Page 158 - I Live in the Slums: Stories (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

HER OLD HOME

She hadn’t wanted to give up her bungalow in the city. Twenty years ago,
Zhou Yizhen had come down with a serious illness. The best thing to do was sell

the house and move to an old apartment building in the distant suburbs—the
living quarters for workers at a tire factory. She said to her husband, Xu Sheng,
“Be patient for another year or two, and then you’ll be free.”
Xu Sheng glared and retorted, “Life and death are determined by destiny. We
don’t get to make these big decisions.”
Living in the tire factory quarters was hard on Zhou Yizhen. She couldn’t
remember when she began to believe that she wouldn’t die after all. She
contacted a nearby woolen mill, and knitted scarves and caps for it at home.
After cooking, she sat on the balcony every day and knitted, and she became
steadily healthier. The air in the suburbs was better than in the city, and fresh
vegetables were available. Zhou Yizhen regained her health, and the nightmare
in her memory gradually dimmed.
Xu Sheng hadn’t mentioned their former home for years because he didn’t
want to make her feel bad.
Although the city wasn’t far away by bus, Zhou Yizhen had never gone back
to see their old house. She wasn’t very sentimental, but after all she had lived

there half her life, had gone to primary and middle school there, and had worked
in a factory, married, and given birth to her daughter. That bungalow figured in
so many of her memories. Although she’d been away for twenty years, she often
still lived there in her dreams. She rarely dreamed of the tire factory quarters.
Zhou Yizhen was planning to deliver her consignment to the mill Wednesday
afternoon (she had knitted some baby shoes and would earn quite a lot for this)
when the phone rang. It wasn’t her daughter Jing. The woman on the other end
of the line asked Zhou Yizhen when she would come to see her old home, as if
they had an appointment. Zhou Yizhen remembered her the moment she heard
her voice. It was the woman who had bought their bungalow all those years ago.
Her name was Zhu Mei, a single woman five or six years younger than she.
Zhu Mei worked in a design institute. Zhou Yizhen remembered the evening she

turned the house over to her. Zhu Mei kept standing in the shadows behind the
half-open door, as though she didn’t want others to get a good look at her
expression. So many years had passed, and yet Zhu Mei was still thinking about
her. Zhou Yizhen felt nervous, but she couldn’t explain why. Zhou Yizhen said