A Map for the Missing

by Belinda Huijuan Tang

then the voice calling out, in that tentative tenor he heard so often in America, thick with its awareness of the possibility for intrusion—“Hey?”

He would have assumed that Yitian was a son, part of a family back in that place, home, with a set of duties toward his parents. This understanding of obligation as the core of one’s being was their shared culture.

He hadn’t allowed himself to picture his home in years. Whenever he was tempted, he told himself he needed to focus on this new life in America and all that needed to be learned here. Sad memories could only be intrusions.

Conception had seemed like a natural rhythm of the world back then, mysterious but inevitable, not the opaque and ungiving process it was now.

“That’s why it’s lucky that I have a son like you, who sends me money. Otherwise, who would be here to look after me in my old age? Think about that for your own future. It’s so important to have children.” She sighed. “Even though our lot has been unlucky, Heaven has made up for it with you.”

Blame would have been easier to live with than forgiveness.

Even those illiterate men knew how powerful words could be. For hundreds of years, histories and stories had burned, new ones then created and written down only to be burned again. His mind was the only place where words could truly be kept safe. He wanted to pass them down to Yitian so that they could continue to exist in the mind of another. Like water poured between cups, so the tales would remain safe for the next generation.

She had to remind herself that her fear wasn’t on his behalf, but for the limits of the person she might be without him.

They were like Americans would be, each family hidden in their own cul-de-sac, willing to break its boundaries only if it demanded no inconvenience to themselves.

He had a feeling he’d escaped a fate he had no right to leave behind.

They’d mock him, how he didn’t understand any of their ways because he was American now, and in that mocking would be a scorn even deeper than they would show to a real white American, the anger at a fellow countryman who’d accessed a whole new world they never would.

To Yitian, the relationship appeared less like love and more like obligation, but perhaps there wasn’t a difference for a person like her.

There were minuscule differences between the accents of their village and surrounding ones, created and solidified over hundreds of years. Even Baijia Village or Five Groves people didn’t sound the same as those from Tang Family Village. How remarkable, Yitian sometimes thought, that now he lived in a country where people couldn’t even hear the difference between Chinese and Korean.

He couldn’t believe that they’d arrived at a silence so quickly. For years, he’d imagined the moment of seeing her again, but had never considered the possibility that they’d have so little to say.

but I had this feeling when I was back there, that everything was on the cusp of being different forever. Like I might accidentally look away and then when I turn back, everything will be gone. But I couldn’t tell whether it was the same, or whether it was just me who’d changed.”

I thought I’d probably seen one of the saddest moments of her life, but we were so separate. I thought, something like that would never happen in my village. People never cried alone like that. Someone would always hear you and come to you.

Her ease made him afraid to voice the deep loneliness that he’d felt

If she sensed his reticence, she pushed against stating it out loud, until all he was left with was the small house of his sadness that he could only enter into alone.

At times she felt the loneliness so overwhelming it became like a physical shadow pressing upon her.

she’d felt a pang of fear whenever she was alone with men she didn’t know, and these were the kinds of men—powerful, who didn’t ask permission—who put her on edge.

She’d sacrificed the whole other life she’d wanted for the safety of this one, so that her mother, and now her son, could have the stability she’d never had. If what she’d collected could be taken away so easily, then for what had she made those choices?

“Why did you do it?” he asked once, and she replied, a mystery even to her own self, “Sometimes I feel seized to do what I’m afraid of.”

“It’s not a specific thing, rather—I miss the feeling that there’s a greater life waiting for me.

He’d tried on a role for which he was the wrong actor.

She reached out to interlace her fingers with his. When she squeezed his fingers and buried the knot of them in the grass, he felt relieved. He was surprised to find he believed her words, fully and completely. Wasn’t it true, that love grew in ways beyond what he’d ever read or understood from a book? It could come from something as small as what she’d just described, or the way a person squinted thoughtfully toward the sun before she answered your questions. That was all it took, a moment enough to lodge in your mind and replay itself over and over, affecting your days forever after.

“What are you thanking me for? I’m your brother. It’s just what I’m supposed to do.

How rude he’d been to Yishou, to everyone. His pain had made him small minded. He would never allow himself to be like that again, he decided. He would never forget all the people who’d sacrificed to help him.

“Hope cannot be said to exist, nor can it be said not to exist. It is just like roads across the Earth. For actually the Earth had no roads to begin with, but when many pass one way, a road is made.” Please comment.

“Do you remember how big Hefei seemed when we came here for the exam? I remember Yishou saying to me, I feel like I could turn around just once and lose my sense of direction here. And I felt the same. I was so scared of getting lost. Even now, with all this construction, the city doesn’t seem nearly as big. But I don’t think anything has changed. I’ve just seen more, and my eyes have gotten bigger.”

Please, she said again, but her words were no longer directed at any object. The favor she asked was from the entire world.

This was the worst part of a death: that the dead could not collect on the balance they were owed, that they left all their burden to the living.

The very fact that they were considering reality as a mistake only meant that she didn’t want to accept what fate asked her to confront.

time could change a person so much that they would no longer even notice the scar that marked them.

She smiled and squinted her eyes upward in a look that she hoped would appear bright, but she found it was difficult to remember what happiness looked like.

It was amazing, he’d thought back then, that an unchanging property of an object wasn’t only what was there, but also what wasn’t. It meant that if you could define what was absent, create a map for the missing, that was also a way of knowing a thing.

Hanwen had reached the age when she should have begun taking care of her mother, but she was still allowing her mother to sacrifice for her.

She wondered if their behavior was because there was so little to be had in their world, and her studying marked her as someone dissatisfied, who might one day have more.

It seemed everyone had some idea for or of her, and no one wanted to ask what she thought.

It was one thing to know her mother’s wishes for her, another to hear about them day and night, to feel her entire life was an obligation to the sacrifices that had made it.

It was not a matter of loving one person more than the other, she told herself; only that some feelings became out of reach with age and knowing, just as some doors closed in a life.

Where is forgiveness? How far is it, and how long must I walk until I reach there?