When you hold my hand, I want to kiss your mouth;
holding hands and kissing, we walk down the alley to the south.
The tune made Zhuang’s blood run hot, while she, her face red, ran into the old lady’s room and shut the door. Zhuang limped over and called out to her when he couldn’t push the door open, “Keep singing, Liu Yue.”
“It’s a bad song. I shouldn’t sing it,” she said from inside.
“It’s all right if you don’t want to sing. But why don’t you open the door?”
She was quiet for a moment. “You must think I’m being bad.”
“I never thought of you that way,” he said, still trying to open the door. She quietly pulled the latch when he gave the door a push, sending him to the floor when it burst open. His face twisted in pain, scaring her so badly that she squatted down to check him out.
“It’s my fault,” she said gravely. “Dajie will be mad at me when she comes home. She’ll send me away.”
He pinched her buttocks. “How would she know? You won’t go if I don’t want you to.” He tugged at her, making her stumble and nearly step on him. She tried to move her foot but ended up sitting on his neck, with her belly almost in his face. He wrapped his arms around her legs, startling and embarrassing her. “That’s better. Let’s have a good look at you.”
He looked up, and through her loose blouse he could see a pair of large, fair breasts with tiny maroon nipples, the color of red beans.
“So you don’t wear a bra?” he said, reaching under her blouse. She squirmed to stop his hand from going further. ☐☐ ☐☐ ☐☐ [The author has deleted 25 words.]
“You’ve had so many women, why would you be interested in a maid from the countryside? You know I’m a virgin.” She pushed his hand away and stood up to go into the kitchen to cook. His face red, Zhuang lay on the floor and reproached himself for projecting his longing for Tang Wan’er onto the girl. He was besieged by shame and guilt, when Liu Yue began to sing again in the kitchen:
When the big red fruit was peeled, people talked about me and you.
Names were besmirched, though nothing happened between us two.
That night, when husband and wife were chatting in bed, the topic naturally turned to Liu Yue.
“Why was she wearing my shoes today?” Niu Yueqing asked. “I didn’t notice at first. She quickly changed into slippers when I came in, and her face was red.”
“She washed her shoes in the morning and had nothing to wear to go out grocery shopping, so I told her to wear yours. She probably forgot to change after she came back. She has a nice figure and looks good in anything. You have so many shoes, why not let her have those?”
“Buy a new pair if you want to give her shoes. I’ve only had those for two weeks, and, besides, we’d be giving her used goods.”
“What a nice person you are. I’ll give her some money to buy a pair tomorrow.”
“You’re so considerate,” she said. “Something’s been bothering me all day. This morning on my work to work, I stopped by a candy store on Zhubashi Street. The shopkeeper stared at me. ‘Aren’t you the wife of the writer Zhuang Zhidie?’ she asked. I said, ‘Yes, I am. Why do you ask?’ She said she had seen a picture of us in a magazine and asked if we had recently hired a maid. I said, ‘Yes, a smart, pretty girl from northern Shaanxi named Liu Yue, a radiant girl no one would assume was from the countryside by the looks of her.’ ‘Don’t judge a person by her looks,’ she said. I asked her what she meant. Had Liu Yue bought candy and walked off with more change than she deserved? She said that Liu Yue had worked for her and caused her a great deal of trouble. She said, ‘I hired her at a labor market to take care of my child. But somehow she heard about your family and asked to leave. I couldn’t keep her if she insisted on leaving, and all I asked was for her to wait until I found a replacement. Then one day I came home after work to find my child crying and the girl nowhere in sight. There was a note on the table saying she’d left. She had made it into a better family, while I had to stay home to care for the child for two weeks. I lost my bonus, but she walked off with two weeks’ pay.’ I said nothing, because I couldn’t be sure that the shopkeeper’s story was credible. If not, it would be a false accusation. But that still made me uneasy. What do you think?”
“Liu Yue can’t be that bad. Maybe she was so good at her job that the family didn’t want her to leave. Now that she’s gone, they’re jealous of us and are trying to drive a wedge between Liu Yue and us.”
“That’s what I thought, too. Being so pretty, so neat and tidy, she can easily make people like her. It’s one thing for me to treat her well, but you need to be careful. Don’t get too cozy with her.”
“I’ll let her go tomorrow if that’s how you feel.”
“You’re just saying that because you know I don’t want her to leave.” She moved close to him, saying she wanted to make love, but he complained that it would be too much for him with his bad foot. She straightened out her legs. “All right. But don’t forget you owe me.” She lay back down and fell asleep.
The next morning, she went to work as usual. Her cousin called her at the office. Niu Yueqing asked how her mother was doing. “She’s fine. She had a bowl and a half of rice porridge with red beans for breakfast, only half a bowl of rice for lunch, but with plenty of odds and ends. My husband caught three fish in the Wei River, which we saved for her. The children were not allowed to touch them. For dinner we steamed two eggs for her, to go with a glass of fresh milk. Aunty has put on weight, and her skin is brighter. All she worries about is the vat of vinegar, since it has to be stirred. She asked me to tell you not to keep the lid on it all the time. Oh, and she complains about not having a radio to listen to opera.” Niu Yueqing said her mother was an opera fan who had spent much of her time at the theater when she was young. She went on to tell her cousin about life at home — the vinegar was fine; the old lady’s shoes had been washed and dried in the sun; Granny Wang had come several times and brought over a yellow stomacher. Niu Yueqing ended the report by telling her about Zhuang’s foot. It so happened that one of Niu Yueqing’s superiors would be going to the Wei River at noon to buy some cheap mutton for the staff, so she hurried back to the compound to pick up a Walkman and two opera tapes for him to take to the Deng Family Fort, where he would deliver the package. But by the time she got home, her mother was there. When Yueqing’s cousin had told her mother about Zhuang’s foot, the old lady had insisted on coming back to Shuangren fu without delay. Unable to change her mind, the cousin had brought her home on the bus. After checking on Zhuang’s foot, her mother grumbled about Liu Yue not folding the blanket neatly, placing the bottles incorrectly on the table, putting too much water in the flower pots on the windowsill, and for sweeping away a spider’s web on the wall. Liu Yue didn’t dare say anything. At night, Liu Yue slept in the same room as the old lady, who continued to use the coffin as her bed and started talking around midnight. At first the girl thought she was talking to her, so she pretended to be asleep. But the old lady kept on, almost as if she were having an argument with someone, softening her tone to reason with the other person one moment, then hardening her voice to frighten the listener the next. She even threw her pillow at the door. Liu Yue couldn’t see a thing in the darkness, and she was so scared that she got up and went to knock at the other door. Zhuang and his wife got up to ask her mother if she’d had a bad dream.