by Lucy Tan
But by seventeen, Lina outgrew this patience. She was bored of her hometown, knew every stone along the lake and every square meter of the woods and the silk factory inside it. The building where her father worked always looked as if it were on the verge of collapse, its walls filled with cracks that climbed almost as high as the ivy. She wanted new vistas, new friends, new teachers. Mostly, she was tired of studying; it felt as though she had been preparing for college for forever.
In the spring of college entrance exams, scoring well was the priority for all Chinese high-school students. Lina and her friends studied for the Gaokao twelve to fourteen hours a day, taking breaks only to walk from class to class, to perform the school-led eye- and neck-muscle exercises, and to eat the food placed in front of them. Every morning, grandmothers across the nation prepared the same breakfast for high-school fourth-years: a bowl of soybean milk served with a stick of fried dough and two hard-boiled eggs; 1-0-0 it read when arranged on a table. A superstitious plea for the test score they all wanted. The score that would determine whether a child attended a good university.
Lina had never liked the taste of eggs. When her grandmother wasn’t looking, she fed one of them to the dog. She took her time with the other one, drumming it on the table, trying to make the cracks in the shell as fine as possible. Those ten minutes were often the only minutes in the day when her thoughts weren’t directed at memorization, explication, or performing the basic functions needed to live. Breakfast time was when her mind was freshest, and she used it to imagine.
Now that she was older, Lina decided she needed to know more about Wei. He was her sure thing, the one part of her future that wouldn’t be influenced by her performance on the Gaokao. Even Jiajia had to admit that, family line aside, Zhen Zhiwei was a good match for her daughter. The community thought him smart and focused. He was handsome enough, too, although Lina had never been one of those boy-crazy girls. She could have done with less.
What she needed more of was information. Because Wei went to a different high school, there was only so much to be gleaned from her classmates, so she came up with a plan. Qiang, the younger Zhen brother, was still sent over to the Fang family with small gifts every so often. Now that the weather was warm, he’d started bringing by bags of oranges and peaches, which he set softly against the kitchen stove. Lina could see into the kitchen from her room, and she watched him whenever he came over, wondering which qualities of his also belonged to his brother. They were only a year apart in age. Did Wei have the same curve to his back, the posture that made Qiang seem as though he was always shouldering a weight against the wind? Was the bridge of his nose quite as high? Lina promised herself that the next time the boy stopped by, she would talk to him and ask him some questions about his brother.
“Zhen Zhiqiang.”
The afternoon was bright and hazy. Lina’s father had just finished dusting off the roof, and some of this dust had made it through the doors, clouding the distance between Lina and the boy crouched before the stove. He looked up, and though the sun behind him made it hard for her to see his expression, she could tell by the way he froze in place that he was startled to find her in the doorway of the kitchen.
He straightened up. “Lina.” He said her name so casually—calling her not xiao jie, not mei, not Fang Lina, but Lina—that she was sure the Zhen household spoke of her often.
“You should have some tea,” she said. “Do you want some tea?”
He looked from one end of the kitchen to the other as if searching for an escape route. Then he nodded.
She put the kettle on to boil and removed two tin mugs from the cupboard. At a loss for what to say to him after that, she busied herself by putting away washed dishes and setting out a bowl of watermelon seeds, the way her mother did for guests. When the water was ready, she filled two mugs. He had not moved from where he stood and suddenly seemed to her less like a boy and more like a wolf on its best behavior. She felt odd about asking him to sit down at the table.
Instead, she handed him one of the mugs and led the way out the door to the backyard. Lina sat on the step and Qiang’s feet landed next to hers, light as a cat’s. Lina considered the questions she wanted to ask him but could not think of any that would come out naturally. It would be awkward to launch straight into discussing Wei, but what else was she supposed to say? Qiang didn’t seem the type to engage in small talk.
“You must be tired, carrying that fruit all this way,” she finally said.
“Why? It doesn’t weigh much. I’ve carried far heavier. What about the coal I brought last winter?”
“That’s true,” Lina said.
Qiang shrugged. “I look weaker than I am. Ba’s always trying to get more muscle on me. That’s why he sends me everywhere with packages. I tell him if he wants me bigger, he should feed me more.”
Lina giggled, which seemed to relax Qiang.
“My brother is bigger than me. I guess you know. He was born that way, so there it is. Ba doesn’t send Wei anywhere anymore. He’s too busy studying for the entrance exams.”
“Me too,” said Lina. “That’s all I’ve been doing. Which placement is he taking?”
“Science and engineering.”
“I’m taking liberal arts.”
“Too much studying isn’t good for anybody. Wei talks in his sleep, you know. Differential equations and all that.” He closed his eyes, leaned his head back, and pretended to snore, muttering numbers loudly on each exhale.
“Huai si le!” Lina laughed, swatting him on the arm. “You should show your brother some respect!”
Qiang opened his eyes wide in mock innocence. “I’m just concerned for his health!”
“Don’t worry,” Lina said. “It will be you soon enough. You’re one year below us, right? What will you test for?”
“The sports university, of course,” Qiang said. “I’m not getting all pale and nearsighted. I’m getting exercise. They need young proletariat men like me to continue to march for the revolution.” His sarcasm was so unexpected that it made Lina laugh even harder. By this time most of the revolutionary fervor had passed, but it was still unheard of—dangerous, even—to joke about the revolution in public.
Suddenly, Lina felt they were doing something very wrong. She wished she’d looked at the clock before coming outside. She wasn’t sure how much longer it would be before her mother came home, and she was anxious about being seen with Qiang. He must have sensed her nervousness. He looked away from her and crouched with his elbows over his knees and one thumb kneading into the base of the other, as though he were trying to crack it. With Qiang to Lina’s left, a shadow was cast over her torso. The upper part of her body began to chill while her cheeks warmed in the sun. A few meters away, two chickens fought over something on the ground. Minutes passed, during which one of the neighborhood kids ran down the street yelling a crass version of a nursery rhyme. When he was gone, the silence seemed even riper between them.
“You’d better go,” Lina finally said. “My ma’s just gone to the market.”
As if there were springs attached to his heels, Qiang leaped off the remaining steps to the ground. He started to walk around the side of the house, but before he reached it, he stopped and turned to face her.
“You should eat the oranges first,” he said. “The peaches aren’t ripe yet.”
Without waiting for a response, he disappeared.
After a moment, Lina stood, feeling even more uneasy. She bent to pick up Qiang’s full mug of tea. Then she walked out to the brush to dump it, taking care not to look at the bottom of the mug after she did. A few years ago, her great-aunt had taught her how to read omens in tea leaves. Up until then, she hadn’t considered the range and abundance of possible bad fortunes in the world—false friendships, mechanical troubles, wasted time, tardiness, financial ruin, broken commitments. As hard as she’d tried to forget the symbols, she had never managed to unlearn what she knew.
6
Wei woke, as he h
ad every day since the phone call from his brother, to the memory of Qiang’s voice. On the phone, it had sounded distant and staticky, like he was calling from the grave. Ge, Qiang had said, wo shi Qiang? Neng ting jian wo ma? Brother, do you recognize me? Do you hear me?
It had been so long since Wei had been addressed as Ge—“Big Brother”—that it took him a moment to be able to answer. Yes, he’d said, finally recognizing Qiang’s voice. Can I come see you? Can we meet?
Wei rolled over and swung his legs off the mattress at the expense of his back. He didn’t do well with these soft hotel mattresses, never had. In the bathroom, he took a piss, shook five times for luck. Strange, he thought to himself, the habits that follow you through the years. Into the shower, then. Bath mat laid down, the spray on. Water pressure set to deafening.
Qiang was alive. Alive. And he was coming to visit. This news had been spinning around in his head all week, a distraction that gave him boosts of energy to get through the workday. He still had a brother, which meant that he and Lina still had family left. Would he recognize Qiang? How much had he changed? Wei had his phone number now. He could ask him to text him a picture.
No; ridiculous. Of course he would recognize him. Hadn’t Qiang recognized Wei, after all? How ironic that it was Pitch 360, in the end, that had brought Qiang to him. Wei laughed softly, shaking his head. He was tempted to nominate Sandrik for a raise. And how like Qiang to so casually call him up after twenty years of silence, announce that he would be coming to visit, and not even stay on the phone long enough to exchange the usual pleasantries.
Since childhood, Qiang had been drawn to extremes. Everything he did, he had to go all the way. He stayed out until nighttime shadows could no longer see him past their parents’ bedroom. He skipped so much school that a neighbor had been able to give his kid a free education by sending him there under Qiang’s name. The moment an idea sparked in his mind, Qiang had to turn it into action. One of the clearest memories Wei had of his brother was when Qiang was six years old. Their parents had dropped them off at the home of an old woman who took care of the villagers’ babies while their parents were working. Usually, Wei was able to keep Qiang out of mischief when his parents weren’t home, but the previous week Qiang had almost burned the place down by trying to melt a cooking pot into scrap metal. After that, their parents decided to spend the five mao a week on professional supervision.
The old woman’s home was one of the larger ones in the village. A small front living room connected to the kitchen, and through the kitchen’s curtained-off doorway was a bare bedroom that contained one large bed, where the babies slept. From the moment the brothers walked in the door, Qiang had that restless look on his face. When he reached to grab at something on the old woman’s table, Wei had immediately taken hold of his brother’s wrist. Fang kai wo! Qiang complained, but as hard as he shook, Wei wouldn’t let go. Though only a year older than his brother, Wei had always been far stronger, and he kept hold of Qiang even as the other children approached them to talk and play. The caretaker was busy preparing food for the babies in the back room and Wei knew that the moment his attention was no longer on Qiang, there would be trouble. I’ll hold him until she comes back, Wei thought. But the old lady took her time, and Wei had gotten tired, and he finally let Qiang loose. For a few minutes, Qiang stalked around the room, rubbing his wrist and scowling—harmless enough. But the next thing Wei knew, there was a chorus of howls coming from the room beyond the kitchen.
Wei and the others rushed through the curtained doorway and collected at the foot of the bed filled with screaming infants.
“Zen me la?” the old woman asked repeatedly, shaking Qiang by the shoulders. “Ni gan shenme le?”
She couldn’t get him to talk. He was convulsing with laughter, flushed from his forehead to his fingers. Finally, he brought a hand to his face and pinched his nose. Having been woken from sleep many times with his own nose between his brother’s fingers, Wei immediately understood this gesture. Qiang had pinched all the sleeping babies’ noses, one by one, until they were awake and crying.
If only he’d stuck to pinching noses. The older Qiang grew, the more alarming his antics became. His preteen years were spent stealing candy from the market and animals from other families’ yards, and lying to teachers and officials if he was caught. Qiang’s one redeeming quality was that he wasn’t a fighter. He enjoyed terrorizing other children so that they chased him, but he was better at running away than he was at fighting. He seemed to think there was more honor in running too. To elude a person took speed and cunning, Qiang had once explained to Wei. To fight meant to hit or be hit, which didn’t require much cunning at all.
But once Qiang dropped out of school, that all changed. Nightly dinners began without him and were eaten in silence, the Zhens’ ears trained for Qiang’s footsteps and the sound of the door opening. As angry as Ma and Ba were when he came home, they always fed him, with Ba delivering ineffectual lectures over cold noodle soup. Then Qiang started coming back with nicks up and down his arms and neck. When they asked him about it—when Ma stripped him and made him lift all four limbs so she could look for hidden damage—he refused to reveal anything. Get Qiang to talk, Wei’s father had begged him, but Wei didn’t know how. He had always been more like a third parent than an older brother to Qiang, and their relationship was further strained by their parents pleading with Qiang to behave more like Wei: to study hard, sit still, stand straight, speak up. During the moments of closeness the brothers did share—playing basketball at the recreational center or fetching water from the local pond—Wei could not figure out a way to start the conversation.
Instead, he followed him. One day after school when Wei was a third-year, he spotted Qiang and his group of friends coming toward him down the road. He ducked behind the nearest tree and waited for them to pass. They did so without noticing him, and after that, the decision to spy on his brother was hardly a decision at all. He followed the boys until they made the next turn in the road. This told Wei that they were going to Zhu Lin, a neighboring village.
But after the boys reached the village center, they kept going. The sun set as they walked, and by the time they stopped, Wei no longer knew where they were. There were trees around them; a clearing. Wei kept within hearing range but made sure to stay out of sight. Soon, he heard other, deeper voices belonging to boys he didn’t recognize. They looked to be older than Wei.
“Shouhuo zenme yang a?” one of them said. “Did you get what we asked?” Wei moved closer just in time to see Qiang and his friends step forward. They emptied their pockets, opened their messenger bags, and laid what they had on the ground: coins, cigarettes, and other objects Wei couldn’t make out.
There was murmuring and soft laughter from the older boys.
“Not bad,” one of them said. “There’s hope for our minions yet. Jian Hua, the bag.”
The largest of the boys collected items from the ground while the boy who had spoken began to pace the clearing.
“Tingzhe!” Wei shouted. Before he knew what he was doing, he had stepped into the clearing. Now he could see the expressions of his brother and his friends, some of whom seemed surprised to see him, others relieved. But Qiang alone was filled with fury.
“Who is this?” the leader of the older boys asked.
“He’s nobody,” Qiang replied.
“I’m Qiang’s brother. And these things are stolen.”
The older boys looked at one another and began to laugh.
“Qiang’s your brother, you said?”
Qiang stood from where he had been crouching on the grass. “He’s no brother of mine.”
Wei was surprised how much the words hurt. Qiang had never rejected him like that before. Or maybe it was his lack of hesitation in doing it that hurt him.
“Look, friend, why don’t you leave?” The older boy—the one who had done most of the speaking—looked from Wei to Qiang and seemed genuinely amused. “We could fight you, but honestly,
I’m feeling lazy tonight. I’d rather save my energy for a real fight. I’ve heard of you. You’re a smart enough guy. It’s four to one. You do the math.”
“I’m not leaving without my brother,” Wei said.
“Fine by us,” the boy said. “Take him.”
Wei stared at the boy’s face. He looked to be about seventeen or eighteen. A scratch, or a scar, was visible just below his jawline.
“I’m also taking whichever of these things he’s responsible for stealing. I can’t speak for these other delinquents. They’re not my problem.”
“You’re not taking anything,” the boy said. “These things belong to us now.”
Wei paused, assessing the situation. “What do you want with them anyway? They’re just boys.”
“Want with them?” the lead boy asked. “Hao xiao. They’re the ones who want to be friends with us. Isn’t that right, Qiang?”
Qiang glared at Wei so fiercely he might have set the whole forest on fire. His mouth was as thin as a fishing line.
“Come on,” Wei said to him. “Let’s go home.”
Qiang didn’t move until, finally, the older boy said, “Get out of here! And by the way, anybody else’s brothers hiding in the bushes? Speak now or get the hell out!”
On the way home, Wei had tried to question Qiang. Who were those boys? How did you meet them? But Qiang admitted nothing—he didn’t even try to come up with excuses. And that’s how Wei’s one effort to save his brother put more distance between them than ever. From then on, Qiang’s antics only got worse, and it became clear that those boys in the woods were a local gang that had taken him in. They stole from villagers and fought other gangs for fun. They provided Qiang with cigarettes and knives and taught him how to be even stealthier than he already was—for Wei never again had the opportunity to follow Qiang.