This night was indulgent and beautiful for both Mi Cai and me. After the intimacy of our bed, we talked about the future again. The stars outside the window made the entire world seem as if it contained only the two of us, so our conversation turned into whispers beneath the starry sky.
The night grew deeper, yet neither of us felt the slightest bit sleepy. Our conversation turned again to the elusive household registration book. She asked me, “Zhaoyang, if we really can’t get the household registration book, what will you do?”
“Even if I have to forge a fake one, I will marry you!”
Mi Cai leaned closer to me and softly said, “Your determination moves me, but that’s not right.”
“Then what do you think we should do?”
Mi Cai thought for a moment and replied, “We can hold the wedding first, showing them our determination. Then they will find their own ways to support us and give us a genuine marriage!”
Looking at Mi Cai, I was moved by her resolve to marry me and instinctively held her tighter. Yet I also saw the different ways we approached handling situations. She was methodical and step-by-step, while I was somewhat reckless. But even so, under pressure, my approach might still be valid. If they still refused to recognize our marriage after the wedding, I would rather forge a household registration book to get married to Mi Cai, because this is a respect for marriage and something I must give to Mi Cai.
As we talked, we fell into a brief silence, gazing together through the window at a distant ginkgo tree that had already shed all its leaves. But we both remembered how lush and full it had been in summer. If possible, I hoped to come back here for a few days next summer to see the green leaves and the ivy covering the walls… Perhaps by then, Mi Cai and I would have stabilized our lives and would be ready to have a child… I truly hoped that she could tell me beneath this ivy-covered building that I was going to be a father… Suddenly, I seemed to really see this scene I had imagined, and couldn’t help but smile slightly, then I opened the window a little and lit a cigarette…
“Zhaoyang, what are you smiling at? Can you share it with me?”
I couldn’t tell her what I was thinking, because it would lose some of its mystery, so I changed the subject, thinking of an old issue that had long been sealed between us. Finally, after taking a deep puff of my cigarette, I asked her, “You once told me that on the day we got married, you would tell me why you bought this old house… Isn’t it time to fulfill that promise now?”
Mi Cai instinctively looked at every object in the room. Although the room was only faintly lit by starlight, I could still see the complexity in her expression. After a long pause, she said to me, “Actually, about why I bought this house, you probably can guess.”
I had indeed guessed before, so based on my guess, I asked, “This house carries your childhood memories, right?”
Mi Cai nodded and said, “Yes, it not only carries my childhood memories but also Mi Lan’s… The room we are living in now was our room more than twenty years ago. My room was my father’s and mother’s, and my uncle and aunt lived in a partitioned room made from the living room… This house was originally allocated to my aunt by her workplace, and it was a witness to our family’s love. Back then, we were truly a loving family… But…!”
Speaking of this deeply buried past, Mi Cai’s mood became somewhat low. This house was a carrier and witness to her memories, but more so a source of regret, as everything had changed, leaving only the emptiness of time passing and people changing.
I continued for her, saying, “But your mother was an unexpected factor; she ruined this harmony, right?”
“Yes, this matter needs to start with my grandfather and grandmother… They were both government officials, but they suffered unjust accusations during a political movement. My grandfather couldn’t endure it and finally chose to end his life by drowning. My grandmother also passed away shortly after from physical and mental torment… This event left a significant psychological shadow on my mother… So she never really accepted the domestic environment!”
“I can understand. Behind every political movement, many people are hurt.”
“Actually, she married my father more out of mutual sympathy… My grandfather was also a victim of this political movement, so they fell in love and took care of each other during their university days… After graduation, my mother followed my father to Suzhou and lived a poor life. Later, I was born, and the next year my uncle and aunt had Mi Lan. We lived in this old house for many years!”
At this point, Mi Cai was already choking up, because beneath the harmony lay an impending pain. Finally, she told me, “Later, my mother’s brother in the United States helped her secure an opportunity to go abroad, and she was tempted… But she couldn’t take me and my father with her! So she discussed it with my father, hoping that after she settled down in America, she could bring both of us over in a few years… My father didn’t agree because, at the time, my lonely grandmother couldn’t bear the thought of him taking me away. Also, my father had already started卓美 with his brother. Well, it wasn’t called 卓美 at first… It was renamed just before she left. My father wanted to show her how important she was to him, but none of this moved her… She still resolutely left… After she was gone, my father was always gloomy, and my grandmother lived with guilt for breaking up the family. She carried this guilt with her and never enjoyed a happy old age. She passed away from remorse the second year after my mother left…”
This past made my heart increasingly heavy…
Tears had already filled Mi Cai’s face. After calming herself for a long time, she continued, “After my grandmother’s death, my father had no more attachments and considered taking me to America to find her, because he missed her so much… But she hadn’t kept her promise at all and had already remarried in America! She married an American and, with his help, expanded her business more and more. But later, for unknown reasons, she divorced the American and had been living alone ever since…”
“Did she have any children with that American?”
Mi Cai shook her head: “No, because after giving birth to me, she lost her ability to have more children. Perhaps that’s why the American divorced her… Zhaoyang, do you think I should resent her? Why couldn’t she stay in China, work with my father to build Zhuomei and our family?… Why… I truly feel for my father. Since she left, my father never remarried for many years, and until his car accident, he still hoped to reunite with her… But heaven never gave my father that chance again!”
I sighed heavily, and tears also fell from my eyes… This night, burdened by this painful past that had been spoken out, became extremely sorrowful!
What I heard was not only the secret of this old house but also the pain deeply buried in Mi Cai’s heart! And this pain stemmed from choices, but I truly knew that under the social background of that time, many people chose to abandon their families and children to seek opportunities abroad, and Mi Cai’s family was not an exception!
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