Justice System: I Litigate for the Whole City

Chapter 282: Parent's Signature

November 2, 10 a.m. Outside the gate of the old locomotive depot in Chengbei.

The gatehouse had a small glass window, and inside it sat a small space heater glowing orange behind a wire mesh. Old Zhao, wearing a pair of quilted sleeve covers, pushed the registration book out. The corners of the pages were curled.

"Write your name, write the time." He didn't look up. "You're the one who hauled the bed last time, right."

"Third floor."

"Third floor." He glanced at the book, then at her. "Everyone in this building knows by now — third floor, a mother and her kid. Moved in on the afternoon of the twenty-eighth, carried things up three trips. Her cousin signs in every single day, and the kid signs when she gets home from school. I told her it wasn't necessary. She said it's better to have a record."

She finished writing her name and set the pen down. Row after row of names on the page — "He Lan," "Su Hongmei" — handwriting uneven, each followed by a time.

"How often do you swap out the book?"

"Once a month." Old Zhao shifted the heater closer to his legs. "Old ones go in the cabinet. They don't get lost."

She looked at the page again but added nothing.

The hallway's sound-activated lights were the same as before — one floor lit, the next dark. The iron handrail was worn to a bright line where hands had gripped it. Outside the third-floor door sat a pair of small-sized sneakers, toes facing out, the white trim scrubbed but yellowed with age.

The door opened quickly. Su Hongmei's hands were still wet.

"Come in, shoes off, I just mopped." She turned sideways to let her enter. "Don't mind the size. It's only two rooms."

Against the living room wall sat a long sofa with one collapsed spring, a stack of clothes folded on top. The folding bed beneath the window stood upright, folded, water streaks from wiping still visible on the metal frame. On the windowsill, a row of medicine boxes — two standing, one tipped over. A single burner in the corner, a cooking oil bottle beside it, and half a pot of rice left in the rice cooker.

"The bed's mine." Su Hongmei scooped up the clothes and stuffed them on top of the cabinet. "She insisted on buying it. A hundred twenty yuan. I'm not paying her back. My back hasn't hurt these past few days."

She tilted her chin toward the inner room. "The kid's in there doing homework. School's off this morning — teachers grading papers. She goes in at two-thirty this afternoon."

"She's not at work today?"

"Swapped shifts with someone." Su Hongmei said. "Early shift tomorrow."

A blue cloth curtain hung over the inner doorway, its hem rolled up about an inch. She lifted a corner.

The bed was against the wall, blanket folded in thirds, two pillows — one large, one small, the small one dented in the middle. A desk stood by the bed, one leg propped up with folded cardboard. The desk lamp's shade was patched with newspaper. A pencil case sat half-open, a glass jar held three sharpened pencils. The school uniform hung behind the door, washed, the collar white.

A class schedule was taped to the wall, edges curling, printed with "Liuhe Primary School Grade 3 Class 2."

A math workbook lay open on the desk.

She stood outside the curtain. She didn't go in.

"Come sit." He Lan rose from the edge of the bed, sleeves rolled to her elbows. "She asked earlier whether the lawyer auntie would come."

"What did you tell her?"

"I said she would." He Lan moved the stool out half a foot. "She's been tidying the desk since last night."

Su Hongmei added from the doorway: "I got the desk at the secondhand market. Fifty yuan. One leg's an inch short, so I wedged cardboard under it. Good enough for homework."

She went in and sat down, straightened the workbook, and opened it.

At the bottom of every page was printed: "Parent's Signature." One line per page.

The handwriting early in the book was small, squeezed into the upper half of the boxes, occasionally spilling past the lines and over the printed word "Signature."

Flipping further, from the October 15 page onward, the writing was a little larger, every stroke inside the box.

"These are your signatures."

"I signed them." He Lan said. "The teacher requires it. If it's not signed, she can't hand it in the next day."

"From October 15 through yesterday. Not one page missed."

"If one's missing, she gets scolded."

She counted twice: seventeen pages of Chinese, fourteen pages of math. "Math isn't every day?" — "Not assigned every day." She flipped to the end. The November 1 page was there too, and those two characters were written flatter and steadier than all the ones before.

"Why did you used to sign outside the box?"

He Lan's hand paused over the paper. "I used to get home at eleven at night. She'd already be asleep. The workbook would be out on the table. I signed in the dark. The pen went wherever it landed."

"And yesterday?"

"Yesterday the shop gave me the day off." He Lan closed the workbook halfway. "I got home early. She hadn't finished dinner yet. I sat here and watched her write."

[Thud. Seventeen pages, fourteen pages. This column is harder than those eight sets of papers.]

She took two photos with her phone — one of the October 20 signature, one of the November 1 page. "Keeping a record. Not going into the case file."

"Can they see the workbook?"

"We'll decide tomorrow." She pushed the workbook back into place, aligning the edges. "Don't tear out a single page. Leave it there."

From the outer room came the scrape of a basin against the floor. Su Hongmei said from the doorway: "She got up the first two nights."

"Got up to do what?"

"Stood there." Su Hongmei said. "Stood behind the door. No lights. Scared me half to death on a bathroom trip. I asked her — she said she was waiting for her mom to get off the night shift. The past two nights she hasn't gotten up."

He Lan lowered her head. "She knows now that I'm home at night."

"How do you get to school in the morning?"

"Six-forty out the door, one bus transfer, at the school gate by seven-twenty." He Lan said. "I watch her go in, then ride three more stops to the shop. Exactly seven-thirty."

"Is there someone watching the gate?"

"There's a woman at the guard post who knows her." He Lan said. "Before the gate opens she waits outside. It's windy; I wrap my scarf around her twice."

"Has the school said anything about transferring?"

"No." He Lan shook her head. "She's the one who refuses. Says her classmates are all there."

The child pulled a drawing pad from the far end of the bed and walked over to her.

"Look at this."

The drawing pad lay open on her lap. A three-story building, four square windows on each floor, the rightmost window on the third floor filled in with yellow crayon, colored past the lines. Three stick figures holding hands at the bottom, the middle one the shortest. A sun in the sky, a road in front of the building.

"That's the three of us." The child said.

"Which one's you?"

"The middle one."

She moved her hand to the yellow window. "Is this the inner room?"

"This is nighttime." The child said. "At night all three of us are in there."

She nodded. On the road below the building there was one more figure, drawn smaller than the others, a distance away, its arms a single horizontal line.

She looked at it. She didn't ask.

The child didn't explain either. She reached out and pressed the page flat, twice.

"Lawyer Shen." The child said suddenly. "Will the court ask me?"

"Yes."

"Will my mom be there?"

"No." She closed the drawing pad halfway. "In the room it'll be the judge, and a woman — a court clerk who takes notes. Your mom will be outside. So will I."

"Then what do I say?"

"Whatever you're thinking." She said. "That part I can't think for you."

The child looked at her, eyes steady, lips moving slightly, then closing again.

"What I say — they write it on paper?"

"They read it back to you after. If something's wrong, you correct it."

The child lowered her head and added one pencil stroke to each of the three stick figures' hands, connecting all three into a single line.

[Thud. That sentence — she has to say it herself.]

"My mom says you can't get anything out of me." The child said.

"Your mom's right."

"Then what did you come for?"

"To see the desk sitting here, the workbook open here." She stood up and placed the drawing pad back on the desk. She didn't photograph it. She didn't flip any further.

Outer room. Su Hongmei poured a glass of water. Glass jar, a chip in the rim.

"Lanlan's no good with words." Su Hongmei leaned against the doorframe. "Put her in court to talk, she won't get three sentences out. She's spent her whole life just working."

"She doesn't need to be articulate." Shen Zhixia said. "The paper will be articulate."

"Will this paper do anything?"

"Whether it does anything depends on the date they stamp on the summons after it's submitted tomorrow."

She pulled the page from her document pouch. Only one line for a title, and below it, a blank space — Application for the Court to Hear the Views of a Minor Child.

She spread the paper on the sofa, a used magazine underneath as a writing board. Pen down. Applicant: He Lan. Respondent: Feng Guoming. Case category copied from the Notice of Acceptance.

Under "Requested Relief," she wrote two lines: Request that the court hear the marital daughter Feng Xiaotian separately in the Family Division, and prepare a written record to be attached to the case file.

Under "Reasons," three lines: the child has reached eight years of age; the dispute concerns which parent will have direct custody; since the parents' separation the child has continuously lived with the applicant, currently residing with the applicant and attending her original school.

She stopped writing, then started a new line:

The specific content and manner of questioning shall be determined by the court according to law. The applicant and her representative will not participate or be present.

"That line is mine." She tapped the pen on it. "What gets asked — I'm not writing that. If I wrote it, I'd be answering for her."

He Lan stood reading it for a long time.

"No one's allowed in the room with her?"

"No one." She looked up. "If you're in there, she'll be watching your face while she talks."

"What if she cries."

"If she cries, the judge will wait."

He Lan wiped her hand on her pants, took the pen, and wrote her name in the applicant's box, then the date: November 2.

Su Hongmei asked, "After this gets filed, when will we know?"

"Filed tomorrow morning. They'll give a receipt."

At 11:10 she went downstairs. He Lan walked her to the end of the alley.

A vegetable stall at the corner, white radishes stacked in neat piles, plastic bags rustling on the line.

"You stood in my room for a long time." He Lan said. "Didn't ask her a single thing."

"I don't ask."

"Why not?"

"If I ask, she looks at my face. If you ask, she looks at your face." She said. "That one sentence of hers has to be said to someone she doesn't know."

He Lan didn't reply. Only after walking a dozen more steps did she say, "What did she ask you just now?"

"She asked whether the court would question her."

"Is she scared?"

"She didn't cry." Shen Zhixia said. "In her drawing she added hands to all three people."

He Lan turned her face away, pressed a finger to the corner of her eye, and when she turned back her nose was red.

"Tomorrow I'm filing two." Shen Zhixia said. "One asks the court to hear her. One asks for Teacher Yang to appear. The teacher will only speak to what she's seen."

"Will the teacher come?"

"Willing or not, we have to ask. I'll file the application first, name written in." She pressed the clasp on her document pouch shut. "The school has to sign off too."

The wind came down the alley, plastic bags flapping.

"Will a judge believe a nine-year-old child?" He Lan said.

"They'll ask. Doesn't mean they'll believe." She paused. "I don't know."

"If she says it, and they don't believe her?"

"That's why tomorrow I'm filing two." She said. "One child's words need something else standing behind them. She called the police twice. She made a phone call from inside a cabinet. Her teacher saw her crying. Three things, all on paper. Her one sentence is the fourth."

He Lan stood motionless, then suddenly said, "Then tonight I—"

"No."

"I won't add a single word."

"The more you ask at home, the less she says over there." Shen Zhixia looked at her. "Whatever you get her to say at home, in court it becomes something you coached."

He Lan closed her mouth and nodded, hands shoved into her pockets.

The bus rounded the corner at the end of the alley, windows fogged with condensation.

Before boarding, He Lan looked back. "What if she says something wrong?"

"Then it's still what she said."

The bus doors closed. She stood under the stop sign and watched it turn past the intersection, the taillight flaring red through the haze.

[Thud. The person who hears her speak has to be someone she doesn't know.]