“You haven’t heard my story yet.”
We sit on the couch, facing each other. Jin holds my hands, and I hesitantly begin to speak. I start with the easiest and least damning sin I’ve committed: that I broke a promise to my a-ma by selling leaves from my grove which should only be used for medicinal purposes and shouldn’t have gone to any man, especially someone like Mr. Huang. Jin easily accepts this, saying, “You were young and poor. You made a mistake. And it sounds like the mother tree was not permanently damaged.” Next, I tell Jin about being married and widowed. His eyes widen with each new detail. When I get to the end, he takes time to compose his response. “I’ve never been married,” he says at last, “but would it be fair for me to look into your eyes and deny that I’ve been with other women before you? If I’d grown up on your mountain, I would have been married too.”
“Whatever happens next,” I say, “I want you to know that I’ll always think of you as an honorable man.” He squeezes my hands, giving me strength. “Before San-pa and I were married, I got pregnant. I didn’t realize it until after he’d gone to Thailand, so he didn’t know. I gave birth in secret and abandoned my daughter. By the time San-pa returned to Nannuo Mountain, she’d been adopted by a family in America.”
Jin slowly releases my hands, stands, and crosses to the window. He keeps his back to me, as though I no longer exist. I don’t blame him. I sigh and get up to leave.
“Wait,” he says, swiveling to me. Twin trails of tears trickle down his cheeks, which he roughly wipes away. “You’re very brave, Li-yan. Far braver than I am. We both have secrets, but you had the courage to be honest with me.” He visibly struggles. “One mistake can change the course of your life. You can never return to your original path or go back to the person you were.”
“That’s how I’ve always felt. If I hadn’t taken a bite of San-pa’s pancake. If I’d only listened to A-ma when she said she didn’t want me to see him. If I hadn’t let false ideas of the future compel me to sell leaves to Mr. Huang—”
“But nothing you did resulted in death.” He pauses to make sure he has my full attention. “I’m responsible for my father’s.”
“How can you say that?” I ask, bewildered. “Your father died of pneumonia. You were a child when he got sick—”
“Perhaps you can understand a little of what it was like for my parents. They went from Guangzhou to a village in Anhui province called Moon Pond. Such a pretty name, but it held only darkness. I was born there, and we lived in a one-room shack made from mud bricks. It was more miserable and wretched than anything I’ve seen in your village.”
That stings, especially since he didn’t see Spring Well before all the changes. But this is not the time to take offense.
“My parents lost their positions, clothing, papers, photographs, friends, everything,” he goes on. “The only tokens from the past they carried with them were five of my father’s philosophy books, which they kept hidden under the wood platform that served as our bed. My mother learned how to haul water, wash clothes by hand, and make soles for our shoes from whatever scraps of paper she could find. My father gathered night soil from different families and hoed it into the fields. My parents weakened from the physical demands of working under a merciless sun or being soaked to the bone during the monsoons. My earliest memories are of having dysentery from the bad water and poor sanitation. We were all sick.” He takes a moment to ask, “What do you remember of the Cultural Revolution?”
“I was born not long after it ended,” I answer softly. “Besides, we were peasants already. My family and all our neighbors had always lived that life. But I have a friend, Teacher Zhang. He was sent to Nannuo Mountain. He suffered—”
“Suffered,” he echoes. “Suffering takes many forms. Hunger. Cold. Fear. Physical and psychological pain. The villagers were bad enough. They had opportunities each day to torment us. But sometimes a Red Guard unit would visit. Everyone was forced to gather together so that my parents could be publicly punished and humiliated. They endured numerous self-criticism sessions. I don’t remember much about my father anymore, except that sometimes, late at night, I’d wake up and see him reading one of his books by the light of our oil lamp. He’d quickly close it, put it back in its hiding place, and say to me, ‘You’re only dreaming, Son. Go back to sleep now. Forget everything.’?”
Jin falls into melancholy silence. I suspect where his story is going, which doesn’t make it any easier to hear.
“The Red Guard came again just after my fifth birthday,” he resumes at last. “They were so young, you know? They played with me. They gave me a piece of candy—the first I’d ever tasted. I thought they liked me. When they asked if my mother or father kept anything hidden, I eagerly volunteered what I knew. After that, they dragged my father from our home and made him kneel in broken glass. They tied his arms up and back into the airplane position. Then they beat him with switches. They tore every page out of his books and set them on fire. They made me stand right in front of him, so he would forever know who’d betrayed him.”
“You were only five. Just a boy—”
“But what son does that?” he asks, tortured. “I broke his heart and his will to live or fight for us. The rest is as my mother told you. My father got pneumonia and died very quickly.”
My heart aches for him. “Those were deviled times filled with very bad people,” I say, trying to offer comfort. “You were a little boy, and you were tricked. Tragedies of this kind happened to people who were far older and with far more knowledge than you had. You can’t blame yourself.”
But of course he can, because I blame myself for so much too. I take hold of his arms, and our eyes meet. What I’d always seen in them, I now recognize from looking in the mirror at my own reflection: pain and guilt.
“You said earlier that one mistake can change the path of your life forever,” I say. “It sounds like it did for you. I know it did for me. But what if this is an opportunity to do something purposefully right? Won’t that put us on an entirely new path? A good path? Maybe even a happy path? Will you still have me?”
* * *