Yiyun Li - A Thousand Years of Good Prayers

Ruolan looked at her mother’s handwriting on the paper. It was the same prescription her mother sent her to fill every month, the mixture of grass roots, tree barks, and dried flowers that her mother boiled the first thing in the morning. “I’m not sick,” Ruolan said.

“A prolonged illness makes a good doctor out of a patient,” her mother said. “I know what you need.”

“I’ve heard that all medicines are poisons,” Ruolan said.

“Are you saying that your mother wants to poison you?”

“I’m only saying maybe it’s not good for you, or anyone, to have medicine every day.”

“I’m ill,” her mother said. She dropped the bill and the carbon paper on Ruolan’s cot. “You’re a woman now, so you’d better listen to me,” her mother said. “Being a woman is itself an illness.”

Before Ruolan replied, her mother walked back to her bedroom. Ruolan looked at her mother’s feet, skinny and ashen colored in the tattered, sky blue slippers. She felt choked by disgust and pity for her mother’s body. Her own body had changed over the last two months, her breasts swelling with a strange, painful itch. She imagined herself growing into a woman like her mother; it was the last thing she wanted from life. She squeezed the carbon paper into a small ball and flipped it through the open door to the courtyard. She flattened the extra bills with her palm and put them in her textbook.

Ruolan’s father came home the next week, much too early. For the first time, Ruolan was overjoyed to see him. They had never been close. She had got used to his absence, and now she understood the reason for it. They were comrades, trapped in a life with the woman they could not love, but could not leave, either.

At the end of the dinner that evening, Ruolan’s father brought up the topic of a divorce. He had submitted an application to his and her working units, he said. In a few days they would expect the welfare officials from both factories to come and dissuade them, but if they could agree on the divorce, the officials would sign the application so they could go to the county courthouse to replace their marriage certificate with a divorce certificate.

Ruolan’s mother did not reply. She dipped the head of a chopstick in the soup and drew linked circles on the table. Her father’s eyes followed the strokes of the chopstick. He looked older than Ruolan remembered; his hair, at fortyfive, was more gray than black.

“What if I don’t agree?” her mother said finally.

“We’ll have to go to the court,” her father looked at his own palms and said. “But why do we have to make it hard for us?”

“For you, you mean? Why should I agree to save you the disgrace of going into the court?” Ruolan’s mother said. “You’re the one to keep a mistress.”

Her father looked at Ruolan and said, “Go out and play, Ruolan.”

“Let her stay. She’s a woman now. She should learn from my lesson of how to keep a man.”

It was not about keeping a man; it was a lesson on how not to become an ugly woman. Ruolan felt a revenging joy of seeing her father leave her mother. She was ready to desert her, too.

Ruolan’s father opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, her mother cut him off. “Don’t say anything. I won’t agree to sign,” she said, and stood up. “I won’t let you off the hook so easily,” she said before she banged the bedroom door closed. The venom in her words made Ruolan shudder. She looked at her father, tired and crestfallen, his lips quavering. “Baba,” she said in a low voice, “are you going to take me in after the divorce?”

“I’m sorry, but Mama needs you more than I do,” Ruolan’s father said, still studying his palms. “She’s ill.”

“I’m not her medicine,” Ruolan said, choked with disappointment in her father.

He looked up at her, but his eyes were empty, his mind already floating to another place. “Am I your daughter, Baba?” Ruolan asked.

Her father looked at her for a long moment and said, “No.”

“Am I Uncle Bing’s daughter?”

“No,” her father said, and picked up the suitcase that he had not unpacked. “You’re your mother’s daughter,” he said, and ran away into the night street before she could ask more questions.

The next morning, Ruolan’s mother did not wake her for the medicine pot, and Ruolan got up late for school. The door to her mother’s bedroom was closed. For a moment, Ruolan imagined her mother hanged from the ceiling with a broken neck and a long, dangling tongue. She shivered and pushed the door; it was bolted from inside. “Mama,” she said. When there was no reply, she hit the door with a fist and started to cry.

After a while, her mother opened the door. “What are you wailing for the first thing in the morning?” she said and shoveled the medicine pot into Ruolan’s hands. “You think I would kill myself and let your father get away so easily?”

Ruolan wiped her tears dry. Halfway to the crossroads, she changed her mind and walked back. Her mother’s bedroom door was closed, and Ruolan dumped the dregs by the door. She unloaded all her books onto her cot and put her clothes, a few pieces altogether, into her book bag. She took the old textbook from underneath her mattress and counted the bills, enough for a day and a night of bus ride to Shanghai, she imagined; but when she reached the ticket window at the bus station, she lost her courage and asked only for a ticket to Uncle Bing’s village.

TWO HOURS LATER, Ruolan got off the bus, and, aftergetting lost a few times, she found the mud shack that served as the classroom for the village school. About twenty boys and girls, of all grades, sat on wooden benches, reading together a story about a tadpole looking for his mother. Uncle Bing was walking around, patting the younger kids’ heads while reading along with them.

Ruolan walked away before Uncle Bing saw her. Across the yard there was a smaller shack. She pushed the door ajar and entered. It was dark inside and it took her a few seconds to see the cot and the desk covered with workbooks and papers. At one corner of the shack was a stove, on which a huge pot of millet porridge was simmering. Ruolan sat down on the stool in front of the stove, and out of habit she took up the ladle and stirred the porridge. The handle of the ladle had been broken and fixed with a pair of chopsticks bound together. She stroked the chopsticks with a finger, and imagined living her life in this shack, cooking for Uncle Bing, waiting for him to finish work, loving him like a good woman.

The door opened and Uncle Bing came in. Ruolan saw his expression change from surprise to worriment. “Is there something wrong?” he said, and clutched Ruolan’s shoulder. “Is Mama all right?”

“She’s fine,” Ruolan said.

“Ah, Ruolan. You’ve scared the soul out of me,” Uncle Bing said and let go of her. “Why are you not in school today?”

“Uncle Bing, the porridge is ready,” Ruolan said.

“Ah, yes,” he said. “Let me get it to the students first. They must be hungry now.”

“Do you cook for the students?”

“Otherwise I wouldn’t have more than half of them,” Uncle Bing said, and explained that for many students, the porridge would be their only meal during the day, and they came to school because of that.

“Baba came home yesterday and asked for a divorce from Mama,” Ruolan said, cutting off Uncle Bing.

“So he told me. He came by last night,” Uncle Bing said, and went out of the shack with the porridge. Ruolan sat down on the cot and looked at the pillowcase, torn at a corner and in need also of a good wash. She remembered Uncle Bing’s scent left on her pillow.

When Uncle Bing came back with the empty pot, Ruolan had found the sewing bag in a basket underneath the cot, and was mending the pillowcase. The needle was rusted, and she wiped it on her hair from time to time. Uncle Bing watched her work for a moment and then said that he had canceled the afternoon’s class. Ruolan looked out the window and saw the children chase one another off. “Let’s catch the next bus home,” Uncle Bing said and walked to the door. “Mama must need comfort now.”