“My mama cooked the breakfast and the supper.”
“But not lunch? Did she or your father go out to buy lunch?”
“We eat only two meals on Sundays,” said Tong. “They did not go out. They took a long nap in the afternoon.”
“Again?” the male teacher said with exaggerated disbelief.
Tong bit his lips and did not speak. His mother always said sleeping was the best way to save energy so they would not have to spend extra money for a lunch on Sunday but how could he explain this to the teachers?
“Did your parents leave home at any time in the morning?” the male teacher asked. “Say between seven and twelve o'clock?”
Tong shook his head. He had a vague feeling that they did not believe him, and sooner or later they would reveal his lie to the school and his parents. What would they do with him then? He would never get the red scarf around his neck by June.
“Are you sure?”
“I went home for breakfast and then they said it was a waste to look for Ear so I stayed home with them.”
“Did you find your dog?” the female teacher asked while she screwed the cap back onto her fountain pen and glanced at the roster, ready for the next student.
Tong tried hard to hold back his tears, but the effort gave way to the fear that he would be punished not only for lying but also for signing his father's name on the white cloth. The two teachers watched him for a moment. “Don't cry over a missing dog,” the woman said. “Ask your parents to get another one for you.”
Tong howled without answering. The male teacher waved to dismiss him and the female teacher led him out of the classroom by his hand. For a moment he wanted to confess everything to the female teacher, whose soft and warm palm calmed him a little, but before he could open his mouth, she signaled to his teacher to take him back and called out the name of the next student.
Tong waited in his seat, not talking to the other children. Nobody asked him why he was crying; already two girls and a boy before him had come back sniffling or sobbing, and no one had shown any surprise or concern.
It was past lunchtime when the principal, talking through the PA system, announced that it was time for an hour break for lunch. They were not to discuss anything with their classmates or their parents, the principal said. Anyone who broke the rule would find himself in grave trouble.
Tong walked slowly. That morning he had noticed the sudden appearance of many black caterpillars nicknamed “poplar stingers,” and now, only half a day later, hundreds more had appeared on the sidewalk and the alley walls. Many had been crushed by careless feet and bicycle wheels, their tiny bodies and innards drying in the sun.
When Tong entered the room his parents both looked at him and then returned to their conversation. “Who knows?” his father said. “Maybe the government means it only to be a setup to scare people a little and nothing serious will come of it in the end.”
Tong sat down at the table, a bowl of noodle soup in front of him. His mother told him to hurry up, as both of them needed to return to work within half an hour. “The way this is carried out gives me palpitations.”
“A woman's heart palpitates at anything,” Tong's father scoffed. “A crushed sparrow could make your heart jump out of your mouth. Let me tell you: The law does not punish the masses. You don't even need to go far—just think how many people were beaten by the Red Guards in 1966. Now that their behavior is considered bad and illegal, do you see any former Red Guard being punished? No.”
Tong ate slowly, each mouthful hurting him while he swallowed. When his mother urged him to eat faster, he said, “Baba, why doesn't the law punish the masses?”
“So you finally have a question about something other than that dog of yours,” Tong's father said. From afar came drawn-out sirens. Tong's mother stopped her chopsticks and listened. “Sounds like a fire engine,” she said to his father.
His father went out into the yard and looked. In a minute, he came back and said, “You can see the smoke.”
“Where is the fire?”
“East side.”
On any other day he would ask to be excused and rush to the fire, but Tong only sat and nibbled on a noodle that seemed endless. His mother felt his forehead with her palm. “Are you sick?”
“Lovesick for a dog,” Tong's father said.
Tong did not answer. He forced himself to finish his lunch so his father would not comment on his eating habits. Perhaps nothing bad would happen, after all, as his father said. This hope cheered him as he walked to school. But what if his father was wrong? Grown-ups made mistakes, as they had said nothing would happen to Ear. Plunged back into despair by the thought, Tong felt cold in the spring breeze; his legs stumbled, as if he were walking in cotton clouds.
Two different teachers, from yet another school, were assigned to Tong's class, and one by one the students went in to answer the same questions for a second time. The two teachers were less intimidating this time, and Tong was able to look up at their eyes. They seemed to find nothing unusual in the sleeping patterns of Tong's parents. “Are you sure?” one of the teachers asked every time Tong answered a question; her voice was gentle enough that Tong did not find it hard to lie. By the end of the questioning, Tong felt relieved. The teachers were nice to him—they wouldn't have been if he had already been found out. Indeed, he had done nothing serious except look for Ear; the more Tong thought about it, the less real the signature he had left on the white cloth became, and soon he stopped worrying about the petition.
***
NINI HAD NEVER KNOWN that a secret could have a life of its own. That she had a place to go someday consumed all the space in her chest in no time; expanding still, it made her small breasts ache. Her limbs, even the good hand and leg, seemed to get farther away from her, the joints becoming loose and out of control. Nini studied herself in an oval-shaped, palm-sized mirror that her second sister had hidden underneath her pillow; even though the mirror was only big enough for part of her face at one time, the person in the mirror was no longer the ugly self she remembered, her lips fuller, her cheeks rounder now, always
