"My child, if Mama isn't here anymore, what will become of you?"
These were words my mother whispered to me many times, holding me tightly when I was just over two years old. I could feel her sorrow and her despair, though at the time, I had no idea what was happening.
I am not sure whether I was born first, or if my biological father was labeled a "Rightist" first. In any case, they happened in quick succession. After he was dismissed from his position, he was sent to a remote mountain farm for "Rightists" to perform manual labor. In 1960, his workplace informed my mother that he had died of illness on that mountain.
Years later, I visited that farm. I met a man—a fellow "Rightist"—who had lived with my father back then. He told me the truth: my father died from a combination of a broken heart and starvation.
Before he passed, my father would occasionally return. Every time he came home, he would lift me high above his head and take me racing around the regional compound on his bicycle. But that only happened three or four times in total. I was only two years old when he died; one can only imagine the immense pressure my mother was under.
I never asked her about those years. I didn't know how to bring it up, and I was afraid of awakening her grief. It wasn't until I was eighteen that she finally told me the truth, though in reality, I had sensed it long before.
After my mother turned seventy, we were chatting one day, and she told me that back then, she truly wanted to "end it all." But because she couldn't bear to leave me, and thanks to the guidance of my grandmother, she chose not to take that final, desperate path.
As she spoke those words, the memory of what she used to say immediately echoed in my mind: "My child, if Mama isn't here anymore, what will become of you?"
The son of a "Rightist," having already lost his father—without the protection of a mother, what would my fate have been?
With her fragile strength, my mother carved out a tiny sanctuary for me within a treacherous environment, allowing me to grow, bit by bit, within the narrowest of spaces.
Written on Mother’s Day, May 9, 2026
By Lewei Shang
