seventeen
requisition
Family is an organism. Multicelled but operating in unison. Decisions are made for individuals by the group, opposition be
damned.
We learn that life is like a bell curve. Children are powerless, and elders are too, in the end. It’s the middle generation
that holds up the sky.
This is what happens when the family decides that Nai Nai is too old to be living in Da Ji Cun by herself. The village is
too far away from high-end medical care. The winters are too cold for an old woman’s bones. Gu Gu and Gu Ma will keep a closer
watch on her in a new city apartment. Baba will financially cover the cost of a full-time live-in aide. These are things Baba
and his sisters talk about in hushed tones over the phone, until at last, they agree to the plan. Three to one, they will
overcome the will of their aging, headstrong mother.
We call her to break the news, the American arm of the family. Baba sitting closest and Mama at the other end. You and I sandwiched in the middle. We, the grandchildren, are here to soften the blow of the news.
“What’s the occasion?” she jokes, seeing us all sitting around the table on a Wednesday.
I shoot a sharp glance at Baba. Surely she can see through this charade. Baba and Mama still call her regularly, but it’s
been months since you and I have. Six months between calls is nothing unusual for us now.
Nai Nai looks rosy and bright-eyed. She looks spry and alert. Shouldn’t she be allowed to decide where she wants to live?
“We just thought it had been a long time since we all talked,” you volunteer uncomfortably.
“I thought you’d all forgotten about me.”
“Ma,” Baba says with a mortified voice.
She laughs. “I’m kidding. You’re busy, everyone’s busy.” She has a big sigh. “Everyone’s busy these days with their own lives.
Me? I’m the only one who’s slowing down. That’s getting old. You young people still have to work hard.”
Baba nudges me, because I haven’t said anything yet.
“We want to see you soon,” I say. As part of the sweetener to coax Nai Nai out of her house, Baba told her that we would visit
her this summer. “We miss you.”
It’s strange. We moved late to the United States, late enough that our Chinese was firmly rooted.
But once we started going to school, it was startling how quickly our tongues began to get used to different sounds.
Sometimes I can even feel my zh ’s and z ’s getting mixed up, my vowels getting wide and sloppy.
“Me too,” she says. “It will be a good trip. Been so long since you’ve been here. The people in town won’t even recognize
how big you’ve gotten.” She shrugs. “The ones who are still here.”
Much has changed in Da Ji Cun. Nai Nai recounts those changes whenever we call. Our neighbors on either side have moved away
in search of better lives, better jobs. Half of the houses now stand empty.
“Xing Xing gu gu got married this year,” Nai Nai says. “The wedding in the village was wonderful.”
She is Peng Tao’s older sister, and accordingly, we call her auntie, even though she is seven years older than me. That makes
her twenty-three. I can’t imagine getting married at twenty-three.
“You know she remembers you both and asked after you.”
Xing Xing was around less than her brother when we were there. I remember a round face, wavy hair, and crooked teeth, but
a sweet smile.
“Who did she marry?” I ask.
“A boy from college,” Nai Nai replies. “Grew up in Henan. In older days, the wedding would be in the boy’s hometown, but these
children have two weddings now.” She nods. “Good for Xing Xing. That girl studied hard. She put in her heart’s blood. She
got out. And she found an educated partner too. She will have a good life.”
I am humbled. I know how hard the kids in China have to work to have the hope of a future. The line between poverty and stability is razor-thin. By a trick of fate, we were destined for America, where the pressure in school is nothing in comparison.
“Now we all worry for Gou Gou,” Nai Nai says.
My attention is seized. “Gou Gou?”
“Yes, she is taking the college entrance exam next year. But she’s not focused like Xing Xing. She’s thinking of the present,
not the future. She’s too busy chasing the boys.” She makes a snorting noise. “Those boys will be nothing. They’ll go nowhere.
And she’ll end up just like her mother.”
I think of Gou Gou when we were little. The tiny gap between her front teeth, her pigtails. The last time I saw her, she had
grown out her hair and her face was losing its childish chubbiness. She was growing into her looks. It was clear that she
was going to be pretty, prettier than me.
“She’s too good-looking,” Nai Nai says. “Beauty is wasted on these girls. Not serious.” She looks right at me. “My granddaughter
is different. Pretty and smart. She’ll be able to go to any college she wants.”
I feel myself getting red at the kind of unabashed praise you can only get from a grandparent.
“And my grandson. Going to the best university in the world next year.” The pride vibrates in her voice. “I always believed.
I’ll die happy now.”
Her words are too on the nose to be real, because no matter what Baba says, we all know the reason they are moving Nai Nai to the city is to prepare for her eventual deterioration. Time catches everything. I meet Baba’s eyes, and his jaw tightens. He clears his throat. “Ma, we’ve been thinking.”
She rolls her eyes. “Aiya, here we go. I knew you were calling me because you have some plan for me that you have to unveil.”
Baba colors. Even though my aunts are in China, when the family needs to ask Nai Nai to do something, it’s always Baba who
lands the messenger. It’s a combination of him being favored because he’s the child who’s far away and being the only son.
Nai Nai’s favorite. “Don’t be like this.” He sighs. “But you’re right. I’ve been talking with jie mei, and we’ve decided that
it makes sense for you to move to the city. It’s too isolated out in the village, and you’re getting older.”
“You don’t have to remind me,” she says tartly. “You and your sisters have decided , eh? No talking to me first?”
“I’m talking to you now.”
She sniffs.
“We can get you an apartment close to jie. Wouldn’t that be nice? Don’t you want to be closer to your daughter?”
“My daughters, both of them, could visit me more out here.” She is stiff.
Baba wrings his hands in his lap. This conversation is not going the way he wants it to, but it’s going exactly the way I expected.
Nai Nai has always been like this. Of course she wouldn’t just roll over and do what they want just because he’s asking.
“Aren’t you always complaining about how the winters are getting too cold for you with the coal heater?
In the city, we can buy an apartment with radiant floor heating.
Your feet will never be cold again. Your arthritis will be better. ” He’s pleading.
She turns her head as though she doesn’t want to hear.
I think about the village in winter, our big puffy coats as we cuddled by the coals. The green skim of ice on the pond in
front of our house. The gray branches of the trees reaching for the white winter sky. The smell of cold.
“Did you already get the apartment, or do I get to tour them at least?” she says finally.
Baba is encouraged. “You can pick, certainly. Jie will come get you next week to see a few if you want.” He sounds artificially gentle, as though he’s afraid if he presses
too hard, she’ll scamper away like a skittish horse. “There are lots of good places out there, Ma. It’ll be nice. No more
stairs. You can have a washing machine and a dryer.”
“I never needed those things,” she says. Her eyes glitter. It seems as though she is going to fight us. Then she deflates
and speaks dully. “But I have to move anyway. The government is requisitioning the village for land developers. We have three
months to vacate.”
Everyone is stunned, except me. I don’t understand what’s going on. I’m not familiar with the word. I look to you for an explanation.
“Requisition,” you say quietly. “It means the government is repossessing the land so they can use it for something else.”
Our childhood home. Gone in three months. The entire village cleared out. Where will they go? It doesn’t seem real.
“Are they paying you?” Baba asks.
“Some.” She doesn’t elaborate. Her tone tells us it isn’t very much. Not that it matters. There’s no appeal. No way to change
the wind. “So you see, I have to find something anyway.”
“Why didn’t you tell us sooner?” Baba says, pained.
“Your sisters would know if they were around more. Three children, none of them to be seen. You don’t care about lao jia,
our home.”
Baba looks like he’s been stabbed. I feel bad for him; it’s not as though he had the choice of being around more. “Well, if
you have to move anyway, then I suppose we are all on the same page at least.”
“The family plots are going too,” she says abruptly. “So we need to find a new place to bury our dead.”
“We’ll find something. We’ll work on it. You don’t worry about anything,” Baba says.
She sighs. “Chen Wei, Chen Liang,” she says to us. For the first time ever, she sounds old to me. “You come back home soon,
okay? You come back one last time to see everything.”
My throat is thick. I wish I could reach across the screen, across the years, across the words I don’t have. “Yes, Nai Nai,”
I say. “We are coming.”