Chapter 1: Drowning
GLUG, GLUG.
’Where am I? I can’t breathe. My arms and legs won’t move. This is awful.’
Shouts, footsteps, and arguments were followed by a splash.
Xu An clearly felt someone grab his arm. The darkness before him gradually faded as the light grew brighter and brighter.
The man straddling Xu An’s body and performing forceful chest compressions was suddenly thrown off by a tremendous force from beneath him. Before he could even react, he heard the surrounding crowd cheer.
"He’s awake! He’s awake! We saved him! He’s alive!"
After a violent fit of vomiting that felt like he was about to cough up his very heart and lungs, Xu An’s focus slowly returned. He found himself tightly clutching a fish in his right hand—a fish so mangled and bloody it was barely recognizable as one.
The moment he saw the fish, Xu An subconsciously tried to stuff it into his shirt. His subconscious was telling him this fish was incredibly important.
This strange action startled the people around him. A few who had been about to step forward and help him up slowly retreated back into the crowd.
An old woman called out hesitantly to Xu An, "Young Xu? Is that you, young Xu?"
Xu An looked up at the speaker. She was an old woman of about seventy with neatly combed silver hair and a kind smile. She was holding clothes covered in suds; she must have been doing laundry.
’Isn’t that Third Granny from the village? But didn’t she pass away three years ago? How is she standing here, alive and well? And no one else seems to find it strange.’
A sharp headache assaulted him, and vast swaths of memories flooded his mind.
Xu An remembered when this scene had taken place.
This was fifteen years ago. Granny Xu had fallen down the stairs and broken her right leg, and she was recovering at home after hospital treatment. This was the scene where he drowned after getting a leg cramp while trying to catch fish for her in the river, only to be rescued by others.
Another image surfaced in Xu An’s mind at the same time: he was standing on a seaside reef as waves crashed one after another, until a massive one swept him, waiting for rescue, into the sea.
Xu An looked down at his body. He was wearing a baggy, worn-out, striped t-shirt with patches. Below his coarse-cloth shorts were two legs as skinny as bamboo poles, and a couple of vegetable leaves were stuck to his feet.
This was his favorite outfit for working outside. He’d worn it until near the end of summer vacation in his senior year of high school, when it got snagged on a branch while he was chopping firewood and was torn to shreds, beyond repair. Only then had he given up on his beloved clothes.
’Have I... returned to fifteen years ago? To the summer vacation after my college entrance exams?’
"Buddha said, ’Much, much, much, a life has too much feeling; love and hate drag you back and forth, locking your brow in sorrow.’"
A cell phone suddenly rang, and the person pulled it out of their pocket. Xu An saw the date on the screen: June 13, 2012.
June 13, 2012!
’At this time, my brother and sister haven’t been sent to our aunt’s house yet!’
Xu An leaped to his feet. After frantically thanking the group of kind-hearted villagers, he took off running for home.
He slammed open the courtyard gate to his home. Seeing his younger brother and sister in the yard washing vegetable leaves, Xu An threw his arms around them both.
His younger brother was named Xu Kang, and his younger sister was named Xu Le; they were fraternal twins. On June 15th, they would be sent to live with their paternal aunt, who had been married for seven years without children. Their household registrations would be transferred to hers, turning them from his own siblings into his cousins.
"Brother, you’re squeezing me too tight!" The two of them pushed against Xu An with all their might, trying to shove him away, but they were too small and weak. Xu An didn’t budge an inch.
Their words snapped Xu An out of his reverie. He quickly loosened his grip and gave their tender cheeks a firm pinch.
Xu Le wriggled out of Xu An’s embrace and peeked behind him. Not seeing the familiar fish basket, she asked in disappointment, "Brother, where’s the fishie? Didn’t you go to catch a fishie? You didn’t get one?"
Xu An ruffled Xu Le’s hair. Looking at their sallow, skinny faces, he said apologetically, "Brother didn’t catch a fishie, so we won’t eat fishie today. How about we eat some meaty-meat instead?"
Hearing this, the two little ones stared at Xu An in disbelief, their eyes wide. "Brother, are we really eating meaty-meat? The meaty-meat from a piggy?"
Seeing the hopeful look in their eyes, Xu An smiled, booped their little noses, and said with certainty, "That’s right. Today, we’re eating meaty-meat from a piggy."
"Woohoo! We’re eating meaty-meat! Eating meaty-meat! Eating piggy meaty-meat!"
The two of them excitedly ran in circles around Xu An, chanting "meaty-meat" over and over.
In 2012, most families could afford to have meat with every meal. But for the Xu Family, eating even a small portion of meat was a luxury reserved only for holidays.
Mother Xu had died from a hemorrhage while giving birth to Xu Kang and Xu Le. Father Xu, who worked on a construction site, took on more dangerous jobs to earn extra money and fell to his death from a building. After a great deal of wrangling, the family received thirty thousand yuan in compensation.
After that, Granny Xu was the only direct relative left in the Xu Family. Fortunately, Granny Xu was in good health. She grew a garden full of vegetables and would carry them to the market to sell each day, earning enough to cover living expenses. Life was manageable.
But a week ago, Granny Xu had broken her leg while repairing the house. The medical bills were paid from the thirty-thousand-yuan compensation, costing over ten thousand yuan and making a bad situation even worse for the already impoverished family.
"Anzi? Is that Anzi back home?"
Granny Xu seemed to have heard the commotion outside. Her weak voice drifted out through the window.
Stopping the two playing children, Xu An locked the courtyard gate and went inside the house.
Stepping into the living room, the first thing he saw was a long table. On it sat three red plastic incense burners, and on the wall above them hung three black-and-white photographs.
From left to right, they were Grandpa Xu, Mr. Xu, and Mrs. Xu.
Against the left wall of the living room was a heavy, square, solid wood table. The red lacquer on it was mottled and peeling, revealing the original wood color underneath.
On the square table sat a small dish of pickled vegetables. Next to it were two somewhat shriveled apples, covered by a red mesh food cover.
To the left was his grandmother’s room. In the center of the bare room was a simple wooden bed cobbled together from stools and wooden planks of varying lengths.
A dried bamboo pole was tied to each of the four corners of the bed, holding up a yellowish mosquito net.
In a corner of the room were several dark-colored jars, sealed tightly with wooden lids. These were the Xu Family’s pickling crocks, passed down for forty or fifty years.
Granny Xu was half-sitting, propped up against the wall. She was covered with a thin, navy-blue blanket, her silver hair tied back messily. Seeing Xu An enter, she asked with concern, "Anzi, where did you go so early this morning?"
Hearing his grandmother’s concern so suddenly, Xu An felt a sting in his nose, and his eyes welled up with tears. It took him a long moment to suppress the emotion. He forced a normal tone and said, "Some of the vegetables in the field were about to get old if they weren’t picked. I went early this morning to pick them and take them to the market to sell."
Granny Xu watched his performance and knew he wasn’t telling the truth. But with her leg injured, she couldn’t even get out of bed. If Xu An didn’t want to tell her, there was nothing she could do. So, she didn’t press him and changed the subject.
"What did you pick, and how much did you make?"
Xu An pulled a wad of damp banknotes from his pocket. He quickly counted them—fifty-one yuan and fifty cents in total—and started making things up based on that number.
"I picked five pounds of green beans at three-fifty a pound; four bitter melons, about three pounds total, at three yuan a pound; and almost ten pounds of tomatoes at two-fifty a pound. All together, that’s fifty-one yuan and fifty cents."
Granny Xu looked at the damp banknotes in Xu An’s hand and said nothing. Her silence was so complete it made Xu An’s hair stand on end.
"This leg of mine is going to take a long time to heal. You keep the money from selling the vegetables. Use it when you need to buy things."
With that, Granny Xu pulled up the blanket, turned onto her side, and faced away from Xu An.
Xu An smoothed the creases on the banknotes, folded them one by one, and put them back in his pocket. He then turned and looked out the door.
It was only then that Xu An realized he was soaked from head to toe. Everywhere he had walked, he had left a trail of wet footprints.