The day my father gave up my mother's columbarium niche, I sat at the counter. Section A, row three, niche 17. It was 2,800 yuan in arrears for ten years. Giving it up would get him 143 yuan back, just enough for his stepdaughter's 12,000-yuan healing retreat. When he signed, he didn't recognize the name on my employee badge. He even misspelled my mother's relationship to him, writing "spouse's corner" instead of "spouse."
That night, I pushed the 28,000 yuan I'd saved up over three years toward the counter and renewed the niche for another ten years. It was the money I'd planned to use to escape this city: a house in the south with a balcony, three months' rent upfront, and a potted pothos left behind by the previous tenant in the listing photo. Once I paid, I left.
Three days later, he turned around and put the house up for sale. I owned a house; I'd checked the title deed. I hadn't wanted to bring it up, but when he said he was selling it, I had to.
Later, I opened the urn and weighed it. It was less than three pounds. My mother had been an adult. There were bits of cement mixed into the sand. He'd hidden her real ashes in the storage room at home, inside a blue paint bucket, covered with a cloth and two old soy sauce jars. They'd been there for ten whole years.
That room had no windows. He said she was afraid of the dark.
