Chapter 3
That rescheduled flight—moving it forward by only two days had cost her little one her life.
What made it even more absurd was that, after the crash, one of her little one’s classmates had taken her to a hospital in the city.
The leading oncologist there told her with absolute certainty that she was not ill. The “suspected lung lesion” had been a misdiagnosis.
The white-haired doctor had seen so much life and death that he thought he knew how people would react. He expected the old woman to sigh with relief.
Instead, she burst into tears. “Are you sure my lungs are fine? Shouldn’t you look again?”
She looked almost as if she hated herself for not being sick.
After leaving the hospital, He Xiuhua spent night after night unable to sleep.
She hated herself for panicking, for calling her little one. What would have happened if she had waited a few days? Would she have died?
At her age, why had she been so afraid of death?
Well, now she had not died. Her little one had died in her place.
Her little one had died in her place.
No one blamed her, but those words sprouted from her heart and crept through every inch of her body, sinking into her bones.
He Xiuhua thought of her husband and daughter, both gone too soon. They had died in the earthquake while she survived because she was away working.
In the black of night, she woke from dreams drenched in sweat.
They should not have died, she thought. She must have cursed them to death—just as she had cursed her little one.
It was all her fault.
Tears slipped from her eyes, strand after strand, running down her cheeks and chin, soaking her collar and pillow.
She hugged an old photo album and turned a page. There was her young husband. Her daughter, faded by time. Her little one, no more than a tiny bundle.
The camera had frozen their lives.
The one left alive could only hate herself for surviving.
I wanted to visit Grandma in a dream.
It was my first time being a ghost, so I had no experience. I went back to the old spirit beneath the locust tree for advice.
He lifted an eyelid. “You can enter her dreams, but you’ll still have to burn your soul.”
He reminded me that after burning it three times, I would lose any chance of being reincarnated as a human. He also said only the stupidest ghosts burned their souls again and again.
I understood, but I was willing to be a stupid ghost.
The instant Grandma unscrewed the cap of a pesticide bottle, she fell asleep.
In the dream, she lay in a hospital bed. When she opened her eyes, it was not her neighbor beside her.
It was her little one.
Her wish had come true.
The moment she saw me, she could not utter a word. Her lips trembled, and then she pulled me into her arms.
She held me so tightly that my tears soaked her clothes. Her entire body shook with sobs she could not contain.
I had heard anguished cries like hers once before—the year the families’ briefings were discontinued.
So many relatives had gathered outside the civil aviation offices, gray-haired and travel-worn.
One elderly woman kept asking whether they had stopped searching. What if the passengers were still alive?
Her daughter and grandson had both been on that plane. Her son-in-law had already remarried.
The staff member explained helplessly that rescue resources were limited. They had persisted for five years and fulfilled every humanitarian obligation.
The old woman clutched his hand, dropped to her knees, and begged.
“Please. If they’re alive, I need to see them. If they’re dead, I need their bodies…”
Grandma’s wailing merged with the cries I remembered from outside that building.
At last, she released me and looked me over from head to toe. She brushed the seaweed from my body and touched my skeletal shoulder. Her gaze passed through my empty eye sockets, and she broke down again.
“Little one, you’ve suffered so much. It’s all my fault!
“I wasn’t even sick! I made you get on that plane. I killed you!”
I shook my head. “It wasn’t your fault.”
You did not curse me.
You are not a jinx.
The crash might have been someone’s doing, an accident, or even simply my fate. But it could never have been your fault.
You deserve to live to a hundred and die peacefully at the end of a full life.
Please do not end that life carrying guilt and regret.
Grandma gently blew on the bare bones of my fingers. “Does it hurt?”
I considered the question for only a moment. “Yes. It hurts terribly.”
Her eyes reddened. “I’m coming to keep you company. Wait for me. I’ll come find you right away.”
I shook my head. “No. I don’t want you to come keep me company. Grandma, can you bring me home?”
Slowly, she raised her head.
I held her gaze. “The sea here is so dark. The water is so cold, and the fish keep biting me. Can you take me back to our hometown?”