Popo, my mother-in-law, often tells me that the greatest regret of her life is never having gone to school. She had four siblings. As the eldest daughter, she was the only one left standing by the edge of the fields. Back then, tuition was free. You only had to pay a small miscellaneous fee. Every day she went up the mountain to collect firewood, slipping copper coins one by one into the cracks of tree bark, saving until she had enough jiao. I don’t remember whether she said two jiao or five. I only remember that jiao rarely appears in cash anymore. She clenched the coins in her palm. Her father grabbed a bamboo broom and beat her. “A girl going to school?” he said. “Is the sky about to collapse, or the ground about to cave in?” She didn’t make a sound. The coins burned into her hand like hot coals. The broom came down again and again. One bruise, then another. Her body bloomed with dark flowers. She says now she can never lose weight. The flesh remembers pain. Fat is a wall the body builds for itself, layer upon layer, pressing all those old injuries down underneath. Whenever she gets to this part, she rubs the corner of her eye with the back of her hand. There are no tears. She says her parents were good people. After saying this, she pauses. Then she says it again: good people. Every year when school started, she hid behind the straw stacks in the grain-drying yard and watched the village children (boys, all of them) run toward the schoolhouse. Their patched clothes were puffed up by their backpacks, like sparrows lifting off all at once. The wind would turn salty. She knew something had slipped into the corner of her mouth and hurried to wipe it away with her sleeve. I tried to comfort her. I told her my mother also came from the countryside. My grandfather was a Party member, someone the village cadres kept an eye on, expected to set an example. That was why my mother was finally allowed to start school at twelve. She studied for three years and became the most educated girl in the village, something she is still proud of. Popo told me she once swore to herself that if she ever had a daughter, she would send her to school, all the way to college. She had two sons instead. She says she was lucky it turned out that way; otherwise, her own mother-in-law would have been far harsher. When I was young, my mother used to tell my sister and me that girls didn’t need much schooling. Finishing elementary school was enough. My sister listened. After sixth grade, she went to work in a factory. Now she pushes her own daughter to get into college.
Popo isn’t illiterate. When her eldest son (my husband) started first grade, she studied along with him, learning characters, learning simple arithmetic. Now she can read medicine labels and bus signs. But when she picks up a pen, the characters scatter, turning back into skittish sparrows, flapping out through the gaps between her fingers. I think she likes me. Maybe because I became the person she never had the chance to be: a graduate of a prestigious university, someone who reads English books, someone who stepped out of an old dream of hers. Her two sons were never much for studying. She has always believed that if she had been allowed into a classroom, she would have made something of herself. Instead, in her thirties, she closed her small shop and stopped working. The family needed someone at home, she said. She cooked good, nourishing meals for her husband and sons. Somewhere inside her, she still wanted to be a good wife and a good mother. Now she dotes on my daughter most of all. When I read picture books to my one-year-old, she never interrupts me. She doesn’t scoff the way my own mother does, “What could a baby possibly understand? You’ve read too much and gone stupid.” She just sits nearby. When the government opened up the two-child policy, she urged me to have another baby. I told her I couldn’t manage both work and two children. Education is a war now, I said. One child already takes everything I have. She was silent for a long time. Then she said, “Girls don’t need too much education. Marry a good husband and that’s enough.” I said nothing more and ended the conversation.
She often tells me I’m lucky to have a popo who isn’t harsh. It’s true. She treats me like a daughter. She would stand over the stove for three hours just to make soup for me. Even so, when it comes to my daughter’s education, to how many children to have, we are two boats heading in different directions. The only oar we can hold together is her granddaughter (my daughter). She will never have to swallow that salty wind. At least on this, we agree. Under this stretch of sky, she will never have to hide behind a straw stack again.
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