Yiyun Li - The Vagrants

“I can't wait for another minute to move out of my parents’ house. I hate everyone there,” Nini said. As if to dispute her, the baby babbled on the other side of the curtain. Nini got up from the bed and peeked at Little Sixth. She was crawling to reach half a cracker she had missed earlier. She sucked her lips with satisfaction after she ate the cracker and then began to play with the rope. She was a good baby; as long as she was not hungry, she could entertain herself for a long time. Nini let go of the curtain and sat down next to Bashi. “Do you think I can bring Little Sixth with me if I marry you?” she said.

“Two at a time? I must be a man hit by good fortune right on the forehead,” Bashi said.

If she were not there to watch out for Little Sixth, who knew what might become of her, especially if her mother gave birth to a baby brother soon. If her parents did not like the idea, Nini thought, she would find a way to sneak the baby out of the house. But why wouldn't they be happy to get rid of two daughters without any trouble? The longer Nini thought about this, the more she was convinced that Little Sixth belonged to her more than to her parents. She could find a good husband for the baby when the time came. She turned to Bashi and patted his face to stop his grinning. “I'm serious,” she said. “When can I leave my parents?”

“Wait a minute,” Bashi said. “How old are you?”

“Twelve. Twelve and a half.”

“Honestly, I would like to get married now,” he said. “But there's a problem. You might be a little young yet to marry me.”

“Why?”

“Because there are people who might not be happy about it.”

“Who? What does it have to do with them?”

Bashi wagged a finger at Nini and hushed her. He knocked his forehead with his fist and Nini watched him. There was an unusual aroma in the room, and Nini twitched her nose hard to identify the smell. “The hedgehog,” she said finally. “It's ready.”

Bashi put a hand on Nini's mouth. “Don't distract me,” he said, and let his palm touch Nini's lips. The mud on his hands had already dried up. Nini thought about the hedgehog, roasted in the ashes. With Bashi there were always things unexpected that made her happy. Nini began to think that perhaps it was a very good idea to marry him.

“I know,” Bashi said after a moment. “Have you heard of child brides?”

“No.”

“Ask Mrs. Hua and she'll tell you about it. Sometimes people send their young daughters to live with their future husbands and their families, and when the girls are old enough, they get married. Maybe you can become my child bride.”

“Will those people you talked about be unhappy with this?”

“Why should they be, if you're my child bride? We can even ask Mr. and Mrs. Hua for help if your parents don't agree with the idea. You can live with the Huas, because they're good friends of mine. They won't mind having you around. I can pay them for your expenses. Will you be happier that way?”

Nini thought about the arrangement. Would her parents let her, a free maid, go so easily? But what could they do if she insisted on leaving for her own husband? People in the marketplace always said that a daughter who was ready to marry had a heart like the water splashed out of a basin—no matter how hard the parents tried, they would never get the water back. Of course her parents would understand this. Perhaps they would even celebrate her success in finding a husband; perhaps they would be generous enough to give her a tiny dowry. “Let's find the Huas and talk to them,” Nini said.

“What an impatient girl,” Bashi said. “They're burying my grandma at this moment. We'll see them later. We have something more important to do.”

“The hedgehog?”

Bashi smiled. “More important than that. Have you heard of the bride check?”

“No.”

“It used to be that the matchmaker checked the bride's body and made sure she was in fine shape for a wife,” Bashi said. “In the case of a love marriage, like ours, the husband does the checking himself.”

Nini thought about her crooked face, her chicken-claw hand, and her crippled foot. Was there a possibility that he could still reject her, even if he promised to take her in as a child bride?

“Don't look so nervous,” Bashi said, and moved closer. He pulled Nini to her feet and let her stand in front of him. Then he put his hands on her shoulders and worked his thumbs underneath Nini's old sweater. “Just like this,” he said, and rubbed her collarbone with his thumbs. “Does it hurt?”

Nini looked at his face, serious with a studying expression. She held her breath and shook her head. He moved his hands downward and cupped her rib cage in his two big palms. Tickled, she wiggled with laughter. He shushed her and said, “The sweater is a problem. Do you want to take it off?”

Nini looked at Bashi suspiciously and he smiled. “You don't have to,” he said, and squeezed his hands beneath her sweater and undershirt and enclosed her washboard body again, his hands hot on her cool skin. She shuddered. He moved his fingers up and down, as if he was counting her ribs. “A bit on the skinny side,” he said. “But it's an easier problem to solve than having a fat hen.”

Nini looked up at Bashi's face, close to her own. It wasn't right for a stranger to touch a girl this way, Nini knew, but Bashi was no longer a stranger after their talk of marriage. His hands on her skin made her feel good. She wasn't nervous now, yet her body still shivered as if it had its own will. When his hands wiggled downward she did not protest. He let his hands stay around her waist for a moment and said with a hoarse voice, “I need to check you down there too.”

“Do you think the hedgehog will be overdone when we finish?” Nini asked. The aroma of slightly burned meat from the kitchen was getting stronger and she was surprised that Bashi did not notice it.

Bashi did not reply. He picked Nini up and laid her on his bed. She felt his hands working on her belt, a long and threadbare piece of cloth she had ripped from an old sheet. Let her do it, she said, and pushed him slightly aside, feeling embarrassed in front of him for the first time. She untied the knot and he helped her take her pants and underpants down to the crook of her knees. She looked up at Bashi but he seemed to be shaking more than she was. Was he cold? she asked curiously. He did not answer, and covered her exposed body with a blanket. He needed a flashlight to go under there so she did not catch a cold, he said in a hushed voice, and he left the bedroom.

Nini waited. The hedgehog would be badly burned when they were finished, she thought. She wondered what Bashi would do to her—the bedroom business, as the men and women in the marketplace talked about? Whatever it was, Nini believed that it was a good thing, because those shameless women always pretended to be uninterested but their flushed faces and giggles told a different story.

Nini wondered why it was taking Bashi so long to find a flashlight. Little Sixth started to cry on the other side of the curtain. “I'm here,” Nini said in her gentlest voice, and when the baby did not calm down, Nini started to sing Little Sixth's favorite lullaby, a song Nini had made up herself and sang to the baby when she was in a good mood. Little Sixth stopped crying and babbled to herself; Nini continued singing, lost in the wordless song of her own creation.

When Bashi finally returned, he seemed less flustered.

“Where were you?” Nini asked. “It took you so long.”

“Ah, I just suddenly needed to go to the outhouse,” Bashi said. He shone the flashlight on her face. “The best one a detective could have,” he said, and crawled underneath the blanket, his legs dangling by the bedside. Nini felt him gently move her legs apart. She was about to ask him what he was doing under there, when a finger tentatively touched her between her legs. She badly felt a need to pee but she held it in and waited. The finger moved around a little, so gentle she almost did not feel it. After a long moment, Bashi emerged from beneath the blanket. “You're great,” he said.