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“You can say that now, David. But you weren’t in the hutong that night. Yes, Uncle Zai had planned everything so that my parents might live rather than die. But he had stood in the middle of that circle and denounced my mother. He had made me shout out the words about my father to satiate our neighbors’ desire for violence.”
David was about to speak when Hulan held up her hand to stop him. “I’m not trying to justify my own actions,” she said. “I am guilty of many things—guilty of persecuting Teacher Zho, who spent the next five years in the cow shed; guilty of cruelty to our group leader at the farm, who tried to commit suicide rather than face another struggle meeting; guilty of betraying my parents, who both had to pay such an exorbitant price for my adolescent rantings.”
“Hulan, you saved your parents,” he corrected. “Surely you’ve told your father what happened that night.”
“I’ve tried, but it’s not the Chinese way. In America, you talk things to death, but we don’t. The past? Emotions?” She shook her head.
“You should still do it.”
She shook her head again. “My father has no desire to relive those days.”
“He seems…” David didn’t know how to phrase it.
“Cold? Let me tell you something. My father has never accused me. He loves me. He always wants to see more of me.”
“And that’s how you ended up at the ministry.”
“I’m getting ahead of my story, but yes. My father arranged for me to get a job. Not as an inspector! My father hired me to be a tea girl. Can you imagine me wearing some little dress, smiling stupidly, and pouring tea for men all day long?”
“No.”
“I had no choice but to go behind my father’s back to Uncle Zai. He’s watched over me since I was a child. He sent me out of the country to protect me. He paid for my education out of his own pocket. He knew that I was a lawyer. He believed that I could think. When Baba found out, it was too late.”
“It’s still not too late to tell your father the truth,” David reasoned. “He should know that what you did took real courage.”
“No, I was the true criminal in all this. And do you know what my punishment was? I went to a fine private university. I got a job at a good law firm. I met you.”
She ran her fingers through her hair, pulling the tendrils away from her face. “I was an empty shell back then. For so many years I had covered my emotions. I had promised myself I would never feel anything ever again, but you made me fall in love. You opened my heart again to joy, happiness, and honor. I thought, Maybe I can make up for my past. I believed one way I could do that was to bury my deeds. Now I know I was right not to tell you.”
But she was wrong. He was thinking instead of the personal toll her mistakes and sacrifices had taken on her, on both of them. As she told her story, he had thought of their missed chances and the years they’d lost.
He reached for her, but she jerked away.
“Can’t you see I never deserved you? I was never worthy of your love. It was all some horrible mistake.”
“I wasn’t worthy of you.”
Weariness crept into her voice as she said, “Okay, so you want to know why I left you? There are no more secrets. You already know my worst sins.”
“Hulan, please don’t say that—”
But she spoke right over him. “We were living in the apartment by the beach, remember that?”
When he nodded, she said, “Of course you do. We used to walk along the beach on the weekends. We used to sit at the water’s edge and plan our future. We would get married, we’d buy a house, we’d have children, we’d do some good in the world. I have to tell you that this last was a dream for me, a way to make amends for my past wrongs. But not one day went by that I didn’t worry about how the universe would pay me back for what I’d done. Then one Saturday I learned how.”
“Your father asked you to come home.”
“He wrote that my mother was finally back from the hospital. She’d been in Russia for thirteen years! He said she needed me and that it was time to make restitution to her.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Again he was thinking of all the time they had lost.
“A million times I have asked myself that question. I suppose I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to bear your contempt. I, Liu Hulan, named for the brave revolutionary, was terrified. So like a thief I made my plans. I bought a ticket. I packed a single suitcase. I kissed you good-bye and said I would see you in a couple of weeks. I have to tell you that when I closed the door to our apartment, I closed the door to the only happiness I had experienced since I was a very young girl.”
“When you came back here, did you know it was permanent?” David asked. When she didn’t answer, he said, “I need to know, Hulan. Please.”
“When I arrived, I didn’t know what to expect. But when I saw my mother…” She put her hands over her eyes.
“What had happened to her?”
