She may not go on reading, after all.
Out in the kitchen, her mother is slicing a salted duck egg. Juanlan takes her toothbrush from the windowsill and runs it under the tap. “Have you been to Tasty Spice?” This is the name of the restaurant they’re going to tonight.
“When would I get the chance? Do you remember your mother going out for nice dinners, even before Ba got sick? No, of course not. It’s some fancy place near the river,” her mother says, spooning congee into a bowl. “Chongqing-style hot pot. You and I will have to watch Xiao Lu to make sure she eats only from the clear broth. That girl.”
“I doubt she’ll get them confused,” Juanlan says around a mouthful of toothpaste.
“That just shows what you know. Your brother’s wife, she’s careless about her health. I tell her she should eat only boiled chicken and plain vegetables, and she says she wants spicy pork. Yesterday at lunch, she asked where I was keeping the lajiao. She wanted to put it on her rice.”
“Did you give it to her?”
“Of course not!” Her mother watches as Juanlan spits into the sink. “You tell her, maybe she’ll listen. She’s going to hurt the baby, eating spicy food.”
“Why would she listen to me?” Juanlan asks, putting her toothbrush back on the windowsill. “We’re not friends.” She leans into the little mirror by the sink to examine her skin. Her last week in Chengdu, she bought a whitening cream from one of the specialty shops, but she can’t tell whether it’s made a difference. If only she’d gotten her father’s thin features along with his dark complexion. Narrow eyes, a long chin, cheekbones so wide it seems someone’s pulled her ears and stretched out the plane of her face—Juanlan looks just like her mother, unfortunately.
Her mother sniffs. “So you’re not friends. Whose fault is that?”
No one’s fault, she could say. They’re just different kinds of people. Two years ago, she received a call from her brother saying he was going to get married. Lulu was the cousin of one of his old high school friends, and she’d made him dizzy with love by singing “The Moon Represents My Heart” when a big group of them went to a karaoke parlor one night. She sang alone in the dark little room full of smoke. “Picture it,” he said. “That old song.” Juanlan didn’t meet her until a few days before the wedding, when she took Lulu shopping with her mother and immediately resented her for her loveliness, her white skin, her tiny teeth slightly pointed like a cat’s. In Feather Beauty, Lulu had tried on different eye shadows. “The blue looks very good on you, Xiao Lu,” Juanlan’s mother told her, and then remarked, “You can’t wear that color so well, Lan’er. Your brother’s almost-wife has better skin.” In the big mirror on the wall, Lulu had blinked at her innocently; her face was as light and shimmery as onionskin.
Now, staring at her own reflection in the mirror, Juanlan gathers her hair in her fingers, trying to fashion it into the kind of high ponytail Du Xian once told her he likes. Three nights ago, she sat with him by the river, his mouth on her neck, one hand on her back and the other gripping her thigh with a fierce urgency that made her shake. Beneath the dusty leaves of the trees, every bench along the river was filled with young couples. The river was low and sluggish. There was no moon. Tomorrow, she thinks, he will write from Chongqing.
Dinner. Three waitresses at the hostess stand call out their welcome: “Huanying, guanglin!” Juanlan recognizes one of them, the tallest. She went to middle school with her. They were one year apart, and she can’t remember anything about the girl except that she always wore gloves during morning exercises, even in the heat. Now, Juanlan waits to be recognized in response. The girl blinks and stretches her smile wider, passing her eyes over Juanlan in a way that says, I am a waitress and you are a customer, now follow me to your table. She leads them down a short hall with private rooms on either side to the room on the end, where Juanlan’s uncle and aunt and a collection of other relatives and friends are gathered.
“Welcome home, you little scholar!” Her godfather laughs, putting one arm around her shoulder. He’s wearing a leather jacket so new it squeaks. In the past few years, he and her aunt have become rich, at least by Heng’an standards, and now they always have something new to show off. Last time she was home, they proudly pointed out the color television taking up the corner of their living room. Releasing her, he propels her toward her aunt, who asks about her journey.
“It was all right. No rain, so the roads weren’t too bad.”
“Your uncle traveled to Chengdu just last week on business. It’s too bad you didn’t come home earlier. He could have taken you in the car.”
Juanlan’s mother lays a hand on her arm, a reminder of something, a warning. “Has Uncle Liu already gotten his license?” Juanlan asks.
“No, no,” her aunt says, “not yet. His lingdao was driving. But they could have found room for you in the company car.”
“She was fine taking the bus,” her mother says tightly, and now Juanlan understands that the offer was refused so as to avoid accepting any more favors. Her parents have taken loans from her aunt and uncle, and they’re not all paid back. And then there is always something owed. “Do you know how many guests we’ve had to give a discount to?” her mother asked her earlier that day. “‘Friends’ of your uncle who we’ve never even met.” Uncle Liu and Auntie Zhang are outgoing people, essentially confident and hopeful, convinced that things are as good as they’ve ever been and can only get better. Favors are nothing; debts will float away on the air. Juanlan’s mother is not of this belief. She thinks disaster is always waiting right around the corner.
“You sit at this table,” Auntie Zhang directs Juanlan, pulling out a chair with the other women. Each place setting is tightly wrapped in cellophane to show that it’s been sanitized. An additional charge but worth the show. “You’re our guest of honor tonight. What would you like to drink? Coca-Cola? Peanut milk?”
Just then, Zhuo Ge and Lulu come in through the door. Juanlan’s sister-in-law is dressed in a loose cotton dress so large it forms a tent over her knees, even though she is only halfway through her pregnancy. Her face is swollen and sallow. Auntie Zhang rushes over to take her by the arm and directs her to a chair next to Juanlan and her mother. Then Lulu proceeds to answer questions about how she is feeling and how they got there. Fine, she says. A pedicab, she says.
“Pedicab!” Juanlan’s mother presses her mouth into a line and shakes her head. “All that bouncing in your condition, Xiao Lu. You should have taken a taxi.”
“We took the river road. It was very smooth.”
“Smooth!”
Lulu shrugs her narrow shoulders and reaches for a handful of dried peas from a basket in the center of the table. “If it was dangerous, your son wouldn’t have taken us that way.”
Juanlan’s mother casts a frown at Lulu and gets up to speak with another aunt. Lulu just goes on grinding the hard peas between her teeth. After a moment, her gaze falls on Juanlan and, blinking slowly a few times, she remarks that her sister-in-law has gotten thinner.
“I’m as fat as ever.”
“No, you can see it in your face.” Lulu sweeps a palm from her forehead to her cheeks to her chin. “Mine is so puffy. But you’ve lost some fat there. Are you dieting?”
“I’ve been trying to eat less rice.” Juanlan explains that she and two of her roommates started eating this way a few months ago, when springtime came and they went shopping and saw all the new fashions. Lots of girls at the university, she says, have been trying this diet.
“That’s good,” Lulu says, nodding. “I can’t do anything right now, but after the baby, maybe. Zhuo says I’m getting fatter than I should.” She raises a hand to her face again, as if afraid that it’s getting bigger as they speak. “I used to move around more—I was standing all day, for my job—but now I just sit.”
Juanlan’s mother passed along the news several months ago that Lulu had lost her job at the snacks counter in the bus station. It’s unclear whether Juanlan should acknowle
dge it now. She settles on remarking, “You don’t look fatter than you should be,” at which Lulu laughs bitterly. Impossible to believe that she’s only a year older than Juanlan, that she’s already a wife and will soon be a mother. She says suddenly, “You have to come spend time with me after the baby comes. Four weeks without going outside or showering”—she wrinkles her nose—“it’s too long.”
Juanlan’s mother appears then and, leaning down, whispers that she should get up and greet her cousin, who has just arrived. She leaves without assuring Lulu that she’ll come see her, leaves her sister-in-law to be scolded again for riding in the pedicab or to be instructed on what’s safe to eat here and what’s not. As she gets up, Lulu gives her a desperate look.
Juanlan’s cousin and his wife hug her. She tickles their daughter’s feet. When they congratulate her on her graduation, she says “Thank you, it’s nothing,” and means it. Four years of studying have been turned, as if by magic, into nothing.
“Are you glad to be back?” her cousin’s wife asks as she jostles their daughter on her hip.
She wills herself to remember that if she had stayed in the city, if she’d gotten a job at a foreign company or gone to work at a travel agency, she would have had to live with her aunt and uncle in their crowded flat outside the third ring road. It would have taken an hour or maybe two to take the bus into the city each morning, and again going back. Remember, she thinks: the sky so dim with pollution that the sun hovering over the horizon is a greasy orange ball you can look at without having to squint. The sleek stores, all windows, too expensive to enter. In afternoon traffic, a man and his bike can slide under the wheel of a bus and the noise only grows.
She wills herself to remember all this. But remembers, too: she could stare at the sun. The noise was a kind of silence. The cold burn inside her was a steady flame. Here, she feels herself flickering.
“I’m only home for a short while,” she says and glances at her father, who’s sitting with his shoulders against the back of his chair as if he’s tied to it. Then she goes on to tell her cousin about her job prospects in Chengdu, talking up the possibility of working at an after-school English program. She grabs its name from a sign that floats up at just the right moment.
“What a great opportunity,” her cousin says vaguely. Then the waitresses come in pushing carts, and they separate to find their places and prepare to eat.
When Juanlan returns to her seat, the waitress, her old schoolmate, begins sliding plates of meat and seafood into the broth and naming them aloud in a monotone: “Pig intestine, chicken wings, fish balls, eel.” She has burn marks on her hands. When she leaves, Juanlan leans over and tells Lulu about knowing her, about the gloves she used to wear.
“How pathetic,” Lulu says, but she doesn’t explain whether the girl’s sin was wearing the gloves in the first place or letting her hands get scarred. Whether it was the vanity itself, or the loss of something to be vain about at all.
The next morning, Juanlan gets up early to cover the morning shift at the front desk. They took a taxi home from the restaurant the night before, and her father, tired from the strain of talking to so many people at dinner, didn’t protest when Juanlan’s mother said he needed to sleep in. “This is why Lan’er is here,” her mother said, and Juanlan told him it would make her happy to help.
The desk is quiet this early in the day. Only two guests are staying at the hotel. They come down ten minutes apart, and each one says good morning and remarks that there’s rain, and Juanlan says it’s not bad out, only a light mist, and watches them, ten minutes apart, squint at the sky in exactly the same way, as if the gray expanse has it out for them personally. The two are businessmen in town from places smaller than Heng’an, here for similar reasons and with similar expectations. The Three Springs Hotel caters to provincial businessmen and government workers. No tourists or vacationers. Juanlan was in middle school when her parents bought the hotel, and ten years later, they’re still paying off the cost.
A few minutes after the two men leave, her mother comes into the lobby carrying a bowl of noodle soup. “I want you to go to the market later this morning,” she says, setting the bowl down carefully on the desk. “Buy some fish. You’re going over to your brother’s to make lunch.”
Juanlan takes the pair of chopsticks her mother offers. “I am?”
“Didn’t you see Xiao Lu last night, dipping everything in oil? Your brother says she isn’t cooking at home, then she goes out and eats like that.” She nods at Juanlan. “Buy a fish and make some clear broth. A little ginger, no spice.”
Juanlan takes a ten-yuan note from her mother. After breakfast, she gets on her bike and rides to the market, then on to her brother’s flat, steering around the largest puddles. By the time she arrives, her pants are flecked with mud. She locks up the bike and climbs the stairs, then changes into a pair of house slippers on the mat beside the door. Before she can knock, the door swings open. “I heard you walking up,” Lulu says, and stands aside to let her enter.
Juanlan holds up the groceries. “I’m here to make lunch for you.”
“I know.” She glances at the groceries without interest. “Your mother told me.”
“When? She didn’t tell me until this morning.”
Lulu gives her a look. “Last night, she pulled Zhuo and me aside and said you wanted to spend time with me. I figured you knew.” She narrows her eyes, considering how to register the offense.
Juanlan raises her shoulders. “I guess my mother wants us to be friends.”
“Your mother doesn’t care about me or my friendships,” Lulu responds coldly. “Maybe she does about yours, but I doubt it. What she really cares about is the grandchild I’m growing in here.” She thumps her stomach. “Aiya, your family—” She looks as if she would say more, but instead turns abruptly away. Heading into the kitchen, she says, “Go wash up, if you want,” and leaves Juanlan by the door.
They have a sink in their bathroom, a step up from Juanlan’s parents’ flat, where the bathroom has only a toilet and a showerhead on the wall that no longer moves. But her mother keeps the bathroom clean, mopping and emptying the trash both morning and night. The trash can here is full almost to overflowing with used toilet paper. Juanlan breathes through her mouth as she wipes the bottoms of her pants with one of the damp hand towels hanging on the wall by the sink.
In the kitchen, her sister-in-law is staring down at the contents of the bag. When Juanlan comes in, she says without turning, “I hate boiled fish. I won’t eat any soup.” She hunches a little as she puts a hand on the edge of the counter.
“Okay, no fish soup. So what do you want to eat?”
“Oh, I don’t care,” she says after a moment. “You can fry it up, if you want. We have some green peppers and garlic.” She nods at the metal baskets hanging from the ceiling; one contains a few fists of garlic, but the others are empty. “Maybe not,” she says and then falls silent without explaining whether the peppers were ever there, or if she only thought about buying them and then forgot. Juanlan wonders what her brother has been doing for meals. Has he been cooking for both of them? Or does he go out for dinner, leaving Lulu at home? She feels, standing in this kitchen, as she did as a child when she visited her relatives in the countryside, and had to share a bed with two of her cousins: a sense of being too close, of encroaching on intimacies. One of her cousins was several years older, and she remembers the simultaneous fascination and revulsion she’d felt at the knowledge that her cousin was bleeding, hearing the rustle of a pad as she turned, noticing the metallic tincture in the air.
“Why don’t you go sit?” she says. “Listen to the radio. This won’t take me very long.”
Lulu nods and goes back into the living room. A bright strum of guitar breaks the air, and Juanlan recognizes the song, a popular one by a musician from Hong Kong. For months, she’s heard it several times a day, threads of the melody floating in the hall of her dormitory or leaking from the open door of a shop. She is
tired of this song.
Turning on the burner under the wok, she waits for the oil to smoke, and because she’s already defied her mother’s wishes, she tosses in a few dried chilies before adding the fish. “Rice?” she calls when the food is ready.
Lulu calls back, “There’s some left over in the cooker.” Then she comes in, dragging a blanket behind her. “You put peppers in,” she says in a flat tone, as if simply stating a fact. She pulls the bowl of lajiao over the counter and spoons some onto her rice. “I’m sick of eating food without any flavor. ‘No oil! No spice! No raw fruits or vegetables!’ Like I’m a child and I need to be told what to do.” She blinks angrily at the bowl of rice, now drenched in the spicy oil. Even Zhuo Ge, who loves heat, wouldn’t eat a spoonful of it. “Oh, fuck,” Lulu says, and dumps it into the trash. At the same moment, the blanket slips to the floor. She’ll cry now, Juanlan thinks. Any moment, she will burst into tears. But instead she just sighs and asks for Juanlan to pick it up.
They dine together with the music playing at the same volume as before, a little too loud. Our love is a river that will carry us far from here. Juanlan says nothing about the volume, or about the fact that Lulu darts her chopsticks to the fish again and again, breaking off small pieces, which she delivers straight to her mouth with a sort of grim determination. When the fish is nearly picked clean on one side, she clamps her chopsticks around its tail and flips it over to expose all the flesh that’s untouched. “You’re not much of a cook,” she says while she resumes eating. “There’s not enough salt.”
“Maybe your taste is off.”
Lifting her bowl to her lips, Lulu shovels in rice and swallows quickly. “I’m a pretty good cook, myself. But not since I got pregnant, because I don’t want to cook what I don’t get to eat. Zhuo is as bad as your mother. He won’t let me have anything good.” Setting her bowl down again, she maneuvers the fish head away from the body. “You want it?” she asks but doesn’t wait for an answer before depositing it in her own bowl.
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