Page 155 - I Live in the Slums: Stories (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

Her voice was low and constrained, filled with fury. She pounded on Lu-er’s
shoulder with something made of stone. Lu-er cried out in pain.
Lu-er crawled out the door. The door closed tightly. He had just struggled to

stand up when the woman, who was carrying a basin of water, opened the door.
She threw the water all over him until he was drenched. She kept howling, “Next
time, I’ll chop your head off.”
When he got home, Dad was also there. He stopped him, held a cigarette
lighter up to his face, and said, “I’ve changed my mind about you.”
Lu-er tossed and turned in bed for a long time. He was thinking of the “nice
thing” that Auntie Hua had spoken of. Then, dazed, he fell asleep. He dreamed
of running away from the village and running toward the rapeseed plot. Above
him, that huge dark shadow was about to press down on him . . .

Plum taught Lu-er how to do handstands, but Lu-er soon gave it up. When he
was upside down against the wall, the atmosphere all around turned gloomy, like
a gale brewing. The flying sand obscured his vision. The moment he left the
wall, everything returned to normal. He tried this several times, always with the
same result. He rubbed his eyes until they were red. “You’re really a loser,”
Plum said to him. Lu-er felt, too, that he was really good for nothing. The sparks
of hope in his heart were extinguished bit by bit.
“What do you see when you’re upside down?” he asked Plum.
“Me? I’ve never looked all around. Hunh.” She answered self-confidently,
“I’ll be the best when I’m grown up, whether I’m married or not.”
Plum’s words startled Lu-er. He felt ashamed of himself. He despaired.
Compared to Plum or Ji, he was no more than garbage. There was no place for

him. Where could he run off to—a piece of garbage like him? Lu-er sighed.
“Lu-er, you don’t want to do handstands. You don’t concentrate well enough
to learn this. Let’s go to my uncle’s home. There’s something in his home that
you want to see.”
“Really? That’s weird. How do you know what I want to see?”
“Of course I know.”
Plum’s uncle’s home was east of the rapeseed plot. It was a one-story adobe
house, half of it buried in the ground. You had to take a flight of stairs down to
get inside.
After they came to a stop inside the large half-subterranean house, they saw
no one there. But when Lu-er took a closer look, he realized the house wasn’t
empty: people were lying under three large beds and were now sticking their
heads out and looking at the two of them. Just then, Lu-er heard a huge clap of
thunder. When they had come down just now, it was a clear day; it had changed