Turning Down the Boat Ticket

When Granny Qin bought two return tickets, it didn’t feel as if she was deciding for someone else again. Her daughter had said they’d settle their summer plans later, which surely meant there was still room to make arrangements. She went to ask about the passenger boat in advance. She’d bring the boy back herself to spare Xiaoman another round trip. She’d even asked which room in Sangqiao would be dry enough to stay in. This time she’d gone out and made sure of the details herself.

She left A-Qiao in charge of the lantern shop for five days. The young woman was twenty-three, often delivered supplies for the paper dealer, and was willing to take on the odd job pasting paper onto lantern shades. Granny Qin had only ever had her pass paper over and had never really put the cash in the till in her hands. This time she had to go, so she wrote down the usual prices, gave A-Qiao a key, and told her to hold off quoting any new prices. If a customer was in a hurry, they could wait until she got back. A-Qiao asked what to do if they wouldn’t wait. Granny Qin only said that if she explained it nicely, they’d wait.

She reached Lanting on the thirteenth day of the seventh month without the two bundles of food, bringing only the paper with the shoe size and a small bundle of thin bamboo strips for the boy to practice with. When Xiaoman saw her mother had come again, she looked behind her first and asked if she’d sent word ahead this time. Her mother said the letter had said they would see, hadn’t it? She’d asked about a boat, and if the boy wanted to, they could go back together the day after tomorrow. The teacher on the next street still had room for summer pupils. There was no need to put it off any longer.

Xiaoman's face slowly darkened. Granny Qin didn't like that look. She hadn't told her daughter to marry anyone again or asked her to give up the troupe. She'd only found the boy another place to study. How could she be in the wrong the moment she came near? She took the tickets out of her sleeve, ready to explain the details she'd arranged, but her daughter put a hand on the paper first and asked why she'd bought them in advance again.

“To save you the trip,” she answered.

“I never said he could go.”

Granny Qin was suddenly at a loss for words. Asheng had been looking at the bamboo strips by the door. At the word “go,” he looked up at once and asked if they were going to see the new kind of lantern in his grandmother's shop. Xiaoman told him to fetch the characters he'd written over the last ten days first. As he went for them, he looked from one woman to the other, plainly unaware he'd already been placed on one side or the other. He wanted to go, but feared saying so would upset his mother. His fingers kept moving along the edge of the paper, and for a moment he couldn't hold his writing steady.

Xiaoman let the argument drop in front of the boy and sent him out front with Gao Man. To Granny Qin, it felt as if her grandson too were being taken away before her eyes. She couldn't help saying it was only a few days, that if Xiaoman was busy she could look after him, and that of course she'd give him back. When she finished, her daughter looked up and asked, “When you made those arrangements for me back then, was it for my own good then too, so you didn't have to hear me out first?”

What she feared most was having the two things laid one on top of the other. Shoes were shoes, lessons were lessons. She no longer stood in the way of her daughter's singing. Why go back sixteen years again? She was just about to defend herself that way when she saw Xiaoman clutching the ticket. Then she understood that what felt the same to Xiaoman wasn't just the matter at hand. It was that she'd always do everything first and leave the question of whether the other person wanted it until the end, as if all anyone had to do was say yes to have every good thing she'd arranged.

She was still angry and said she hadn’t come all that way at her age to fight with her daughter. As soon as she said it, she remembered refusing any extra help from Zheng Qin on the passenger boat for fear of being thought old. She wouldn’t acknowledge her age when she felt it in her legs, yet brought it up as soon as she was refused, as if her weariness should make her daughter swallow whatever else she had to say. She took the ticket back, her hand still trembling a little.

Someone came into the back room to collect a costume, heard that the grandmother was taking the boy to study, and remarked that it was wonderful to have an older person looking after him. With his father gone, at least there was someone to care for him. Granny Qin looked up at once and said, “My daughter takes good care of him herself. She can manage perfectly well on her own.” Unsure what they'd said wrong, the visitor gave an embarrassed laugh and left. She'd meant every word in her daughter's defense, but hearing it couldn't make Xiaoman accept the ticket. A silence no one could take back still hung in the room.

A-Zhao returned then, carrying a freshly dried piece of lining. Seeing her, Granny Qin seemed suddenly to have found someone who understood both sides of the journey. She asked whether the child would not be able to study more peacefully over there. The young woman did not answer at once. She put the cloth somewhere dry, then said that place had its advantages, but lessons were being held here too. She could not hand Xiaoman's child over on her behalf. Hearing that she could not, Granny Qin felt as though someone had blocked her once again.

She nearly said, you two live together now, so of course you take each other's side. A-Zhao read her expression. She no longer took the same care to speak around things as she had when she first arrived. She simply said she hadn't bought the ticket, and nobody had asked her to answer on anyone's behalf. Then she turned to finish a strap she owed someone, without trying to spare the old woman embarrassment by making a promise about the future she had no power to keep.

Granny Qin stood in the room feeling that she'd come two days for nothing. She also felt that if she left like this, it would be even harder to speak in the days ahead. Xiaoman finally said she'd see to the boy's lessons herself. If he was to go to Liuwan later, she'd ask first and take him herself. Buying a ticket in advance this time didn't make it settled. Her voice was hard, but then she added that now her mother was here, she should stay and eat. There was no sense going hungry out of spite.

She did want to sulk. But her stomach was empty, and she had eaten poorly on the journey. If she refused food, her daughter would have one more unspoken hurt to attend to. She sat down, still lifting the bowl too forcefully; its base knocked against the wood. A-Sheng heard it outside and stole a look in. She softened her touch and asked the child to come show her the new characters he had learned, rather than first asking again whether he truly wanted to leave with her.

On that page were 水 (water), 木 (wood), and a crooked 舟 (boat). The boy said Master Shen could play for a long time on one breath and he couldn't yet. He had to finish reading the characters with the teacher before it was time to hear those two notes. Granny Qin had assumed things were always in a muddle here, onstage and off. Only after she sat and listened to the end did she see that her daughter really had found him somewhere he could go at a regular hour. The fact that she hadn't suggested it herself gave her no reason to think less of it than a desk she could see with her own eyes in Liuwan.

On the fourteenth, she followed the boy's directions to Teacher Shen's lane without first going to the back room to call for anyone. Inside, several children sat apart. A-Sheng was pointing to 水, the character for water, on a sheet of paper. When he pointed to the wrong stroke, the teacher waited for him to look again instead of reading it for him. There were flutes by the window, but no one was allowed to pick one up to play as soon as they came in. Granny Qin stood outside watching for a while, without beckoning her grandson out or going in to announce herself as his grandmother. She had come with a great deal to say about getting a child to sit quietly and study. Now she could find no one who needed to hear any of it.

The return ticket lay beneath her knee. She went to find Zheng Qin and asked if she could change it to take one child off. The boatwoman said she would check the passengers again before boarding tomorrow, and the rules allowed a partial refund for a leg they hadn’t traveled. The deposit on the room in Sangqiao was something Granny Qin would have to discuss herself. Resentment stirred when she heard there was another errand to run. Then she remembered she had gone ahead and arranged it all herself. How could she use it now to make her daughter feel awkward in her own room?

She asked Zheng Qin if she knew Xiaoman. The boatwoman said she did, having seen her on a few trips. Granny Qin went on as though she were just making conversation. The boy was on boats a lot with his mother here, so wouldn’t a change to somewhere steadier do him good once in a while? Zheng Qin left that for them to decide. She just pulled out the unused ticket and said that until the boy was in Granny Qin’s care, the boat couldn’t fetch him for her from the lane. Even with cargo she expected people to hand it over to her themselves and make clear what she was carrying, all the more so with a child still with his mother.

She left on the fifteenth day of the seventh month. Xiaoman saw her to the landing with a little bundle containing the sheet of paper A-Sheng had written for his grandmother. She didn't bring the child. Taking the bundle, Granny Qin still wanted badly to ask what day they'd come next time. In the end she only said she knew her way and there was no need to see her all the way onto the boat. Her daughter didn't entirely listen. She waited until her mother had a sure footing before letting go of the corner of the bundle she'd been supporting.

On the way back to Liuwan, she had the room at Sangqiao to herself. She put the little bit of refunded fare on the corner of the bed. Instead of counting it right away, she opened the small bundle to look at the writing. A-Sheng had written, “Today I learned the character 舟,” and drawn a rather unconvincing boat underneath, with two little lanterns beside it. She looked at it for a long time. The boy had remembered her even though he had not come along this time, but she was still angry that her daughter always seemed to speak as if she would leave no room to budge.

When she returned to the shop on the sixteenth, A-Qiao had already patched two old lantern panels and charged the price Granny Qin had written down. The first thing Granny Qin asked was why she hadn’t waited. The young woman said the customers had to go, and the instructions for repairing the paper and frames were written down clearly enough for her to follow. At ‘clearly enough,’ Granny Qin’s annoyance shifted from her daughter to a hired hand. She had been away only a few days, and already there seemed to be someone everywhere making decisions before she could.

A-Qiao laid out the money and materials neatly and said that if she was only permitted to sit and wait, Granny Qin should say so beforehand next time. Then she would not accept lantern repairs and would only mind the shop. She was not Qin Xiaoman, and being Granny Qin’s daughter was not a reason she had to soften her words. Granny Qin looked at the two repaired lanterns on the table. Their paper was smooth and the frame openings straight. At last, she changed the rebuke she had been about to deliver into a question about where old bamboo strips had been used, asking A-Qiao to explain it to her.

When A-Qiao finished explaining, she left at her usual hour and took her day’s wages. She didn’t stay the night to keep the old woman company just because Granny Qin was upset. In the quiet shop, Granny Qin took out the travel dates her daughter had written this time and got a blank sheet. She wanted to write that they needn’t trouble themselves with her anymore either. As she raised her brush, she suddenly saw the words she’d said all those years ago. If you won’t come back, don’t call this home. Sixteen years apart, the two lines could still be written in exactly the same spirit.

She put down the brush and waited until after supper to write. In the end she wrote only that she'd arrived, that if the child still wanted to tell her about his lessons that week or so, he could send word through someone, and that in future she'd ask before coming and leave the return fare for them to arrange. She put nothing on the page about how tiring the trip had been or how much money she'd wasted on the tickets. She was still a little angry and weighed the letter down overnight when she finished, in case she wanted to add another half line in the morning to soften her daughter's heart.

Before bed, she went to look at the new curtain at the back door. The half of the blue-green cloth that had come back was just enough for it. Now the wind no longer blew straight onto the lantern paper. She fastened the door hook, went back to the cabinet, and put the thin bamboo strips A-Qiao had used in their original box. She left the work intact without pulling it apart and remaking it to put her own mind at ease. Half the bow of the child's drawing of a boat peeked out from under the paper. She reached out to smooth it flat and sat a little while before blowing out the small lamp.