Zero-Sum Game

I grew up in a rural town surrounded by dense greens and leaf walls, with sunlight beaming on my skin. Thick vines blocked any means of entry or exit through the untamed greenery, the only way out being a rotting wooden door plagued with cordyceps and lichen slouched over a dirt path.

Stories and legends of the town’s ancient history praised famous ancestors and wise men who ruled as emperors, robes of golden silk, jade riches, and intricate china in the grasps of their fingers. Old temples that existed for religious practices, sloped with tiled roofs and guarded by grand stone lions, became sacred monuments—a symbol of our history. People worked to restore all the cracked paint and fractured structures to maintain respect and honor for our predecessors. After all, they constructed the living walls to protect us.

But the outside stayed a mystery over my childhood years.

An early memory: Māma slapping the back of my hand, tears welling up in my eyes, and a harsh scolding broke from her lips, “How many times do I have to tell you, 海伦? Stay away from the town walls! A little girl like you will not survive!” I swallowed my indignance to appease her.

A decade had passed since, and I kept away from the outside, watching those my age parade anywhere but the rotten door—bright smiles, curved eyes sparkling. Once in a while, I heard adults whisper anxiously about outsiders.

A decade had passed, and I was still trapped here.

⓿

Bàba allowed me to start working in the town fields with him when my stick limbs grew muscles and my height had almost reached his. I would pull weeds next to him, knees buried in fertilized soil, and bring other field workers buckets of water from the creek running through the town’s southwest area—stealing sips to stay hydrated. He taught me how to identify plants by their seeds and leaves alone, why we never planted the same crops on the land repeatedly, and how to look for pests hidden within the crops.

Once, in spring, I had gone home after planting new crops for the next season to ask Māma again if I could soon leave the town. Since I was already past Bàba’s height, I figured she’d understand then.

But she cursed at me as soon as I brought it up. “You have everything you need here to live a fulfilling life. Why do you need to go out?”

“Māma, I want to see the world,” I pleaded. “I don’t want to be a farmer like Bàba when I’m older.”

“Foolish daughter!” She slammed the bowl of fresh-cut fruit on the dinner table. “What will you be then? A beggar? A failure?”

I didn’t have an answer for her.

“Stop blabbering nonsense, and go back to the fields to help your bàba.”

The bitter woman stood firm in her words, and I stormed out the door, resentment swirling through my heart, bitterness in my mouth.

Again, I waited in complacent silence, stuck in this snare of a town.

⓿

Spring rain turned into summer’s sweltering heat, the humidity clinging to my skin. I sought shade from the sun’s piercing fire when the afternoons blazed. The sweet smell of lotus flowers filtered through the suffocating air as I strode home, carrying a basket of cucumbers.

But something strange happened on my way home that day. People were crowded around the town entrance, peeking over each other’s heads—to glimpse the group of outside people approaching the town’s walls.

They said they were missionaries, with their bibles and butchered words from our language and pale skin; they were here to teach us about their divine creator.

I glanced around. Some of us peered at them with curiosity while others seemed to disapprove. Regardless, they explained they would be here through the rest of the summer, then fall, before leaving. A glare colored my face. These people should consider themselves lucky. They could be whatever they choose, yet they were wasting their time in a place like this.

When I returned home with the cucumbers, Māma frowned at my sudden entry, wrinkles etched her beige skin. Cups of chamomile tea rested on the table, cooled to fight the summer fever. Sliced tomatoes—cold and dusted with sugar—sat in a large, wooden bowl. Māma waved a circular handheld fan as she drank. She swung the handle so fast I thought it would break.

“My daughter, why are you in such a hurry?” She gestured to the cups. “Do you want some tea?”

I shook my head. “There are missionaries who arrived today.”

“Ah.” Her gaze narrowed. “How long will they stay?”

“They will leave at the end of autumn.” “…I could…go with them to learn, Māma. Please—I could be so much more than who I am now.” If only she would just let me.

“No.” She sipped her tea. “I have already told you many times that I will not allow it. No more talking.”

Fury seethed in my chest. Hatred burned in the pale crescent idents marring my palms. How could no one understand me? How could Māma not understand me? I looked away from her—hands clenched and jaw tight.

But I have learned that there is no use in picking fights with bulls. They will only continue charging you, after all.

“Fine,” I said.

⓿

Leaves fell upon the town—reds, golds, browns, and yellows. They fell until the trees and bushes were devoid of them, until death scourged the life from them, winter scowling around the corner. Māma and Bàba were in the fields when the missionaries started preparing to leave.

I approached one of the women as she was stuffing items into her bag.

When she asked me if I needed anything, I told her that I wanted to go with them and learn more about their religion. She looked me up and down skeptically.

“You?” The woman spoke terribly in my language, but anyone could tell she was mocking me.

“I thought your god welcomed all sinners,” I retorted. “Isn’t that why you showed up at our door? To convert us?”

Her voice stammered as she asked about my parents. I replied that I was an orphan from birth. It took nearly all my strength to will myself not to smile when she told me to meet her at the town entrance in an hour.

That late afternoon, I left the house. Bába was working in the fields again, and Māma was busy in the kitchen, rolling out dough and cutting vegetables to make baozi. I couldn’t bring myself to say anything to either of them.

As I ran through the town, past the way to the fields, the curving southeast creek, I imagined how freedom would feel, taste—smell like. I imagined myself as a sailor, a fish, a traveler, a bird.

I imagined I could become anything.

—

Stars thread diamonds into the clear, ebony sky on the night of my 26th birthday. It’s now, more than ten years later, that I remember these memories from my early adolescence.

Graduate school leaves me little time and money to spend outside living expenses or papers, but I book a flight to my hometown during spring break. From the start with my parents to my departure, maybe the recklessness in it all made me nostalgic.

It takes about a full day to get to the closest airport to the town, and another by train to reach the dirt path.

As I walk, suitcase trailing after me, I wonder if things will still look the same. Will my parents recognize me? Will they welcome me with open arms? No—I can’t imagine they will after the way I had chosen to leave.

The sight of the new wooden door, vacant of any cordyceps or lichen, sends a pang of regret through my chest.

Even from a distance, the living walls appear—different to me. Foreign, in a way, despite how I had grown up within them. Inside, the terrain looks unfamiliarly shaped, and the temples and lions come off as more exotic than emblematic—as I can’t remember all the stories my mother once spoke of.

I thought it was just an effect of time, of being away for so long without recalling this part of me. But I realize that’s not it when I see the people.

Children giggle and dance with the long, wild grass in the open fields. Groups of adults with their toddlers and babies scrutinize me, half-afraid and half-scornful, I’m sure. In their dirt-stained clothing and with their sun-baked, tan skin, I find myself doubting if I ever lived here.

Nevertheless, I make my way to my parents’ house, relieved that the outside is the same as what I can remember: sloping, tiled roofs, two potted plants at each side of the front door, and a large tree arching over the entrance. The smell of baozi wafts out from an open window—as if I had never left in the first place.

The door creaks. A shadow is cast.

I run towards my parents with a large grin on my face. A rush of warmth bubbles through me, filling my heart, my lungs, my ribcage. My mother’s wrinkles, my father’s slouching form.

“Mama—!” The tone doesn’t come out right. But I know the word—I remember how to say it.

I falter as my parents turn towards me.

Their mouths thicken into the same disappointed sneers they brandished at the missionaries all those years ago.

Our eyes meet, and I can’t seem to find any resemblance of them in my face.