Page 215 - I Live in the Slums: Stories (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

my hot-air balloon can climb five hundred meters . . . And I’m also not very
interested in heights. In this deathly still night, my heart is close to this village.”
“Has . . . it . . . always . . . been . . . like . . . this—” Yiping asked in a
lingering tone.
Glancing at her cousin, she saw him snickering. Yiping realized that there
was an enormous distance between the two of them. She grew dizzy and
grumbled, “Where did you come from?”
Her cousin didn’t answer at first. After a while, Yiping heard his voice; it was

intermittent and seemed to be coming from the ground.
“Here’s Auntie Li; she’s sticking her head out the window . . . Now she’s
walking into another room. She’s thinking about me
. . . She’s my relative. Oh, you mustn’t lean out; you’ll scare her . . . Here’s some
thick smoke: it’s your mama cooking breakfast in the dark . . .”
Yiping couldn’t see anything, because her eyes were filled with tears that had
suddenly gushed up. She quietly and repeatedly asked her cousin, “Should I cry?
Should I cry? . . . Should I . . .”
“Go ahead and cry, go ahead,” her cousin said.
His voice was still coming from the ground. Was it possible that he was no
longer beside her?
Yiping stretched her hand out to the right—she was startled when she felt
nothing but air! At the same time, she heard a dull sound: the wicker basket had

turned upside down on the ground, and she had rolled into the paddy field next
to it.
It was already light in the east. Yiping scrambled up. She was covered in mud
like a clay figurine.
Her mama stood in the field and called her, “Yiping! Yiping! What’s wrong
with you?!”
Yiping washed herself with water from the field and then went home. She
covered her face with her hands so that her mama couldn’t see her face.
“I was dreaming! I was dreaming!” she said as she walked.
“Oh, so you were dreaming. That’s really dangerous.” Her mother sighed.
As soon as she got home, Yiping took a shower and washed her hair. After
that, she went into her bedroom and bolted the door.
Not until she sat down on her bed did she remember what had just happened.
Had the hot-air balloon flown away while she was rolling into the field? When
she climbed out of the paddy field, she hadn’t seen the hot-air balloon.
Apparently her mama hadn’t seen it, either! So had her cousin flown the hot-air

balloon away? Yiping felt weak all over, but her eyes were dry; she wasn’t
crying. She also remembered that when she was in the basket her cousin’s voice
had come from the ground. He had said, “Go ahead and cry. Go ahead.” So the