8
When the hired van pulled up at her grandmother’s building, Jia Jia’s friend Qing was sitting cross-legged on the front steps, waiting for her, an unlit cigarette between her lips. She always rolled her own cigarettes, a European habit that she had perfected during art school.
Jia Jia had few friends she kept in touch with from those days, and Qing was one of them. Of the three roommates from her first year, Jia Jia had become closest with Qing. They had nothing in common besides their passion for creating art, but back then, that single commonality had been enough for them to spend every day together, painting in silence, until the sun had set and risen again.
Qing had short, dark brown hair that always smelt like rushes. She claimed that she had kept the same hairstyle her entire life, though it used to be black when she was younger, and that the scent came from the Japanese tatami bed that her mother had installed in her room when she was a girl. Jia Jia admired Qing’s ability to stay true to herself, to have an identity and one only. Qing’s wardrobe was filled with olive-green T-shirts and black jeans, and those things were all she ever wore, except in the winter when she would put on a black padded denim jacket.
Qing stuffed her cigarette behind her ear when she saw Jia Jia.
‘Qing’s Home Movers reporting for duty!’ She lifted her right hand, holding the neon-green lighter to her temple, and gave Jia Jia a salute.
They both laughed and proceeded to carry boxes upstairs to the second floor. Every so often, Jia Jia’s grandmother stuck her head out from the kitchen window and asked if they wanted pears.
By the time they had emptied everything from the van, night had fallen, and Jia Jia’s grandmother had settled into a deep doze that would last until four in the morning – the time she began cooking a pot of plain breakfast congee. The plate of pears sat on the bedside table waiting for Jia Jia and Qing.
Jia Jia’s childhood bedroom had been converted into a spare room. It was the only one that faced north and overlooked the main road, making it much louder than the others, which all faced the courtyard. The white walls were yellowing and so were the curtains. With the boxes piled on top of each other and filling up the room, there was hardly anywhere to stand.
‘Jia Jia, you have a lot of unpacking to do,’ Qing said as she popped a half-moon of pear into her mouth and collapsed onto the single bed. The bed was made for Jia Jia already; the sheets were pale green and did not match with the purple-striped pillowcase.
‘Also, about what you asked me last time,’ Qing said. ‘I heard back from a gallery who told me that they’d like to speak to you. Maybe you can organise a little exhibition or something.’
Jia Jia sat down next to Qing.
‘I rang my father today,’ Jia Jia said.
Qing sat up.
‘I called him in the van,’ Jia Jia continued. ‘He suggested we meet for dinner. What’s the gallery’s name?’
‘But you never call your dad.’ Qing took a card out from her back pocket and handed it over. ‘Here. They said that you can call in any time next week.’
‘Thank you, Qing.’ Jia Jia studied the card. She had never heard of the gallery before. ‘So, are you still dating that guitarist?’ she looked up and asked.
‘What are these?’ Qing started removing canvases from a box.
‘Failed art. Are you still dating him? The tall guy with the purple guitar.’
‘I’m thirty-one. I’ve decided that I need to consider my future a bit more, find someone more dependable.’ She held up one of Jia Jia’s paintings. ‘You haven’t painted something so many times since university. A fish … without a head?’
‘There’s supposed to be a man’s head there.’ Jia Jia pointed to the empty oval on the canvas. ‘You know, Chen Hang was dependable.’
Moonlight shone in, revealing a thin layer of dust on top of everything: the television, the collectible book sets on the shelves, the ink painting of a red-crowned crane in the corner, the lantern hung on the window frame. Jia Jia recognised the lantern – it was one of the many things that had belonged to her mother and one of the few that were left. She had purchased it from a craftsman in Chongqing. Jia Jia’s mother instilled stories into every object that she brought home with her from her travels. She asked young Jia Jia to guess where they came from and where they would go.
Wherever they go, it will be a better place, her mother once said.
Jia Jia ran her index finger along the edge of the lantern. Where had they gone? Where was the ceramic pot from Jingdezhen? The flute from Yuping? The bronze dragon from Xi’an? The qipao from Shanghai? The roll of embroidered fabric from Suzhou?
Did things disappear one by one, or altogether? she wondered. The past seemed to have become merely what remained.
‘All these years, my father never married that new woman,’ Jia Jia continued. ‘Why do you think so?’
Qing shrugged. ‘Maybe he doesn’t want more family. I need a smoke.’
‘Not here inside my grandma’s apartment.’ Jia Jia lightly punched Qing on the arm.
Perhaps Qing was right, Jia Jia thought, maybe he never wanted a new family. Now that she had lost her own, she seemed to understand her father a little, his unwillingness to start another family, to move on so completely. From the day he announced that he was in love again, to the moment he drove his car away with all his belongings, it was Jia Jia’s mother who had been desperate to expel him from their home. Back when Jia Jia was a small child and morality was a more definite thing, she had chosen to stand with both feet on her mother’s side, offering to her alone – the only victim in her mind – all the love that her young, delicate body could possibly summon. She had ignored, forgotten, those afternoons when she observed her father from the window of their apartment, pacing around, sometimes even knocking on their door. She had forgotten that she had never opened it for him, that she had deserted him too.
Qing stood and picked up her bag.
‘Don’t you want to eat something before you leave?’ Jia Jia asked.
‘Dieting!’
Qing took her cigarette from her ear, swung her bag behind her shoulder, and waved the hand that was holding the lighter. Jia Jia observed from her window as Qing exited the building and mounted her scooter. She shouted, ‘Thank you,’ as Qing disappeared around the corner, cigarette in her mouth.
A week after her move, Jia Jia was sitting at a small, round table with four chairs in a quiet corner of a Shanghainese restaurant. A waitress in a black skirt suit handed her a menu that felt as thick as a novel.
She was half an hour early and relieved to be away from her grandmother’s for the first time since moving in. She had told Ms Wan that she was ill with a fever and could not finish the last section of the wall painting until she felt better. Instead, she had sat in her room and toiled over her own fish-man paintings in vain. The room was too small, too restricting. She did not remember it being that way. Every day, she felt as though she was in a tank of water, suffocating. Her aunt was rarely home, but in the dead of night, Jia Jia would hear her whispering and fighting with her grandmother about Li Chang.
Jia Jia studied the expertly-shot food photos inside the menu. She decided that she would begin her conversation with her father by complimenting the quality of the menu’s paper – it felt like waxed cardboard. It would be an appropriate way to praise him for his restaurant choice, she thought. She had phoned her father from the van to tell him that she was moving out. Since then, she had realised that staying with her aunt and grandmother was not a long-term solution. They had developed their own way of living together through the years without her, and in the past few days, Jia Jia had felt out of place anywhere but in her own, tiny room.