I Chose the Cage Myself

If I could live my life over again, I would go back to the afternoon I filled in my college preferences and pull that form back out of the admissions officer’s hand.

That year, something happened to the math exam paper. Everyone in the country knew about it. They swapped in an Olympiad paper at the last minute. Our math class representative came out with his eyes fixed and blank, saying he couldn’t do several of the big questions. Someone nearby lowered their voice and said that at one high school, a student had jumped. I gripped my pencil case and said nothing.

My math scores usually landed between 60 and 80 out of 150. I rarely passed. That time I got 90. The problems I couldn’t do normally, I still couldn’t do on the gaokao, but I neatly wrote “Solution” and “Answer” on every question. On the final stroke of the last character I wrote especially slowly, letting the pen tip rest on the paper before lifting it. On the day scores came out, I checked three times. The number on the screen didn’t change.

That was the best hand of cards I held in eighteen years.

The admissions fair was in the gymnasium. Stuffy, crowded, the floor covered with water bottles and flyers. Other parents crowded the teachers, asking about graduate recommendation rates, whether the dorms had air conditioning, the policy for switching majors. I stood alone at a display board and ran my finger along a line of small print under “Industrial Design”: “Sketching,” “Color.” The admissions officer handed me a form and said that if my score was high enough, I’d get in. I took it. I didn’t ask a second question. After I filled it out, I went to the convenience store and bought a mung bean popsicle. One bite, too sweet, I threw it away.

Then came four years in Wuhan. No air conditioning in the dorm. In June the bamboo mat burned my back. At midnight I went to the water room to rinse my feet; the water came out warm. In the cafeteria line I avoided the hot-dry-noodle counter for four years. My drawing board sat on the desk for three months and gathered dust. I drew a line through it with my finger. Under the dust, white.

I didn’t like that city. I didn’t like that major. I couldn’t follow the coursework and didn’t want to. Those four years were something I endured.

For a long time, I blamed my mother. When I went home for New Year, she stewed ribs and said, “It would have been better if you’d gone somewhere out of the province.” My chopsticks stopped over the ribs. I said nothing and put a rib in her bowl. What I was thinking: wasn’t it you who wanted me to stay in Hubei? I never said it. It sat in my stomach for years like an undigested bone.

Then one year we were talking in the kitchen. She was washing dishes, hands never stopping, faucet running. She said, “That year I kept hoping you’d get into a school out of the province. I never imagined you’d pick one in Hubei yourself.”

I was peeling an orange. The peel broke off under my fingernail and juice seeped in. I didn’t wipe it. The faucet ran. Bowls clinked against bowls. I said, “Oh.” Then I pulled the orange apart, segment by segment, and set them on a plate. One segment fell on the floor. I picked it up and threw it away.

So no one had forced me.

The cage that held me for four years: I walked into it at eighteen. I closed the door myself.

That was harder to swallow than a wrong choice. A wrong choice can be blamed on luck, on an information gap, on someone. When there’s no one left to blame, the force has nowhere to go but back at you. After that, whenever I saw news about Beijing Foreign Studies University, my finger paused. When I passed a campus in Suzhou or Hangzhou, I walked in. People reading on the lawn. People lying in the sun. I stood by the path and watched for a long time. Then I took out my phone, searched “part-time master’s in English,” and locked the screen. Two steps. Unlock. Lock.

My phone still has a screenshot of that year’s admissions brochure. I’ve kept it for years. Once, cleaning out the album, I scrolled to it. My finger paused. I scrolled past. I didn’t delete it.

The worst thing in life isn’t “I can’t.” “I can’t” means the wall is too high; you can’t climb it, so you go around. “I could have” means there’s a garden behind the wall, the key was in my hand, and I threw it away.

I don’t need to forgive that afternoon. But I did one small thing. I called my mother and asked whether there was any pickled vegetable left. She said yes, I’m saving it for you. I said okay.

That afternoon won’t come again. But now, when I stand in front of a display board, I ask a question first.