“She wouldn’t let us.”
“It’s too bad that all of the sugar is filthy. Otherwise, we could sell it for a lot of money. The custodian swept it all into the garbage can. What a shame.”
When Little Zheng and I finally went over there, we saw the door of the tool shed standing open. She was sitting on top of a pile of brooms. I kept wiping my eyes with the washcloth. I despised this old woman. I heard a bunch of children coming this way: after a while, they formed a long line at the door.
“Here you go!” the old woman said to the little boy at the head of the line.
The little boy was holding the air with both hands; he went out rapturously.
“Here you go!” the old woman said to the second child — a little girl — in line.
The little girl was also holding the air with both hands; she, too, went out rapturously.
Like the head of a household, the old woman sat smugly on the brooms. Little Zheng and I were dumbfounded. Some of these children were from our neighborhood, others from elsewhere. What were they doing together with the old woman? Each child took ten or twenty cents from his pocket and gave it to her. The money was all real. After taking the money, she carefully put it into a pocket in the front of her garment. Soon, the pocket was bulging. When I looked outside, I was startled: I couldn’t see the end of the long line. The custodians didn’t mind postponing their work. They were looking on with interest, as if they were celebrating a holiday.
Little Zheng was seized by a whim: he also joined the line and waited. When it was his turn, the old woman — without even lifting her eyes — said, “Get out of here.”
Little Zheng wasn’t willing to move out of the way, and the other children angrily set upon him and threw him to the ground. He was like a drowned mouse. I helped him up, and in the midst of hisses from the other children, we left.
We went back to my home, where I lay down on the bed. I was still plagued by the same question: How could I amass enough capital to become a vendor? Sitting next to the bed, Little Zheng brainstormed: we could rob the old woman; in any case, she had earned her money fraudulently. I vetoed that idea. Unconvinced, he said, “She got the money through fraud.”
I didn’t think the old woman had been cheating people. I’d seen the multi-colored cotton candy, and I’d seen Amei eat it. The children’s excited expressions had persuaded me that something I hadn’t seen was real. I couldn’t rob her. And it was useless to kidnap her. So how would I get the capital?
“What if we establish good relations with the other children, and make them do as we say and hand money over to us?” Little Zheng was talking nonsense.
In reality, the children not only wouldn’t listen to us, but they had thrown Little Zheng down on the ground. Maybe the key was to gain their trust and then do what we wanted. For years, the old woman had shaken so much cotton candy out of that contraption that everyone believed she was a cotton candy vendor. Later, she used neither machinery nor sugar. Yet, everyone was still accustomed to the notion that she was a vendor. She had practiced this for years and years. We were just little kids; it was evident that no one would trust us. Even if we did trick people, no one would take the bait. We gave it a lot of thought. We couldn’t figure out what to do, and yet we weren’t willing to give up.
Someone came in. I thought it was my parents, and so I lay there very still. Little Zheng left the room to take a look. When he returned, his face was flushed. He poked me, meaning that I should get up right away.
I looked: the old woman was sitting in the outbuilding.
When Little Zheng and I walked over to her, she held out her hands. Each of us took hold of one hand and stood there waiting for her to speak.
“You can’t cheat people,” she said with her shriveled mouth.
Little Zheng and I nodded our heads earnestly.
We thought she wanted to say something else, but she seemed tired of talking. She just lowered her eyes again and started snoozing. We were still holding her hands. I was afraid my parents would return and question us, so I had to urge her to leave my home. As soon as I made this clear, she opened her eyes and angrily called me “fickle.”
Then my parents came back. They looked at the old woman sitting at the table, but said nothing. Weary of hanging around, Little Zheng went home.
When it was time for dinner, the old woman ate with us. My parents didn’t seem to think this was unusual; it was as if the old woman were part of our family, not the vendor from two streets away. After eating, she rose to leave. When she reached the door, she suddenly turned around and said to me: “Every day, I sleep and dream amidst the cotton candy.”
As she spoke, her breath and body both smelled sour. When I watched her walk into the distance, I was still tasting her words. Right up until Mother called me.
“You finally have some ambition. We feel reassured,” Mama said.
This time, Father broke precedent and didn’t scold me; rather, he stared at me questioningly for a long time.
The next day was another bright, sunny day. After I fetched water and dried vegetables, I walked over there. From a distance, I saw a long line of children, but the old woman wasn’t at the head of the line. I saw Little Zheng again; he was sitting where the old woman used to sit. He and the children were exchanging knowing looks. He beckoned to me, and I sat side by side with him on the bench. One by one, the children came and solemnly smacked our palms. Although they didn’t give us money, I felt utterly content. Little Zheng, the children, and I were immersed in daydreams about the multi-colored cotton candy. One after another, the honey jars in the depths of our memories were opened up: the strong fragrance overflowed into the air.
The Brilliant Purple China Rose
Mei lived on a small, lonely side street in the downtown area. The five-story building had been constructed in the 1950s. Mei and her husband Jin lived in a three-room apartment on the first floor.
Mei’s home was a little unusuaclass="underline" except for the kitchen, all the appliances and furniture were covered with cloths of various colors, as if the two of them were about to go traveling. It was only when they wanted to use these things that they uncovered them. For example, at mealtimes, they removed the heavy tablecloth, and when they drank tea, they uncovered the tea table and sofa. Even the two large mirrors hanging on the walls were covered with embroidered cloths. Only when they looked in the mirrors did they uncover them. Because of these cloths, the rhythm of Mei’s daily life was much slower than that of ordinary persons.
Mr. Jin seldom took off these covers, for Mei handled everything for him. All day long, he lay on a chaise lounge — the only piece of furniture that wasn’t covered with a cloth — and read a thick book, A Collection of Illustrations of Wild Plants, and looked repeatedly at the pictures in it. Lying on the chaise lounge, he was staring with his left eye at the book’s illustrations of humid euphorbia while at the same time glancing sideways at the shoe rack. He said loudly, “The cat has pulled the cloth on the shoe rack down to the floor!” From the kitchen, Mei heard him and rushed over to re-cover the shoe rack. Jin was obviously a sensitive person, too.
In the small garden outside, Mei grew neither flowers nor trees. From strips of bamboo and plastic film, she created an awning — a long one which looked ridiculous. Inside the plastic awning, she raised a strange plant from seeds that Jin had bought through a relative who lived in another place. The seeds were a small, purple crescent shape. Jin dug a furrow one foot deep and buried these seeds in it. He told Mei that this plant was the rare “underground plant.” None of it was on the surface. After the seeds were buried, they would grow straight down. He also fertilized and watered their plants, and then Mei covered them with the plastic awning. Jin said, After this, you don’t need to tend them. You only need to keep this plastic awning in shape, that’s all. When this plant grows underground, it makes strict demands of the environmental conditions. In short, the less environmental change the better.