That essay, “My Home,” was read aloud during Wednesday afternoon’s writing class.
The Chinese teacher, Mr.
Fang, was in his forties, with a bald patch on top of his head and a habit of stretching out his words when he spoke.
He held up the notebook high above his head, pacing back and forth in front of the podium, pausing after each sentence as if savoring some rare delicacy.
“My father’s hands are cracked all year round.
In winter, the cracks open up, revealing red flesh beneath.
He wipes them with saliva and keeps working…
My mother can’t speak, but her hands do…”
The stream in the valley was shallow, thick with reeds that rustled softly in the wind, like someone whispering from the edge of the sky.
She sat down on the grass, opened the notebook, and read from the first page to the last.
Those words had taken three long nights to write, hunched over a kerosene lamp, each stroke carefully drawn.
She wrote: “My mother cannot speak, but her hands do.
On the embroidered insole is a red peony.
She says, that is our family’s spring.”
In the corner of the final page, there remained a black fingerprint—the mark left by Bian Shoutian when he helped her count the sheets.
Her nose suddenly grew sharp, tears welled up in her eyes, yet she didn’t let them fall.
When she returned home, she didn’t put the notebook into her schoolbag.
Instead, she pried away the loose mud brick at the foot of her bed, carefully slid the notebook inside, then replaced the bricks one by one, smoothing the surface with mud so no trace remained.
That night, lying on the kang bed, she kept her eyes open, listening to rain seep through the roof, dripping drop by drop into a cracked clay jar in the corner.
And when I finish, I won’t show it to anyone.”
What she didn’t know was that behind that mud brick, in years to come, she would hide notes, receipts, textbooks, tears—and everything else a person refuses to surrender from childhood onward.
And that year, before she even turned ten, she had already learned how to lock her heart away.
The next day in class, after finishing his lesson, Mr.
Fang walked over and, under the puzzled gaze of her desk mate, gently said, “You, kid—you’ve got spirit.
Don’t ever lose it.”
Only then did her tears finally burst forth.
She quickly lowered her head and tried to wipe them with her sleeve, but the fabric was worn thin—each swipe revealed her skin beneath.
She feared being seen, feared being asked questions.
In this classroom, being noticed wasn’t good.