A Thousand Years of Good Prayers: Stories Read Free Page A

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