Mao 1

Sister’s Wedding

“April is the cruellest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire,

stirring dull roots with spring rain.” --the Waste Land

No sooner had I sat down than the train started. I’m breathless yet too scared to take off

my mask. The only thing I can do is pinch the nose wire, feeling the tearing behind my ears, and

try to take in some warm fresh air.

It takes me seven hours and thirty-three minutes to back home by train, to attend my

sister’s wedding. It’s April, and I can see the twigs outside the window all aquiver with the new

spring life. But not do the white masks reflected on the glass. If Grandpa is still alive, I can’t stop

thinking, he probably couldn’t survive the Omicron this winter. I remember he told me winter is

getting harder and harder.

My Grandpa died not of COVID, but from pancreatic cancer the same year. February,

New Year, and cold winter. I can still sense the freezing air I breathed in on the way from home

to the hospital. In such a small town we didn’t have many infected people. I was in high school

and every day after finishing the online class, I would go and take care of him while doing my

homework. Coldness hadn’t accompanied me for long. He died ninety-three days after the

diagnosis, in April, one week after I back to school.

Thoroughly checked, I put the box with a bracelet in my jacket pocket. A wedding gift,

childhood memories. People say my sister resembles my grandpa a lot. Not sister indeed, cousin.

Before my uncle moved to Nanjing, we spent thirteen years together at Grandpa’s. I never call

her cousin, just sister, we are sisters. Strangely, I never thought they two were alike -- sister

always laughed, grandpa never, to me. In third grade, I picked up a knitting bracelet on my way
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home. Grandpa was so angry that I didn’t keep to the “none pick it up” rule, while my sister

comforted crying me with her smile. I knew she knew me, and she always will.

***

My father shows up to drive me home. Usually, Nanjing is a bit colder than Zhuhai.

Coldness here is something you can sense in the air—dry cold, something that won’t enter you

but seems to always surround you. Coldness besieges me. Father turns on the AC, while I plan to

send a message to my sister whom I haven’t seen for years since she was in Australia. Then I see

a notification pop up which reads:

Hello, according to the big data, you may have had time and space intersection with the

risk people recently, please stay home or centralized isolation and report…

Before I realized what had happened, I had already been in my grandma’s home, namely,

my old home. The home she and my grandpa have lived in for over thirty years. The home I had

spent my entire childhood in. Grandma was a strong woman, at least stronger than I was. None

of us had ever talked to her about my grandpa’s condition, but when things happened, she just

dealt with it, so naturally. Except she refused to leave this house.

I’m afraid you can’t make it to your sister’s wedding.

You gotta be kidding me, I have to, it means a lot to me.

I’m sorry, sweetheart, but what if you made the rest of us quarantined too?

Seven days. For seven days I need to stay with my grandma at home doing nothing. The

last time I got a chance to do this was before high school. The house looks the same just as I

have never left. I remember when Grandpa was ill, I went back a couple of times to fetch

commodities for him, but none of which I had time to look at the characters written by the

childish me with calks on the yard wall. Now I have time, enough time.
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Grandma is so happy for it has been a long time since I shall, or anyone shall, accompany

her. She settles me down in my small old room on the second floor. This is a third-story building,

which can get extremely cold when the winter is hard. Before, Grandpa would set up the coal-

burning stove and toast tangerines for us. After that, we bought the AC, and after that, I couldn’t

recall when we dismantled all the pipes for that stove--- all my memories about this house

seemed to fade away when my grandpa died.

And now they appear to all come back to me.

***

On the first day, Grandma cooks me lots of dishes I like. She asks me if I can get used to

the soft rice, and I say definitely.

On the second day, I phone my sister to check if everything is going well. “I reckon your

mood is as good as the weather outside”, speaking of this I look at the sun out of the window.

“You guessed wrong my dear, Nanjing is raining, and my mood is as shitty as that. I really have a

lot of stuff to do. I better go, catch you later, sweety.”

Day three rains, heavily. Normally in this area of China April is not the rainy season. I

spot my grandma sitting on her armchair watching the rain.

On the fourth day, Grandma somehow didn’t put enough water in the rice. She asks me if

the rice is too hard to chew. I said it is ok. “If that were your grandpa, he would complain about

the rice.” Grandpa had bad teeth.

Day five is a sunny day. I am so bored that I watch my grandma hang all the clothes out

on the balcony. She rejects my help. She says when my grandpa was alive, she wouldn’t let him

help either.

On day six, my sister finally calls. “I’m so sorry dear, I was too busy these days,
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something was wrong with the guest list.” “Because of the pandemic?” I joke. “Yes, darling.

Look, I’m so sorry you can’t come, you know how much I wish you would come, but you can

join me with Grandma online, what do you think?” “Yes, yes sure, we will watch online.” I hear

someone calling her vaguely, so I shut the phone, or else I will cry. I dry my tears and find

Grandma standing there, giving me a familiar little box. “I found it when I was planning to wash

your jacket”, she says gently, as if she knows what is in it.

Why don’t you go to my sister’s wedding, Nana?

Have you ever dreamt of your grandpa?

Then she tells me. How she thinks my sister would remind her of Grandpa. How Grandpa

wishes to witness my sister get married. How she never washes her memories away. How she

qualified to be a city resident by getting married to him. How she fell in love and spent nearly

her entire life with him, sometimes sweet, but most time hard. How she cooked every meal,

washed every clothes, and raised my uncle and my father. How she was disliked and downgraded

by his relatives and how she dealt with all his bad temper.

“I always wonder how a favour could take a lifetime to pay back. It wasn’t until your

grandpa was dying that he told me ‘Thank you, this life journey is really hard for you.’ But it is

just meaningless. How could all these make meaning when a person dies?”

It was April. Just like today, an April day.

Next day, my sister sets up a live stream specially for me and my grandma to witness her

happiest day.

“Miss Mao, will you marry this man and go on this journey of life?

The answer is always yes.