Yiyun Li - A Thousand Years of Good Prayers

Ruolan shrugged and did not reply. Her mother had been ill, or thought of herself as ill, for as long as Ruolan remembered. Every morning, her mother rocked her awake and told her to get rid of the dregs from the medicine pot — it was said that to make a patient recover, the dregs were to be scattered on the crossroads for people to trample on. Ruolan believed that her mother did it only to remind the world that she herself was not well; since age five, Ruolan had been the one to carry the medicine pot into town, disgusted by the bitter smell of the leftover herbs, her mother’s prolonged and fake illness, and the looks people gave her.

Uncle Bing drank silently for a few cups. Ruolan pushed a plate of fried peanuts toward him. “Uncle Bing, drink slowly,” she said.

He downed another cup. “Want to hear a story, Ruolan? Once upon a time, there was a man who loved dragons so dearly he had dragons painted everywhere in his mansion.”

“And when the real dragon came to visit him, he was scared out of his wits,” Ruolan said. “You’ve told it many times before.”

“Once upon a time there was a man who spent a fortune to buy a pearl—”

“And he fell in love with the box, and thought it alone was worthy of the money, so he returned the pearl to the seller,” Ruolan said. “Why are your stories always about idiots?”

Uncle Bing smiled a sad and drunk smile. “What other stories can an idiot tell?”

Ruolan regretted her impatience right away. It had always been a game between them that Uncle Bing told stories and sang folk tunes to her when they were left alone. But she knew enough now to start suspecting the real reason for those stories and songs. The neighborhood grannies and aunties commented to her on her father’s long absence, and the frequent visits of Uncle Bing. “Do they send you to bed early?” some of them asked, their smiles pregnant with mean curiosity. “Is your mother still sick when your uncle’s around?”

Ruolan tried to ignore the women, chatty and shameless like a group of female ducks, but they had left something poisonous inside her. She had looked at herself in the mirror and tried to find a resemblance to her father’s face, or Uncle Bing’s. She did not look like either of them.

“Here’s a new story,” Uncle Bing said and poured another cup for himself. “Once upon a time a man heard the story about magic leaves. If you put a magic leaf in front of your eyes, it would make you disappear so nobody would be able to see you. The man believed in the story, and went out to gather bags of leaves every day. He put each leaf in front of his eyes and asked his wife, ‘Can you see me now?’ The wife said yes until she finally lost her patience. ‘Oh, heaven, where are you, my husband? I can’t see you now.’ The man was happy. ‘Finally, the magic leaf!’ he said, and went to the marketplace with the leaf in front of his eyes. But when he tried to steal, people caught him and gave him a good beating.”

Ruolan laughed for the sake of Uncle Bing. He laughed, too. “Poor woman. How could she marry such a stupid man?” Ruolan said afterward.

“Perhaps her father didn’t pay the matchmaker enough,” Uncle Bing said.

“Perhaps she was very ugly, she could only marry an idiot.”

“Or she was a lazy woman, nobody else wanted to marry her.”

“Or when she was a girl, she stole men, so only an idiot wouldn’t mind being a cuckold,” Ruolan said with a wicked joy.

“Don’t say words that you don’t understand,” Uncle Bing said.

“I’m not a child anymore,” she said. “A good woman doesn’t let her husband live elsewhere and let another man visit her every week.”

“Ruolan,” Uncle Bing said, and she stared back until he looked away. “You’re a big girl now, and Uncle Bing is old,” he said, and got up drunkenly.

Ruolan ran across the room and made a bed for him in her cot before he could stop her. When Uncle Bing came and stayed overnight, he slept in her cot at the corner of the living room, and she slept with her mother in her big bed. “Uncle Bing,” she said, the edge of her defiance softened by a sudden pity for his sadness, “have a nice sleep.”

Later, Ruolan huddled on the edge of the bed, as far away as possible from her mother, whose shallow and quick breathing reminded Ruolan of a dying fish. Ruolan covered her head with the blanket, but the smell of her own body, warm and familiar, mixed with the bitterness of the herbs from her mother’s bed, nauseated her. She wished she would never have to sleep near her mother, but then, when Uncle Bing’s bus was late, she was the one to look out the door for the sight of him every three minutes until her mother reminded her not to lean on to the door frame like a shameless girl displaying herself for all the men in the world.

Every time after Uncle Bing left, Ruolan buried her head in her pillow and sniffed the unfamiliar scent of his hair. It smelled strangely comforting, different from the stinky boys in her class, or her own home.

ON THE FIRST day of every month, Ruolan walked to the cement factory three miles outside the town for the illness allowance for her mother. Ruolan’s mother had stopped working totally two years ago. She was forty-one now, still four years short for the early retirement pension.

Ruolan signed the slip and accepted the few bills, soft and worn out, from the old accountant. “How’s your mother?” he asked.

“All right.”

The old man looked at Ruolan from above his glasses and shook his head. “ The most beautiful woman always has the saddest fate, ” he said. “When your mother first came— you were a baby then — she looked so young that you’d think she was only sixteen. Who’d imagine that she would become ill so early?”

Ruolan left the old man lost in his own sentiment. She could not imagine her mother possessing any beauty. Because she lay in bed all day long, her complexion was sickly pale, almost translucent. Her hair, carelessly cut by herself, was like a bird’s nest most of the time. She wore her pajamas even when she had to walk to the next lane for the public outhouse. On Saturday afternoons, however, before Uncle Bing’s arrival, she cleaned herself and changed into her best clothes. She powdered her face, too, with stale, caked rouge; it gave her hollowed cheeks an unnatural pink, as if she were a patient dying from consumption.

That summer, Ruolan had her first period. She was not surprised; she had seen darkly stained tissues in the public outhouse, and had heard other girls her age discuss it. She found an old cotton shirt in a trunk and ripped it into rags. “What are you making all the noises for? I’m having a headache now,” her mother said from her bed.

Ruolan hesitated and answered, “I have my bad luck with me.”

Her mother sighed aloud and came out to the living room. “ Bad luck? What’s bad about it?”

“What do you call it, then, Mama?” Ruolan said. Her mother had never talked about it with her; moreover, untidy as her mother was, Ruolan had never seen stained underwear or any sign of her having the monthly visit of her bad luck.

“It’s not something you need a name for,” Ruolan’s mother snapped. “You don’t need to go around and talk to everybody about it.”

“Whatever,” Ruolan said under her breath.

Ruolan’s mother stared at Ruolan with contempt. “Why does a patient want to waste her energy talking to a brat like you?” her mother said, and counted a few bills and coins from her small silk purse. “Go buy what you need.”

Ruolan accepted the money. She did not know what she needed, but she would rather ask a stranger in the street than her own mother.

“And stop by at the old pharmacy,” her mother said, and brought out a piece of carbon paper and two more bills. “Ask for a week’s dose for yourself.”