The Vagrants

One night Nini overheard her parents, on the other end of the brick bed, discuss whether they should send Nini away for a few months, the general belief being that a pregnant mother would unknowingly pass on physical traits to the baby from the people around her. Nini's mother did not want the baby to inherit anything by accident from Nini; was there a place to send her for a few months? she asked.

There was no place to send her, her father replied. After a while, her mother said, “If only we had finished her when she was born.”

Nini's father sighed. “Easy to say so but hard to do,” he said. “A life is a life, and we're not murderers.”

Nini's eyes turned warm and wet. For this she would, when the time came to bury her parents, give his body a warm bath instead of a cold one. He had never said more than three sentences to her in a day, but he was a quiet person, and she forgave him. The moment of softness, however, lasted only until her father's next sentence. “Besides,” he said, “Nini's like a maid we don't have to pay”

Quietly Nini put out the fire and filled the basin with icy cold water.

Little Fourth and Little Fifth, who had recently formed an alliance between themselves and did not participate in much of the life outside their secret world, held hands and watched whenever their mother put on a show of morning and evening sickness. They were less annoying to Nini because they never courted their parents’ attention—they were not old enough, or perhaps they had everything they wanted from each other. A few times Nini thought of befriending them, but they showed no interest, their inquiring eyes on Nini's face reminding her that she would never be as beautiful as they—by now there was no mistaking that the two girls would grow up to be the prettiest ones in the family.

But all these things—her parents’ impatience with her, her two oldest sisters’ scheming to get her punished, and the indifference of Little Fourth and Little Fifth—bothered Nini less now that she had Bashi. She explored her power with a secret joy. She put a pinch more salt into the stew than necessary or half a cup more water into the rice; she soaked her parents’ underwear in suds and then wrung them dry without rinsing; she spat on her sisters’ red Young Pioneers’ scarves and rubbed the baby's peed cloth diapers against her mother's blouses. Nobody had yet noticed these sabotaging activities, but at her most daring moments Nini hoped to be discovered. If her parents kicked her out of their house, she would just move across town to Bashi's place, less than a thirty-minute walk and a world away, freed from her prisoner's life.

Her newly added housework, however, made it inconvenient for her to spend more time with Bashi during the day. Apart from providing coal and vegetables, Bashi did not have the magic to make meals cook themselves, or laundry do itself, or the stove and her sisters take care of themselves. He suggested coming to Nini's house and being her companion when her parents were at work. She thought about the idea, alluring and exciting, and then rejected the offer. Her parents would hear about Bashi's presence in no time, if not from the neighbors, then from her younger sisters; they would throw her out for sure. Was Bashi a reliable backup, despite all her wishful thinking? Nini decided to give him some more time.

The short hour in the early morning became the happiest time of her day. When she arrived at six o'clock, Bashi always had a feast ready—sausages, fried tofu, roasted peanuts, pig's blood in gelatin, all bought at the marketplace the day before, more than they could consume. Nini started the fire—Bashi seemed unable to finish this simple task by himself, but he was a man, after all, the deficiency forgivable—and when she cooked porridge on the stove to go with the morning feast, Bashi would peel frozen pears by her side. The flesh of the pears was an unsavory dark brown color, but when Bashi cut it into thin slices and slipped them into Nini's mouth, she was surprised to find the pear crisp and sweet; the iciness inside her mouth and the heat from the burning stove made her shudder with some strange joy. Sometimes his finger stayed on her lips even after the slice of pear disappeared. She opened her mouth wide and pretended to bite; he laughed and snatched his hand away.

The morning before Ching Ming, between slices of frozen pear, Bashi said, “Old Hua says it's time to bury my grandma now.”

“When?” Nini asked.

“Tomorrow. They think it makes sense to bury her on the holiday.”