Free The Interior by Lisa See Page B

way she held herself as she sat on the upended crate, whereas, if she had seen Suchee on the street in Beijing, she would have taken her for someone sixty or seventy years old.
    As twilight faded into darkness, Hulan began to see her girlhood friend hiding behind the old woman’s face. Under the flickering light of a kerosene lantern—electricity was too expensive to use on a daily basis—Hulan saw how a lifetime of backbreaking work under an unforgiving sun had taken its toll. As a twelve-year-old Suchee had been stronger and far more robust than Hulan. But Hulan had spent the rest of her teenage years in America, eating meat at almost every meal, so now she was perhaps four inches taller than Suchee. Beyond this, Suchee’s back was already curving into a dowager’s hump due to years of carrying water and produce on a pole slung across her shoulders. Suchee’s face pained Hulan most of all. As a girl Suchee had been beautiful. Her face had been round and full of life. Her cheeks had glowed pink. Now her skin was wrinkled and stained dark brown from the sun.
    Of course, she had lived a much fuller life than Hulan. She had married and borne a child. She had also lost both her husband and her child. When Hulan looked straight into Suchee’s eyes, she had to turn away. Behind the polite words Suchee was suffering from a loss that Hulan could not begin to imagine. Hardening her heart against the details that she knew would come, Hulan reached across the table and took Suchee’s hand. “I think it’s time you tell me about your daughter.”
    Suchee talked late into the night, recalling in painful detail Miaoshan’s last day. Suchee had just finished locking the ox into its shed when she met her daughter, who was coming home for the weekend, having been away for several weeks at the Knight factory. Seeing Miaoshan on the dusty pathway that led to the house, Suchee instantly knew that her only child was pregnant. Miaoshan denied this accusation. “I told her, ‘I am a peasant. I have grown up on the land. Do you think I don’t know when an animal comes into season? Do you think I don’t know when a creature is with child?’” Faced with these basic truths, Miaoshan had broken down completely. With tears streaming down her face—the Western display of emotion doing little to settle Suchee’s fears—Miaoshan had confessed everything.
    There were so many sayings that covered chastity and what happened when one didn’t protect it: Guard your body like a piece of jade, or, One blunder can lead to remorse. But Suchee didn’t believe in these kinds of reproaches. She had been young once herself. She knew what could happen in a moment of passion. “I told her that there was nothing wrong that couldn’t be fixed.” Then Suchee went on as if her daughter were in the room with her at this moment. “You can be married to Tsai Bing next month,” she said. “You know he has waited a long time. Tomorrow I will go to the Neighborhood Committee director. That old grandma will understand. You will have your marriage permission certificate by the end of the week. The child permission certificate may be a little more difficult. You and Tsai Bing are still young, and this will be your only child. But I am not concerned. I have known that busybody director for so long. If she wants to make trouble for you, I will tell stories of when she was young, eh? So don’t worry. I will take care of everything.”
    But her comforting words had done little to calm Suchee’s own emotions, and during the night she’d been jarred awake many times, feeling a sense of foreboding that went beyond the news of the pregnancy. “The next morning Miaoshan was dead, and the police wouldn’t listen when I said that the men in our village were getting rich by sending girls and women to that factory,” Suchee continued. “They don’t care what happens so long as they make their profit.” Before Hulan could question her about this, Suchee said in