My Obituary
Three days after my grandmother died, I came home for her funeral and found my own obituary nailed to a tree.
**Shen Zhiyao. Female. Twenty-eight.**
**Funeral procession: July 17, between seven and nine in the morning.**
Six days from today.
I reached up to tear it down, but the village headman caught my wrist.
“There's no mistake in the name,” he said. “We built the coffin to your measurements, too.”
Rain dripped from the leaves of the old locust tree onto the back of his hand. His skin was papery; fresh earth filled the cracks beneath his fingernails.
I stared at him.
“Uncle Zhou, I came to bury Grandma.”
“I know.”
“Then who exactly are you planning to bury in that coffin?”
Three old men sat beneath the tree. One rolled tobacco into a cigarette. Another withdrew his feet under the bench. The third watched my suitcase, his lips moving soundlessly.
None of them answered.
I raised my phone and took a photograph of the obituary, making sure Zhou Shoushan was in the frame.
Only then did he release me.
He turned to the old men. “What are you still sitting around for? Go home and put everything away.”
“So you'll clean up as soon as I threaten to call the police?” I asked.
He looked back at me. Something changed in his eyes. It might have been hatred. Or the exhausted recognition of a day he'd spent years dreading.
“Go to your grandmother's house,” he said. “Read the letter she left you. Then call whoever you want.”
While he was speaking, I seized the obituary and ripped it from the tree.
The paste was still wet. A scrap of yellow paper had stuck to the back. The handwriting slanted downhill, and the final stroke in the character for *Yao* curved back on itself.
Grandma's handwriting.
Two lines. That was all.
*Zhiyao, they've already dug your grave.*
*If anyone asks you to acknowledge who you are, don't. Go home first.*
The paper went cold between my fingers.
Grandma had died of an illness three days earlier. I'd been working out of town when Zhou called. Two trains and a bus had gotten me as far as the county seat, where I'd rented a car for the last hour of mountain road.
On the phone, he'd told me she went peacefully.
How could a woman who was already dead have arranged a grave for me six days in advance?
“Who brought you this?” I asked, holding up the notice.
“Your grandmother.”
“When?”
“Before she went into the hospital.”
“So she asked you to do this?”
Zhou didn't answer. He held out his hand for the notice.
I stepped back.
“I'm keeping it. It's evidence.”
Three strokes of a gong rang out somewhere beyond the village.
The man rolling his cigarette dropped his tobacco into the mud. All three old men turned away from me and bowed their heads toward the space behind the locust tree.
Zhou glanced toward the road. The color left his face.
“Get in your car.”
“Tell me what's going on.”
“Go straight to your grandmother's house. After dark, if someone calls your name, look at them before you answer.”
“And if I can't see who's calling?”
He opened the driver's door for me.
“Then don't answer.”
I got in, locked the doors, and kept filming through the window. Zhou stood under the tree until I started the engine. Only then did he move aside.
As I drove past, I glanced in the rearview mirror.
The three old men were kneeling.
Not to Zhou.
To someone behind the tree.
A woman stood in the rain beneath a black umbrella. She wore a gray coat and carried a brown suitcase.
The same suitcase I had brought home.
She watched my car without moving.
My foot hit the brake. The back tire skidded into the muddy shoulder. When I looked again, the trunk of the locust tree hid most of the umbrella. I could see only a gray sleeve.
I rolled down the window.
“Who are you?”
No answer.
Zhou came running. He slapped a palm over the open window.
“Drive!”
I twisted in my seat.
The woman had vanished into the rain. The old men were still on their knees. One had hidden his face in his arms; his shoulders shook.
I drove into the village and stopped in front of the little grocery store.
Auntie Guixiang was hanging white funeral cloth over the doorway. She'd been selling candy here since I was a child. Whenever a sweet arrived with a torn wrapper, she'd slip it into my hand and say damaged goods didn't count as merchandise.
She spotted me. Her bamboo pole clattered onto the pavement.
“Auntie, Uncle Zhou put up an obituary with my name on it.”
She retrieved the pole without looking at me.
“Is this some kind of prank?” I demanded. “A video? Grandma just died. Don't make a joke out of her.”
“Come inside. Have some water.”
She went behind the counter for a paper cup.
A sheet had been thrown over the mirror on the back wall. It didn't reach the floor. A narrow strip of glass reflected the mud on my sneakers.
On the counter lay several sheets of paper. Names had been written across the top one in blue ballpoint pen.
**Guixiang — acknowledge.**
**Li Cheng — acknowledge.**
**Zhou Shoushan — chief mourner.**
I reached for the list. Auntie Guixiang lunged across the counter and pinned it beneath her hand, splashing water over her knuckles.
She didn't seem to feel the heat.
“What is that?”
“A register.”
“A register of what?”
Her fingers tightened around the cup until it buckled.
A little boy of seven or eight poked his head out of the back room and pointed at me.
“Mom, that's her. The lady who came to measure the coffin last night.”
I looked from him to his mother.
Auntie Guixiang clapped a hand over his mouth and shoved him behind the curtain.
“I was out of town last night,” I said.
“Children get people mixed up.”
“What did he say she measured?”
She pressed the cup into my hand and guided me toward the door. At the threshold, she slipped something into my palm.
An orange-flavored candy. The wrapper was split at one corner.
“Eat something, child,” she said, looking at the floor. “Don't go around on an empty stomach.”
Then the metal shutter rattled down between us.
I stood under the awning, enlarging the photographs on my phone.
The obituary. Zhou. The old men.
All there.
In the lower-right corner of the third picture, I noticed two pairs of shoes.
One pair was mine: black running shoes spattered with road mud.
The other pair stood directly behind me, no more than a foot away. Black running shoes again. On the right shoe, a short length of white thread stuck out from the laces.
I'd tied that exact knot at the rental office that morning, when my shoelace came undone.
I spun around.
The alley was empty except for the rain. The grocery store was shuttered. A strip of the mirror's covering protruded beneath the metal door, wet and clinging to the ground.
I got back in the car and didn't stop again.
Grandma's house stood at the deepest end of the village. Every time I came home, she'd wait for me at the lane's entrance, holding a plastic bag full of food in case I hadn't eaten on the way. There would be a boiled egg, two steamed buns, sometimes an orange she'd decided looked particularly sweet.
This time, no one was waiting.
I pulled up outside her gate. Before I'd even switched off the engine, the car's display lit up.
The Bluetooth speakers crackled.
Someone was breathing.
Then a woman said, very softly, “Zhiyao.”
My hands locked around the wheel.
Grandma's voice.
Even the slight breathlessness she'd developed after she became ill was there. The downward curl at the end of my name. The sound that usually meant she was about to complain that I'd parked too close to the wall.
I nearly answered.
My phone vibrated. The rental company was calling to ask about the car. The bright incoming-call screen jolted me out of it.
Grandma was dead.
I shut off the sound system.
The next words came from somewhere directly behind my head.
“This time, don't mistake the house.”
I threw open the door and ran, leaving my luggage behind.
Grandma's courtyard gate stood wide open. Her funeral portrait hung in the main room. She was wearing the navy coat I'd bought her, smiling straight at the doorway.
Beneath her photograph sat a new black coffin.
A white slip of paper had been fastened to its head.
Three characters had been written there.
**SHEN ZHIYAO.**
