Jennie Liu - Like Spilled Water

Having just finished final exams, my seven roommates and I are crowded in the narrow space between the bunks of our dorm room, singing to the blare of K-pop and dancing around the mess of clothes, bags, and books strewn all over the place. Were supposed to be packing up, getting ready to head back to our homes for the summer break, but the glee of being done for the year is bubbling over us, and we cant stop laughing and tossing the hairbrush-microphone back and forth. I almost dont hear my phone ring over the noise. I bark out to Xiaowen to turn down the music as I ransack my bunk, searching for my phone under the pile of clothes.

I answer the call. Its Nainai, my grandma, but I can hardly hear her. I press my free hand over my other ear and move out into the hall, but the connection is bad. The reception can be spotty in the countryside at home, and I can just see her yelling into her old flip phone as if shouting will smooth out the choppy breaks and static.

I think I hear her say, Your brother died!

And now its me whos shouting, What?! What did you say?

But the connection is already broken.

***

I cant believe I heard right. Bao-bao dead? How can that be? I punch in Nainais number three more times, but I cant get her back.

I dial up Mama, but the call goes to her voicemail. Same with Baba. I try texting them. I wait and wait, sitting against the wall in the corridor with my knees drawn up, restlessly unbraiding and rebraiding my hair.

My roommates and the girls all up and down the hall laugh and shriek and sing as they stuff their bags and fill the trash cans. Theres no response and Im left frantically wondering, Why dont they answer? Why dont they call me? What could have possibly happened? Bao-bao cant be dead.

Finally, a couple hours later, my phone dings. Its a text from Mama telling me to get on a bus and come to Taiyuan. Thats all she says. Nothing else. I consider messaging back, hammering her with questions, but I know she wont answer them, because shes paid no attention to me so far.

My roommates help me cram the rest of my clothes and books into my bags, and I drag them to the Linfen bus station in a foggy state of mind. I text Gilbert, my childhood friend, to tell him I wont be traveling home with him to our village, that I have to go to my parents in the city instead. He messages back to ask whats going on. I only say somethings happened to Bao-bao, the same vague information I gave the girls. I cant say he died.

I cant, because I wished for it so many times.

***

My bus leaves in the late afternoon, and an hour later, its still crawling in a procession of coal trucks that clog the roads. The smell of exhaust and burning coal seeps into the bus. The air is thick, and the spewing smokestacks of the refineries near the highways are barely visible in the yellowy-gray smog. With the traffic around the cities, the stops, and the transfers, it will be at least a six-hour trip to Taiyuan where Mama, Baba and Bao-bao live. Where Bao-bao lived.

Because of the fug of pollution, I cant tell when the sun goes down or when the day turns to dusk, but by the time night falls weve gained speed. We pass several massive, well-lit Sinopec gas stations with their rusty exercise equipment and billboards with gory images of what could happen in a car accident if you dont take care while driving.

People crowd onto the bus at the stations of towns and small cities. At one stop, a pregnant woman waddles down the aisle. I automatically stand to give her my seat. She smiles gratefully, but moves one step past the seat I just vacated and ushers a little girl in pigtails, who was hidden behind her, to sit down. Immediately, I regret giving up my seat to this little emperor . But then I see the mothers protruding abdomen bump against the girls head when the bus lurches on, and I remember that I was once like that little girla first child showered with attention, indulged, until I was pushed aside by a second child. My brother. Who is dead.

What could have happened? I wonder and wonder, questions stopping up my muddled feelings of bewilderment, old jealousies, guilt that Im not sadder. Was he hit by a car in traffic? Has he been sick? What sort of terrible disease could strike so fast?