Page 153 - I Live in the Slums: Stories (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

the wall next to the main entrance of her home. She was doing handstands; she
had probably been doing them for a long time. Lu-er stopped in his tracks and
watched her. He watched for quite a while, and she was still leaning against the
wall. Lu-er thought to himself, It must be really hard to learn a skill. Just then,
the door opened, and Plum’s uncle emerged.
“There’s no point in learning this,” her uncle said. “Plum is a girl. Sooner or
later, she’ll get married, so right now she can learn whatever she wants. You’re a
boy. Your father expects a lot of you. You have to work hard.”
When the uncle walked away, Lu-er approached Plum. In the dusk, he could
faintly make out the sweat on her forehead.
She ordered Lu-er, “Move aside. You’re blocking my view.”
Lu-er stood beside her; he couldn’t keep from asking, “Plum, what are you

looking at?”
Plum didn’t answer. Lu-er circled around to the back of the house. Every
once in a while, he glanced at Plum: he wanted to see just how long she could
keep this up.
He waited until the sky was completely dark, and Plum was still clinging
upside down to the wall. This girl was really a superwoman! Lu-er turned
around: he felt discouraged. He walked out from behind the house and squatted
next to her. He whispered, “How long can you keep this up?”
“I sleep this way every night,” she said.
This made Lu-er sweat all over. A sound reverberated in Lu-er’s head: he
seemed to be hearing Plum berating him and telling him to leave. He stood up
and left. He ran into Auntie Hua on the road. Auntie Hua droned on and on. He
heard some of the words clearly: “Get going. Quickly. Something nice is waiting

for you!”
Auntie Hua was always in good spirits, always saying that something nice
was waiting for him. She had told him this the last time, too, and after that he
had gone to the rapeseed plot with Ji. He had witnessed Ji stab the human
shadow in the sky with a spear. Maybe that was the “something nice” that
Auntie Hua had spoken of. What other nice thing would be waiting for him
today?
Lu-er returned to his dark home and groped his way into bed. He had just
closed his eyes and fallen asleep when a flash of snow-white lightning roused
him. The lightning wasn’t followed by thunder. Just then, he heard his dad
talking in his sleep in the next room, “Lu-er! Lu-er! Why haven’t you run away
yet—I’m so disappointed in you! You’re good for nothing!” Then he heard both
his dad and his mama grinding their teeth in their sleep, as if chewing something
hard.
He was scared. He coiled up into a ball, afraid to move, intending to go on