Across the River Once More

On the twelfth day of the ninth month, Xiaoman saw two plaques on the ferry at Tongxu. She recognized the old brass first, then saw that Ding Quan was the one poling the boat. A-Zhao sat at the other end with an offcut from a new plank on her knees, comparing paint with him. A-Sheng wanted to jump aboard with his book bag, but Ding Quan held the pole across his path and told him to wait until the boat was alongside and steady. This time the boy didn’t argue that he knew how to ride a boat. He waited until the line was secure before stepping onto the board.

The short crossing still cost eight cash. Xiaoman laid them in Ding Quan's outstretched palm. Azhao saw mother and son and smiled, moving the offcut aside to make a place for them to sit. She'd left Lanting two days ago and reached Liuwan yesterday. Today she'd come along with Ding Quan to look at the mooring on the east bank after the tide. She hadn't come expressly to wait for them. Xiaoman saw fresh boat paint on her fingers and suddenly felt that coming back from the theater to this boat hadn't turned her back into the person she used to be.

The river wind had turned cool. A-Sheng wore the shoes his grandmother had altered, and the uppers no longer stretched taut. Xiaoman had brought her mother only a few things, a packet of cakes people often ate in Lanting and two rolls of new lantern paper, tucked into a bag she had sewn from old cloth. Before leaving, she had thought of bringing a new outfit, but stopped after cutting half a width of cloth, afraid it wouldn’t suit and they would end up arguing over whose eye was better. The half-width was still at home. She didn’t have to finish everything she wanted to give on this one visit.

Once ashore, A-Zhao went home and mother and son headed for the lantern shop. A young woman stood outside telling a customer that the old lantern frame had cracked. If they simply repapered it, it would break again after two days of carrying it. Better to replace the frame first. Xiaoman recognized A-Qiao from the letters and waited until she had finished speaking before going in. When A-Qiao saw her, she was in no hurry to call Granny Qin out. She set the customer's lantern down securely, made a note on a slip of paper, and only then turned to invite her inside.

Granny Qin came out from the back with paste on her cuffs. The first thing she asked, as always, was whether it had been cold on the boat. The second was why Xiaoman had brought paper again. Xiaoman tensed and almost set the bundle back beside her leg, but her mother had already picked up a roll and felt it. She said it was just the right thickness. She’d asked the price a few days ago and hadn’t been able to bring herself to buy it. Xiaoman was a little slow to let go, and her mother didn’t hurry her. Holding the roll together like that was easier than starting by asking if she’d missed home.

A-Sheng had already gone over to the table. One glance told him the paperweight was a different little stone from the one he’d left last time. Granny Qin said his had been too round and rolled under the cabinet. She hadn’t moved the cabinet to look for it yet. He immediately got down on his belly, making everyone in the room laugh. Xiaoman was about to tell him to get up before he dirtied his clothes, but her mother was already handing him a long bamboo strip to reach under with, so she held her tongue. They poked and scraped beneath the cabinet, and before the stone came out they fished out two old copper coins.

Lunch didn't fill the table the way it had in spring. There was a plate of beans, a fish, and a little dish of scallions served separately from the soup. A-Sheng smiled when he saw the dish, put two pieces in his own bowl, and said Teacher Shen's scallion pancakes were good. Granny Qin opened her mouth to say, “So you do eat them after all,” then looked at Xiaoman and asked whether she should make some next time. A-Sheng said that would depend on how thin they were. Her mother gave a little huff, but nudged the dish closer to him.

After lunch, A-Qiao came to the back door to ask about a color. Granny Qin rose to go, and Xiaoman was surprised to feel a little put out. It had taken so much to come back, and her mother hadn't even kept the whole day free. Then she remembered rushing to go onstage in Lanting in the fifth month and resented having to be so understanding. She knew the reason, so why did she still feel hurt? Did every hurt have to wait for a ruling on who was more in the right before it was allowed to stay?

She took the empty plate to wash. A-Qiao stepped aside in the doorway and called her Sister Man. It sounded so natural, as though there were nothing to compete over. Xiaoman heard her mother say to use her old pattern for the outer ring and try A-Qiao’s method for the inner one. Even after that, each of them held her ground for a while. It struck Xiaoman that A-Qiao saw her mother’s face like this every day, knew which cupboard she kept the salt in and which bamboo strip couldn’t take a twist. Xiaoman was her daughter, yet there were so many things she knew less well than someone else did.

She turned to find the salt and, sure enough, opened the wrong cupboard. Her mother came in without laughing and told her she’d moved it to the left of the stove, where it was less damp. Xiaoman shook far too much salt over the fish. Her mother couldn’t help asking who could eat it with a handful like that. Xiaoman’s hand stopped, and the spatula nearly knocked over the soup bowl beside it. They each reached out to catch the bowl, banged their wrists together, and both drew a sharp breath. Behind them A-Sheng doubled over laughing.

‘Don’t laugh,’ they said again, almost in unison. As soon as they said it, they couldn’t help laughing themselves. The fish was still too salty. Nobody could conjure up a new one when the laughing stopped. Her mother poured a little hot water into a bowl so anyone who liked could rinse their fish. Xiaoman didn’t use her good intentions in cooking to silence anyone, or take away the dish because her mother had spoken sharply. Supper lasted longer than lunch. Fish bones lay here and there on the table, and nobody hurried to make the whole scene tidy.

That night she saw the half of the old curtain she'd sent back hanging at the rear door, with a new line of blue-green thread along the edge. Her mother said it used to be so long they were always stepping on it. Shortened, it was easier to come and go. Xiaoman touched it. She didn't ask whether her mother couldn't bear to part with the old garment, or look for some tender explanation for the moment it had been cut up sixteen years ago. That cut had hurt at the time, and the hem was well sewn now. Both things were there, and neither had to be erased before the other could come through the door.

On the thirteenth, A-Zhao came for breakfast, then went with Ding Quan to check the seams in the planking at the end of the lease. Xiaoman had meant to ask her in private what she ought to do now that her mother saw more of A-Qiao than of her. But just then Luo Yan called A-Zhao over to look at the mooring fastening, and she set down her bowl and left. Xiaoman watched her go and had to laugh at herself. She still wanted to catch hold of her and sit her down, as though asking a shopkeeper who knew what both parties had come for to tally who was closer to whom.

When A-Qiao finished work that morning, Xiaoman really did ask her which kinds of paper the lantern shop used most these days. A-Qiao explained in detail, holding nothing back and giving a candid account of Granny Qin. Sometimes, she said, the old woman was so afraid of wasting paper that she made the samples too small to see how the light would shine through. Xiaoman laughed and said she measured people for shoes the same way. A-Qiao hardly dared laugh too loudly with her, but in the end she did laugh. They cut out a little sample together. Granny Qin heard them from the doorway and only remarked that there was nothing wrong with saving paper.

People were drying nets by the river that afternoon, and A-Sheng wanted to go and watch. Granny Qin handed Xiaoman a key to the door and told her to take the boy and have a good walk. She had to finish the lantern a customer was waiting for. Xiaoman held the key, knowing her mother hadn’t forgotten how she’d asked last time who would close the window at night. Still, she stayed in the doorway watching her mother for a while. Only when her mother finally looked up at her did she wave and take the boy out, letting herself want that one more look.

The light by the water was bright enough to make her squint. A-Sheng crouched to watch a torn net being mended and asked whether his father had known how. She said a little; he had not done it well, but had loved boasting about his speed. The boy laughed and asked whether he could play the flute. She said no, though he had loved blowing along anyhow. In the past, whenever she mentioned Lu Zheng, she had feared that leaving out one good thing would seem like missing him a little less. Now, hearing about a man who mended nets crookedly, the child was more willing to keep asking than when he heard only of a brave drummer.

When they returned to the shop, her mother was testing a lantern. Xiaoman stood behind it and looked at her shadow on the paper, then suddenly struck a pose from the play. A-Sheng was the first to recognize the farewell at Luhua Ferry and came running with a bamboo strip for a pole. Granny Qin put out a hand for fear he’d poke through the paper, but let him keep hold of it. A-Qiao had already gone, and there were only the three of them in the shop. Xiaoman’s mother watched her make a turn and, after a long moment, said the sleeves were neater now than in the spring.

Xiaoman started to say these were everyday clothes, not a costume, then stopped halfway through. Maybe her mother was complimenting her. Maybe she really had only noticed the sleeves. She told her mother that Lu Heniang would still play A-Heng in the autumn run, that she'd sing the mother's part, and that the words had changed again. Before her mother could ask whether it was the lead, she sang the passage with the pause in the new rhythm. When she forgot the words, she made no attempt to cover it and said this part still needed practice. Her mother listened without closing down the whole play with a question about whether it tired her out.

Before they left on the fourteenth, Granny Qin asked if they would come back in winter. Xiaoman said the performances had yet to be set, and she would write as soon as they were. Her mother was to leave the tickets alone until then. “As if I would,” Granny Qin shot back instinctively, her voice rising enough for them both to hear. She paused, then said she understood. The boy put the round stone he had finally found back in his bag and left his drawing of a flute on the table. He told his grandmother she could draw things if she got the characters wrong. Granny Qin said pictures were hardly guaranteed to look better than writing, but tucked the sheet into the top of the cabinet all the same.

Before leaving, Xiaoman spotted the two chi of blue cloth she hadn’t taken last time by the cabinet. Her mother asked if she wanted to take it. Xiaoman said there was room in her trunk this time, so she would. They folded it together and left it whole. She thought she’d make A-Sheng a light vest. He’d still be growing next year, and she’d have to measure him when they got back before deciding how much room to leave at the seams.

Ding Quan was still working the short crossing. A-Zhao saw them to the bank and said she'd see them at the autumn performances. She was leaving that day too and wouldn't reach Lanting until the next day either. She wouldn't lose another night over a few words. Xiaoman looked back toward the lantern shop. She couldn't see her mother at the door, just a little of the new paper set out to dry. She didn't call out for her mother to go back inside. No matter how loudly those words carried across the water now, they couldn't walk the road from the bank to the shop door for her.

That night at the Sangqiao inn, Asheng lay on his stomach and wrote a little note to tell his grandmother that the round stone had made it to Sangqiao. Xiaoman didn't laugh and say that was too small a thing to write about. She wrote the name of the person it was going to for him. She added a few lines of her own, first saying that salted fish really did go well with porridge, then adding, next time let me put in a little less salt myself. The note went back on a boat only after they reached Lanting the next day. Words still took days to go back and forth, but they no longer all had to wait for Azhao to walk between the two of them with a lantern.