Ha Jin - A Free Life

"What sickness, sickness…" With those words on his lips, he drifted off to sleep. The fluorescent tube remained on until daybreak.

HEIDI MASEFIELD called the Gold Wok and asked Pingping whether she had heard from Livia recently. The girl had run away from home, and for days her mother had been looking for her. Shocked, Pingping wondered if Taotao was still in touch with the girl despite his agreeing to stop e-mailing her. She told Heidi that she'd talk to her son and find out whether Taotao knew Livia's whereabouts. "I will call you tonight, Heidi," she said.

"Please do. I don't know why she did this to me."

"I hope she is not with someone."

"How do you mean?"

"Did you tell police?"

"Not yet. She disappeared three days ago. I thought she might have gone to her grandparents' or a friend's home." "Maybe you should let police know."

"If I still haven't heard from her by this evening, I'll do that."

Pingping didn't ask her why Livia had run away. Neither would she express her fear that Livia might have fallen into a molester's hands. From the brief conversation she guessed that the girl and her mother had quarreled over a boy who could be a bad influence. Livia was just thirteen and seemed already entangled with a number of boys. On the phone Heidi had revealed that recently Livia had often "played hooky." Pingping had almost gasped at that, not knowing the exact meaning of the idiom, and assumed it had something to do with "hookers." She went into the kitchen to tell Nan about the phone call. The radio was on in there, sitting on a shelf, and Nan was listening to Car Talk. He enjoyed the show, especially the hacking laugh of Tom, the older of the Magliozzi brothers. Tom's wild laughter was contagious and often made Nan chuckle or giggle when he was cooking. It was boring in the kitchen, so every Saturday he'd listen to Car Talk from beginning to end. He liked the seemingly casual way Tom and Ray treated their callers-teasing them a little so that everyone could have a good laugh. He often wished he could crack up like Tom, who would ha-ha-ha with total abandon and from the depths of his gut. Pingping, who liked Tom's laughter too but felt he cackled way too much, came in and turned down the radio, saying, "Heidi just called. Livia ran away from home."

Nan 's face stiffened. "I hope it hasn't implicated our son."

"She's a bad girl and 'played hooky.' "

"I 'played hooky' when I was in elementary school."

"What did you say?" She widened her eyes at him.

"We just fooled around in the mountains, doing kids' stuff."

"That's not what you would do with 'hookers.' "

Nan broke into laughter.

Discomfited, she went on, "This is not funny!"

" 'Play hooky' means to skip school. It doesn't pertain to prostitution."

"Oh, I see." She laughed, then went on, "Still, Livia is a bad girl." She removed the lid from a pot, as the broth in it was about to bubble over.

That afternoon they talked to their son about Livia. The boy had no idea about her disappearance but knew she didn't get along with Heidi. Recently Livia had often complained to him about her mother, who had a boyfriend named Joe. She disliked that man and thought he was just "a smarty-pants." Both she and Nathan tried to dissuade their mother from seeing Joe, but Heidi was obsessed, because, unlike the other men she had dated, Joe would always pick up the tab when they went out. Together they had traveled to Paris and London. Joe was a banker, but in her e-mail to Taotao, Livia had called him "a little jerk." She also wrote: "I never thought my mom was such a cock-tease."

"What that mean?" Pingping asked her son.

Nan explained, "A woman who is too fond of men."

"Something like that," agreed the boy. "That's a gentle expression." "I don't believe you," Pingping said. "Livia is never gentle to her mother."

"I mean Dad's explanation."

"Anyway, she can't talk about her mother like that. She's bad girl and crazy."

That night Pingping phoned Heidi and told her that Livia was angry about her taking a boyfriend. Heidi said someone had seen Livia at the train station three days before. She was worried sick and had reported her disappearance to the police. She didn't mind whatever Livia called her, as long as the girl could return home safe and sane.

TO THE Wus' astonishment, Livia showed up at the Gold Wok two days later. The girl was a foot taller than three years before, almost as tall as Pingping now. She wore a jeans skirt and high heels, her lips thickly rouged, nearly purple. Despite a few flecks of acne on her cheeks, she was handsome, as well as curvaceous. Her frizzy auburn hair was pulled back into a ponytail, giving her the look of a young woman. Both Pingping and Nan couldn't help but marvel at the girl they had never imagined Livia would grow into. Though unsettled by her sudden appearance, Pingping hugged her and said, "I told you you will grow tall."

Livia beamed. "You were the only person who knew me."

At those words Pingping's unease melted, and she called Taotao to the front to meet his friend. The boy came over, and the two of them hugged awkwardly, smiling without a word as if shy in the grown-ups' presence, as if he had known all along that she was coming.

Livia had no extra clothes with her and reeked of tobacco, which she said she'd caught from a man sitting close to her at the Greyhound station. "Anyways, don't think I smoke," she told Pingping. Then she caught sight of the God of Wealth sitting in the alcove and asked Taotao, "Who's this cross-eyed guy? Why offer him so many goodies?"

"He's the money god. We inherited him from the former owner of this place, and my parents don't want to disturb him." "Can he make your family rich?" "I've no frigging clue."

She patted the deity's porcelain belly and caressed his smiling face. "He's so pudgy, a model of obesity. Can I have an orange from this plate?" She lifted one of the fruits Pingping had placed at the deity's feet that morning.

"I'm not sure if you can now. They were was just offered to him."

Pingping said, "We have orange at home. Let's go." She wanted the girl to take a shower and change her clothes. Livia put the fruit back on the plate, and together she and Pingping went out, heading for Marsh Drive.

It was early August, and despite the clear sky, the air was so muggy that Pingping and Livia both opened their mouths to breathe as they walked. The roadside near an intersection was littered with napkins, a squat whiskey bottle, a few chicken nuggets and fried shrimp; the grass had been grooved by a truck's wheels, red mud exposed like festering wounds. Several photos were scattered around, all torn in half. "Whew, it's so humid!" Livia said to Pingping.

"This is Georgia, not Boston. It's not hottest time in summer yet."

"Hotter than this?"

"Of course, it can reach ninety-eight degree."

"God help me! How can human beings live here!"

Pingping didn't respond, but she was glad that her son didn't seem involved with the girl's running away, though she wasn't sure whether Livia had come to stay with them or mainly to see Taotao. In some sense she was pleased that the girl had shown up here, which meant that Livia must have felt somewhat attached to them, and now her mother could stop looking for her.

A snapping turtle appeared ahead of them, crossing the street. At the sight of the creature, Livia let out a cry and bounded over. "Wow, he's so cute!" She patted its dark shell and scared it to a halt, its head withdrawn from view. With her toes she overturned the turtle, whose underside was brownish and rubbery, semitranslucent. Ping-ping bent down, held one side of its shell, and put it back on its stomach. Still it wouldn't move, playing dead. Around them a pair of blue dragonflies hovered, their wings zinging and flickering with sunlight.