Zhen Zhi last saw
the small house when he was six years old. He kept looking back while his mother
gripped his wrist in her hand, pulling him along the road as she shifted the
pack on her back—all they would take with them to the New World, their new lives.
He did not even
take his name. His mother gave him a new name while they rode on top of the
train to the coast, and she reminded him over and over that he was now Tony
Chou from Xianxiang. He whispered his new name with his face pressed against
his knees, the wind pulling it from his mouth and carrying it away, all the way
until it flew into the corners of the old house and drifted into a corner of a
room like the dust that blew in the bare windows.
As it turned out,
he did not take his mother either. She fell sick with fever and died on the
ship as they crossed the wide, deep ocean. Tony arrived in the New World with
nothing but the small pack his mother had once carried from the small house.
At night, his
mother stroked his hair and whispered into his ear, “Zhen Zhi, do not forget
me, my son. Do not forget our old home, where you were born.” His American
mother cried when he said this at breakfast. His American father drove him to
school and asked him not to make his new mother cry. He could not stop his old mother’s
tears.
Tony studied
civil engineering and art history in college. He graduated valedictorian and
won a scholarship to graduate school at Stanford. He studied Mandarin and
Cantonese online, audited classes unofficially that never showed on his
transcript. There was no sign that he held any interest in China. He graduated, again with honors.
He accepted a job
in Beijing the next week, designing development projects in rural China. He never
spoke of his old name, his old mother, the small house. Surely it was long
gone, torn down, ground to dust, blown away on the wind like his name.
He took a train
out into the country, consulted the map on his phone, started hiking. He
carried a small pack on his back. He walked for hours along the old, broken
road. If he closed his eyes, he could hear voices, people moving, children
fussing, babies crying. No car passed him in over four hours.
He stood in front
of the old house. The door was gone. The windows had always been bare. He stood
there a long time before he walked inside. There was nothing inside, nothing
but trash and dirt blown in by the wind. Mud from the rains. Fragments of
memories, including his old name, buried in the corners. He picked them up and carefully
pressed them on the walls. He pulled out a small roll from the pack and
unwrapped a calligraphy brush and inkpots. He began to write.
He wrote until it
became too dark to see. Then he lay on the floor with the pack under his head
and slept. In the morning, he woke and began to write more. He wrote all day.
And again. And again. He covered each wall in the house. He wrote behind doors,
and along window frames, and inside the cabinet doors in the kitchen and the
bathroom. He wrote in the small bedroom closet. When he reached the final blank
wall, his characters became smaller and smaller. He had so much still to say,
and so little room remaining.
He finished the
last wall, the last open space in the small house. He sat on the floor and closed
his eyes, listening to the wind’s whispers quieting as they brushed against the
walls and the words, the stories, the memories there. He lay down and slept there
one last night. In the morning, he walked back to the train station and took
the train to Beijing.
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Dogs
in house
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Houdini, Brindle
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Time
writing:
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35 minutes
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August
word count:
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2,331
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