“Why are you hiding in the shadows?” she asked Jiaming.
“You’re not going to like the way I look now.” Jiaming walked into the lamplight. “They got my clothes dirty.”
They had held her down on the beige-colored sofa at McDonald’s, where the Coke spilling from the cup they toppled on purpose flowed onto her pants from the table. Lina hadn’t been in the crowd; she had stood in the back, traces of tears on her face.
“Did they hit you?” the pale woman asked.
Her face felt swollen, and there were a few scratch marks. Jiaming licked her cracked lips. The taste of blood was a bit similar to Coca-Cola.
“They weren’t too fond of iced soda.”
The girl who had toppled the Coke had been the first one to slap her in the face. Then they had dragged her in front of Lina. Half a dozen pairs of hands had shoved her until she was kneeling before Lina, her knees striking the hard tiles. This was the price for betraying Lina.
They had then slapped her face: one, two, three. Right in front of the customers and employees gathered around them, in front of the pedestrians on the sidewalk looking in through the windows, in front of the teacher mixed in the crowd pretending to not know them, perhaps in front of other students.
Someone had held her by her hair so that she couldn’t lower her face. They wanted everyone to see her face. Jiaming had closed her eyes.
One of the girls had explained the scene to the spectators.
Look at this stupid bitch. She could barely get passing marks. How dare she make up stories about Lina, a model student?
“You know who they are, don’t you? Did you guess or did the stars tell you?” Jiaming wiped away the pale woman’s tears. “Don’t cry. Don’t you find the whole thing funny?”
Had she not shut her eyes tightly, had she been able to see the expressions on those faces, she would have laughed hysterically, unable to stop herself. The joke hadn’t reached the punch line until then.
“Did the stars tell you how many times they slapped me? Twenty-seven. I was so bored that I counted for them. But this wasn’t the real problem. There’s actually a really important question, something that I had to ponder before Lina left. Mama, how did they know I was at McDonald’s?
“Why did the man who’s so important to me take up their side? Ask the stars, Mama, ask them! Why did he treat me the same way that man treated you? Hurry up and ask the stars! We must have the same stars, Mama.”
The pale woman was curled up in the chair, biting her fingers instinctively. Only her eyes, independent of body and will, attracted by the star chart, stared without blinking at the figures on the sheet.
Jiaming walked over and pulled her fingers out of her mouth. “What do the stars say? My crazy, mad mother, tell me, what does this mean?” She pointed to one symbol.
“The Moon.”
“The Moon?” As Jiaming spoke, she moved her pen. The pale woman screamed and stretched out her bloody fingers to stop her, but it was too late. The symbol for the Moon disappeared in a dense storm of pen strokes. The pen moved and casually drew the symbol somewhere else. “It’s over here now.”
“You don’t know what you’re doing.”
“What about this one?” The nib pointed at another symbol.
“That’s Pluto.”
“It’s too crowded over here.” She scratched out Pluto and randomly set the nib down in a blank space elsewhere. “Isn’t this better?”
The pale woman howled, tearing at her hair.
“Don’t cry. Open your eyes. The stars and planets are no longer where they were, but the world remains the same. Nothing has changed. The stars do not speak; they don’t tell the future. The future, the past, the present—none of it has anything to do with your shitty stars.”
The pale woman bent over the star chart, as if gazing at a baby she had given birth to who had just died. Tears flowed down her cheeks and dropped onto the paper; ripples expanded over the chart as though pebbles had been tossed in. The symbols on the paper trembled like reflections in the water, and then cautiously began to move, heading for their former positions.
Jiaming watched them expressionlessly, unmoved. This was nothing more than another cheap trick.
The stars did not speak; the stars did not tell the future; the stars were powerless.
She understood this better than anyone else at this moment.
“You don’t know what you’ve done!” The pale woman sobbed uncontrollably.
“I know what I’ve done. Almost, almost I believed you. This morning was the first time I’ve ever believed that I might deserve happiness after all.”
My name is Tang Jiaming.
My mother is insane.
Dad told me that when I was four, my mother died coming home on a ferry. I didn’t understand why Dad told me such a story until I was much older.
Not long after my mother’s death, Dad and I moved into our current home. Dad is an architect; he spent a lot of time renovating our new home. Our new home didn’t feel as spacious as it looked, but it was plenty big for us. Later, I went to school like other kids. One night, I dreamed of the pale woman. She had a sheet of paper filled with strange symbols, and she told me that the paper told her the future. I didn’t believe her. Although I dreamed about the pale woman every night after, I never believed her predictions, the words of the stars.
Until I met Zhang Xiaobo.
Because I wanted love.
That’s humanity for you.
He opens the door and is surprised to find me sitting on the sofa. “You’re home?”
“Sorry. I know we said we’d go out for dinner. I forgot it was tonight.”
“No big deal.” He takes the Sarah Brightman CD out of his briefcase. “For you.”
No matter what I want, he always tries to get it for me. No matter how disobedient I am, he never disciplines me. None of the other fathers are like this.
He doesn’t ask about the bruises on my face. He’s been like that since I was little. If I got bullied he always pretended that he saw nothing.
“That’s why you have to be smart and take care of yourself,” the pale woman had said.
“Did you get out of work early because you wanted to tell me something?”
“No. I just wanted to have a good meal with you. Aren’t you going to get in trouble for skipping study hall tonight?”
“Don’t worry about it. Since you’re back early and I’m not going to study hall, why don’t we sit and chat a bit?” I get up and dim the living room lights.
The living room has never been so dim in my memory. Day or night, the lights and the TV have always been kept on.
“What are you doing?”
I walk in front of the mirror facing the TV. I press against the glass and look in. I see what he doesn’t want me to see: the pale woman and her prison cell.
“One-way glass?” I stare at him. “Daddy, I guess our living room isn’t so small after all.”
My name is Tang Jiaming.
My mother is insane.
My father is an excellent architect. He built a secret chamber into our living room, where he has imprisoned my mother for more than a decade. The pale woman has never been a dream. It took me a long time before I understood this, but I continued to insist that she was just a dream. Like the story he told me about her drowning.