Yiyun Li - The Vagrants

“I've found you a brother-in-law,” Nini whispered to Little Sixth in the street, her lips touching the baby's ear.

The baby pointed to a police car with lights flashing on a side street and said, “Light-light.”

“I'll find you a good husband too, and people will be so jealous that their eyes will turn green,” Nini said to Little Sixth, imagining the helpless infuriation of her parents and the two older girls. If Little Fourth and Little Fifth behaved, she would consider helping them too. She pulled gently until the baby had to look at her instead of the police car. “Listen. Do you want a better life? If you do, you have to stick with me. Don't ever love anybody else in the family. Nobody will make you happy except me, your big sister.”

“Sis,” Little Sixth said, and put her wet mouth on Nini's cheek.

“Your brother-in-law,” Nini said, and blushed at her audacious name for Bashi. “Your big brother, he knows how to make a stone laugh.”

The baby babbled, practicing saying “brother,” a new word for her.

“He's rich and he'll give you a dowry when it's your turn to get married. Don't ever expect that from anybody else.”

When they entered Bashi's house through the unlocked door, for a moment nobody replied to Nini's greetings. The bedroom door was closed. Nini knocked on the door. “I know you're inside. Don't try to play a trick on me,” she said.

There was no reply from the room. Nini put her ear on the door and heard a rustling of clothes. “Bashi?” she said.

A second, he replied, his voice filled with panic. Nini pushed the door open. Bashi rushed to her, a hand buttoning his fly. “I didn't know you were coming,” he said, panting a little.

She studied his flushed face. “Who's here?”

“Nobody,” Bashi said. “Only me.”

Nini shoved Little Sixth into Bashi's arms and went in to check. She found Bashi's reaction suspicious, and instinctively she knew it was another woman he was hiding from her. She picked up Bashi's unmade quilt from his bed but there was no one hiding underneath. She peeked under the bed. On the other side of the curtain, his grandmother's bed was empty. So was the closet.

“What are you looking for?” Bashi said with a smile, the baby sitting astride his shoulders and pulling his hair.

“Are you hiding someone from me?” Nini asked, when she could not find a trace of another woman in the bedroom.

“Of course not,” Bashi said.

“Why else were you sleeping in the middle of the morning?”

“I wasn't really sleeping. I came back from a walk and thought I would take a rest in bed,” Bashi said. “In fact, I was dreaming about you when you came in.”

“What idiot would believe you?”

“Believe me,” Bashi said. “I have no one to think about but you.”

Nini thought of laughing at him but he gazed at her with a desperate look in his eyes. “I'll believe you,” she said.

“I talked to Mrs. Hua.”

Nini felt her heart pause for a beat. “What did she say?”

“She did not say no,” Bashi said.

“But did she agree?”

“She said she needed to talk to Old Hua, but I think they will agree. I can't see why not. Mrs. Hua looked like she was ready to kiss me when I said I wanted to marry you.”

“Nonsense. Why would she want to kiss you? She's an old woman.”

“Then do you want to kiss me, young woman?”

Nini punched Bashi on his arm. He jumped aside, which made the baby shriek with happiness. Nini opened both arms, trying to catch Bashi, and he hopped around, all three of them laughing.

Nini was the first to calm down. She was tired now, she said, sitting on Bashi's bed. Little Sixth pulled Bashi's hair, demanding more rides. He marched around in the bedroom, singing a song about soldiers going to the front in Korea, the baby patting his head and Nini humming along. When he finished the song, he lowered the baby and put her next to Nini. Then he took the baby's kerchief and folded it into a small mouse and played tricks with his fingers so that the mouse jumped onto Little Sixth as if it had a life of its own. The baby screamed with joy; Nini was startled and then laughed.

“What a lucky man I am to have a pair of flower girls here,” Bashi said.

Nini stopped laughing. “What did you say?”

“I said with one trick I made both of you laugh.”

“No, you said something else,” Nini said. “What did you mean?”

Bashi scratched his head. “What did I mean? I don't know.”

“You're lying,” Nini said, and before she knew it, tears came to her eyes. She sounded like the bad-tempered women she saw in the marketplace; she sounded like her own mother, and she was ashamed.

Little Sixth chewed on the tail of the kerchief mouse and watched them with interest. Bashi looked at Nini with concern. “Do you have a stomachache?”

“What ideas do you have about the baby?” Nini said. “I tell you— she's not yours. She'll have the best man in the world.”

“A man even better than I?”

“A hundred times better,” Nini said, though already she was starting to smile. “Don't ever set your heart on Little Sixth.”

“For heaven's sake, she's only a baby!”

“She won't always stay a baby. She'll become a big girl and by then I know you won't like me, because she'll be prettier and younger. Tell me, is that your scheme, to marry me so you will one day get Little Sixth?”

“I swear I've never schemed anything.”

“And when the baby is an older girl—”

“I'm her big brother so of course I'll watch out for her. Pick for her a man a hundred times better than I.”

“Brother-brother,” Little Sixth said, the kerchief still between her teeth.

She did not believe him, Nini said, trying to keep her face straight.

“I'm serious. If not, all the mice of the world will come and nibble me to death, or I will be stung by a scorpion on my tongue and never talk again, or some fish bone will stick in my throat and I will never be able to swallow another grain of rice,” Bashi said. “I swear I only have you in my heart.”

Nini looked at Bashi and saw no trace of humor in his eyes. “Don't swear so harshly,” she said in a soft voice. “I believe you.”

“No, you don't. If only you knew,” Bashi said, and took a deep breath. “Nini, I love you.”

It was the first time he had said love, and they both blushed. “I know. I love you too,” Nini said in a whisper, her arms and legs all in the wrong place, her body a cumbersome burden.

“What? I can't hear you. Say it louder,” Bashi said, with a hand on his ear. “What did you just say?”

Nini smiled. “I said nothing.”

“Ah, how sad. I'm in love with someone in vain.”

“That's not true,” Nini said, louder than she'd intended. Bashi looked at her and shook his head as if in disbelief, and she panicked. Did he misunderstand her? “If I were not telling the truth, the god of lightning would split me in half.”

“Then the goddess of thunder would boom me to death,” Bashi said.

“No, I would die a death a hundred times more painful than you.”

“My death would be a thousand times more painful than yours.”

“I would become your slave in the next life,” Nini said.

“I would become a fly that keeps buzzing around you in the next life until you swat me to death.”

Neither spoke, as if they were each entranced by their desire to demonstrate their willingness to suffer for the other. In the quietness they listened to the baby babbling. Nini wondered what they would become now that they knew how much they desired each other. When Bashi touched her face, it was only natural for his lips to touch hers, and then they let the rest of their bodies drag them down to the bed, onto the floor, without a sound, and they held tight to each other until their bones hurt.