In 1965, at the military family compound in Yangcheng District,
Florence Mercer was squatting on the main room floor, carefully packing osmanthus cakes into a pastry tin.
She had asked someone to queue at an old famous bakery to buy them. This weekend, she planned to take Stella to visit Director Feng from the song and dance troupe. Her daughter had been preparing for this assessment for more than half a year. Whether she could get in smoothly or not depended on whether this visit worked out.
On the chair nearby lay a newly made dress, pink-and-white plaid, meant as a gift for Stella Mercer’s sixteenth birthday.
“Mrs. Mercer! Urgent telegram!”
The shout of the messenger came from outside the yard gate. Florence’s heart skipped hard, and she hurried up to take it.
The telegram slip was thin, with only six short words on it: Grandma passed. Clara Mercer.
Florence’s fingers tightened at once around the paper. She stood there turning in place twice, her thoughts in a complete mess.
By the time Harold Mercer came home from work in full uniform, what he saw was her standing there gripping the telegram and staring blankly.
“What happened?” He took the telegram, glanced over it, and his face darkened in an instant.
“Mingzhi, this...” Florence lowered her voice. “Even if we leave tonight, it’ll take three days by train just to reach the county seat, then another half day or more into the mountains. By the time we get back, Mother’s funeral... we definitely won’t make it.”
Harold walked to the window and stood there with his back to her for a long time.
“That was my mother.” His voice came out rough. “The one who gave birth to me and raised me is gone. I have to go back and see her off one last time.”
“I’m not saying you can’t go!” Florence grew anxious and stepped closer, speaking in a hushed rush. “But you were only promoted to regimental commander half a month ago! The political commissar has his eye on you right now. If you ask for seven or eight days of funeral leave at a time like this, what are people going to say behind your back? That you’re using a funeral to dodge responsibility? How are you supposed to carry out work later on?”
“Funeral leave is in the army regulations.” Harold turned around, his expression grim as storm clouds. “Who doesn’t have elders? When someone’s elder dies, who doesn’t go home for the funeral? If I, Harold Mercer, don’t even show my face when my own mother is buried, then what face do I have left wearing this uniform?”
“But what about Stella?” Florence clenched her teeth and brought out the matter she cared about most. “Director Feng already asked us to come by this weekend. I only managed to make this connection after calling in favors through three layers of contacts! Stella’s assessment is next month. If we leave now, who’s going to smooth things over? The child has prepared for half a year. We can’t ruin her future over this, can we?”
Harold’s brows twisted into a knot. He said nothing.
Seeing his expression soften a little, Florence gentled her tone. “And Clara too. That girl’s always been steady since she was little, far more sensible than children her age. Besides, there are uncles and aunties in the clan looking after her. Nothing serious will happen. Once Stella finishes her assessment, we can go back and hold a memorial service for Mother. It’ll be the same.”
“The same? How can that be the same!” Harold suddenly slapped the windowsill, anger rising in his voice. “Once Mother’s gone, who in the clan is really going to protect a fifteen-year-old girl? Back then, wasn’t it because you kept going on about how grain was tight in the city and another child meant more expense that Clara was sent back to the mountains to stay with Mother? Now Mother’s dead, and if we don’t even show our faces, how is Clara supposed to hold up on her own?”
“When did I ever keep going on about that!” Florence’s eyes reddened, full of grievance. “When we sent her back, didn’t you agree too? You said your mother could watch over her in the countryside, and she could even learn medicine there. Better than squeezing into that cramped apartment with us in the city! And now somehow it’s all my fault?”
“That’s enough.” Harold waved her off impatiently, leaving no room at all for discussion. “Go pack now. I’m going to the school to call Victor back. We’re taking the earliest train tomorrow morning. We have to go.”
—
The rain in western Hunan came hard and sudden, hammering against the green roof tiles with sharp crackling sounds, soaking all of Yunwu Village in cold, wet mist.
The fresh grave on the hillside still carried the raw smell of turned earth. Clara Mercer knelt in the mud and rain, her back straight as a pine on the mountain ridge.
Clutched tightly in her hand was a polished blue cloth needle pouch, worn smooth with use. It was what Grandma had stuffed into her hands before dying. Inside, silver needles of different lengths were lined up in neat order.
Rainwater ran down past the loose strands on her forehead, slipped over the light brown tear mole at the corner of her eye, and sank silently into the mud.
Grandma had once told her that tears were soft knives. Cry too much, and even your bones would go soft.
She had promised Grandma she would not cry.
Three telegrams had been sent out, all vanishing like stones dropped into the sea. She had already known then that Harold Mercer and the others would never make it back in time.
If she had really waited for them before burial, how could Grandma’s body have held on in this summer heat?
All these years, his heart had been full of the army, full of his new family in the city. Long ago, he had forgotten there was still an old mother in the mountains, and a daughter sent back there.
“Lara, get up and rest a bit.” The old clan head, Clifford Gifford, came over holding a tung-oil umbrella, most of it tilted over her head. “The rain’s this heavy. If your grandma’s spirit is watching from above, she’d feel heartache too.”
Clara did not move. Her eyes stayed fixed on the bluestone grave marker. She had painted the words on it herself, stroke by stroke, each one done carefully: Grave of Grandma Beatrice Mercer, erected respectfully by granddaughter Clara Mercer.
Behind her came the soft sound of footsteps. The village aunties were coming up the slope carrying bamboo baskets.
Sticky rice cakes, salt-boiled eggs, a small piece of smoked cured meat—these were the most precious things mountain families could offer, brought according to funeral custom to comfort the bereaved household.
“Clara, my girl, hold yourself together.” Aunt Guihua set down her basket lightly and let out a sigh. Her husband had been bitten by a five-step snake two years ago, and it was only thanks to old Madam Ji’s herbal medicine that he had lived. She still remembered that kindness.
At last Clara moved. Bracing a hand on her knee, she slowly stood. She had knelt so long her legs had gone badly numb. She swayed once before steadying herself, then bowed deeply to everyone present.
At fifteen, the girl had already grown tall and slender. She wore a faded indigo homespun jacket and trousers, tied at the waist with a coarse hemp rope.
The wet clothes clung to her body, making her shoulders and back look even thinner, yet there was a toughness about her, something that would bend before it broke.
“Thank you, uncles and aunties.” Her voice was hoarse, but every word was clear. “My grandma’s gone. You’ve all gone to trouble for her and for me.”
In Yunwu Village, Grandma had been her only real family. Without the villagers helping carry the coffin and pile the grave, there was no way a fifteen-year-old girl could have managed a funeral like this alone.
Everyone around her felt sorry for her when they looked at her.
Beatrice Mercer had been a well-known barefoot doctor for dozens of li around, saving no one knew how many lives. Now that she was gone, everyone felt a hollow place in their hearts.
Luckily, Clara had learned medicine from her grandma since childhood. At seven or eight she could already identify a hundred herbs; at ten she dared handle acupuncture herself. In the last two years, as old Madam Ji had grown weaker in spirit, Clara had been the one helping beside her with treatments and diagnoses.
But she was still too young. Without an elder to back her up, life would be hard for her from now on.
Clifford Gifford had just opened his mouth to say a few comforting words when suddenly the roar of a tractor came from the village entrance, chugging and spitting muddy water half a man high as it drove in.
A military-green jeep followed behind, jolting over the rutted dirt road as it bumped its way into the village.
The vehicle stopped at the foot of the hill.
A gleaming black leather shoe stepped out first, speckled with bits of mud. Then the neat hem of a military uniform dropped into view. The star on the shoulder insignia looked almost painfully bright through the gray curtain of rain.
Harold Mercer stood by the car and looked up. His gaze swept first over the newly raised grave, and his brows tightened sharply. Then his eyes landed on his daughter, drenched through and smeared with mud, and his face turned dark enough to drip water.
The passenger-side door opened too. Florence came down holding a plain-colored umbrella, dressed in a well-fitted women’s military casual outfit, her hair combed so neatly not a strand was out of place.
When she saw Clara’s miserable state, her brow creased almost invisibly. Her lips moved, but in the end she only said, “How did you get soaked like this?” She made no move at all to step forward.
“Mingzhi’s back!” someone called out.
Harold gave the villagers a small nod, then strode through the mud up the slope. He did not look at his daughter. He went straight to the gravestone, adjusted his uniform, and bowed deeply three times.
The moment he straightened up, he turned around, his voice carrying obvious anger as he demanded at once,
“Who told you that you could bury her on your own? Your mother and I hadn’t even made it back to see her one last time. Who gave you the right to make that decision yourself?”
The rain kept falling, crashing over the fresh grave.
The hillside went silent in an instant. The aunties all froze—no one had expected Harold’s first words on returning would not be to ask whether his daughter was all right, but to call her to account.
Clara slowly raised her head. Rain dripped from her lashes. She looked at the man before her, so familiar and yet so strange, her eyes calm as a deep pool without the slightest ripple.
“Wait for you?”
“Grandma died on the eighteenth day of the sixth month. That same day I sent the first urgent telegram, saying Grandma critically ill, come back at once. On the twentieth, I sent the second, saying Grandma was failing. On the twenty-first, the third, saying Grandma was gone.”
She paused, her gaze passing over Harold before settling on Florence. Her voice was not loud, but every word landed clean and clear.
“Today is the twenty-fourth. Dad. Mom. You took a full six days to get here.”
Florence’s expression shifted slightly, and she stepped forward. “Clara, how can you speak to your father like that? Army discipline is strict. Your father was just transferred to a new post. There are countless things to handle. How could he just leave the moment he wanted to—”
“Was it the transfer that kept you from leaving, or Stella Mercer’s business?”
Clara cut her off. Her eyes rested on Florence’s face, calm to the point of sharpness. “Last month in your letter, you said Stella had her troupe exam at the end of June, and that you’d spent half a year pulling strings, just waiting for this chance to make contact. June eighteenth happened to be her sixteenth birthday too, didn’t it?”
The words dropped into the crowd like a stone into water, and low murmurs immediately rose all around.
Harold’s face flushed red at once, then turned iron-dark.
“Nonsense!” he barked. “Stella’s assessment is official business. A funeral is family business. How can you lump them together? The army has its rules. With duties on hand, do you think I can just leave whenever I please!”