Stepping out from Peng Xiangzhi’s room, Xiang Wan stopped at the doorway of Chao Xin’s room.
A soft knock echoed against the door.
In a hushed tone, Xiang Wan asked, “Are you asleep?”
“Mhm.”
“I’m going to grab my clothes and spend the night with Director Peng. You stay and sleep with Paipai,” Xiang Wan whispered.
Knowing that Paipai needed Chao Xin’s presence at the moment, Xiang Wan considerately chose not to intrude too much. Fortunately, the hotel offered only a few room types; Peng Xiangzhi had booked a standard room, which was convenient enough for both of them.
However, Chao Xin stopped her.
Xiang Wan looked up as Chao Xin closed the door and stepped into the hallway, inviting, “Join me for a bit, will you?”
Chao Xin recalled the time she and Xiang Wan had been on the rooftop, where she had first opened up about her past to Xiang Wan. At that moment, standing at the city’s pinnacle, shoulder to shoulder with Xiang Wan, they faced winds unfettered by the towering buildings, gazing at the city’s grand and majestic skyline.
Back then, she thought freedom was within reach.
Now, here she stood with Xiang Wan once more, in a hotel situated in a small town not far from where she was born. Ahead lay a concrete corridor leading to a simple courtyard.
Square and plain, with an end in sight.
“Are you tired?” Chao Xin softly asked Xiang Wan.
Xiang Wan shook her head. She was feeling a bit tired, yet for some reason, whenever she looked into Chao Xin’s eyes, it never seemed like enough.
This was the place where Chao Xin was born and raised, her face and heart emerging from the rural soil, birthing a vibrant and rebellious spirit.
Chao Xin, world-weary yet affectionate in her own clumsy way, struggled through sin and ugliness, gradually reaching out with both fingertips and arms. Though her body was sensitive, usually showing a highly sensitive heart, yet she had coarsely ground that heart into the dirt, only to cleanse it anew, loving another girl with immeasurable tenderness.
Suddenly, Xiang Wan understood the root of all of Chao Xin’s evasions.
“You said you carried a knife during the day, was that true?” Chao Xin asked with a smile, looking at Xiang Wan.
“It’s true, a fruit knife from the car, I put it in my pocket.”
Chao Xin’s tear mole moved as she laughed, reaching out to touch Xiang Wan’s face.
Chao Xin always displayed this behavior whenever she wanted to kiss Xiang Wan, a detail Xiang Wan had noticed.
Xiang Wan was about to speak when the door behind them opened, revealing Peng Xiangzhi drying her hair. She asked, “What are you two whispering about at the door?”
Was the soundproofing that bad?… Xiang Wan inquired, “You can hear us?”
“Not just me, I reckon the next room over can too.” The door looked very thin.
“Paipai asleep?” Peng Xiangzhi asked again.
“Mhm.”
“Then how about I take her to sleep in my room, and you two go back to your room to talk?” She could tell—Chao Xin and Xiang Wan seemed reluctant to part with each other tonight.
Xiang Wan felt a surge of emotion within her. In fact, she had been touched all day—moved by Su Chang’s timely assistance and now by Peng Xiangzhi’s complete acceptance of Chao Xin, even beginning to show empathy for her hardships.
“Don’t worry, if she wakes up, I’ll come knock on your door.”
Peng Xiangzhi made arrangements with them, and the three of them tiptoed into the room, gently lifting Paipai to switch rooms.
Once the door was closed again, the aching in Chao Xin’s bones seemed to permeate every corner of her body, yet she still didn’t want to sleep. Xiang Wan saw this and simply sat beside her, holding her pajamas.
“Aren’t you going to take a bath?” Xiang Wan’s voice was gentle.
“Take a bath, get a good night’s sleep; we still have to drive tomorrow.” She added.
Chao Xin, with tired eyes, spoke, “I’m afraid to sleep.”
Even though they had considered the exhaustion of Su Chang and the others and decided not to rush to the county, Chao Xin still felt uneasy. Her distrust of this place was so deep-rooted that she dared not close her eyes.
Xiang Wan leaned against her, resting her head on Chao Xin’s shoulder, and said, “Then talk to me.”
Talking through the night would make it pass.
Chao Xin stretched out her arm, wrapping it around Xiang Wan’s slender waist, gently caressing her as she spoke, “Do you want to hear the story of my family?”
“It might make you uncomfortable.” She added
“Tell me.” Xiang Wan’s young voice lingered softly near Chao Xin’s neck, as if safeguarding a dream.
Chao Xin was about to recount a nightmare, yet with Xiang Wan’s breath in her ear, she felt confident she could always wake up.
“You might have heard it; he calls me Panpan, that’s my original name, Chao Pan. Chao Wang, Chao Pan.[1]“
It sounded quite hopeful.
“It means hoping for a son.” However, that was how Chao Xin explained it.
Chao Xin was a name she chose herself, to forget the past and start a new life.
“My dad always wanted a son, but my mom gave birth to two daughters, then got pregnant again, but miscarried. It wasn’t properly dealt with, so her health was always poor after that, and it was difficult for her to get pregnant again.”
“Not having a son, my dad would beat my mom, and also my sister and me. Not like how I hit Sun Er today, but the kind that aims to kill. I remember one time he dragged my mom by the hair and smashed her head against the stove. You might not know how sharp the corners of a stove can be; my mom’s head got a bleeding hole on the spot.”
“How old was I then? Probably around four or five, terrified. Afraid my mom would die, my sister and I, crying, walked two miles in the middle of the night to find my grandma. I said, ‘Grandma, save my mom.’ My grandma led us back home and didn’t say much.”
Chao Xin paused for a moment, her tongue pressing against the inside of her lower teeth.
“When I grew up a bit, I urged my mom to divorce him. My mom wouldn’t do it. At first, she said it was for me and Chao Wang—without her, who would take care of us? Later, she claimed that even if she divorced, she wouldn’t be able to find someone better.”
“Ever since I was young, I got used to running out to find help every time she was beaten. I went to the village committee, to relatives who still cared enough to listen. In my teens, I even took an ox cart to town to find the police station. The officer was a kind young man. He followed me back to the village, and at that moment, I thought we were finally saved.”
A wave of emotion stirred in the depths of Chao Xin’s eyes, revealing a young and naive girl, gasping for breath as she returned home, believing salvation was at hand.
“But when my mom saw someone in a police uniform, she got scared. She said she wasn’t beaten, that she had fallen while working.”
The light in her eyes slowly extinguished, the naive girl was dead.
“After that, I kept thinking, I have to get out. I have to leave this place. I wanted to study, to go to university. I was fed up with everything here.”
“At that time, our family couldn’t afford to send two kids to school. My dad wanted both me and Chao Wang to drop out. Chao Wang begged him on her knees, saying she would stop studying, help with the farm work, and let Panpan continue her education because Panpan was a good student and could definitely get into a university.”
“If Panpan goes to university, she’ll be able to take care of us. And when she gets admitted, the whole village will hear about it through the loudspeakers.”
“My dad agreed. After Chao Wang graduated from junior high, she didn’t continue her studies. She told me it didn’t matter because she couldn’t learn much anyway, and someone had to do the farm work. She said once we had more money, she’d buy a motorcycle, sell vegetables in town more frequently, and our family’s situation would improve.”
What Chao Xin later dwelled on was the motorcycle Chao Wang never got the chance to buy before she died.
A red one, with hooks for two cages that could hold four chickens.
In high school, Chao Xin moved to the town to attend a boarding school. During summer and winter breaks, she’d wash dishes for people to save money. Her family’s situation had improved slightly by then, and her mom would occasionally visit her, bringing pickled mustard.
“I can still remember the taste of those pickled mustard,” Chao Xin smiled faintly, “and douchi[2]. Sometimes I’d just eat a bowl of rice with a spoonful of douchi. I’d smell like them all day, and my classmates would tease me.”
Nevertheless, that period was the most carefree and hopeful time in Chao Xin’s life.
During the preparations for gaokao, Chao Wang’s marriage was arranged.
“She wasn’t even of legal age to marry then. They said she could move to the man’s house first, have the wedding banquet, and that would count. They’d get the marriage certificate after she had a child.”
That was common in the countryside at the time. Chao Wang was just a teenager when she got married.
When Chao Xin returned home after gaokao, Chao Wang had already become a daughter-in-law of the Sun family. She would listen to Chao Xin share stories from school while working, and then Chao Wang would say, “I’m so envious of you.”
So envious, Panpan.
Perhaps it was around that time that Chao Wang had a premonition that her life would be starkly different from Chao Xin’s.
“Back then, Sun Er wasn’t as despicable as he is now, but he was just as cowardly. His family was dominated by his formidable father, and Sun Er barely dared to utter a word, so he seemed like just another honest and simple young man.”
“Ever since Chao Wang married into their family, they had been pressing her to have a son. Years later, Paipai was born. I was very busy in Jiang City at the time and only occasionally went back to see her. Once, when Paipai was still very little, I held her—so soft, I could hardly believe that Chao Wang had become a mother.”
Chao Xin’s hand made a small gesture over her knee, as if to indicate how tiny Paipai was.
“Chao Wang’s health was already poor by then, but I didn’t realize it at the time.”
Chao Xin’s usually controlled voice trembled slightly, her nostrils flaring, yet her eyes remained dry, devoid of tears, devoid of anything.
She was finally about to recount the most painful chapter of the story, yet her voice didn’t change at all. There was no deep breath taken before she spoke, just a direct and plain delivery of her words.
“Chao Wang was too thin, always malnourished. She had complications during her second pregnancy. The Sun family, having heard somewhere that her belly was pointed and she craved sour foods, was convinced it was a son. They badgered the doctor when signing the surgery consent form, insisting on saving the ‘little one.’ The doctor said there was no longer any question of saving the ‘big’ or the ‘little’ one, that the priority was saving lives.”
“I heard later that the family thought the doctor refused to save their son. They made a scene in the corridor, crying and wailing, kowtowing, faces red with agitation.”
“I don’t know if their actions delayed any chance of treatment. I don’t know, and to this day, I still don’t know. But at that time, the child didn’t survive, and Chao Wang was resuscitated and rested in the hospital ward.”
“The Sun family blamed her ‘weak constitution’ for not saving the child and for constantly ‘burning money’ by staying in the hospital. They didn’t want her to stay there, so they took her back home, and constantly berated her for lying in bed and not working. Chao Wang was already at the end of her tether and simply…”
Simply…
Simply didn’t make it through.
She gripped Xiang Wan’s hand, twitching as if a muscle had spasmed, instantly growing cold. Xiang Wan’s heart ached unbearably; she embraced Chao Xin but couldn’t utter a word, only rubbing her upper arms over and over with force.
“Chao Xin, Chao Xin,” she called out softly, helplessly.
Chao Xin wrapped her arms around Xiang Wan, her thoughts often wandering to the same haunting question: what was Chao Wang’s life all for? Enduring a lifetime of hardship, had she committed grave sins in her past life to warrant such ceaseless torment?
But how could that be? Chao Wang was the kind of girl who would sit on the edge of the fields, holding a little yellow dog and confiding her secrets. She was not one to commit atrocious deeds.
Later, the Sun family created a scene at the Chao family, complaining that they had spent a fortune on a ‘barren’ for a bride who could not bear a son and now was dead. They demanded the return of the betrothal money and insisted on sending Paipai back to the Chao family, not wanting to delay their son’s search for a new wife.
When Chao Xin rushed back, she wasn’t fully aware of the true circumstances of Chao Wang’s death, however, she felt a pressing need to take Paipai with her.
Enduring the Sun family’s vile attitude, she paid them a hefty sum under the condition that they would cooperate with the household registration transfer, and she brought Paipai to Jiang City.
“And after that, you and Paipai never went back?” Xiang Wan asked Chao Xin.
“Later, my father got into a fight; it was quite serious, and the other party demanded compensation. My mother reached out to me, but I refused to pay. That landed my dad in jail. I thought I could get my mom out, that she could finally have a good life, but she grew to hate me. She cursed me in front of everyone, saying I was no good.”
“After my dad’s torment in jail, he was as thin as if he had been hollowed out. He was happy when he came out, and drank for several days straight. It was a cold winter, and he suffered a stroke and died. After that, my mother started to lose her memory. When she was lucid, she cursed me when she saw me, blaming me for my father’s death. When she wasn’t lucid, she’d say my father was beating her, nearly to death.”
“She’d rather stay at my aunt’s house than see me again.”
“Afterward, I only occasionally sent some living expenses to my aunt.”
Xiang Wan’s heart felt like it was being weighed down by stones, one after another. It was suffocating just to listen, and yet Chao Xin could speak so calmly, still as tender as if she had never been through any hardship.
“I’ve said all there is to say, Wanwan.” A faint, hollow smile emerged on Chao Xin’s face, then she raised her hand and gently stroked Xiang Wan’s hair.
“So now you should understand why I thought you might not be able to accept my family. I also feared that any future misfortune might become a burden to me, and to you as well.”
Chao Xin caressed her hand, smooth and delicate, as if even the hardships were ashamed and wanted to shy away.
“You coming here now, you really should take some time to think things over, all these things…”
Her words trailed off as her lips were claimed by Xiang Wan.
Xiang Wan kissed Chao Xin earnestly, with an urgency as if making up for lost time.
Never before had their breaths intertwined in such a way, so close to an exchange of souls.
“You’ve never told this to anyone, have you?” Xiang Wan murmured the question as she kissed Chao Xin’s neck.
“No.”
“Chao Xin, I’m your first, in every sense of the word.” Xiang Wan’s lips moved to her collarbone.
“And I want to be the last, the only one.”
“We shouldn’t be apart anymore, Chao Xin.”
Never again.
“Xiang Wan,” Chao Xin’s eyes quickly reddened as she cradled Xiang Wan’s face, looking at her with difficulty, “I just asked you to think about it, and your answer is that we shouldn’t be apart.”
“You said that,” she sniffled, shaking her head, “and from now on, no matter what happens, I will never let go, unless you tell me that you truly don’t like me anymore.”
Xiang Wan brushed away the damp hair from her forehead, nodding with a choked voice, “Yes, I’ll remember that.”
Xiang Wan recalled, this was the phrase she had been waiting for since what felt like a thousand years ago, and at last, she heard it.
With gratitude in her heart, Xiang Wan traced the contours of Chao Xin’s body, button by button coming undone, then she buried her head further down.
Realizing Xiang Wan’s intention, Chao Xin hooked her chin, stopping her, “It’s dirty.”
The surroundings were filthy, and so was the body.
“It’s not dirty.” Xiang Wan used her most beautiful part to cleanse.
There were no familiar sounds of passion, all she heard were soft sobs. Chao Xin cried quietly, the water just enough to blur the dried tear mole on her cheek.
Xiang Wan slipped her fingers between Chao Xin’s, intertwining their hands.
She wanted to please Chao Xin, not just physically, not just tonight, but for the long stretch of time that lay ahead.
Xiang Wan thought of a lifetime, the longest measure of time she could imagine, and she dedicated it to Chao Xin.
- Pan and Wang can make a word Panwang(盼望, means hope). [return to text]
- Douchi is a type of fermented and salted black soybean most popular in the cuisine of China.(Douchi – Wikipedia) [return to text]
CNYuriTranslation 