Yiyun Li - The Vagrants

On the way back to school, Tong listened to the boys behind him talk about the event. One boy swore that the woman had threatened to come off the stage and attack him, if it were not for the two policemen holding her; another boy told a story that he had heard from his grandfather: Sometimes a woman is a snake in disguise—if she succeeds in locking your eyes with hers, at night she can slither into your dreams and eat your brain.

What nonsense, Tong thought, but his spirit was low and he did not want to contradict the childish notions of his peers.

NEITHER LITTLE FOURTH nor Little Fifth was willing to take Nini's bad hand, so she had to let Little Fourth run free. Little Fifth tried to wiggle her hand out of Nini's grip too, and Nini said in a fierce tone that if she did not obey, a car would run over her, or someone would steal her and sell her to strangers and she would never see their parents again. Frightened, the girl started to cry, and Little Sixth, who had been happily babbling in a cotton sling on Nini's back a moment ago, watched her crying sister for a moment and then joined the howling.

For a moment, Nini thought of bringing all three sisters back home and locking them inside the house, as she often did when she went to the marketplace. She would go to the riverbank by herself. The young man Bashi, odd as his talk was, was an interesting person, and Nini was curious to find out if he had lied about the coal he would give her for free. But the girls would tell on her, and certainly her mother would send her to a corner to kneel through lunch. She should have hidden the tin of biscuits, Nini thought, and then remembered the barrette in her pocket. She hushed her sisters and displayed the blue plastic butterfly in the palm of her good hand. It took Nini five minutes of coaxing and threatening to persuade the older girls to agree to wait for their turns. Nini sat Little Sixth on the sidewalk and plaited her soft brown hair into a tiny braid on top of her head, and then clipped the barrette at the end. The braid wobbled, and Little Fourth and Little Fifth clapped with laughter. Nini smiled. At moments such as this, she liked her sisters.

When they reached the East Wind Stadium, all the entrances were closed; the only people walking around were the security guards in red armbands. “What are you doing here?” a guard shouted at Nini as they walked closer to the entrance. Little Fourth was no longer running, her hand nervously gripping Nini's sleeve.

Nini held Little Fourth closer and replied that they were coming for the denunciation ceremony.

“Which unit do you belong to?”

“Unit?” Nini said.

“Yes, which unit?” the man said with half a smile.

An older guard came closer and told his colleague not to tease the young girls, and the first man replied that he was not teasing but teaching them the most important lesson of life, which was to belong to a unit. The second guard ignored the young man and said to Nini, “Go home now. This is not a place for you to play around.”

Nini thought of explaining to the old man why she had to go to the denunciation ceremony with her sisters, but he was already waving his arms and shooing them away. Nini walked her sisters to the alley closest to the stadium, and told them to sit down at the corner. “Let's wait here.”

“Why?” Little Fourth asked.

“We're supposed to take a look at this daughter of the Gu family before she's executed,” Nini said. “If we don't see her, there'll be no dinner for us tonight.”

The two girls sat down immediately. A few minutes later, they started to play games with pebbles and twigs, chanting in whispers. Nini walked around in a circle, and soon Little Sixth fell asleep, her head heavy and warm on Nini's neck. Slogans, songs, and angry voices came from the loudspeakers in the stadium, but Nini could not tell what they were saying. She thought about Mrs. Gu, laying out pickled string beans and scrambled eggs and telling her to eat as much as she wanted, and Teacher Gu, handing her the paper frogs, his hands gentle yet not quite touching hers. They must have wished all along that Nini had never existed, since Nini's deformity was proof of their daughter's crime.

An ambulance and a police car drove down the main street and turned into the alley. The drivers turned off the sirens, but left the blue and red lights blinking. Little Fourth and Little Fifth stopped their game and asked, “What is it?”

Before Nini could reply, a policeman came out of the patrol car and yelled to the girls, “Where is your home? Go home now. Don't stay in the alley.”

Little Sixth was startled from her dozing and started to cry. Nini grabbed Little Fifth's hand and told Little Fourth to come with her. A few steps into the alley Nini saw one of the row houses without a fence. She pulled her sisters in and hid behind the fence of an adjoining house, and told them to keep quiet. Little Sixth was squirming on Nini's back. She put a finger into the baby's mouth and calmed her. The two younger girls wandered around the yard, checking the pile of firewood at a corner, crushing a few pieces of soft coal into powder.

Nini peeked out from behind the fence. A few people jumped out of an ambulance, all of them wearing white lab coats, white head covers and masks. One of them pulled a gurney out of the ambulance, and the two shorter ones—two women, Nini realized, as their hair crept out from underneath the head covers and reached their necks—pulled from the ambulance white and blue packages, tubes, and a strangely shaped lamp that connected to the inside of the ambulance with long metal arms. One of the women switched the lamp on and off for a test, and the four policemen, uncurious, patrolled nearby with black batons.

All of a sudden, someone started to shout. A dog darted across the alley, yelping, chased by a policeman waving his baton. “Quick, they're coming,” a voice shouted. The man who had been chasing the dog ran back, and Nini looked out again. Someone was dragged into the alley. For a brief moment, Nini thought she saw the black hair of a woman, but before she could take another look, several men lifted the person onto the gurney, which was at once covered by a piece of white cloth. The body struggled under the sheet, but a few more hands pinned it down. “What is it?” Little Fourth asked. Nini did not answer, her heartbeat quickening when she saw a red spot on the white sheet covering the body, at first about the size of a plate, then spreading into an irregular shape.

A few minutes later, the body was lifted off the gurney, its legs kicking; yet strangely, no noise came from the struggling body. Nini felt an odd heaviness in her chest, as if she was caught in one of those nightmares where, no matter how hard you tried, you could not make a sound. The policemen shuffled the body inside the police car. The men and women in the white lab coats climbed back into the ambulance, and a moment later, both vehicles turned onto the main street and, with long and urgent siren wails, disappeared.

“What is it?” Little Fourth asked again.

Nini shook her head and said she did not know.

“What is it? What is it?” Little Fifth said. Nini told her to stop being a parrot. She led them to the entrance of the alley where the ambulance had parked a few minutes ago. Before the younger girls could notice the drops of blood on the ground, Nini dragged her bad foot across them and smeared them into the dust. Little Fourth pointed to a black cotton shoe on the ground, and Little Fifth picked it up. There was a hole in the rubber sole; she pushed a finger through it and wiggled the finger. Nini told Little Fifth to get rid of the shoe, and when she refused, Nini grabbed it and threw it as hard as she could across the alley. Little Fifth started to cry and then stopped when a huge rumble came from the sky. Nini and her sisters looked up. An army helicopter flew over them like a huge green dragonfly. “Helicopter,” Little Fourth said, and Little Fifth echoed her, both of them pointing their fingers at the sky.