White Horse Read online

  I was bored these days so I looked forward to his visit. ‘Will it be long before the CNPC leader comes?’ I asked.

  ‘He’ll be here in the next few days.’

  The great man turned up on the seventh day of the New Year. He arrived with his driver in a small minibus. The old folks from the compound all took their stools to the canteen to welcome him, and my dad went, too. I hung around in the doorway, waiting for the meeting to be over. There was burst after burst of applause from inside, and speeches from the CNPC man, from the Director of the Home, from representatives of the old folks themselves, then another speech from the great man.

  No one else spoke after his final speech and the Director shouted from the platform, ‘Let’s give our leader a big hand!’ The applause was so thunderous it drowned the snoring of some of the old gents, but not the banshee-like wail that suddenly caught my ears: ‘Yun Yun! Have you seen Zhang Qing?’

  I felt a cold shiver, and turned to see my auntie approaching. She did not look at all pretty today, in fact she looked downright ugly. Her hair stuck out all over her head and her eyes were swollen with crying. Grabbing my arm, she said, ‘Yun Yun, have you seen your cousin?’

  She pushed her face up close to mine. I hadn’t seen her for a while and I had forgotten how old she looked. Completely different from those photographs of them when they were young that I’d seen in the family album.

  ‘No, I haven’t,’ I finally remembered to reply.

  ‘Ai-ya! Ai-ya!’ she wailed.

  ‘What’s happened to Qing Qing?’ asked my dad. He had come out before the VIPs and now pulled Auntie and me to one side.

  ‘She’s run away from home!’ My auntie’s face was drenched in tears, but at least she managed to avoid wiping the mess on my dad’s jacket.

  They went off to look for my cousin. My heart was thumping with fear, but they didn’t want me to go with them. ‘You stay at home, girlie,’ said my dad. ‘If your cousin comes back, don’t let her go out again.’

  I trotted back and forth, from our home to the entrance gate and back again. The old folks, men and women alike, realized something was going on and strolled around the compound looking smug. When they met me, they asked, ‘Where are you off to in such a hurry, Yun Yun?’

  Anxiously, I told them, ‘My cousin’s run away from home!’

  The second time, they asked me, ‘Yun Yun, have you found your cousin yet?’

  ‘No,’ I answered even more anxiously.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ they reassured me, ‘she’ll turn up!’

  Eventually it got dark. The smell of beef and potato strew wafted from the canteen, and everyone went over to fetch their dinner in enamel bowls. But my dad and my auntie didn’t come home.

  Finally I went out into the street to see if I could see them. It was a cold, dark night, and my hands were like two blocks of ice. I walked out of the alley, as far as New South Gate Street. I didn’t see a single person I knew. It was as if the familiar neighbourhood had simply disappeared and the streetlights looked far, far away.

  I walked and walked, looking for my cousin, my dad and my auntie, or any familiar face.

  I began to cry. The more I cried, the colder I got.

  Passers-by asked me, ‘What’s up, kid?’

  ‘My cousin’s disappeared,’ I said anxiously.

  I thought I saw a white horse emerging from Jin Jia Alley, followed by a twittering crowd of school students, but they swept by me and my cousin wasn’t among them.

  When I at last got back to the compound, I was exhausted from crying. There was a light on in the flat and I started to run. My dad and my auntie were standing in my doorway. I could see their dark figures tightly embraced, just like in foreign films.

  After a while, they pulled apart but stood close together. I crept closer. My auntie saw me first. She pounced on me with a cry of ‘Yun Yun! Where have you been? We’ve been looking everywhere for you.’

  My dad came out of the doorway and told me off. ‘Didn’t I tell you to guard the house?’

  The way they looked made me think I must have imagined their kissing.

  ‘What about my cousin?’ I asked.

  ‘She’s back, she’s gone to sleep,’ said my auntie.

  I rushed inside and saw Qing asleep in my dad’s bed. She had been crying, her face was covered in red blotches and her hair was in a mess, but she still looked like an angel, with those long, long eyelashes resting on her cheeks.

  We shared the same bed that night, and Qing’s body seemed to give off a sort of fragrance.

  When school began again, my aunt and my dad took my cousin and me to see Qing’s new teacher, the Mrs Xiang we all knew. My auntie was laden down with bags, which she deposited with a clatter on the teacher’s desk.

  ‘Mrs Cai, you really shouldn’t have brought all these presents, you’re too kind, I don’t know what to say!’ said Mrs Xiang.

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ said my auntie. ‘At New Year we all got so much food given us at work, far too much for us to eat. Please don’t think anything of it.’

  I sat on the sofa watching this exchange of civilities, itching for them to hurry up and sit down and open the boxes of sweets, so I could have some of my favourite peanut toffees. My cousin sat woodenly beside me. The purpling bruises and scabs on her face, where my auntie had dug her fingers in, were still visible.

  Finally they sat down and Mrs Xiang opened the sweets. ‘Yun Yun, Zhang Qing, come and have some.’

  As I hurried over to take some sweeties, I heard my auntie say to the teacher, ‘I hope Zhang Qing won’t be any trouble in your class this term.’

  ‘No trouble at all,’ said Mrs Xiang. ‘Zhang Qing’s such a good girl.’ She reached over and stroked my cousin’s face. Qing didn’t protest but her face was expressionless.

  My auntie pulled the teacher’s hand away and clasped it affectionately in her own: ‘She’s not good at all,’ she said. ‘Her dad and I have been so angry with her.’

  ‘All kids makes mistakes,’ said Mrs Xiang. ‘But they can mend their ways.’

  My auntie gave a despairing sigh. ‘If only she would! But she goes around from morning till night, looking like the devil’s got into her. Anyway, if she cheeks you, you have my permission to give her a beating.’

  I was still chewing my sweetie when my cousin stood up and pointed to my auntie. ‘What mistakes did I make? I didn’t make any mistakes. And no one has the right to give me a beating.’

  My auntie’s mouth gaped as if she’d swallowed a duck egg. Then she quickly pulled herself together and launched herself at her daughter, digging her fingers into Qing’s face and yelling, ‘You bad girl! Flunking out of school and playing around with boys at your age! And I only had a couple of words with you and you ran away from home. How can you say you never made a mistake? Are you going to mend your ways? Are you?’

  My cousin in her turn dug her sharp fingernails into my auntie’s hand and shrieked back, ‘It’s not illegal to have a boyfriend! What’s wrong with having a boyfriend?’

  My dad rushed over to pull them apart but my auntie dealt him a swift blow and redoubled her efforts to subdue her daughter. ‘Bad girl!’ she ground out between gritted teeth, ‘I just can’t keep you under control.’

  Mrs Xiang appeared rooted to her chair with terror as the battle raged. I carried on eating sweets and tried to reassure her. ‘It’s nothing, Miss, nothing at all.’

  The words were hardly out of my mouth when my cousin swept all her mother’s gifts off the teacher’s desk onto the floor, which brought a stinging slap in response. Trembling with rage, my auntie yelled at her, ‘You slut! So young and such a slut! Playing around with a boy like that!’

  My cousin slumped to the floor, just like one of those beautiful but ill-starred girls on the TV. She turned her face up to her mother, her eyes filled with tears, but what she said was ‘I’m not as much of a slut as you.’

  My auntie threw herself on her: ‘Who are you calling a slut?’<
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  The pair wrestled on the floor, squashing a tangerine which had rolled out of the gift bag. The muddy blood-red juice went all over the back of Qing’s green windcheater, looking like fresh poo.

  In the space of a few days, my cousin seemed to have grown as shrewish and quarrelsome as her mother.

  The teacher hesitantly got to her feet and reached out to them: ‘Please don’t fight! Don’t fight!’ but her words were drowned by the accusations the combatants were hurling at each other.

  Finally it was my dad who pulled my auntie to her feet, looking the way he did when he was about to spank my behind. ‘Cai Xinrong, have you gone mad? Why are you beating her?’

  It looked as if my auntie was going to have another swipe at him, but suddenly she crumpled and seemed to get smaller. My cousin lay on the floor, crying as if her heart would break. There was no room on the floor for my auntie so she threw herself weeping at my dad instead. My dad patted her back. ‘It’s all right, it’s all right, stop crying, stop crying now. What a scene you’re making!’

  At this point, I thought it was time for me to put in a word. I got to my feet and said, ‘Stop crying. Stop crying.’ Mrs Xiang stood behind me and echoed my words: ‘Stop crying. Stop crying.’

  We really didn’t know which one of them we were trying to comfort.

  These days, I went to old Mrs Yu’s house to do my homework after school. The weather gradually got warmer and Mrs Yu used to sit in her doorway on a rattan chair reading a book. I carried my stool out and sat beside her, using another stool as a table to do my homework on.

  On this particular day, my teacher had taught us a new phrase and we had to copy it out five times. The phrase was ‘crystal clear’. I had done it three times when Mrs Yu asked me: ‘How old are you, Yun Yun?’

  ‘Ten years and three months,’ I said.

  The old woman gave deep sigh. ‘Is it really ten years?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Time’s gone by in the blink of an eye,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, it has,’ I said.

  ‘Your mum was still in the land of the living then . . .’

  I copied ‘crystal clear’ for a fourth time, then a fifth.

  When I finished my homework, I went to the canteen with Mrs Yu for my dinner. All the old folks were really nice to me. Whenever they saw me, they beamed. ‘What a good girl you are, Yun Yun, are you coming for your dinner?’ Zhu the cook, who was ladling out the portions, asked me, ‘Which is your favourite, Yun Yun? I’ll give you a bit extra.’

  I stood on tiptoe and took a long look at the food. Then I announced, ‘I want that stuff.’

  The cook laughed and said, ‘That’s not “stuff”, Yun Yun, that’s Gong Bao chicken.’ And he gave me an extra-big ladleful.

  We all sat around a big table eating our dinner. Everyone found something to say to me: ‘What classes did you have today, Yun Yun?’ ‘You’ll be in fifth grade soon, won’t you, Yun Yun?’ ‘You got the best marks, didn’t you, Yun Yun? When you get into university, old Mr Sun will give you a big red envelope,’ and ‘Such a grown-up girl; you’re getting prettier by the day.’

  I finished my dinner, and sat watching the old folks finishing theirs. Then Mr Zhu, the cook, came out of the kitchen and handed me another full bowl to take home. ‘This is for your dad,’ he said.

  A sudden silence fell, and I felt the eyes of everyone on me as I left, carrying the bowl. Outside in the fresh air, I managed to avoid the other residents in the courtyard and the pitying looks they gave me. I opened my front door, and smelled alcohol fumes. ‘I’m home, Dad,’ I said.

  My dad was sitting slumped on the sofa, looking rather sinister in the half-dark. But he knew it was me and grunted, then took the bowl and began to eat. He even remembered to ask me, ‘Yun Yun, did you work hard at school today?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  He gulped his food down, sniffing as he did so.

  ‘I’ll wash the bowl,’ I said.

  He said, dejectedly, ‘No, I’ll wash it.’

  I went back to Mrs Yu’s to fetch my school bag, and she said, ‘Why don’t you sleep here tonight, Yun Yun?’

  ‘I’m going home,’ I said.

  ‘Is your dad all right?’ she asked cautiously.

  ‘He’s fine.’

  ‘Such a pity,’ she sighed as she showed me to the door. ‘Such a pity. And all because of a woman.’

  As I made my way home, I wondered if the woman she was referring to was my auntie or Mrs Xiang, the teacher.

  It was my auntie who turned up that evening.

  As I opened the door, I saw her in the sitting room, clearing liquor bottles and cigarette butts off the coffee table. ‘Hello, Auntie,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, you’re back, Yun Yun,’ she said, in an odd tone.

  She was crying without making any noise. I looked at her helplessly. Finally I said, ‘Are you ill, auntie?’

  ‘No,’ she said, tearing off a piece of toilet paper to wipe her nose.

  ‘You should go home,’ my dad told her. ‘I’ll clear up.’

  Auntie ignored him.

  ‘You really should go,’ he repeated. ‘If you’re late home, Zhang Xinmin will get annoyed.’

  Auntie was still bent over the table, wiping up the cigarette ash. She scrubbed her nose again, this time without toilet paper, just pinching it between her thumb and forefinger. Then she flicked her fingers.

  The room was very dim and I couldn’t see where Auntie’s snot landed, but I heard her say in a hoarse voice, ‘He doesn’t want to do it with me any more.’

  ‘Don’t talk rubbish,’ said my dad heartily. ‘You should make him feel a bit special, he’s been good to you.’

  ‘Huh! None of you know what you’re talking about.’ Auntie’s voice shook.

  Dad sighed. ‘I’ve let Xiang down, and you, too.’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with who let who down, it’s just life,’ my auntie said gently. Then she blew her nose on her fingers again, flicked her fingers, and the snot landed somewhere beyond the margins of the lamplight.

  The next day, she came to meet me after school. I didn’t see her at first, because there was the usual noisy crowd around the school entrance. Then I heard her shrill call: ‘Yun Yun!’ and spotted her by the flowerbed, waving at me. She was smartly dressed today, and really stood out from the rest of the women.

  ‘Auntie!’ I cried in delight, and threw my arms around her.

  ‘Hello, sweetie.’ Auntie hugged me back, equally delighted.

  She bought me some spicy pickled turnip and I tucked into it, getting chilli oil all round my mouth. Auntie gave me some paper hankies from her bag. ‘Wipe your mouth, Yun Yun,’ she said.

  ‘Have some, Auntie.’ I offered her the bag.

  ‘No, thanks, you finish it,’ she said with a big smile.

  So I did.

  We got to my cousin’s middle school and Auntie held my hand as we waited for Qing to come out. The bell went, and the middle school students burst through the doors like jungle beasts. I couldn’t see my cousin among them but Auntie spotted her and shouted loudly ‘Zhang Qing!’

  My cousin was standing with her boyfriend, Ye Feng. Auntie rushed over to her with me following, but Qing grabbed Ye Feng by the hand.

  This was a standoff: Auntie and me, Qing and Ye Feng. The bystanders drew back.

  My cousin’s face darkened. ‘Why have you brought Pu Yun?’ she asked. ‘And where did you go last night?’

  ‘Where are you taking this young man off to?’

  Ye Feng tried to free his hand but failed because Qing had a tight grip on it. ‘We’re boy-friend and girlfriend,’ she pronounced to her mother.

  Auntie let go of my hand and gave my cousin a slap on the face. ‘You slut!’ she shrieked. I knew a fight was imminent and hurriedly stepped back, but Ye Feng stood rooted to the spot as my cousin hawked and spat a gob of saliva that landed on Auntie’s front.

  ‘You’re the slut! If I’m a slut, where do you thin
k I learned it from?’

  Auntie went pale. She went to tug her daughter’s hand from Ye Feng’s, shouting, ‘You bad girl! Come back home with me right now.’

  I stood at the school gate, as passers-by craned their necks to see what was going on. I was terrified that Mrs Xiang might finish her class and come out and see. Luckily, Auntie finally succeeded in getting hold of my cousin’s hand and, by the force of her plump body, pulled her away. Then she turned to Ye Feng and snarled, ‘Are you really Zhang Qing’s boyfriend?’

  ‘No,’ said Ye Feng, who had gone as white as a girl. ‘No,’ he repeated, ‘we’re not boyfriend and girlfriend.’

  My cousin’s frenzied shriek nearly made me throw up my turnip pickle.

  We finally got home. As we went up the stairs Qing stumbled twice and my auntie got a firm grip on her. I was too scared to be anywhere near her and followed Auntie into the kitchen. Auntie mixed some honey in water and gave me the cup. ‘Go and give it to your cousin.’

  I took it to Qing’s room. She was wailing and swearing at the same time, though I don’t know who at. I went over and said, ‘Qing, drink some honey water.’

  I hadn’t actually handed it to her but she took it anyway. She sipped, realized she was thirsty, and gulped the rest down. The first thing she said when she’d finished was: ‘That double-crossing creep, Ye Feng! He’d better not think I want anything to do with him ever again.’

  Uncle didn’t come home for lunch so we three had lunch without him. Auntie made a point of selecting a nice morsel of meat from the stewed beef and potato dish to put into her daughter’s bowl.

  Then my cousin said, ‘I don’t want to go to school this afternoon.’

  ‘Of course you’ve got to go to school,’ said Auntie.

  Qing’s head jerked up and she looked at us. Her eyes were bloodshot, the lids swollen into two slits. ‘How can I go to school looking like this?’ she said.

  Auntie was startled into silence. Then she said, ‘All right, you can study by yourself in your room.’

  We both missed school that afternoon. We went to her room, and my cousin got Ye Feng’s letters out of her drawer, then took her time cutting them to ribbons, one by one.