as in those days, blinded by her eagerness to love, Moran had found the world a loving place.

Moran had met Josef at the county jail the first year she’d been living in America, on a tour organized by a local church group to introduce international students to the American legal system. The group had sponsored other gatherings — potlucks in the park, free English lessons on Tuesday and Thursday nights, and a fundraising concert for the church — but Moran had not gone to any of them.

There had been only four students — two boys from India and a young couple from Thailand — when Moran arrived at the jail. A man, pudgy, bald, and dressed soberly in a dark-colored jacket, came in a few minutes later and introduced himself as Josef. He said that the woman who was in charge had come down with the stomach flu, so he’d had to step in to help.

The sheriff hosting the tour seemed undeterred by the less than promising attendance. His initial remarks in the lobby lasted almost an hour, during which he gave a detailed account of his being shot at by a teenager, of the psychological trauma he’d had to overcome, of the everyday challenges a law-enforcement officer had to face, of America and its justice.

The Thai couple smiled and nodded, their hands clasped behind their backs. The two Indian boys gallantly volunteered when the sheriff produced handcuffs with which to demonstrate the more painful and the less painful way of being arrested, depending on one’s willingness to cooperate. Moran wondered if she could slip away, but Josef, standing behind his charges, dutifully blocked her way to the exit. Once again she read the visiting hours posted on the wall, which she had already memorized. It was a Saturday, the only day that the inmates were not allowed visitors. A needle of pain pulsed in Moran’s head, but surely there was more in life for one to endure than an afternoon in a county jail, which would, at some point, come to an end.

Once the sheriff unlocked the metal gate, both a relief and a hushed reverence settled over the foreign tourists. Through the barred door of a low-security cell, they saw a few men in orange outfits sitting around a table playing cards, none of them looking up at the procession in the hallway. All sorts of reasons, the sheriff answered when the Thai couple guiltily asked what had brought the inmates here. In an unoccupied cell the sheriff showed them a metal toilet with neither a lid nor a seat, and a brown mattress folded up in a corner. With a tape measure he demonstrated the size of the window, not wide enough for the skinniest man to climb through, yet offering a plentiful view of the world outside: the bare tops of the trees, the low, lead-colored clouds in the sky.

One of the four high-security cells was occupied, and the sheriff stopped in front of the door to give an introduction. He unlocked the inspection window and peeked inside before locking it again. A woman’s voice could be heard, whimpering, then screaming, then lowering again to a whimper. A metal basket affixed to the door frame held a toothbrush and a tiny tube of toothpaste.

The Thai couple looked away, as though embarrassed on the sheriff’s behalf. When he asked if anyone wanted to have a go at a straitjacket, which had been left outside the cell, neither of the sanguine Indian boys volunteered. A detour led them to the office, where the sheriff gave yet another long speech. By the time the group was released onto the chilly, empty sidewalk, it was dusk. In the orange light of the street lamps, big flakes of snow fell soundlessly, and already the world was covered by an undisturbed layer of whiteness.