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我很喜欢烘焙，尤其是烤苹果派，因为做挞皮的过程总是很有趣。把各种各样的原料揉合在一起，反复调整切割之后铺好，放上肉桂味的挞心，摆好造型送入烤箱，然后在半个小时的时间里期待会产出什么样的成果。最难把握的是挞皮面团的湿润度，因为需要很好地把面粉和黄油混合在一起，才会使挞皮在可以起酥的同时不至于太过湿润成不了形。对我来说，缝缝补补一个貌合神离的家庭就像揉面团，原料是一盘散沙，而我是粘合剂。
我爸妈一个来自湖南，一个来自四川，两人九十年代各自来武汉求学，共同创业后生下了我，但一直只能算事业夫妻。他们是奉我成婚，从结婚证上的日期就能看得出来，我妈和我聊天也从不掩饰这点。她是更爱我爸、更爱家庭的，但她放不下她的事业，那是她在陌生城市立足的资本。她总会告诉我，在怀我八个月的时候，她是如何跪在地上贴三面翻广告的画面的。我眉间有一个疤，是两岁大时，爸妈为了应酬没看住我，我撞在玻璃门上，门碎了在我脸上划的。在那事以后，她慢慢淡出了公司经营，全心全意照顾我。
爸妈从小在感情上三五天一吵，饭桌上只谈公司生意，每顿饭都是不欢而散。这让我学会了两件事，首先是看脸色，比如想去逛商场的话，必须要提前几天安抚两方情绪，否则就算人到了停车场也只能原路返回。第二是让人省心。我总觉得，我是这个家庭得以存续的唯一依据，如果不是我，他们不会结婚，而如果我能乖一点，他们也不会吵架。我是我妈带大，我爸在十岁前爸爸基本没有过问我的生活。每当我在被窝里听着隔壁房里传来的谩骂和指责，看着穿红裙子的我妈抹眼泪的样子，我总是会在潜意识里觉得我拖累了她，如果不是我，她可以去开她的公司，不用被男人拖着，事业家庭两头不讨好。
后来我才知道，他们命里不合，我无力回天。我妈十八年后才明白这点。
据我妈所说，因为小时候的我过于聪明乖巧，让她产生了小孩很好养的错觉，于是六岁那年，“为了生个小孩出来陪我”，她生下了我妹。那是2008年，住在城中村的我们幸运避开了居委会的超生查办，交了几千罚款蒙混过关。我妹出院的那天汶川大地震，恰逢城中村拆迁，家里公司同时遭遇经营困难，时不可测，我妈决定重回公司。但从我两岁会背的几句古诗词她断定我前途不可限量，于是天天把我拴在身边。上小学时，每天中午我都会回我妈公司，在她办公桌旁边吃饭，在她打电话和会计的吵架声中睡着。对于妹妹，她叫来了老家的小姨，把妹妹交给她接送。在我妹四岁之前，我们并不熟。
在我上三年级的时候，我妈又怀孕了，这次是个男孩。我们家到底是不是爱丁堡，这我很难解释，毕竟我也不知道是什么让这对没有感情基础且心系搞钱的夫妻顶着巨额罚款压力连生三个，别人听到我们家两个女儿一个弟弟的时候，第一反应也是心领神会地笑笑。我那时什么都不懂，只知道家门口总会刷新一些陌生阿姨上门找人，而我随着我妈躲在公司早出晚归，不敢轻易在小区散步。没多久，我们暂时搬到了一个新家，过着深居简出的生活。我妈仍然每天早上六点挺着八个月的肚子开车接送我，而我仍然会中午去她公司写作业。我妈生我弟的那天偷偷摸摸，我放学去看她也去得偷偷摸摸。全家铆足了劲要给小儿子取个有气运的名字，而我只觉得小孩太多了，真吵。
从小我就对语言很感兴趣，三岁开始学英语。家里没有一个人会英语，但我单词背得津津有味。从我埋头苦读的势头和遥遥领先的课内外成绩中我妈再次判断，这小孩有语言天赋。五年级的时候，经爸妈一致商讨决定，送我去加拿大寄宿半年看看世界。至今我都觉得那是我童年最快乐的时光，每天两点半下课后就躺在床上看teen fiction，看master chef，看寄宿妈妈烤苹果派和玛芬，骑车去旁边的公园荡秋千，然后把一切全部写进日记。寄宿家庭里有一对兄妹，我和其他两个女生住进去后，我又莫名其妙地融入了调和者的角色，帮另外两个室友做翻译，在原住民和新小孩之间和稀泥。日子过去地很快，我四处打点得津津有味，我完全爱上这种缝缝补补的生活。于是，回国的第一天我立下了一个宏伟的目标，我要当外交官。
这个梦想来得非常自然。喜欢语言又会说话，家长评价为先天翻译官圣体。那时恰逢华春莹上任，我指着CCTV13台朝闻天下里她的脸对我妈说，以后我也要让你在那里看到我。我觉得她会很扬眉吐气，证明她呕心沥血的奔波是有效的，证明她是对的。一番检索后我发现，北外英翻好像是成为翻译的最标准路线。调研完分数线和录取标准之后我有了两个结论，首先我要长到一米六，因为外交部只要一米六以上的女生；其次，我要在语言上很好很好，不仅英语要好，最好开发一门二外。很难想象，十二岁的我是以怎样的雄心壮志在日记里写下这番话的。小升初的那个暑假，我说服她给我报了所有我看准了想上的英语班，用考试赢来的奖金买了一台卡西欧辞典，每天在上面背四六级单词。我去了一所比较标准的应试初中，在数学的泥潭里挣扎的同时在武大报了法语班。每年暑假，除了连日的衔接班，我还要抽出时间去背法语单词和语法，乐此不疲。我爸看着他不怎么过问的大女儿自驱力如此之强不禁暗喜，估计心想妈能带好小孩爸也能带好，良心发现决定回归家庭露一手，第一件事就是告诉弟弟妹妹，你们不用好好学习了，你大姐这么能干，以后肯定有出息，你们就只管好好玩就可以了。从此以后，大姐两个字就成为压在我头上的一座大山。有年市里作文竞赛，题目是“那一刻，我长大了”，我就写了这个大姐的故事，很讽刺拿了一等奖。挺好的，三句话让大女儿辛苦一辈子。
初中三年，我妈在学校附近租了房子陪读，把妹妹接过来，三个人在三十平米的小两室里挤着过。我在客厅里写作业，卧室桌前坐了一个，床边卧铺上还趴着一个。每天早上六点半，我妈先把我叫起来给我十块钱买早饭，再带妹妹下楼吃早饭，然后开车把她送去上小学后又回家送弟弟上幼儿园，一切弄完后九点回公司上班。晚上回家，小四口我妈坐镇客厅沙发，三个小孩头一点一点写作业，隐形老父亲一个人独守几公里开外三百平大洋房，一家五口，纯不熟。
初二那年我觉得校外培训班好没意思，眼巴巴地去上了托福课。有的没的上了一年，14岁生日那天早上查分，104，妈妈决定送我出国读高中，遭到隐形老爹强烈反对，被我戳破其实是怕被人说小孩成绩不好去国外镀金脸上挂不住后，连骂了我三天，说我就是个普通人，不要觉得自己英语好点就怎么样，在国外什么都不是。我爸让我明白，有些人钱赚得没有老婆多，但软饭硬吃的底气比谁都足。我先以为我妈处处让步是委屈，后来发现实则是看破不说破的大度，至于这算不算大女人心态，又牺牲了什么，就很难说清了。在我妈的沉默和我爸的恼羞成怒中我明白，有些小孩，生来就是块牌子。当然后来我才知道，不比我弟，我连我外公的牌位都上不了。
我很快认了命，匆忙进入初三。偏文科的我立志要上本市的外国语高中，走语言类保送上北外。我妈听说外高自由散漫的名声，知道我的想法后连夜请教班主任上外高的会不会变成只知道玩的坏孩子，得到老师的安慰后和我站在同一战线，努力说服我爸让我填了外高的志愿。她大概还是因为没能送我出国的事觉得对我有所亏欠，中考后又让我去了本市最好的国际学校考入学考，名义上说是试一试让我不要有所期待，考出来后笔试面试全市第一，和我爸抗争一周无果，她站在国际学校的对面跟我说，如果不是因为你弟弟妹妹，我说什么也要把你送出去。直到这时我才真正懂得，两个小孩是不仅是桌上的两双碗筷，更是压在我肩上的两双碗筷。身为大姐，以身作则只是入门修养，主动让路才是终极奥义。就像我六岁以后再也没有吃过的鸡腿一样，有些东西，早生六年，要用一辈子去还。
上高中后，老师发现我是个面试奇才，劝说我妈让我放弃北外改保北大，我说好，因为其实我也不再对外交官的未来抱有期待。初中的时候我发现学语言到最后实在没什么太大意思，因为就像出国读书一样，能不能上电视不是我的能力可以决定的。初一的时候又因为一次宪法知识竞赛对法律产生了兴趣，六岁时把一千多页的刑法案例分析当故事书看的沉睡记忆唤醒了新的热爱，连夜上网购买法理学导论看得津津有味——把生涩的法律文本与千变万化的现实一一对应，这好像和理清我生活的一团乱麻没什么区别。那时只是对它有种模糊的印象，在鸡飞狗跳的生活中，法律和单词是很确定的依托。
高中在江的另一边，如果坚持走读，每天光通勤都要花两小时。旧事重提，我妈重新在高中旁边租房陪读，这次没有接来弟弟妹妹，而她选择跨江通勤，每天早上六点喊我起床吃饭后，开车过江去接送我弟弟妹妹上学，然后自己再去上班，下班后接我弟弟妹妹回另一个家，看着两人做完作业后，开车过江回我这里睡觉。我觉得首先她简直是超人，其次我绝对不要成为她这样。我看着她从三十多岁的神采飞扬熬成四十多岁的形容枯槁，看着因为和我上了同一所初中被老师天天嘲讽不如我的妹妹变得敏感易怒，看着保姆陪着长大的弟弟渴望妈妈的爱又惧怕她的严厉，我开始觉得，我所谓的优秀，除了是我的枷锁，对他们来说是否又是一种负担。
高二那年疫情爆发，形聚神散的一家五口开始了漫长的网课生活。武汉，这两个熟悉的字眼第一次变得如此沉重。更沉重的是家里的窒息。爸妈开始不在一张桌子上吃饭，他们不再吵架，只是无言，甚至没有相对。比起在饭桌上听爹高谈阔论，我宁愿回卧室自娱自乐。那时候什么都不确定，病例从几百到几千到几万，开课时间从二月到四月到七月。老师让我们写周记，我看着手机上的哀嚎遍野，看着家里两层楼高的壁垒，我不知道过去还有什么可回顾，而未来还有什么可写。我试图找些什么去重拾对生活的实感。在青春期不安的躁动中，任何一点社会新闻都会点燃高中生的激情。我和同学们在班群里经常用匿名模式辩经，从发放消费券是实惠还是噱头到怎样看待方方日记，从刻板印象是好是坏到抗疫口号能否反映民族素质，这些围绕现实的辩论迫使我去重新审视我以为是平常的种种，尽管它们常常导向一个悲观的结论。我迫切地想寻求一个答案、一个出口，而法律小故事来得正是时候。因为模拟联合国的经历而学会翻墙的我，开始在油管上看美国最高法院案例解说视频。其实我也不知道有什么可看的，只是觉得，在一个世界里，法律还能对人的生活有所调节，真好。那些极致简化的故事给了我迷茫的生活一点确定性的安抚，让我知道还有什么是可期待的。
当然，最紧迫的现实需求，是怎样帮我妈离婚。那年离婚冷静期出台，我在家里大骂三天三夜。我的直观感受是，这即将让经济关系复杂的我们家在离婚难度上雪上加霜。我妈一度问我，你觉得要不要跟你爸离婚呢。我总是说，赶紧离，我跟你。最后他们还是没有离成，我妈搬到了同一小区的另一个家，并劝说我和她一起搬走。我看着我爸一个人佝偻在自2012年起就没住过第二个人的主卧，每天只能跟奶奶打电话抒抒情的背影，看着弟弟妹妹一落千丈的成绩，我觉得我的双腿并不自由。离开意味着抛弃责任，意味着主动分家，而起码是为了弟弟妹妹，我也得把家的样子做起来。之前我总是觉得自己其实是有小心机的自私，在家里不惹事只是因为想哄爸妈开心然后趁机要点生活费。这时我发现我没法再欺骗自己，我就是想一家人在一起，而我的妥协和懂事，都是为了粉饰太平。
与返校复课一同而来的是保送考的先声。我觉得我爸这种八十年代大学生对教育有种爱恨交织的感情，对于他这种因为参加运动没分到好工作只能下海经商的人而言，大学不是阶级跨越的门槛，钱才是。我妈不以为然。她觉得我会读书就应该读最好的书，这样我能有选择的权利。而他俩共同的观点都是北大无疑是最好的选择。我从来不认为我跟北大会有什么联系，走语言保送总是有种绝妙偷感，所以也只是尽己所能不抱太大期望。保送考试的前一天我住在北大隔壁酒店，看着外国语学院这几个字晃神。我当时想，只要这场考试过了，我就可以提前八个月毕业，我可以把我妈还给弟弟妹妹，这是我欠他们的。
后来赵家如愿以偿，我有点麻木，因为专业并不是我想要的，不过我看着我妈苦尽甘来的如释重负，我觉得无所谓了，值了。接到录取电话的那一刻我正在写港大法学院的申请文书，我写法律是文字的光影和现实的应合，写到最后一句话的时候电话响了，我后来想，这大概也是命。外婆给我打电话叫我回老家过年，我心里冷笑，这会儿记得我和我妈了。我总对这个大家庭里女人之间的互相攻讦和男人的沉默抽烟嗤之以鼻。长达八个月的假期我如愿以偿地做了家里的边缘人，每天上上韩语课看看电影，辅导弟弟妹妹英语赚点拆东墙补西墙的零花钱。
旁观者清，上大学之后我总是从电话和微信群里得知关于家里的种种，关于妹妹的休学脱产和弟弟的高尔夫课，关于妈妈的放弃家庭和爸爸的全面接手，关于鸡飞狗跳的父女关系和母子关系，关于日渐吃紧的经济状况。最让我感觉恍惚的，是妹妹漫长的休学后，爸爸同意送她去国际学校的决定。我觉得他简直重现了当年成绩差才会出国镀金的自我预言，一个巴掌狠狠打在了我的脸上。但其实我不怨，送她出国是我全力支持的。当年我没有得到的，我全部想给她。在北京，看到好看的梵高展，我想起她；看到有趣的演唱会，我想起她；看到新的商赛和夏校，我想起她；甚至在纽约的百老汇门前，我第一个想起的仍然是，一直想来美国上学的她，一定会很想来看看这里。我离家越来越远，却越陷越深。在我妈失望至极脱身离开之际，我完全变成了我妈。我开始唠叨妹妹的成绩，帮她规划存钱计划，管理手机的使用时间，尝试回答她关于价值选择的困惑，听她讲学校里的闲事、同学间的八卦。在美国交换的时候，她凌晨四点一个电话打来哭着闹着要我解锁手机，而我在筋疲力尽解决完她的情绪后，在理解我妈的同时，也越来越认识到我已经完全变成了她的模样，操心的命。
对我妹的未来负责是一个空洞的承诺，而如何撮合不熟的一家五口变成了一个切实的任务。因为理解我妈的放弃与退出，我决定培养我爸。我试着用商量的语气和他沟通，到底怎样让我妹听他的，怎样避免过分的冲突，怎样不厚此薄彼，怎样规划弟弟的初中。他或许听了，或许没听，但这确实是我和他这么多年以来唯一和钱没有关系的沟通。在芝加哥的青年旅馆里，我听他给我打电话吐槽我妹日渐增长的消费，帮他在妹妹和妈妈之间反复传话，有时感到疲惫，但这粘合剂，我当得甘之如饴。我时常会在家庭群里撮合开个家庭会议，商量一些和我无关但因为缺乏沟通悬而未决的事情，比如要不要同意妹妹去看演唱会，比如暑假他们要不要出去旅游。在寝室里的我经常要和妹妹在玩几个小时手机上讨价还价，在申请夏校上步步为营，这大概就是放心不下。小时候我妈曾和我说过有关每周开办家庭内部会议的畅想，没想到多年以后还是由我实现了。我也不知道这是否是一种自我感动，但每当家庭气氛有那么一点好转，一家五口能和和气气围在茶几说上一个小时的话的时候，我总感觉是有我那么一份功劳在的。
交换期间租房之后，做饭尤其是烘焙成为了我的新爱好。无论一天有多么疲劳沮丧，泡在厨房里切切菜、做做饼干，心情就能很快变好。就像把混乱得仿佛八字相冲的五口搓在一起一样，从无序到有序，再期待一个未知的结果，从某种程度上来说，烘焙和治家是相似的过程。回国后，家里买了烤箱，总是能变出巧克力饼干和蛋挞的烤箱和好像什么都会做的我给了弟弟妹妹跟着我跑前跑后的新理由。在弟弟打电话给我，问我怎么做柠檬沙冰的时候，我觉得我和了这么久的稀泥，大概还是浇了一个不错的地基，让他们起码回想起童年，还有一些和学习无关的，属于家人的时间。
I love baking, especially apple pie, because there’s something about making the crust that never gets old. You work all these different ingredients together, knead and cut and shape and lay them down, spoon in the cinnamon filling, arrange everything just so, slide it into the oven, and then spend thirty minutes wondering what will come out. The hardest part is getting the moisture right—the flour and butter have to bind so the pastry flakes without going soggy and losing its shape. For me, holding together a family that looks whole but isn’t is a lot like working dough. The ingredients are loose sand. I’m the thing that makes them stick.
My parents came from different provinces, my dad from Hunan, my mom Sichuan, both arriving in Wuhan in the nineties for school. They started a business together, had me, but never really became more than business partners who happened to be married. They were a shotgun wedding; you can tell from the date on the certificate, and my mom has never pretended otherwise. She was as much of a family enthusiast as a workaholic—it was the only foothold she had in a city that wasn’t hers. She still tells the story of kneeling on the ground eight months pregnant, pasting up billboard ads by hand. I have a scar between my eyebrows from when I was two: my parents were out receiving clients, no one was watching me, and I ran into a glass door. The door shattered across my face. After that, she quietly stepped back from the company and gave herself over to raising me.
For as long as I can remember, my parents fought every few days. Dinner conversation was only ever business, and every meal ended badly. This taught me two things. First, how to read a room. If I wanted to go to the mall, I had to spend days managing both their moods in advance, otherwise we’d make it to the parking lot and turn right back around. Second, how to be no trouble at all. I always felt, somehow, that I was the only reason this family still existed. Without me they wouldn’t have married, and if I could just be good enough, they wouldn’t fight. My mom raised me. My dad was essentially absent for the first ten years. Lying in bed at night, listening to the shouting and accusations bleeding through the wall, watching my mother in her red dress wipe her eyes, I couldn’t shake the thought that I was the thing weighing her down. Without me, she could have run her company. She wouldn’t have been tethered to a man, failing at career and family both.
It took me years to understand that they were simply wrong for each other, and there was nothing I could do about it. It took my mother eighteen years to reach the same conclusion.
According to my mom, I was such an easy child that she got the impression raising kids was simple. So when I was six, she had my sister—“to give you a playmate,” she said. It was 2008. We were living in an urban village and managed to dodge the neighborhood committee’s crackdown on extra births, paying a few thousand in fines and slipping through. The day my sister came home from the hospital was the day of the Sichuan earthquake. The village was being demolished, the family business was in trouble; everything collapsing at once, and my mom decided to go back to work. But she’d heard me reciting ancient poetry at two and concluded my future was limitless, so she kept me tethered to her side. Every day during elementary school, I’d go to her office at lunch, eat at the desk next to hers, and fall asleep to the sound of her arguing with the accountant on the phone. For my sister, she called in my aunt from the countryside to handle school pickup. My sister and I were practically strangers until she was four.
When I was in third grade, my mom got pregnant again. A boy, this time. Whether we were running a boy-or-die operation, I honestly can’t explain—I still don’t know what other reason could’ve possessed two people with no romantic foundation and a shared fixation on making money to have three children under the threat of massive fines. When people hear we’re two daughters and a younger brother, they just smile knowingly. I didn't understand any of it at the time. All I knew was that unfamiliar women kept showing up at our door looking for someone, while my mom and I hid out at the office from dawn to dark, afraid to be seen walking around the neighborhood. Before long, we moved to a new place and lived like fugitives. My mom, eight months along, still drove me to school at six every morning, and I still went to her office at noon to do homework. The day my brother was born was a covert operation. My visit to see her after school was equally covert. The whole family poured its energy into choosing an auspicious name for the little son. I just thought, too many kids. Too loud.
I’d been drawn to languages from early on, taking English lessons starting at three. No one in the family spoke a word of it, but I devoured vocabulary like candy. Watching me bury myself in books and dominate every exam, my mom arrived at her next verdict: this child has a gift for languages. In fifth grade, after joint deliberation, my parents sent me to board with a family in Canada for six months to “see the world.” To this day I think those were the happiest months of my childhood. School ended at 2:30 and I’d spend the rest of the day lying in bed reading teen fiction, watching MasterChef, watching my host mom bake apple pies and muffins, biking to the park to swing, then writing it all down in my journal. The host family had a brother and sister of their own, and after two other girls moved in with me, I slid into the all-too-familiar role of a mediator. Translating for my roommates, smoothing things over between the original kids and the newcomers. The days went fast. I threw myself into the peacemaking with genuine pleasure. I was completely in love with this life of patching things together. So on my first day back in China, at 12 years old, I announced a grand ambition: I was going to be a diplomat.
The dream made perfect sense. Good with languages, good with people, my parents called it a natural-born translator’s constitution. It happened to coincide with Hua Chunying’s appointment as Foreign Ministry spokesperson. I pointed at her face on the morning news and told my mom: someday you’ll see me up there too. I thought it would vindicate her, proof that all her exhausting sacrifice had meant something, proof that she’d been right. After some research, I decided that Beijing Foreign Studies University’s English translation program was the standard route. Two conclusions followed: first, I needed to grow to at least 5’3 tall, because the Foreign Ministry only accepted women that tall; second, I needed to be extraordinary at languages, not just English, but ideally a second foreign language. It’s hard to imagine the twelve-year-old who wrote all this in her diary with such dead seriousness. The summer before middle school, I talked my mom into signing me up for every English class I’d been eyeing, bought a Casio electronic dictionary with prize money I’d won, and spent my days memorizing college-level vocabulary on it. I enrolled in a standard exam-oriented middle school, struggled through the swamp of math, and signed up for French classes at Wuhan University on the side. Every summer, on top of days of bridge courses, I carved out time for French vocabulary and grammar, and loved every minute. My dad, watching his largely ignored eldest daughter drive herself this hard, couldn’t help but be quietly pleased. I imagine he thought: if Mom can raise a kid well, so can Dad. Seized by this sudden burst of fatherly ambition, he went back to the family and did exactly one thing—told my brother and sister: you don’t need to study hard. Your big sister is so capable she’ll definitely make it. You two just have fun. From that moment on, “big sister” became a mountain sitting on my head. One year there was a city essay competition. The prompt was “The Moment I Grew Up.” I wrote about being the big sister. It won first prize, which was its own kind of joke.
For the three years of middle school, my mom rented a place near the campus and moved in with me, bringing my sister along. The three of us squeezed into a two-room apartment no bigger than 300 square feet. I did homework in the living room. In the bedroom, one sat at the desk, the other lay sprawled on the bed doing hers. Every morning at 6:30, my mom woke me first, handed me ten bucks for breakfast, then took my sister downstairs to eat, drove her to elementary school, came back to drop my brother off at kindergarten, and finally made it to the office by nine. Evenings: my mom stationed on the living room couch, three children nodding over their homework, and the invisible father holding down a 3000-square-feet house a few miles away, alone. A family of five, perfect strangers.
In eighth grade, I decided tutoring centers were a bore and talked my way into a TOEFL class. After a year of scattered prep, I checked my score on the morning of my fourteenth birthday: 104. My mom decided to send me abroad for high school. My invisible father was fiercely opposed. When I called him out, pointing out that what he actually feared was people saying his kid’s grades weren’t good enough and she was going overseas to fake a pedigree, he berated me for three straight days. Told me I was ordinary, that being decent at English meant nothing, that abroad I’d be nobody. What my father taught me is this: some men just eat at the table with more entitlement than anyone. For a long time I thought my mom’s constant yielding was suffering. Later I realized it was the composure of someone who sees through everything and chooses not to say so. Whether that counts as strength or sacrifice, I still can’t untangle. In the silence of my mother and the humiliated fury of my father, I understood: some children are born to be trophies. And of course, I’d later learn that unlike my brother, I wasn’t even good enough of a trophy to make it onto my grandfather’s tombstone.
I accepted my lot quickly and plunged into ninth grade. With my strengths in humanities, I set my sights on the city’s Foreign Language School, planning to earn a language-track recommendation to BFSU. My mom, hearing rumors that the school was lax and free-spirited, called my homeroom teacher in the middle of the night to ask whether I’d turn into a delinquent. Reassured, she came around and joined my campaign to convince my dad to let me list it as my first choice. She probably still felt guilty about not being able to send me abroad. After the entrance exam, she had me sit for the admissions test at the city’s best international school, just to try, she said, don’t get your hopes up. I placed first in the city, written and interview combined. A week of fighting my father changed nothing. Standing across the street from the school, she told me: if it weren’t for your brother and sister, I’d send you there no matter what. That was the moment I finally understood that two younger siblings weren’t just two extra pairs of chopsticks at the table, but two extra pairs of chopsticks on my shoulders. Being the eldest meant leading by example as a bare minimum. The real duty was learning to step aside. Like the chicken drumstick I stopped eating after I turned six, there are some things you’re born into first, and you spend the rest of your life paying back.
In high school, my teachers discovered I was a natural in interviews and urged my mom to let me aim for Peking University instead of BFSU. I said fine, because the truth was, I’d stopped believing in the diplomat dream. Somewhere in middle school I’d realized that mastering languages was ultimately beside the point, because getting on television, like going abroad, wasn’t up to me to decide. Meanwhile, a constitutional law quiz competition in seventh grade had sparked something new. A dormant memory surfaced: being six years old and reading a thousand-page criminal case analysis like it was a storybook. I ordered an Introduction to Jurisprudence textbook online and read it cover to cover with the same appetite: mapping the stiff language of statutes onto the chaos of real life felt no different from trying to make sense of the mess I lived in. Back then it was just a vague impression, but amid the daily pandemonium, law and vocabulary were the only solid ground I had.
High school was on the other side of the river. Commuting from home would have eaten two hours a day. So my mom rented another apartment near school and moved in with me again, this time without my siblings. Instead, she commuted across the river herself: woke me at six for breakfast, drove across the bridge to shuttle my brother and sister to their schools, went to work, picked them up after work and brought them to the other apartment, supervised homework, then drove back across the river to sleep on my side. She was, first of all, superhuman. And second of all, I was absolutely certain I never wanted to become her. I watched her age from a vibrant woman in her thirties into someone gaunt and hollowed out in her forties. I watched my sister, enrolled in the same middle school I’d attended, mocked daily by teachers for not measuring up to me, grow sharp and volatile. I watched my brother, raised by a nanny, aching for my mother’s love but terrified of her discipline. And I began to wonder whether my so-called excellence, beyond being my own cage, was also a weight they had to carry.
Sophomore year, the pandemic hit, and our family of five, together in form, fractured in spirit, began the long season of online classes. Wuhan. Two familiar syllables that had never felt so heavy. Heavier still was the suffocation inside the house. My parents stopped eating at the same table. They no longer fought, just silence, not even facing each other. Rather than sit through my father’s dinner-table monologues, I’d retreat to my room. Nothing was certain then. Cases went from hundreds to thousands to tens of thousands. The return-to-school date drifted from February to April to July. Our teachers assigned weekly journals. I stared at the wailing on my phone screen, stared at the two-story wall between my parents, and didn’t know what past was left to reflect on or what future was left to write about. I went looking for something to make life feel real again. In the restless agitation of adolescence, any scrap of news could set a high schooler on fire. My classmates and I debated endlessly in anonymous class chat threads, on whether consumer vouchers were genuine relief or political theater, what to make of Fang Fang’s Wuhan Diary, whether stereotypes served any purpose, whether pandemic slogans revealed national character. These arguments about the real world forced me to reexamine everything I’d taken for granted, even though they usually led to bleak conclusions. I was desperate for an answer, an exit. And the little legal stories arrived right on time. Having learned to bypass the firewall through Model UN, I started watching American Supreme Court case breakdowns on YouTube. I didn’t really know what I was looking for. I just thought, pretty naively in hindsight, in some version of the world, the law can still do something for how people live. And that felt like enough. Those radically simplified stories gave my aimless life a small dose of certainty, a sense that something was still worth waiting for.
Of course, the most urgent practical question was how to help my mom get a divorce. That year the mandatory cooling-off period for divorces was enacted, and I raged about it at home for three days straight. My gut feeling was that it would make everything worse for a family like ours, already tangled in complicated finances. My mom once asked me: do you think I should divorce your dad? I always said: do it now. I’m coming with you. In the end they didn’t go through with it. My mom moved to another unit in the same complex and tried to get me to come with her. But I looked at my father, hunched alone in the master bedroom no one else had slept in since 2012, his only emotional outlet a daily phone call with my grandmother. I looked at my siblings’ grades in free fall. My legs weren’t free. Leaving meant abandoning responsibility. Leaving meant splitting the family, and if nothing else, for my brother and sister’s sake, I had to at least keep up the appearance of a home. I used to tell myself I was secretly selfish, that I only behaved well to keep my parents happy so I could squeeze out some pocket money. But I couldn’t lie to myself anymore. I just wanted us all under one roof. All my compromises, all my being good, it was all to paper over the cracks.
Along with the return to school came the first rumblings of the recommendation exam. My father, I think, had an ambivalent relationship with education, the kind that’s specific to eighties-era college graduates. For someone who’d been sidelined for his political activities and forced into business, the threshold to class mobility wasn’t a degree; it was money. My mom disagreed. She believed that if I was good at studying, I should study at the best possible place, because that was how you earned the right to choose. On one thing they agreed: Peking University was the obvious best. I never thought I had any real connection to Peking University. The language-track recommendation always felt like a beautiful heist, so I did my best and kept my expectations low. The night before the exam, I stayed at a hotel next door to campus, staring at the words School of Foreign Languages and losing my train of thought. What I was thinking was: if I pass this, I graduate eight months early. I can give my mom back to my brother and sister. I owe them that.
The family got its wish. I felt mostly numb, because the major wasn’t what I most wanted. But watching the relief wash over my mother’s face—years of bitterness finally breaking—I thought it didn’t matter. It was worth it. The call came while I was writing my application essay for HKU’s law school. I’d written that law was the play of light between language and reality. I was on my last sentence when the phone rang. Looking back, I suppose that was fate too. My grandmother on my mom’s side called, inviting me home for the New Year. I thought: funny how you remember us now. I’ve always snorted at the women in this extended family tearing each other apart while the men smoke in silence. During the eight-month break before college, I happily became the family’s wallflower—taking Korean classes, watching movies, tutoring my siblings in English for pocket money I could rob from Peter to pay Paul.
Distance clarifies. Once I was at university, I learned about home mostly through phone calls and the family group chat. My sister dropping out of regular school. My brother’s golf lessons. My mom stepping away from the family. My dad taking over. The chaos between father and daughters, mother and son. The money getting tighter. What hit me hardest was learning that after my sister’s long absence from school, my father agreed to send her to an international school. He’d fulfilled his own prophecy from years ago, that only kids with bad grades go abroad, and the irony landed like a slap across my face. But I wasn’t angry. Sending her abroad was something I supported with everything I had. Everything I didn’t get, I wanted to give her. In Beijing, whenever I saw a Van Gogh exhibition, I thought of her. A good concert, I thought of her. A new business competition or summer program, I thought of her. Even standing in front of a Broadway theater in New York, the first person I thought of was her, and how much she’d want to see it, she who had always dreamed of studying in America. The farther I moved from home, the deeper I sank into it. As my mom retreated in exhaustion, I became her completely. I started nagging my sister about her grades, helping her budget, managing her screen time, trying to answer her questions about what mattered in life, listening to the school gossip and friend drama. During my exchange in the States, she called at four in the morning, crying and screaming for me to unlock her phone. After I’d spent every last ounce of energy calming her down, I understood my mother better than ever, and recognized, with a clarity that was almost funny, that I had become her. The worrying gene, inherited in full.
Being responsible for my sister’s future is a hollow promise. Figuring out how to make five near-strangers function as a family became the real task. Because I understood why my mom gave up and walked away, I decided to work on my dad instead. I started talking to him in a tone that made it feel like collaboration, how to get my sister to listen, how to avoid unnecessary blowups, how not to play favorites, how to plan my brother’s middle school. Maybe he listened, maybe he didn’t, but it was the first time in all our years that he and I had talked about something other than money. From a hostel in Chicago, I listened to him complain over the phone about my sister’s spending habits, relayed messages back and forth between her and my mom, and sometimes felt tired, but this role—the glue—I wore it willingly. I’d regularly rally everyone in the family group chat for a meeting, to hash out things that had nothing to do with me but had been left unresolved for lack of communication: whether to let my sister go to a concert, whether they should take a trip over the summer. From my dorm room, I’d negotiate with my sister for hours about phone time, strategize step by step about summer programs. I suppose this is what it means to not be able to let go. My mom once told me, years ago, about her fantasy of holding weekly family meetings. She never managed it. Turns out I was the one who made it happen. I don’t know if this is just me being moved by myself again. But whenever the family atmosphere shifts even slightly for the better, whenever the five of us can sit around the coffee table and talk civilly for an hour, I let myself believe I had a small part in that.
After I got my own kitchen during the exchange, cooking—and especially baking—became my new refuge. No matter how draining or bleak the day, an hour in the kitchen chopping vegetables or rolling out cookie dough would set things right. It’s not so different, really, from mashing together five people whose stars seem fundamentally misaligned: disorder into order, then the wait for an outcome you can’t predict. In a way, baking and holding a family together are the same process. When I came back to China, the family bought an oven. The oven that could always conjure chocolate cookies and egg tarts, and the big sister who seemed to know how to make everything, suddenly my brother and sister had a new reason to follow me around. When my brother called to ask how to make lemon slushies, I thought: all those years of smoothing things over probably did lay a decent foundation after all. Enough for them to look back on childhood and find, alongside all the studying, some time that belonged to being a family.
