Can Xue - Vertical Motion

The next day, the old woman was sitting there again.

“Hey, Little Qing. Hey, Little Qing. You’re out of your mind,” Amei taunted me.

I thought the children were all on to me: they must be jealous of my desire to become a vendor. Somebody might secretly sabotage my plan. But where could I raise the money? I had to force the old woman to divulge her secret recipe for shaking cotton candy out of thin air. I also had to ask her how to get rid of the strange, frightening sound that the contraption made. If it weren’t for that sound, wouldn’t I have already shaken out lots of multi-colored cotton candy?

Ah, she beckoned to me! From a long way away, I saw her beckoning to me! After setting down my dinner bowl, I ran toward her, even though Mother was scolding me from behind. I ran over to the old woman. How strange. She’d reverted to the way she was before: she was like a fossil, motionless.

=

“Granny — quick! Please teach me your secret recipe.”

I said this three times in a row.

She pointed at the contraption. I looked, but it was no longer there. There were only some flies licking the syrup that had fallen to the ground. The old woman stood up, pretending to turn the crank. I heard the tremendous sound again. After shaking it for a while, she looked disheartened and sat down heavily on the wooden stool. She uttered a crisp sound from her mouth, but not from her throat: “Take it!” I looked at the ground: nothing was there.

My hopes had been dashed: How could I reconcile myself to this? For so many years, my only goal had been to be a vendor — one like this trickster. Not only did I want to shake cotton candy out of thin air, but I also wanted to shake out little golden bells. First, I had to amass capital and buy a contraption and practice. But I had no capital. With no capital, I had to shake a treasure out of thin air that could turn into money for real. The old woman was my only hope. With my own eyes, I’d seen her empty hands shake out cotton candy. I couldn’t let this hope be dashed. As I reasoned with myself, I came up with a bizarre, audacious plan.

That morning, while the adults were at work at the bamboo-ware factory, Little Zheng and I began putting our plan to kidnap the old woman into effect. Everything went smoothly: we didn’t even need our rope and chair, because the old woman made no sound as we manipulated her. Little Zheng and I carried her, letting her old legs drag on the ground. She was heavy. After we dragged her to the custodian’s tool shed, we were ready to pass out from exhaustion. When we flung her to the ground, we also fell down and couldn’t get up for a long time.

“Let’s starve her and see if she opens her mouth or not!” Little Zheng said angrily.

We knew that she had only an alcoholic son at home, so there would be no problem for a while.

When we glanced at her, we saw that she was coiled into a ball on the ground. She was pawing at the dust with one hand and rubbing her face with it. Her face was now as black as the bottom of a pot, and her crocodile-like eyeballs were turning slowly. Little Zheng and I felt uneasy: Could she have some sinister motive?

“Granny, do you want something to eat?”

I had no sooner said this when my eyes were blurred by dust; they hurt too much to open. The old woman had thrown a handful of dust — accurately and ruthlessly. I had never expected this. I heard Little Zheng kick the old woman.

“Water! Water!” I shouted wildly.

=

In unbearable pain, I had no recollection of how Little Zheng got me home. The next day, my eyelids were swollen. Although I couldn’t go out, I was still thinking about the tool shed. How was she getting along there? I had a hard time waiting until afternoon when my parents left. Then I got out of bed. Covering my eyes with a washcloth, I moved to the door. From outside came the sound of running footsteps. Someone came in.

“Little Qing, little Qing, the floor of the tool shed is heaped with cotton candy. She’s almost buried in it!” It was Little Zheng.

“Really? Really?”

“Alas, we were really dumb. Why didn’t we wait and watch her sorcery?”

“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.