White Horse Read online

  ‘Motherfucker! Motherfucker!’ I flung sand as hard as I could in his face.

  There was a big fuss and the teacher took us to the school office, where we waited for our parents to pick us up.

  My aunt was the first to arrive, rushing in furiously. ‘What’s up? Yun Yun? Who’s been bullying you?’

  I looked at her and burst into tears.

  Auntie turned to Ms Zhu, our class teacher. ‘Who’s been bullying Pu Yun?’

  Before Ms Zhu had a chance to open her mouth, Chen Zinian’s father came in. Immediately he saw Auntie, he greeted her politely: ‘Mrs Cai, how are you?’

  Auntie glowered at him, and said nothing.

  ‘Ms Zhu, what’s Chen Zinian done?’ Chen Zinian’s father sounded worried now.

  ‘The pair of them had a fight in the sports hall,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why.’

  ‘A fight?’ Auntie raised her eyebrows. ‘Yun Yun, did he hit you?’

  Tears pouring down my face, I played my trump card: ‘He said I didn’t have a mum.’

  My auntie instantly leapt up and, seizing the boy by the ear, told him off. ‘You’re a very bad boy! Such a wicked thing to say! You think you can bully Yun Yun because she has no mum? Let me tell you something. I’m her mum now.’

  She was weeping as much as I was, so loudly you would think it was her who had been hit. Her cheeks streamed with tears but she just gave them a quick wipe with her hand, and grabbed Chen Zinian’s dad’s grey checked jacket.

  ‘You’re our neighbour, Mr Chen, you’ve known Yun Yun since she was a baby. how could you teach the kid to say such wicked things!’

  Chen Zinian’s dad was scarlet in the face. He wrenched his jacket free of Auntie’s grip and retorted, ‘Mrs Cai, I’ve never said anything like that to him. I don’t know where the wretch picked it up from.’ And he gave his son a smack across the head with his free hand.

  Chen Zinian burst into howls of tears.

  My auntie led me away. She was hiccupping with sobs, and her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen.

  ‘Don’t be angry, Auntie,’ I said. ‘I’ll be a good student from now on and they won’t dare tease me.’

  ‘What a good girl you are, Yun Yun,’ she said.

  But she was still in a temper, and took me to see my dad so she could give him a piece of her mind, too.

  My dad hung his head, and didn’t utter a word. ‘Pu Changshuo,’ she began, ‘I don’t care if you have a girlfriend, and it’s none of my business who she is, but you can’t neglect your daughter. Either look after her properly or stop being her father and that’ll be that. And that Xiang woman’s a teacher, too! She should be helping you look after her. Are you completely hard-hearted?’

  She went on and on for ten minutes, and only stopped when she remembered we hadn’t had lunch. We went to a restaurant to eat. After she left, my dad took me back to school and bought me a lollipop on the way.

  ‘I’m sorry, Yun Yun, I haven’t treated you right,’ he said. ‘I’ll be a good dad from now on.’

  The only thing I was unhappy about in those days was that Qing felt she was too grown-up to play with me any more. I used to wait at my aunt’s house for her to come home from school, but she would shut herself in her room. I don’t know what she was doing, but Auntie used to shout to her from the kitchen, ‘Zhang Qing! Come out and play with Yun Yun!’

  ‘I’m doing my homework.’

  There was nothing Auntie could say to that, so she called me in and said she’d play with me instead.

  But Auntie was no fun to play with so I went back to watching TV and eating jam-filled biscuits which she brought back from the food store where she worked.

  I knew Qing was keeping something from me. Once, at dinner, I asked her, ‘Is it fun at middle school?’

  ‘There’s a lot of homework,’ she answered, deadpan. ‘It’s tiring.’

  ‘I can help,’ I offered.

  She glared at me. ‘Do you think this is still primary school? How could you possibly do middle school homework?’

  When she’d finished, she wanted to go out with her friends, but my auntie said, ‘It’s dark. What are you going out for now?’

  ‘We’re preparing for the biology class experiment tomorrow,’ said my cousin, and she ran out.

  I’d never been to biology class; we just had nature study. While my auntie did the washing up, I messed around in my cousin’s room. I took everything out of her school bag to have a look.

  There was an English textbook with some writing I couldn’t understand, a pencil case with rubber bands in all different colours, and 70 cents in coins.

  I decided to take 10 cents and a red rubber band, because she’d hurt me.

  A little while later, I found her letters.

  The letters were in the lining of her school bag, and as soon as I looked I knew they were love letters. One began: ‘Dear Qing . . .’

  My heart went pitter-patter and I strained my ears for any noise outside. But my cousin was still out and my auntie was in the kitchen. She called to ask if I wanted an apple, and I said, no thanks. Once I’d read one letter, there was another, half-finished, which was her reply: ‘Dear Feng,’ it began.

  My cousin was in love.

  By the time she returned, I had put everything back, even the coin and the rubber band. I was still in her room and she asked warily, ‘Yun Yun, what are you doing?’

  ‘Just reading,’ I held up my book innocently. She came over and picked up her school bag. ‘Did you move this?’ she looked suspicious.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Just you leave my school bag alone,’ she said severely.

  ‘OK,’ I said.

  My cousin and her boyfriend had said they’d ‘meet after school by the sports ground parallel bars’.

  So I went and leaned over the balcony hoping to catch a glimpse of him. I saw my cousin casting suspicious glances up at the balcony, but she didn’t see me. My uncle’s beloved orchid plants were so bushy, I could duck down behind them.

  From up there, I had a panoramic view of the goings-on between the girls and boys at the Pingle Town middle school, which made me feel omniscient and omnipotent. At the start, I only had eyes for my pretty cousin in her corduroy trousers and apricot-coloured top, hanging around the parallel bars. Then the boy turned up. He was taller than Qing, with a bristly haircut and a white shirt. They looked embarrassed, but after a while drew closer, then started strolling around.

  After that, they met regularly at the sports ground. Sometimes they went round twice, sometimes five times, and sometimes were only halfway round before they secretly entwined hands. Sometimes there were too many people and even after five circuits they hadn’t managed to hold hands. On those occasions, I got bored and began to look at the others. Behind the platform, there was a place where people used to meet and smoke. Sometimes there were quarrels, and once I thought I saw a couple with their arms round each other, kissing on the mouth.

  They really were kissing on the mouth, because their arms were round each other and their heads side-on to each other, like in the films. Engrossed, I leaned right over to gape at them. When I pulled myself together, my cousin had gone, and my mouth was full of cold air.

  Qing came home and asked my auntie: ‘Where’s Pu Yun?’

  ‘Doing her homework in your bedroom.’

  She came in, looking like a thundercloud: ‘You’re so crafty!’ she said.

  I realized she must have seen me. ‘I won’t tell anyone,’ I said.

  The way she looked at me, I thought she was going to give me a slap, but she just said, ‘You’re not allowed to tell the grown-ups, otherwise I’ll never speak to you ever again.’

  I knew we were back together again when she told me his name was Ye Feng, and his parents had jobs in the county town Labour Department. Then she said, ‘We’re going out together on Sunday, and you can come too.’

  At dinner, she told her parents, ‘On Sunday, I’m going out with Yun Yun.’

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p; ‘You spend all day out wandering around,’ grumbled my uncle. ‘It’ll be your final exams soon.’

  ‘Ai-ya,’ protested my auntie. ‘Let them go out and have a bit of fun. Just don’t be late back,’ she told us.

  When Sunday came, my cousin and her boyfriend strolled by the river, with me bringing up the rear. They were hand in hand. After we’d been twice up and down the riverbank, I’d had enough. ‘Qing, I can’t walk any more,’ I called.

  ‘Then stay here and wait for us,’ she said.

  I sat on the riverbank and they disappeared. I knew they must be sitting somewhere out of sight, kissing. I threw a stone, then another, then I picked up a really big one and smashed it down into Bright Creek as hard as I could.

  It was getting dark when I started to call my cousin. ‘Qing! Qing! Zhang Qing! Zhang Qing!’ Up and down the riverbank I went but she still didn’t appear.

  I seemed to see something in the eucalyptus trees on the other side, and screamed even louder: ‘Zhang Qing! Zhang Qing!’ The thing emerged from the trees. It was a white horse.

  I burst into tears.

  Eventually the two of them turned up and Ye Feng bought me a bag of fruit candies.

  ‘What are you crying for?’ said my cousin. ‘If you keep on crying, I won’t take you out again.’

  She took my hand and we went home. Her boyfriend followed behind and slipped away when we got to the crossroads. She and I walked through the market by the old South Gate, just as close as could be, and I asked her, ‘Did you kiss on the mouth?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ she said.

  ‘You did!’

  ‘Don’t you go telling any grown-ups.’

  ‘Is it nice?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said, finally giving me a direct answer.

  When we got home, my auntie asked, ‘Did you have fun with your cousin, Yun Yun?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  One evening, I asked my dad: ‘Do you kiss Mrs Xiang on the mouth?’

  ‘What a disgraceful thing to say! Wherever did you get that from?’

  ‘It’s on TV,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t believe everything you see on TV,’ my dad said. ‘Only dirty foreigners kiss on the mouth. Chinese people don’t.’

  ‘Qing, Dad says kissing on the mouth is dirty,’ I told her.

  She leapt up, grabbed me by the neck and dug icy-cold fingers into me. ‘What did you tell your dad?’ she demanded.

  ‘Nothing! I just asked if he kisses his girlfriend.’

  She released me, flopped back into the chair and said with a smile, ‘If he says they don’t, I don’t believe it.

  ‘Do Auntie and Uncle?’

  She hesitated and frowned. ‘Of course not. They’re so old!’

  We sat together, contemplating the hair-raising thought of my auntie’s rude-swearing mouth stuck to uncle’s. ‘They can’t have done after I was born,’ said my cousin firmly.

  After a while, she went on, ‘My mum’s such a bitch; what made my dad decide to marry her?’ She was writing back to Ye Feng as she spoke.

  ‘Don’t talk about Auntie like that,’ I said.

  My cousin had a know-it-all look. ‘She is a bitch. Everyone in the South Gate neighbourhood knows that,’

  I took a long good look at my auntie that evening at dinner. Her eyes were enormous, though now she had big bags under them. She had a small frame, which made her look rather plump. I guessed that before the swathe of brown spots crept up her face, she must have had delicate white skin like her daughter’s.

  Auntie didn’t notice me scrutinizing her, she was engrossed in chewing a morsel of meat. When everyone had finished, she would help herself to the bit she loved best, a bowlful of rice with the meat oil poured over it. I could not help sighing to myself.

  ‘Where did you learn to sigh like that, Yun Yun?’ asked my uncle.

  My cousin pursed her lips and smiled at me. She was probably imagining those two greasy mouths kissing.

  That night, when I got home, I asked my dad again, ‘Was Auntie pretty when she was young?’

  ‘Why are you asking that?’

  ‘I think she must have been pretty when she was young,’ I said.

  Dad smiled. ‘She was as pretty as a picture. Every one of us South Gate lads was after your auntie.’

  ‘So who was prettier, Auntie, or Mrs Xiang?’

  He looked down, then his gaze focused on the top of my head, then it slid off and landed somewhere else. ‘You’re too clever for your own good,’ he said. ‘Don’t ask so many questions about grown-up things.’

  My dad, my auntie and my cousin all seemed to think I was just a baby. They’d be shocked if they knew how mature I really was. I decided to make friends with Chen Zinian and, in maths class, I gave him my exercise book to copy. I got 92 per cent and he got 95per cent, and the teacher praised both of us and said we made good desk-mates.

  ‘Why did you get three more marks more than me?’ I asked him.

  ‘Because you got the last sum wrong!’

  ‘You’re crafty,’ I said coldly.

  In PE class, Chen Zinian came over: ‘Pu Yun, at the next maths exam . . .’

  ‘I’ll give you mine to copy from,’ I said.

  His eyes lit up. ‘Thank you. You’re so nice. I’ll take you to have some jerky.’

  ‘I don’t want you to.’

  ‘Then just tell me what you want,’ he said.

  ‘Kiss me on the mouth, right?’

  Chen Zinian’s mouth dropped open. He took a step back and blurted out, ‘You’ve got a dirty mind!’

  We had another fight.

  Auntie said to me, ‘Zhang Qing has gone so strange recently. She’s off out every evening. Do you know what’s up with her, Yun Yun?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  Auntie sliced the sausage and looked at me suspiciously. I used to think she knew everything about the pair of us but she seemed to have got duller in the last few years. She turned her gaze back to the sausage, and popped a slice speckled with fat into her mouth, and then one in mine, too.

  My cousin came in. ‘Hey! Are you two cooking sausage for dinner? I want some!’ she cried excitedly.

  She was wearing a red down-filled jacket, blue jeans (the height of fashion) and almost-new trainers, and she bounced and bobbed into the kitchen, grabbed two slices of sausage and stuffed them into her mouth.

  My auntie swallowed and aimed a slap at her daughter: ‘Zhang Qing! Greedy pig, don’t stuff your mouth like that.’

  ‘I’m hungry,’ said my cousin, with a grin which showed a mouthful of half-chewed red and white sausage.

  I tried to shoot Qing a warning glance but she wouldn’t look at me.

  Sure enough, my auntie asked her. ‘Where have you been? You’ve been running around a lot these last few days.’

  ‘I’ve been studying, just studying,’ my cousin said.

  ‘Nonsense!’ My auntie piled the sausage slices in a bowl, sneaking another slice as she did so. ‘You think I don’t know you? You haven’t been studying,’

  ‘I have. I really have!’ Finally my cousin looked at me. All of a sudden she looked less cocksure.

  ‘You just behave yourself,’ my auntie said fiercely to her, and carried on getting the dinner ready.

  ‘I really was studying!’ my cousin wailed.

  ‘Well, next time, you take Yun Yun with you, and don’t leave her kicking around all on her own in the house.’ And my auntie buried her head in the cupboard, looking for the pot of braising sauce.

  ‘Take her!’ My cousin launched into a furious argument with her mother, but glared at me so fiercely that it might have been me she was quarrelling with.

  Dinner was braised chicken wings, thighs and claws – special dishes for New Year’s Eve. My dad was coming, and bringing Mrs Xiang with him.

  ‘Have some chicken claws, Xiang,’ Auntie offered her.

  ‘She doesn’t like chicken claws,’ my dad said. ‘Give them to me; I like them.’ He swi
ped them from Mrs Xiang’s bowl and passed her a chicken thigh with his chopsticks instead.

  ‘Huh!’ my auntie said, annoyed. ‘You’ve always liked those chicken claws.’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with you, what Changshuo likes to eat,’ said my uncle.

  ‘Who are you to say what’s my business and what isn’t?’ retorted my auntie.

  ‘You’re always sticking your nose in,’ said my uncle. ‘It doesn’t matter who likes the claws and who doesn’t.’

  ‘You know nothing about anything,’ said my auntie.

  ‘Oh yes I do. I know very well.’ And my uncle pushed his chair back from the table.

  I don’t know what Qing was thinking, but this was the first time I’d heard Uncle and Auntie having an argument. Uncle stalked off into their room and slammed the door.

  Auntie looked stunned. She forced a smile at Mrs Xiang, then burst into tears.

  The three of us soon made our escape. My cousin, looking pitiful, saw us out.

  ‘I’m sorry, Xiang,’ my dad said to his girlfriend. ‘We didn’t put on a very good performance today.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Mrs Xiang. ‘Everyone around South Gate knows about what happened between you and her.’

  My dad squeezed her hand and said solemnly: ‘That was a long time ago. It’s all water under the bridge.’

  I suddenly thought of something very philosophical: The world is full of secrets…

  It certainly was.

  Even I realized we’d be spending a lot more time on our own now. Mrs Xiang didn’t come as often, and my dad spent all his time playing chess with old Zhong. I learnt to cook noodles and my dad instructed me, ‘Keep an eye on the water in the pot, and when you can see little bubbles coming to the surface, put the noodles in, a bundle as thick as five of your thumbs.’

  When the noodles were cooked, I took my dad a big bowlful and one for old Zhong, too. My dad said I should stir in two soupspoons of lard for him and half a spoonful for old Zhong.

  ‘What a good girl you’ve got there,’ the old man said cheerfully.

  My dad was deprecating: ‘No she’s not. She’s a complete nuisance!’

  After a while, I went and collected the bowls and they set to again, with a clattering of pieces on the chessboard.

  One day, on my way back to the flat, I noticed a bright red banner hanging on the entrance gate, inscribed, ‘The Old People’s Home extends a big welcome to the County National People’s Congress leader.’