I found a door and pushed it open. I stood on the curb, nauseous, as mopeds and cars roared around me, the noise deafening, thunderous, and as I took a step forward a moped zoomed past, nearly knocking me over. The uniformed men had said I could go, but where? There could still be guards watching.
It was a cloudy morning in November, or January, and the air was packed with smells I recognized, memories of the village: burning wood and paper ashes, roast meat and salt, a brackish odor, swampy and thick with a tinge of rot. The scent of the riverbank. Was this was for real, or was it a trick? I needed to find you.
A minibus for Minjiang pulled up. The driver, a woman whose hair was arranged into long, curly ribbons, opened the door. I stared at her. She said, “You’re getting in, or what?”
I paid for a ticket with the twenty-yuan bill, sat by the window, and watched the road disappear behind me as we drove away from the airport. Nobody was following. For weeks, months, years, whenever I turned a new corner or opened a door, I’d expect to be ambushed by guards. Even now I can’t trust that they won’t come for me someday.
The entrance arches of the village were far wider than they’d been twenty years ago, extensions built onto the top and sides, and there were new street signs and lampposts. The dirt roads were all paved. I passed chickens and trucks and bicycles, plastic sheeting strung between poles, posters on the walls announcing new development projects. I searched the face of each person I saw, dreading the moment I’d recognize someone and wishing someone would recognize me, but although some people looked familiar, I couldn’t identify anyone I knew. After twenty years away, nobody looked the same.
At a newspaper stand I picked up the morning paper and saw the date on top. It was April, but the year was different. I had counted the days correctly. Fourteen months had disappeared while I was at Ardsleyville.
I felt faint. My head spun. I searched the newspaper vendor’s face, hoping for a sign of recognition, but none appeared.
On 3 Alley, the lane was cleanly swept and there was a fresh coat of paint on my old house. I tried to open the door, but it was locked. I knocked, and Mrs. Li answered, dressed in a lavender sweat suit printed with dark flowers.
“Peilan? What are you doing here?”
“What are you doing in my house?”
“We’ve been using it. My cousin and his family live here, though they went home to the countryside last week for the holiday. Are you back for the holiday?”
“What holiday?”
“Qingming.” Mrs. Li drew her words out slowly, eyeing my Ardsleyville uniform.
“You’re using my land? My house?”
“You were in America. We couldn’t contact you.”
“I didn’t give it to you.”
“You can stay if you want.”
“It’s not for you to decide.”
I pushed past her. The inside of the house had also been repainted. My old room was full of the belongings of Mrs. Li’s countryside cousin and his wife. Mr. Li had died eight years ago, and Haifeng and his wife had a son of their own, a five-year-old whose photographs Mrs. Li showed me. I was relieved to notice he didn’t resemble you.
Neighbors came by, though I couldn’t remember most of their names, and they looked shocked when they saw me. Had I changed so much? I told them I’d come home because there weren’t many jobs in New York, that you were staying with relatives until you finished school. To have been detained for over a year was embarrassing, like I’d been caught out of stupidity, and I couldn’t let anyone know.
Mrs. Li gave me a pink sweat suit to wear. I roamed the village without hitting a fence or a wall, swinging my arms and legs, gulping in the clean air. At the temple I saw my name next to Yi Ba’s on a plaque with the names of villagers who’d given money for repairs. Yi Ba must have donated with the money I sent home. I ate meat and rice and vegetables and not oatmeal, heard music and cars and people, walked for hours without guards ordering me inside. I tucked blades of grass between my toes and pressed my thumbs against leaves and bark. The dirt smelled sweet and the breeze was as soft and clean as freshly laundered sheets. But the house was no longer my house. Mrs. Li’s cousin had a little girl, and her books and clothes were strewn across the room downstairs. Yi Ba’s television was gone, a new one in its place. I found, hidden in a corner beneath the bed, one of your old shoes. I had bought them for you that first winter in New York, before sending you here. I held the tiny gray sneaker in my palm, remembered slipping it onto your little foot, pulling the laces tight. You must have been wearing it on the flight from New York. Dirt had settled into the creases, and the sole left my palm blackened with dust. I couldn’t find the other shoe.
That night, I slept in my house. The next morning, I took a bus to Fuzhou with five thousand yuan that Mrs. Li had given me for taking over my house. Later, I would learn that the house was worth at least fifteen thousand, even twenty, but by then it wouldn’t matter.
Downtown Fuzhou looked nothing like it had twenty years ago. Fountains spurted in a square, surrounded by statues of men and women with their arms raised, with faces that looked oddly European. People walked past me in business suits. In a telephone booth, I called the number for the loan shark, which I’d gotten from a neighbor on 3 Alley, and told the man who I was, my birthdate, how much I had paid off before leaving New York, that I was in China and wanted to know the balance.
“One moment,” he said. “Let me check.” I waited. Then the man got back on the phone and said, “Your debt has been paid. Your balance is now zero.”
I bit my fingers. Leon must have wired my payments, month after month, when I was in Ardsleyville.
I bought an international calling card and dialed Leon’s number, the one I thought I remembered. The phone rang twice and disconnected, no answer, no voice mail. I tried again and again and again and again. I stayed in the phone booth, attempting different combinations of phone numbers, all the numerical combinations that could possibly be Leon’s, but none of them was the right one. I even dialed my old cell, a number I did remember, which was answered by a teenage girl. I had never memorized the numbers for Didi or Hello Gorgeous. With each dead-end phone call, my optimism receded, until I was crying into the sleeve of Mrs. Li’s sweat suit. You were lost; my family was lost. Fourteen months had disappeared, and I didn’t even have a place to live.
It was hunger that finally drove me out of the phone booth and into a nearby food stall, where I ate until the shakiness retreated and my despair hardened into ambition. Mrs. Li had mentioned a nail salon, one of the first in Wuyi Square, and I found the address and introduced myself to the owner, a woman whose French manicure was flaking at the tips. “I worked in New York,” I told her. “Give me ten minutes and I can draw your face on your thumbnail.” By nightfall I had a job and a rented bed in a building full of Sichuanese workers.
Eighteen