Andrea Barrett: The Middle Kingdom

I held Jody tighter. ‘He’s fine,’ I said. ‘He’s just frightened.’

‘Everyone is frightened,’ the student said. ‘The soldiers have been in and out of here since Sunday. They forbid us to allow the relatives of the dead to claim the bodies, to talk to reporters — are you a reporter?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘Too bad. But you should go home. Go home and tell everyone what has happened here.’

The air was dense with the smell of blood and disinfectant, and beside us someone groaned. A girl, no older than Wenwen, was using her right hand to support her left, which was bound in a green strip of cloth and missing two fingers. The student turned away from me and began murmuring to the girl. ‘Gunshot?’ I heard him say. ‘This morning? Where?’ But when I moved toward the elevator, he looked back over his shoulder and said, ‘You must go out.’

‘Dr Zhang Meng,’ I said. ‘Do you know him? I have to find him or his wife. She’s a biologist, Dr Yu Xiaomin …’

The student nodded. ‘I know her,’ he said. ‘I know them. Dr Yu has been helping her husband here since Sunday. Please — wait outside on the steps. I will send her to you.’

I picked my way back through the wounded people until I reached the fresh air and could close the door on the sights and sounds I’d never meant Jody to see. Jody climbed down and grabbed one of the posts supporting the railing. When he saw me begin to cry he started kicking the post with one cloth-shoed foot.

‘Don’t cry,’ he said.

And so I stood silently. I had once spent a week in this hospital, which had been sleepy and quiet and clean. The halls had been empty except for the soft upholstered armchairs. The sun had shone on the smooth wooden floors. And when I’d returned the following June to have Jody, I’d had the same sun, the same quiet, and a roomful of smiling mothers for company. I’d had Xiaomin, who, as the door banged open now, stumbled into the light.

Jody looked up and called ‘Minmin!’ — his name for her — and then ran up to her leg and seized it. Xiaomin was pale and drawn and her hands were shaking, but she bent down and smoothed Jody’s hair while she greeted me.

‘You’re all right,’ she said. ‘We were so frightened. And the baby …’

‘He’s fine,’ I said. ‘He slept for most of our bike ride in.’

She smiled at that. ‘You’re fine,’ she said. ‘You’re both fine. And the students?’

‘They’re all right,’ I said. ‘Some soldiers came to the campus earlier this afternoon, but almost everyone was gone by then. And then I thought I’d better come find you. I wasn’t sure you’d be here, I was afraid you’d be at home …’

‘I’ve been here with Meng the whole time,’ she said, and then she spread her hands in the air and turned them over and back, as if they were chickens at the market. ‘I assisted him,’ she said. ‘All the wounded people — he cut and I held what he told me to.’

In the sun her hands looked transparent. ‘Have you slept?’ I asked.

‘A little,’ she said. ‘Not much.’ She looked down at Jody, who was fiddling with the hem of her pants.

‘I brought our notebooks,’ I said. ‘And the drafts of the papers. What do you want to do with them?’

In the distance we heard a single sharp pop, which might have been a truck backfiring or another gun. ‘What does it matter now?’ she said, but when I dug them out of my sack she took them and pressed them to her chest. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘But the important thing, the important thing is to get you out of here. Thank God Zaofan is gone.’

We looked at each other then, and Jody looked up at us. Thank God indeed — Zaofan, Xiaomin’s oldest son, had left China in the fall of 1986, and that was what Xiaomin and I had said to each other the first winter he was gone, during the demonstrations that led to the downfall of Hu Yaobang. Those had involved a few thousand students, a handful of arrests, but both Xiaomin and I had been convinced that Zaofan would have been one of those detained. If he’d been here now, he might have been shot.

‘He called Monday night,’ Xiaomin said. ‘From Massachusetts. Our phone was still working then. He was frantic — he’d heard that some doctors from our hospital had been killed trying to rescue students from the square. And he wanted to know if we’d heard from you. And then he said he was coming back — you know how he’s been — and that I couldn’t stop him. I had to put Meng on the phone. Meng told him no. No, absolutely. He said Zaofan could help us more by staying there.’

‘I’ll call him,’ I promised. ‘As soon as I can. I’ll make him stay.’

She picked up Jody and carried him down the steps and onto the grass, where she gave him a length of rubber tubing she pulled from her pocket. ‘You can call him from there,’ she said, knotting the tubing into a sling. ‘You can see him. You must go home.’

A gentle breeze blew, carrying with it odd hints of burning rubber and gasoline. ‘This is home,’ I said. I had never meant to stay here forever — three years, Xiaomin and I had decided. Maybe four. Just until we finished our project and Jody was ready for school. But I had no intention of leaving now.

‘Zaofan begged us to come and join him,’ Xiaomin said. ‘I told him we might later on — what will be left for us after this? We have to stay now, at least until this is over. But I promised him I’d send you and Jody.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ I said. ‘We’re staying here. I can help.’

Jody looped the sling around his foot and pulled against it. Xiaomin struck the railing with her hand. ‘You have to go,’ she said sharply. ‘Now. Already there were soldiers this morning at Jinguomenwai, firing into the air around the British and American embassies. Your embassy is evacuating everyone. You have to go.’

‘No,’ I said, and I glared at her stubbornly. We had never argued. We had disagreed over many things, most of them having to do with Jody: she’d been appalled at what I’d let him eat, and at my failure to discipline him; I’d been annoyed that she’d sent pictures of him to Zaofan. But even our disagreements had worked out. Jody was at least as healthy and happy as the other children in his nursery, and as for the pictures — that hadn’t been all bad. Zaofan had sent me a stilted, formal letter after he’d gotten the first one, congratulating me on Jody’s birth. I’d sent another back, thanking him and avoiding any explanation of Jody’s physical appearance. ‘I’ve given Jody my maiden name,’ I’d written. ‘Doerring — Jody Doerring. My father is pleased.’ And if Zaofan knew more about Jody’s paternity than that, he never pressed it. Since then, we’d kept up an occasional correspondence in which I described how Jody was growing and Zaofan described his adjustments to life in Massachusetts.

‘Think of Jody,’ Xiaomin said. ‘What if something happens to him?’

‘No,’ I said again.

‘You’ll hurt us if you stay,’ she said softly. ‘You’ll make things worse for us — I can’t afford to have an American working in my lab. And you can’t refuse me, not after all that Meng and I have done for you.’

And that was the one argument I couldn’t refute. She and Meng had done everything for me: arranged for me to stay in China, found me work in Xiaomin’s lab, stood by me throughout my pregnancy and during my labor and then helped me through the awkwardness of registering Jody’s birth when I had no husband. They’d helped me buy a bike. They’d taught me to find my way around the city. And, whether they’d meant to or not, they’d helped me discover how I fit into the world.

‘I owe you,’ I told her. ‘I know I do. But don’t make me repay you like this.’