Yiyun Li - The Vagrants

Tong watched his father chanting and dancing a little before he crouched down and, with a bellow, hit the brick with the heel of his hand. Ear would have enjoyed the evening if only he had been home in time—he was always the most excited member of the family when Tong's father put on a drunken show. The brick remained intact, but his father's hand looked red and swollen. Tong hid both hands in his pockets. Only once in a while could Tong's father break a brick in half, by sheer luck perhaps, but he never tired of his brick-hacking trick.

He tried another time with both hands but the brick did not yield to the strike. When he examined his hands, the sides of both of them were bleeding. Unfazed, he told Tong's mother to stop fussing, when she brought a clean, soft rag for him. He tried two more times, and when the brick refused to surrender, he kicked it, which seemed to hurt his toe more than it had his hands. He cursed and hopped on his good foot to the storage cabin, and before Tong's mother could protest, his father hit the brick hard with a hammer. The brick broke but not into two halves; he squatted down to study it and roared with laughter. Tong moved closer with his mother, and they saw three rusty iron rods in the middle of the brick, holding it together. “Where did they steal the construction blocks for their shack?” Tong's father said. He wiped his bleeding hands carelessly on his pants and drank more liquor, content with the fact that he had not lost face. When he was urged once again by Tong's mother to go to bed, he retreated into the bedroom with a last cup, and soon his snores thundered through the closed door.

Tong and his mother sat by the table and she smiled at him. “What a funny man he is,” she said quietly, and shook her head with admiration. The dinner was cold now and she stoked the fire to heat it up for Tong, but he was not in the mood for eating. “Mama, do you think something has happened to Ear?” he asked.

He shouldn't worry, Tong's mother said. Before he could reply, he heard a noise. He rushed to the yard and was disappointed to find that it was not Ear scratching on the gate but someone knocking. He opened the gate. In the yellow streetlight Tong saw the unfamiliar face of a middle-aged woman, her head wrapped in a shawl. She asked for his parents in a low voice. Next to her on the ground was a big nylon bag.

“Are you coming because of my dog? Did something happen to Ear?” Tong asked.

“Why, is your dog missing?”

“He's never been out so late,” he said.

“I'm sorry to hear that. But don't worry,” the woman said.

The grown-ups all said the same thing, without any offer to help. Tong stood aside but before he could invite the woman into the yard, his mother came to the gate and asked the woman what had brought her.

“Comrade, you must have heard of Gu Shan's case by now,” said the woman. “I'm here to talk to you about a rally on Gu Shan's behalf.”

Tong's mother looked around before apologizing in a low voice that she and her husband were not the type of people who cared for this information.

“Think about the horrible things that happened to a child of another mother,” the woman said. “I'm a mother of three. And you're a mother too. How many siblings do you have, boy?”

“Three,” Tong said.

His mother pulled him closer to her. “I'm sorry. This household is not interested in politics.”

“We can't run away from politics. It'll catch up with us.”

“It's not that I'm not sympathetic,” Tong's mother said. “But what difference would we make? The dead are dead.”

“But if we don't speak up now, there will be a next time, another child maybe. A thousand grains of sand can make a tower. We each have to do what we can, don't we?”

Tong watched his mother, who looked away from the woman and apologized again. Once in a while, beggars from out of town would stop in their alley, asking for money and food. Tong's father never allowed these people near their yard, but his mother always looked embarrassed when he shouted at the poor and hungry strangers that he was an honest worker and had no obligation to share his blood-and-sweat money. Sometimes when Tong's father fell into a drunken slumber, his mother would wrap up a few leftover buns and leave them outside the gate. When Tong got up early the next morning, the buns would always be gone. Did the beggars come back to get the buns? he asked his mother when his father was not around, but she only shook her head and smiled, as if she did not understand the question.

“Comrade, please listen to me just for this one time,” the woman said. “We're having a memorial service for Gu Shan tomorrow at the city square. Come and meet her mother. Perhaps you'll change your mind then and sign the petition to support the rally.”

Tong's mother looked flustered. “I can't go—I—my husband won't be happy with it.” She looked around as though to check if he was coming.

“I'm asking for your own heart and conscience,” the woman said. “You can't let your husband make every decision for you.”

Tong's mother shook her head slowly, as if disappointed at the accusation. The woman unzipped the nylon sack and brought out a white flower. “Even if you don't want to sign the petition, come with this white flower and pay respect to the heroic woman and her mother,” she said.

Tong looked at the flower, made of white tissue paper and attached to a long stem, also made of white paper. His mother sighed and did not move. Tong accepted the flower and the woman smiled. “You're a good helper for your mama,” the woman said to Tong, and then turned to his mother. “Every family will receive a white flower tonight. It won't pose any danger if you just leave the flower in the basket for us tomorrow. We'll be there before sunrise.”

Tong's mother closed the gate quietly behind the woman. She and Tong stood in the darkness and listened to the woman knock on their neighbor's gate. After a moment, Tong nudged his mother and handed her the paper flower. She took it, and then tore the flower off the paper stem and squeezed both together into a small ball. When Tong raised his voice and asked her why, she put a warm, soft palm over his lips. “We can't keep the flower. Baba will find out and he won't be happy.”

Tong was about to protest, but she shushed him and said the matter was better left where it was. She led him gently by the arm and he followed her into the front room of the house. His father was still snoring in the bedroom. The dishes that his mother had reheated had grown cold again, but she seemed too tired to care now. She sat him down at the table and took the seat on the other side. “You must be starving now,” she said.

“No.”

“Don't you want to eat something? There's your favorite potato stew.”

“No.”

“Don't be angry at me,” she said. “You'll understand when you're older.”

“Why don't you want to take the flower back tomorrow? The auntie said it wouldn't bring any trouble.”

“We can't trust her.”

“But why?” Tong asked.

“We don't want to have anything to do with these people,” his mother said. “Baba says they're crazy.”

“But Baba is wrong and they aren't crazy,” Tong said.

Tong's mother looked at him sharply. “What do you know to say so?” she said.

Tong did not speak. He thought about the leaflets he had kept and made into an exercise book. He had read the words on the leaflets; the part that he could grasp sounded reasonable to him— they said that people should have the right to say what they thought; they talked about respecting everyone's rights, however lowly people were in their social positions. Tong himself understood how it felt to be looked down upon all the time as a village boy.