Yiyun Li - A Thousand Years of Good Prayers

That is where I am from, a world different from the world of the alley girls. I am surprised that they have never heard of the Institute or nuclear industry. In my world every child knows nuclear weapons, and we have made “atomic bomb” a nickname for the principal of our elementary school. But then I have to admit that they surely know other things that I do not know, like Truman and the Truman-eating tiger.

THE WIND STARTS at lunchtime, the wind from Siberia that brings winter to our city, whistling across the alley and shaking the tiles on the roof of every house. For the whole afternoon I kneel on a chair by the window, waiting for the wind to calm down so that I can go out to play with the alley girls. The blue sky has turned brownish gray, the sun behind the sand and dust pale like a dirty white plate. In the late afternoon, one by one the four boys of the Song family run into the yard, each of them sporting a newly shaved head. I run into the yard. “Hey,” I shout in the wind, my eyes hurting from the dust. “What happened to your hair?”

“Gone,” the youngest of the brothers shouts back. “Windy days are good for haircuts.”

“Why?”

“No need to clean up. The wind does it,” the third brother says, making a gesture of being blown away by the wind.

I laugh. I like the boys of the Song family, each one of them knowing how to tell a joke and make people laugh. None of them is in school, the youngest one expelled from the high school for gang fights earlier in the year; nor is any of them working, since jobs are so scarce and the city is full of young idlers like the Song boys, to-be-placed youths, as they are called. The Song boys spend their days wandering in the city, picking fights with other boys and coming home with stories of their victory.

Mrs. Song sticks her head out their door and yells, “You money eaters! Who told you to shave your heads? I don’t have money to buy you hats.”

“Use the money we save on shampoo!” the oldest boy retorts.

I laugh and run back into the room.

“Out again to speak with the Song boys?” Mrs. Pang says, shoving coals into the burning belly of the stove.

“No,” I lie, though I know Mrs. Pang will not be angry with me. Mrs. Pang was once a nanny for me, and she spoils me the way I imagined kindhearted women would spoil an orphan, loving me for whom I am, exactly the opposite of my mother, whose love I have to earn with great effort and with little success.

“They’ll have a lot to worry about soon,” Mrs. Pang sighs, placing a water kettle on the stove.

“Why?”

“They need to think about finding wives in a few years, right? If they do not have jobs and places to live, how can they get married?”

“Can they inherit their parents’ jobs?”

“They sure can, but they only have two parents. What would the other two do?” Mrs. Pang says. “They learned nothing in school.”

“I bet the oldest two will not inherit Mr. and Mrs. Song’s jobs.”

“How do you know?”

“I just know,” I answer with a smile of secrecy. The oldest son of the Song family told me that their father worked in a factory making lightbulbs and their mother worked in a factory making light switches. “My mother clicks and my father is turned on. Perfect pair, huh?” he said, and was happy to see me laugh hard. Mr. Song is a quiet man, following every order of his loud wife, a loyal bulb always responding well to the light switch.

“Don’t boast because you know too little,” Mrs. Pang says. “Things change a lot. Within a blink a mountain flattens and a river dries up. Nobody knows who he’ll become tomorrow.”

NOT LONG BEFORE dinner, Mr. Pang comes back from work, chatting with Mr. Du in the yard about the weather before entering the room. Mr. Du rents the two small rooms on the eastern side of the quadrangle, and he pays the rent on time. He is a dutiful son, living with his old mother, who has been left paralyzed by a stroke. He does not have a wife, as nobody is willing to take care of his mother. Besides the Songs and the Dus, five other families live in the inner quadrangle, around a bigger yard that is connected to the front quadrangle with a moon-shaped door. The inner quadrangle used to be the Pangs’ living quarters while the front quadrangle was for the servants. But of course that was before the liberation. Mr. and Mrs. Pang live now in the small quarters that once belonged to their chauffeur and his family, with a living room, a bedroom, and another bedroom that used to be shared by the Pangs’ two daughters before they married, occupied by me when I visit. A small room next to the kitchen serves as Mr. Pang’s study, the door always locked and the windows shut tight behind a heavy curtain.

“How was your day?” Mr. Pang comes in, putting his briefcase in the usual corner and hanging his coat and hat neatly behind the door.

“Good,” I answer. “How was yours?”

“Working hard, as usual,” Mr. Pang says and turns to Mrs. Pang. “How was your day?” It is the only thing he can think of saying to us at the end of the day. In the morning it is always, How was your sleep?

Mrs. Pang does not reply. Mr. Pang never earns a penny, hardworking as he is, six days a week and sometimes overtime on Sundays. Nobody knows what he does at work. He was kicked out of his working unit at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, on the charge of being the son of a big landlord, an enemy of the proletarian class. After the Revolution, when he went back to his working unit in the Postal Department, he was told that his files had been lost and there was no record of his being employed there, even though every one of his colleagues had attended the meeting and voted for denouncing him as a dog son of the evil landlord class. Still he goes to work every day, taking the first of each month off to deliver copies of yet another letter to several sections in the Postal Department as well as the city government, appealing for an investigation of his history.

“A tiring day,” Mr. Pang says, and sits down at the head of the table.

Mrs. Pang places a bowl of rice heavily in front of him. “Nobody pays you to work. What can you do? Just wasting your own life. Better if you could stay home and help me with the housework.”

Mrs. Pang is the rice earner of the family. She was a nanny for years but I was the last kid she nannied. The year she spent with me made her age fast, as my mother always says when she blames me as the most difficult child in the world. After me, Mrs. Pang performs only small chores: buying groceries for some families in the alley, doing laundry for other families, and taking care of Mr. Du’s paralyzed mother.

Mr. Pang does not reply and counts the grains of rice with his chopsticks.

“Please eat, Mr. Worker,” Mrs. Pang says and exchanges a smile with me.

Mr. Pang eats silently. Dinner is the only time when Mr. Pang stays with us. Afterward, he goes directly to his study. One year he installed a folding bed in the study, and started to sleep there.

“What is he doing there in his study?” I ask when I am helping Mrs. Pang do the dishes.

“Heaven knows!”

“You know, he is the only one I know who has a study,” I say. “I thought only rich people had studies and they never used them.”

“That sounds like him.”

“Why?”

“Because he does nothing in his study.”

“But he is not rich.”

“Well, he was at one time.”

“Why does he still keep a study when he is no longer rich?”

“Because we still have these rooms left with us so he can play a rich man. Things could be worse — everything confiscated, not one penny left.”

“Why? You are good people.”

“Good people may not have good luck,” Mrs. Pang says. “Remember the saying? Bad luck always chooses a good man. ”