A Thousand Years of Good Prayers: Stories Read Free

Tang does not hear her. He pushes Granny Lin, and his arms are suddenly strong. Granny Lin clutches him, but he is wild with uncontrollable force. She lets go of his hands, not knowing why she needs to fight with her husband over a dead woman. But he is still wrestling with the air and, two steps away, slips down in a puddle of soapy water.
    Nobody pays attention to Granny Lin at the funeral. She sits in a corner and listens to the men and women who come up to talk about Old Tang’s life: an accomplished physicist and a great teacher, a loving husband, father, and grandfather. The speakers finish and shake the family members’ hands, ignoring her at the end of the line.
    I did not kill him, Granny Lin imagines herself telling every person there. He was dying before the fall. But she does not tell the truth to anyone, and instead admits her negligence. Nobody would believe her anyway, for she alone saw the light in his eyes, the last glimmer before the eternal night, as it is called, the brief moment of lucidity before the end.
    GRANNY LIN DOES not get a penny from Old Tang’s savings. She has looked after Old Tang for only two months, and has, in many of the relatives’ minds, killed him with her carelessness. She does not blame the two sons. She can think only of their loss, a thousand times more painful than her own. When one of them suggests a job in a private boarding school that is run by his friend, Granny Lin almost weeps out of gratitude.
    Situated in a mountain resort in a western suburb of Beijing, Mei-Mei Academy takes pride in being among the first private schools in the country. It occupies one of the few four-storied buildings that were allowed to be constructed in the area. (“Connections, connections,” the chef tells Granny Lin the day she arrives—how else could the school have gained the permit if not for its powerful trustees?) Private schools, like all private businesses, are sprouting up across the country like bamboo shoots after the first spring rain. Relatives of the Communist Party leaders are being transformed overnight into business owners, their faces appearing on national TV as representatives of the new proletariat entrepreneurs.
    Granny 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