April 14th, 1968
Four thirty. The bugle call. Same as always.
Yushu was already halfway done packing when it sounded — not because she was in any particular rush to leave, just that there was never much to pack. Notebooks. The Selected Works on top because that was where it went. Bag over shoulder and done.
Around her the classroom dissolved into its usual end of day chaos. Someone's pencil case hit the floor. The two boys by the window who had spent most of the afternoon passing notes were now openly talking. The girl in the front row — the one who always looked vaguely anxious about everything — was arranging her desk items with intense concentration as though the fate of something important depended on whether her ruler was parallel to the edge.
"Yushu."
She turned. The girl from the next desk was holding a pencil out toward her.
"You dropped this."
Yushu looked at it. "That's not mine."
The girl looked at the pencil. Looked at the desk beside her. Looked back at Yushu.
"Oh," she said.
Yushu smiled and headed for the door.
Outside it was the kind of April afternoon that couldn't quite make up its mind. Not cold. Not properly warm either. Just — April. The compound looked the same as it always did at this hour. Buildings in their rows. Paths clean. The red banners between the trees moving slightly in whatever breeze had decided to show up today.
She had read those banners so many times the words had stopped meaning anything specific. They were just part of the view now — like the portrait of Chairman Mao above the administrative block entrance that looked out over everything with the same expression it had worn for as long as she could remember.
The loudspeaker came on. The East is Red. Of course it was. It was always The East is Red at this hour, in that particular tinny quality that made everything played through compound loudspeakers sound vaguely like it was coming from slightly further away than it actually was.
She walked.
Some of her classmates peeled off toward the recreational building. Others formed their usual end of day clusters heading toward the residential blocks — fragments of conversation drifting past her about tomorrow's self criticism session, about the memorization passages due by Friday, about whatever else filled the space between one day and the next in a place where the days had a way of resembling each other quite closely.
She didn't stop to join any of them. Not unfriendly — just not necessary.
At the curve past the notice board she slowed without quite meaning to. New big character posters had gone up since yesterday. The paper was still flat and white, not yet starting its inevitable curl at the corners. Revolutionary slogans. A notice about the political study session. A reminder about the three constantly read articles. Beneath them the older posters were yellowing quietly, being slowly covered rather than removed. That was just how it went.
Beyond the curve she could see the upper edges of the research facilities. The buildings with their covered windows. The checkpoints. The red flag above the main building catching the same light breeze that was moving the banners behind her.
She looked for a moment the way she always looked. Not really expecting to see anything in particular. Just — looking.
Her parents were in there somewhere. Three weeks now without a visit.
She turned toward the residential sector.
The sentry at the gate gave her the nod he always gave her and she returned it and that was the whole transaction. Through the gate the compound felt different — quieter, the loudspeaker reduced to something you had to listen for rather than something that simply arrived at you. An older researcher was on one of the benches with the People's Daily. Two women near the water point were in the middle of a conversation that had probably been going on for a while. From the open windows of several houses came dinner — garlic, something properly cooked, rice that was done and sitting warm.
The senior researcher houses were at the far end. Bigger than the rest. Two floors each. Small courtyards out front. Her parents had been assigned Number Fourteen before she was born. She had lived there her entire life and it had always looked exactly like this — gate, courtyard, elm tree in the corner that had clearly been there since long before anyone currently in the compound had arrived.
Wang Guihua had swept the stones that morning. Still clean.
The door was unlocked. It was always unlocked when Wang Guihua was inside.
The smell got to her first. Braised pork — proper braised pork, the kind that had been going long enough that the soy and the fat had done what they were supposed to do and the whole ground floor knew about it. Rice underneath that. Something green steamed alongside. This was what dinner smelled like in a household that had a senior researcher's supply allocation and Wang Guihua running the kitchen. Which was to say — it smelled like a real meal.
The sitting room was the way it always was when nobody had been in it for a while. Father's chair at its angle by the window. Empty. The People's Daily stacked on the low table, last straightened by Yushu herself some days ago and untouched since. The particular quiet of a room that gets maintained but not really used.
She left her bag at the bottom of the stairs.
Wang Guihua was at the stove when she came into the kitchen doorway — back to the door, gray hair pinned, blue apron tied, lifting the lid off the pork pot with the unhurried confidence of someone who already knew exactly what she was going to find when she looked.
"You're home," she said. Not a question.
"Four thirty," Yushu said, leaning in the doorway. "Same as every day."
"And yet." Wang Guihua glanced back — that look, the one that had been the same for as long as Yushu could remember. Warm. Quietly amused at something. "How was today?"
"Political study in the morning. Mathematics in the afternoon."
"Lunch?"
"I ate."
"All of it?"
Yushu thought about this for just a moment too long.
"Most of it."
Wang Guihua put the lid back on the pot. The sound it made said everything her voice didn't bother saying. "Braised pork tonight. Good rice. You sit down properly and you finish it."
"I always finish what's in front of me."
"You finish what's in front of you when you remember it's there." She picked up the ladle. "Wash your hands. Change your clothes before you sit down — your mother would say something about the table in uniform."
Yushu pushed off the doorframe. But —
"Wait." Wang Guihua set the ladle down and dried her hands on her apron. Reached for something on the small table by the kitchen door — a cream colored envelope that had been sitting there all day waiting. "This came for you. Internal courier. Before noon. I signed for it."
Yushu came back and took it.
Her mother's handwriting. There was no mistaking it — precise, no character wasted, the same hand that wrote everything the same way. The courier stamp in the corner. Envelope properly sealed.
Not a note. A letter. A full letter — the kind you only sent when there was enough to say that a note wouldn't cover it.
She turned it over once. Didn't open it yet.
Through the sitting room window the elm tree moved in the last of the afternoon light. The loudspeaker was still going somewhere above the rooftops. The auxiliary facilities hummed the way they always hummed.
Wang Guihua had gone back to the stove. No comment. No looking over. Just — giving her the space of the moment without making it into anything.
"Go," she said after a while. The hand motion toward the hallway. The same one she had always used. "Read your letter. I'll call you when it's ready."
Yushu went upstairs.