Tie Ning - The Bathing Women

With her sleeve in the woman’s grip, Wu was embarrassed. She was unprepared for an encounter with so difficult a woman. Yes, indeed, a very difficult woman, a horrid woman, with expensive but tasteless clothes, and at least two diamond rings on her hand. With her child such a treasure, the rest of the world was bound to become her enemy. Wu struggled to get free, but the woman grasped her even harder. Wu had never been good at fighting, and at this point she was more helpless and petrified than she’d ever been. How she had managed to get herself into such a fix was a mystery to her. She found it particularly unbearable to have her sleeve clutched by a total stranger. With a frustrated expression, she said, “What are you doing? What are you doing, pulling my sleeve?”

The woman turned even more fierce. She whirled back and forth from Wu to the customers who had started to gather. “Everyone listen: she bullies my child and then complains about me pulling her sleeve! So you know what an uncomfortable feeling it is to have your sleeve grabbed by someone? Did my child feel comfortable when you hit his hand? I’ve been talking for so long and you haven’t even apologized. What else could you do if you’ve learned anything in all the years you’ve lived?”

Wu said, “What do you mean, I haven’t apologized? Didn’t I say I was sorry for being careless?”

“Did you say this to my child? Did you apologize to him?”

Wu said, “Why do you keep talking on and on like this? I’ve made it clear that I didn’t do it on purpose and I was just choosing my mascara. The saleswoman will tell you.”

Suddenly a young woman next to the child’s mother, with her hair dyed blonde and lips painted purple, cut in. She taunted Wu. “How old are you? Still painting your eyelashes with mascara? Look at the few you have left. What’s there to show off? Why don’t you go home and take a good look at yourself in the mirror? Come to the mall to give a two-year-old a hard time!”

Blond-Hair-and-Purple-Lips cutting in gave new energy to the child’s mother. Judging by their looks, they seemed to be sisters. Blond-Hair-and-Purple-Lips was the child’s aunt. They appeared to be people with money, the sort who got rich overnight and hadn’t learned to conceal their essential vulgarity. They were eager to attract attention, to have people notice their money and the power money conferred. Faced with an old woman like Wu, with her plodding speech, what scruples would they have? So they couldn’t stop. The older sister chimed in with the younger, “Yeah, what strange things happen these days. Whether the creature is human or not, it always wants to dress itself up like a human being.”

Wu was enraged. She shook the child’s mother’s hand from her sleeve and said, “You’ve gone too far. Why are you insulting me?”

“Who’s insulted you? Who?” the child’s mother said.

“Both of you, together. Should I be insulted this way just because I’m old?”

Blond-Hair-and-Purple-Lips said, “Yes, I insulted you. So what? Shameless old bitch …”

It was at that moment that Tiao pushed her way through the crowd and saw Wu. Her mother was standing alone in front of the counter, her unrecognizable face full of agony and helplessness. She looked weak and ashamed before the two vigorous young women, at a loss to defend herself, not just in the current moment, but forever. She stood lonely in front of the cool perfection of the Dior counter, a laughing stock. Her back was visibly stooped, and her right shoulder was slightly higher than her left one, which made her seem even more pathetic. This woman was Tiao’s mother. Tiao had never encountered her mother in such a situation or in such a condition, and it evoked a care and protectiveness in her heart that she had never felt before. No, she had never cared for or protected her mum; her relationship with her mother was full of demands, resentments, distance, and indifference. Her condemnation of Wu’s betrayal of the family had run through her entire life, and it was what argued loudest for Tiao’s neglect of Wu. Wu accepted her indifference; they had a tacit understanding. It took those two arrogant young women in front of the Dior counter to awaken the maternal feeling in the depth of Tiao’s heart. She was certain it was a maternal feeling; a daughter had to acquire the feelings of a mother in order to treat her mother with kindness and care.

So when Tiao showed up while the two women were shouting insults at Wu, she stepped between Wu and the women and confronted them without the least hesitation. “Now, I apologize for my mother to your child, but I find your behaviour a little shocking. You swear and shout insults right in front of the child like this, which will teach your child how to treat you in the future.”

With that, Tiao took Wu’s arm and said loudly, “Mum, let’s go.”

Wu stumbled along beside her. They left the mall and got into a taxi. As soon as Wu was in the car she couldn’t help bursting into tears, like a child who had been bullied in the street and was finally taken home. Ah, your parents are your children. A heart must be big for that.

Wu said in tears, “Tiao, if you hadn’t come, I really wouldn’t have known what to do. I was really … I was really …” She kept blowing her nose with handful after handful of tissues. Ever since she had had the bridge of her nose raised, her nose ran, so she had to blow it constantly.

They got home and Wu said to Tiao before they went in, “Don’t mention what happened today to your dad.”

Fortunately, Yixun was not home, which immediately calmed Wu. She walked into the bedroom and lay down. Tiao took her a cup of water.

She lay in bed and closed her eyes for a while, and propped herself up to drink half a cup of water. She then lay back and said, “Tiao, come over and sit beside me.”

Tiao got a chair and sat next to Wu’s bed.

“I know none of you likes to see how I look now. I think maybe my plastic surgeries were a mistake, a complete mistake.”

“Mum, you stay quiet for a while. After a while you’ll feel better.”

“Why do you think I had plastic surgery? To make myself look prettier? I wasn’t sure in the beginning, myself. I was bored with my life. Later, I participated in the seniors’ fashion show, and I think that got me into the plastic surgeries at first, and I convinced myself that this was the most important reason. But then I found it wasn’t true. The real reason was for your dad, to please your dad. You know your dad doesn’t like me, and for many years I didn’t like myself, either. I fantasized that by changing my appearance entirely I could destroy the old me. By destroying the old me I would destroy my old memories. Most of the old memories were unpleasant. Your dad wasn’t happy. You know.”

“No, I don’t know.”

“You know.”

“No, I don’t.”

Wu insisted, “You do know, no matter what you say. I wanted to please him, but that was another mistake. I don’t know why there was always something that went wrong with my life. The old me has disappeared, but who is the person with this new face? Your dad can go without talking to me or looking at me for days on end, and I don’t blame him. Only, he would never believe that I changed my face to destroy the past, to make him happy now.”

Tiao looked at Wu’s distorted, miserable face and believed what she said. She wanted to understand this strange and selfless wish, although all of it made her angry. Chen Zai’s ex-wife came into her mind at this moment, and she remembered what Wan Meicheng had said about how she wanted to change herself into Tiao. They wanted to please their loved ones, but in an absurd way, and they were painfully misguided.