Frontier by Can Xue

Author:Can Xue
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781940953557
Publisher: Open Letter
Published: 2017-02-02T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

LIUJIN, HER PARENTS, AND THE BLACK MAN

The year that Liujin was ten, the Design Institute assigned her family to a bungalow with a small courtyard. One Sunday, they happily moved in. Two young poplars were growing in the courtyard, and disorderly weeds stood three feet high. In the beginning, Liujin hated their new home because of the many mosquitoes and because of strange animal sounds at night. When it turned dark, she withdrew inside, not daring to go out. From the window, she saw some suspicious black shadows moving through the weeds: they looked a little like foxes or birds. She heard her parents walking softly in the adjacent room, discussing something. They were apparently very pleased with this new home that they’d been looking forward to for a long time.

José did a great job tidying up the courtyard in only two of his days off. Besides cleaning out the weeds, he planted a few flowerbeds and planted vines next to the fence. This resulted immediately in fewer mosquitoes. Strange birds still hooted at night, but the sounds were less terrifying. No longer panicky, Liujin began exploring her new home. The courtyard was large, and the backyard even had an old well. Liujin craned her neck and looked down into the well; this gave her goose bumps. People said the water wasn’t safe to drink. She saw a gecko on the red brick wall next to the main entrance. It looked as if it had lived more than a thousand lonely years. Liujin touched it, but it didn’t move. For a second, Liujin wondered if it was dead. But after a while, it began crawling slowly: it crawled from the wall to the ground and then into the house. Once in the house, it climbed the wall again—straight up to a corner of the ceiling. There, it stopped. Liujin thought it was absorbed in its own reflections.

“Liujin, Liujin, it’s time to do your homework!”

Mother spoke to her from outside the window. Through the glass, Mama’s face looked distorted—short and broad, a little like a tea urn. While Liujin was doing her homework, the bird on the poplar in front distracted her. What kind of bird was it? It wasn’t an owl, even less likely a crow. Maybe it was the same one she’d heard at midnight. How she wished she knew for sure! Mother didn’t seem the least bit sentimental. She was a strong-willed woman, always acting in accord with her own strange principles. When they lived in a third-story loft, she had never fussed about the sounds made by large birds on their skylight. She was no different now. She seemed to be used to strange phenomena. Though Liujin was young, she had sensed this long ago and admired this side of her mother.

Although the weeds had been pulled, the dark animal shadows still traversed the courtyard. From a crack in the curtains, Liujin peered at a lonely little animal, and her heart thumped. She wondered where it slept.

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