Chapter 5

In the end, I didn’t immediately accept the posting.

I asked Wei for another week.

For that week, Chen Shuo and I carried on preparing for the wedding as though nothing had happened.

Tasting the menu.

Printing invitations.

Checking the guest list.

His mother bought me a gold bangle. It was substantial, heavy on my wrist.

She held my hand. “Soon we’ll be family.”

My heart gave a sudden ache.

Chen Shuo’s mother wasn’t a wicked mother-in-law.

She was warm.

She never came to our home empty-handed. When the fridge was full, she stacked boxes of eggs on the kitchen floor.

She knew I liked bamboo shoots, and every spring she asked relatives back home to send some.

When I was busy at work, she’d even said, “A woman needs a job of her own. You can’t be asking a man for money.”

So afterwards, a lot of people assumed I’d cancelled the wedding because his family had tried to put me in my place.

They really hadn’t.

What finally made up my mind was a perfectly normal dinner.

That evening, both sets of parents sat down to eat in our new flat for the first time.

My mother mentioned the project away from home.

“Cencen’s manager thinks very highly of her,” she said. “He says if she does well on this project, she can get promoted.”

Dad kept his head down, picking up food, and said nothing.

Chen Shuo’s mother smiled first.

“Of course it’s good for a young woman to be so capable. But once you’re married, don’t wear yourself out. There’s always more money to be made.”

“That’s true,” Mum said.

Chen Shuo’s father took a sip of his drink.

“Chen Shuo’s job is secure. He’ll be the family’s main support. Liang’s work is more flexible. When a child comes down with something, it’ll be easier for her to look after them.”

No one meant any harm.

The mood around the table was positively pleasant.

Mum nodded.

“Of course. Mothers have more to worry about when the children are small.”

Chen Shuo put a piece of fish in my bowl.

“You like this, don’t you?”

I looked at the fish and suddenly didn’t want to say a word.

Four adults had arranged my future in front of me as naturally as could be.

No one had asked me.

Even my own parents saw nothing wrong.

After dinner, Mum helped me clear the dishes.

I leaned against the kitchen doorway and asked, “Mum, when you were young, was there anything you really wanted to do but never got to?”

She paused.

“What made you ask that?”

“Just wondering.”

She thought for a long time as she washed up.

“Once, the pharmacy’s head office was recruiting trainers. You had to go to the provincial capital for three months of training. Our shop manager told me to apply.”

“You didn’t go?”

“You’d just started primary school. Your dad worked the early shift. How could I get away?”

She smiled.

“It was years ago.”

I said nothing.

She put a plate in the draining rack.

“It wasn’t a big deal, anyway. Isn’t that just a woman’s life? You’ll understand when you have children.”

That night, for the first time, I felt a very clear fear.

Not of marriage.

Of finding myself in a kitchen twenty years later, saying lightly to another young woman:

“It wasn’t a big deal.”

Those words were so light.

As light as an eraser.

They could rub out every path a person hadn’t been able to take when she was young.