Yiyun Li - A Thousand Years of Good Prayers

Ruolan checked the stitches without replying. He had only one person in his heart, and Ruolan was disappointed that it was not she. “Don’t worry,” she said finally. “Mama won’t die before everyone she knows dies first.”

“Ruolan,” Uncle Bing said disapprovingly. “She’s your mother.”

“Is she really?” Ruolan said, looking up at Uncle Bing. “Baba said I wasn’t his daughter. How could I be her daughter?”

“She brought you up.”

“She did it only to have someone to torment.”

“Ruolan.” Uncle Bing raised his voice, and she stared back. “She’s in a bad mood because she’s ill. You need to help her feel better,” he said.

Ruolan did not reply, and started sewing again. When she finished, she broke the thread between her teeth and ran a finger to smooth the stitches. She patted the pillow into a good shape before putting it back on the bed. “Why do people all expect me to be her medicine?” she asked.

Uncle Bing sat down by the stove. “You’re the only one she has now,” he said.

Ruolan sneered. Uncle Bing hesitated, and said, “Perhaps it’s time to know their story so you’ll understand her.”

“There’s nothing for me to understand,” Ruolan said.

Uncle Bing ignored her words. He poured a bowl of water into the stove to put out the leftover fire, and said, “I’ve known your mother all my life, since when we were small children. She was a beautiful girl. She was loved by many boys my age, and she was proud and happy about it, but when we reached eighteen, something changed. The proposals that many of us sent with the matchmakers to her parents were rejected, and she became less happy. Her parents must be holding on to her for an offer better than any of us could afford, the townspeople said; look how the greedy parents are wasting her youth for money, the townspeople said. Soon many boys found other girls as wives, but year after year, there was no sign of marriage on her side. They must have some unspeakable and dirty secret in the family, the townspeople said, and then had wild guesses. Your mother became very sad and pale.

“The year when we were twenty-seven, her parents suddenly married her off to your father, who lived two counties away. After the wedding, the couple moved to a new town even farther away. I was the only boy who hadn’t married then. A fool stricken by love, people said about me, and perhaps I was. When she left, I moved too, to the town where she lived with her husband. I thought I would be satisfied if only I could see her in the street from time to time, but a few days after the wedding, rumors started that every night the bridegroom was heard sobbing in the yard. People talked about the scandal that the bridegroom’s family must have hid his mental disorder from the bride before the wedding, and when your mother’s family did not show up to denounce the cheating, people looked down upon her, too.

“For the first year of their marriage, I was your mother’s only friend, and she came to talk to me every day, until there were rumors about our affair. I thought it would only make her life more miserable, so I planned to leave her for good. When your father learned that I was leaving, he came to visit me. I thought he was coming to fight me; I told him your mother and I were innocent, but he only smiled and brought out a bottle of liquor. We drank for the whole night like a pair of old friends, and he told me his story. He had been in love with a widow twelve years his senior since he was fifteen, he said. His family thought a wife would cure him of his infatuation with the older woman, so they arranged for him to marry a girl from out of town and arranged for them to move away so nobody would know his history. But on the wedding night, your mother told him that she could not become his real wife.”

“Why?” Ruolan said for the first time since Uncle Bing started the story.

Uncle Bing hesitated for a moment, and said, “Your mother — she is a stone woman. ”

“A stone woman ?”

“It’s something you’ll understand when you’re older,” Uncle Bing said.

“How does one know if she’s a stone woman?” Ruolan asked. She wondered if all the medicine her mother drank in the morning year after year had turned her into a solid rock. Ruolan wondered if she herself would be poisoned, by the years of breathing in the bitterness from the dregs, into an ugly and cold woman like her mother.

Uncle Bing did not reply, his eyes looking past Ruolan into a distant past. “She told your father to either live with the fact or divorce her; she said she didn’t mind because her only goal was to get married and leave her hometown so people would no longer talk about her. Your father was shocked that her family had cheated in the matchmaking, but he could not tell this to anyone, including his family. I asked him why, and he said a husband was a husband no matter what was missing from the marriage, and it would be unforgivable if he attacked his wife’s name even with the truth. Besides, he said, they deserved it because they had planned to deceive, too. Your father, he’s one of the good people in the world. There was nothing wrong with his mind. He was in love with an older woman, that’s all, but he was willing to be thought a crazy person and stay in the marriage to protect your mother’s name.

“After that night, your father and I became close friends. I helped them to adopt you. We — your father and I— thought it would make their marriage better if they could raise a child together. To make you their own child, they moved farther away, to a different province — where we live now — so that people would not know anything about their past. I did not move at first; I thought I would let them live in their own marriage, and it seemed that things were fine for a while. But after three years, your father came to visit me again. We had another night of drinking, and he confessed that he could not help going back to the widow from time to time. Your mother was very upset when she found out about it, and she refused to leave her bed. I moved again to be close to your mother. I came to take care of her and you when your father was away to live with the other woman. He stuck to his words and came home as a husband for the year-end housecleaning and celebration. The rest of the story you’ve known. Believe me, Ruolan, your parents are good people. They’ve tried all these years; they’ve tried very hard.”

“Why does he want a divorce now?”

“The other woman — she used to work as a nanny for people — she’s sick now, and he wants to marry her so he can take care of her, and help with the medical bills.”

Ruolan thought about her father and the other woman, and she pitied them. “Why didn’t you get married, Uncle Bing?” she said.

Uncle Bing smiled. “I’m one of those fools who puts a magic leaf in front of his eyes and then stops seeing mountains and seas.”

“Would you marry Mama if their divorce goes through?”

“What difference would a marriage make now?” he said.

Ruolan was relieved but unsatisfied. “Don’t marry her,” she said. “She’s poisonous. Look how she’s already destroyed half of a life for Baba. You don’t want her to destroy your whole life.”

“Ruolan!” Uncle Bing raised his voice.

Ruolan looked at the dark veins on his forehead. He looked unfamiliar, ferocious even, but she did not recoil. She had seen two men poisoned into sad and sheepish beings by her mother, and she wanted to correct the mistake. “What’s good about her? She’s lazy, ugly, bad-tempered,” Ruolan said. “Whatever she does, I can do a hundred times better.”

“Ruolan?”

“Think about it, Uncle Bing. We’re not related to her. We can leave her, and make a new family ourselves. I can cook. I can sew. I’ll do all the housework. I’ll find a job after middle school. When you are too old to work, I’ll earn money and support you. Why do you need her if you have me?”