Leaving Mother Lake: A Girlhood at the Edge of the World by Yang Erche Namu & Christine Mathieu

Author:Yang Erche Namu & Christine Mathieu [Namu, Yang Erche & Mathieu, Christine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, China, BIO000000, Biography & Autobiography, history, women, Women's Studies, Asia
ISBN: 9780316029308
Google: As3uNGr2xKYC
Publisher: Little, Brown
Published: 2007-09-03T00:23:28.231523+00:00

The City

Ishould have found it ugly. The guest house was a squat gray concrete building three stories high, with large glass windows in metal frames, and underneath, white and blue shirts and dark trousers and flesh-colored underwear hung on square metal racks, billowing in the breeze like prayer flags gone awry. The yard was an uneven patch of dirty broken concrete surrounded by buildings and a brick wall with tall iron gates. A gray, dusty haze covered everything, including a half dozen geraniums growing in pots and a poor excuse of a shrub meant to decorate the entrance. Latsoma and Zhatsonamu found it ugly. But I did not.

The tall rectangular building took my breath away. I thought of all the glass Dr. Rock had brought from America and imagined that this must have been how the little glass palace on our island had looked. I tapped my feet on the dirty hard ground and touched it. Curiously, no dirt rubbed off, and I thought, if we had this sort of floor in our courtyard, it would not get muddy and would be a lot easier to sweep. The worn-out local buses parked alongside our Jeep, the people going about their business, milling back and forth between the buildings, the loud unfamiliar noises, and perhaps also the fact that my ears were still ringing with the vibrations of the car engine and my head and stomach had not yet settled from the motion sickness — all of it transported me into a strange and wonderful space, marvelously unreal, as the world beyond our mountains ought to be. And that world, to me, was immediately beautiful.

Latsoma climbed out of the car holding her stomach. “If I had known it was going to be this horrible, I would never have come! When we go home, I am not riding in this car! I’d rather walk all the way!”

“Me, too,” Zhatsonamu joined in. “I’ll never ride in a car again!”

They looked at the surroundings. They said nothing, but the expression of disappointment and shock on their faces spoke plenty.

Latsoma tried shaking the dust from her soiled clothes and she leaned back against the car with a dejected expression on her face. “We look horrible. . . .”

We did. We looked terrible. We were so dirty, covered in red dust, and our clothes reeked of vomit. And we had left our mothers’ houses so beautiful. . . .

“Come, you’ll feel better soon,” Yisso bravely cheered us on, as he pointed toward a building at the end of the yard. “Let’s go to the canteen and get you some sour cabbage. That will settle your stomachs.”

By now we had our doubts about Yisso’s remedies, but the sour cabbage worked better than the ginger. When we felt a little better, Yisso led us to a sink with water faucets. He poured water into an enamel pan and we washed our faces and hands and slowly woke up to the world, but then we could not stop ourselves from turning the water on and off.

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