Page 30 - I Live in the Slums: Stories (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

dad cried, one shouldn’t bother him. I heard a noise at the door, and someone
came in. Tusheng made a face, pulled out the top, and set it spinning. The person
screamed and ran off. As for me, I was getting sort of used to the top. It no
longer bothered me so much. Could this little thing be making Tusheng and me
invisible? Why couldn’t his dad see us? A magical top! Magical! How could
there be such a rarity?
“Tusheng! Tusheng! I can’t see you. I know you can see me. Answer me.”
This sounded familiar. Who had I heard say this? He sadly picked up his
basket and went out to buy groceries. I felt as if my heart had been pressed down
by a rock.
Tusheng told me to sleep holding the top. He said something good would
happen. In my dreams, I was sleeping on a huge top disk. I could see everything:
the flowers and grass, trees, rocks, little animals, and other things. They were all

levitating. The sun, by contrast, was descending and rolling back and forth in
front of me. It was as though I could touch it with my claws. Someone anxiously
shouted under the disk, “Can you see me? Hey? Can you see me?”

I settled down in this home. The slums were my home. I was born here and grew
up here. I don’t remember how old I am, but I do remember things that happened
a long time ago. Back then, the houses in the lowlands had just been built and
weren’t really like houses. They were more like temporary work sheds. After the
houses had been built, the sun withdrew. It could shine only on the fence. The
children fell to the ground and slept. In the early morning frost, their faces were

frozen purple. I remember all of this.

Part Three

My tangled relationship with people was probably the main reason I
continued staying in the slums. When I was little and had only a thin layer of
hair, I was placed on a family’s stove. Did Mama give birth to me there, or did
this family mercifully take me in? I stayed inside a pottery bowl with fragments
of cloth in the bottom of it. If the fire was too hot, the bowl would be scalding,

and if I wasn’t careful, it would burn me. My body was blotched with scars for a
long time. As for food, the family served me a spicy brown porridge in a small
dish. Maybe that porridge was a soporific, too, for I would sleep all day after
eating it. It relieved the pain from being scalded. But because I was asleep, I
rolled around inside the bowl and was left with even more extensive burns. Most
of my body was affected, and I was in constant pain. I considered escaping from
this bowl, but the blisters on my feet had broken and ulcerated. How could I