A Thousand Years of Good Prayers. Yiyun Li

Lin cannot imagine a better life now that she becomes a maid at the academy. Every meal is a banquet. Meat and fish are abundant. Vegetables are greener than Granny Lin remembers from her market days. Everything is produced by a small organic farm that serves the president and the premier and their families—so the chef informs Granny Lin.

      Sometimes Granny Lin feels sad at seeing so much good food go into the garbage. She begins to come late to her meals, waiting until the students finish theirs. Throughout the dining hall, untouched vegetables are left withering on the plates; shipwrecked fishes lie flat on their half-gnawed bellies. Granny Lin spoons the leftovers onto her plate and dreams of having an express shuttle running between the school and the city every day, taking the unconsumed food to her old neighbors.

      Eating such good food without working hard is a sin. In addition to the laundry and dorm cleaning assigned to her, Granny Lin takes on other duties. She gets up early in the morning and opens the classroom windows to let in fresh mountain air. She sweeps and mops the terrazzo floor. She dusts and wipes the students’ desks. She makes sure everything is meticulous, even though the janitor has cleaned the classrooms the night before. Sometimes, when there is still time before the wake-up bell, she leaves the school and takes a walk in the mountains. The morning fog is damp on her skin and her hair, and birds she has never seen in the city sing in a chorus. At such moments, Granny Lin feels overwhelmed by her good fortune. The years in the factory seem a distant dream now, and she no longer remembers what her life was like when she walked through the morning smog expelled by the coal stoves and bargained in the market for vegetables puffed up by chemical fertilizers.

      Often Granny Lin gathers an armful of wildflowers on her walk: mountain orchids, pearl cherries, jade barrettes. She arranges the flowers in vases for the six classrooms, one for each grade, but such a delicacy rarely lasts beyond the first period. Boys of all ages pelt one another with the flowers; the boy whose lips touch the flowers is called a sissy. Girls of the upper grades pull the petals off and bury them in a mound in the school yard, their fingers ruthless and their faces shrouded with a sad seriousness.

      THE SCHOOL IS growing. Every month a few new students arrive. Granny Lin is stunned by the parents’ wealth, the ease with which they pay the initiation fee of twenty thousand yuan and another twenty thousand for the first year of tuition and room and board.

      In the third month of Granny Lin’s stay, the school celebrates its one hundredth student with a feast. Kang, the boy who draws the lucky number, is six years old. Unlike the other students, who come from the city, he was sent from a nearby province. A few days into his stay, the teachers and the staff members have all heard his story. Kang’s grandfather used to be the leader of a big People’s commune in his home province, and his father has become one of the top agricultural entrepreneurs in northern China.

      “I thought farmers liked to keep their sons at home,” Granny Lin says to Mrs. Du, a dorm mother, as they search for the foul-smelling socks under the mattresses. “They can almost stand up and walk by themselves” is how Mrs. Du describes the stiff socks that have been worn for too long.

      “Not when he is the son of a disfavored wife,” Mrs. Du says. “An extra is what he is.”

      “Are the parents divorced?”

      “Who knows? But the father does have another wife, or a concubine. What’s the difference? The boy’s mother is no longer needed in the family, and the child has to go, too.”

      The thought of the boy, who is so small and occupies almost no space at all in the world yet who is still in other people’s way and has to be got rid of, saddens Granny Lin. She starts to look for the boy among the crowd. His clothes, of the same brand names as those that the other students wear, look wrong on him. Too large, too new, too trendy, the clothes do not belong to him any more than he belongs to the school. His face and hands always seem in need of a thorough wash, but after Granny Lin herself has tended to them several times, she has to agree that it is not the child’s or the dorm mother’s fault.

      In the second week, Kang starts to come to the laundry room during the afternoon activity time. “Granny, what’s this?” he asks one day while Granny Lin is massaging some baby lotion into his cheeks.

      “Something that will make you a city boy,” Granny Lin says.

      “Granny, where do you live?”

      “I live here.”

      “But before you came here? Where is your husband’s home?”

      Granny Lin thinks for a moment. “In the city,” she says.

      “What’s the city like? My mom said she’d take me to see the city.”

      “Where is your mom?” Granny Lin asks, holding her breath and trying to make her heart beat less loudly. The boy seems not to notice.

      “She is at home.”

      “Your father’s home?”

      “My grandfather’s home. My new mom lives in my father’s home.”

      “What’s your new mom like? Is she pretty?”

      “Yes.”

      “Is she good to you?”

      “Yes.”

      “Do you like her?”

      “Yes.”

      “Do you like your mom also? More than your new mom?” Granny Lin asks. She turns around to see whether anyone is walking past the laundry room in the hallway. She feels like a thief.

      The boy, too, turns around nervously. He then comes closer and circles his arms around Granny Lin’s neck, his mouth to Granny Lin’s ear, his hot breath touching her earlobe. “Granny, I’ll tell you a secret. Don’t tell anyone.”

      “I won’t.”

      “My mom said she would come and get me back one day.”

      “When?”

      “She said soon.”

      “When did she say it?”

      “Before my new mom moved in.”

      “When was that?”

      “Last year.”

      “Have you seen your mom since then?”

      “No, but she said she’d come soon, if I don’t make my dad and my new mom angry,” Kang says. “Granny, do you think the guards will let her in when she comes?”

      “I’m sure they will,” Granny Lin says. The boy smells like a mixture of baby lotion, fresh laundry, and clean sweat. It reminds Granny Lin of Old Tang after his bath, the way a dear person smells good. The thought makes Granny Lin’s lips go dry, and she feels the boy’s arms on her neck, hot and sticky.

      ON FRIDAY AFTERNOONS, the parking lot outside the school gate is full of luxury cars. Chauffeurs and nannies come, and sometimes the parents themselves show up. Teachers and dorm mothers stand inside the gate, pointing out to one another who is the daughter-in-law of a power figure in the government and who has appeared in the latest hit movie.

      Kang is the only child who stays for the weekend. His father has paid the extra fee for the weekend care and has promised to come for him at the end of the semester. Sometimes Granny Lin wonders if the father will ever come and what will become of Kang if no one picks him up when summer comes. Will he be able to stay with her at the school? Then she wonders if she herself will be allowed to stay and, if not, where she will spend the two months before she is allowed back in September.

      After the last student is picked up every weekend, the teachers and the dorm mothers leave on a shuttle bus for the city. Apart from the two guards, Granny Lin is the only one who stays, and she has cheerfully agreed to take care of Kang.

      They stand side by side at the school gate and wave at the bus. Both sigh with relief once it is gone. Kang darts across the yard to the activity room, flipping through the picture books as fast as he can, eager to get to the next one.