Missing Mother

Author: Shao Jun / Country: Mainland China
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-06-01
Features: I came to this small town called "Waco" in Texas that summer. Before I arrived, my classmates wrote to me, "Our place is vast and flat, just like the Inner Mongolia Grassland." I was so excited to hear this, my heart felt like a warhorse restrained by a bridle, eager to charge. I grew up in a large courtyard of a secret research institute in Beijing as a child, surrounded by barbed wire fences and rows of buildings, so I had a deep longing for the grassland world. I was always impatient to travel far. First, I used to wander around with my grandmother. She walked in front, and I behind her. Although she had bound her feet in her youth, she still walked briskly. I wore the small cloth shoes my grandmother made for me, but I could never keep up with her. She only cared about her own pace. My legs were short and slender, so I had to run the whole time. When she bought me a fragrant coiled cake (now called a "snack store") at the cooperative, I felt like this trip was worth it. That's how I got used to walking quickly from a young age. I knew no one would carry me if I didn't walk. At the age of 14, I went to Jiaozhuanghu in Hebei for military training. We had to walk more than 40 kilometers every day, and my feet were covered in blisters. Unlike many of my classmates who complained, I didn’t.
This letter was written to my grandmother. I said, "It was so good to walk with you when I was a child." My grandmother replied, "Your mother cried when she received your letter. She said that now soldiers take buses to training, and she feels sorry that her son is in middle school and his feet are already blistered." I wrote back, "We no longer walk on the ground. There are over 100 people crawling through the tunnels." We really crawled in the tunnels for two days. Each person had a small backpack with blankets, military shoes, books, diaries, and daily necessities. Although it was still May, the weather in Hebei that year was scorching. I always sweat a lot, so when I stooped in the narrow tunnels, my clothes got soaked, then dried by my body, leaving a large, round, layered salt residue on my back, which became a strange sight. Before I turned 16, my sense of life was just about walking, walking, and walking fast. If you didn’t, you’d end up alone on a desolate path. That was the illusion left by that training. In the last summer of my homeland, I really had to leave far away. My family was both happy and sad. I held a map of the United States and pointed to it, saying, "I’m going to a vast grassland." My mother was suddenly moved: "Your bold spirit of venturing out really reminds me of me." I flew across the ocean much faster than a train. Sitting in the plane, I was overjoyed until I had to get off. Because the flight attendant had never heard of Baylor University, she told me to take a Greyhound bus after getting off the airport. But fate had it that this mistake began a romantic story. I was sincere, and during college, a classmate called me “choice.” I wasn’t very tall, but I looked dignified, and people always asked for help wherever I went. My principle was to help if I could. But I never expected that in the U.S., I would need help myself. I was standing at Dallas Airport, staring at two large suitcases, feeling lost. Then she walked over. I didn’t know her name yet, but her graceful demeanor made my heart race. She said, "Sir, do you need help?" Her accent was soft and captivating. Later, I learned it was called "Taiwanese Mandarin." I asked, "Are you here to pick someone up?" She said, "No, my family is in California, and I’m taking a flight tomorrow to Boston. Are you in Dallas?" I said, "No, I’m looking for a Greyhound bus to Waco. I’ll have to stay overnight at the airport." At that moment, I forgot my parents’ warning: don’t talk too much to strangers, especially don’t reveal your plans. Despite being in my prime, I fell for this woman in a black T-shirt at first sight.
"There are no buses at the airport. You can stay at my relative’s house first, and I’ll take you to the Greyhound bus station tomorrow." She said sincerely, and it didn’t seem like she was lying. I nodded happily and waited by my luggage while she went to call a taxi. When we left the airport, it was already late at night. The car drove into a place filled with crickets. We moved our luggage into a clean and spacious room. The house was empty, with the living room and bedroom combined—just a bed and a sofa, as if no one lived there. She said it was an apartment managed by her aunt and that there was a vacant room. I was an independent and open-minded boy in college, who had had several girlfriends, but I always slept in separate rooms when I went out with them. Later, I broke up with them for various reasons, but they thought I was too old-fashioned and not like a city boy, which was probably one of the reasons. Sitting on the sofa, I was both happy and uneasy. If my parents knew I stayed in the U.S. the night I arrived and slept in the same room with a Taiwanese girl, they would kill me. After all, my father still has bullet fragments from the war with the Nationalist army. But they didn’t know that young people often have these romantic and unreasonable experiences. As if it had been planned in advance, she slept in the bed, and I slept on the sofa. The excitement of arriving in a new place kept me awake. The apartment was on the fifth floor. I pulled back the curtains and saw the beautiful lights of the stars before me, with flowing cars like a long dragon weaving through the night. A few months before I left for the U.S., I worked at a foreign-funded company in the Great Wall Hotel. I often stood at the window on the 10th floor at night, watching the dazzling lights of Beijing like a paradise, feeling the beauty of a distant life. On the first night in this new place, it was the same night. We lay down for less than ten minutes before getting up and sitting on the windowsill, talking. We told each other almost our entire lives in just a few hours. I learned that her parents were Taiwanese immigrants who came to the U.S. during the early wave of Taiwanese studying abroad. She had finished her biology degree at the University of California, Berkeley. Her father was the owner of a listed company, and now she was going to Harvard Business School for her master’s degree. My experience was much simpler. I was born in Haicheng, Liaoning, in a place called "Niuzhuang," which was small but famous because both Zhang Zuolin and Zhang Xueliang were born in the same village as me. At the age of one, I moved to Beijing, and like many diligent and obedient children, I went through primary and high school in order. I passed the university entrance exam and studied in Beijing for 14 years before following the trend to the U.S. As I was saying this, a crescent moon drifted in front of the window. The faint moonlight cast a glow on her delicate and charming face, making her look like a beautiful statue. The moonlight was so beautiful, and the first thing that came to mind was love. As she told me about her past, she would occasionally glance at me with a thoughtful look. I didn’t know if I looked sympathetic or pretended to be mature at that time. I felt like a country bumpkin in front of this worldly-wise princess, and I was careful. I thought having this kind of time with her would be enough.
"Have you ever had a girlfriend in college? You’re such a handsome young man!" I blushed. I welcomed her passion and desire with my body, and I answered her question with a silly laugh. That silly laugh stayed in her memory forever. Later, she wrote to me, saying I was pure like a dream from her youth. Her Chinese writing wasn’t very good, and she didn’t deliberately embellish it. I understood that if she called it a dream, it was truly a dream. Unfortunately, not many dreams in this world can come true. I didn’t expect her love or pursuit, but I also didn’t expect her to be so changeable and obedient to her parents’ wishes. This made me miss the girls in my home university who were so devoted to me. What I was grateful for was her honesty about her own feelings. What I hated was that she knew this was a love that couldn’t bear fruit but still indulged in it. For the next few years in the U.S., I struggled in the emotional whirlpool of this woman six years older than me, both joyful and painful. I still keep the stack of letters she wrote to me. Each one was short because she had to spend a long time writing on the computer. The last one said, “I think what’s between us can’t change anymore. I’m destined to be either your sister or a one-night stand. My parents have arranged for me to go back to Taiwan for the summer, and there’s a friend’s son…” The rest of the letter was stained with tears. The love she gave me, I sealed away with the dust of time. Walking alone in the evening wind, I felt like a wanderer, sorrowful. I hope to look back one day when I’m truly mature and no longer care who was right or wrong. P1-3