off-kilter. She was Chinese with a religious Karz husband, who was ten years her senior. He was a Muslim who allowed – or perhaps could not prevent – his Chinese wife keeping a Pig.
The family pig was in the front room being fattened: half the room was full of old shucks. The beast looked lordly and pleased with itself. Tsang's four-year-old son sat tamely beside it, feeding it the greener leaves, as if the animal could not find them for itself.
'Is it all right to talk?' Mae whispered, her eyes going sideways towards the boy.
'Who is it?' Mae mouthed.
Tsang simply waggled a finger.
So it was someone they knew. Mae suspected it was Kwan's oldest boy, Luk. Luk was sixteen, but he was kept in pressed white shirt and shorts like a baby. The shorts only showed he had hair on his football-player calves. His face was still round and soft and babylike but lately had been full of a new and different confusion.
'Tsang. Oh!' Mae gasped.
'Sssh,' giggled Tsang, who was red as a radish. As if either of them could be certain what the other one meant. 'I need a repair job!' So it was someone younger.
Almost certainly Kwan's handsome son.
'Well, they have to be taught by someone,' whispered Mae.
Tsang simply dissolved into giggles. She could hardly stop laughing.
'I can do nothing for you. You certainly don't need redder cheeks,' said Mae.
Tsang uttered a squawk of laughter.
'There is nothing like it for a woman's complexion.' Mae pretended to put away the tools of her trade. 'No, I can effect no improvement. Certainly I cannot compete with the effects of a certain young man.'
'Nothing… Nothing…' gasped Tsang. 'Nothing like a good prick!'
Mae howled in mock outrage and Tsang squealed, and both squealed and pressed down their cheeks, and shushed each other. Mae noted exactly which part of the cheeks were blushing so she would know where the colour should go later.
As Mae painted, Tsang explained how she escaped her husband's view. 'I tell him that I have to get fresh garbage for the pig,' whispered Tsang. 'So I go out with the empty bucket…'
'And come back with a full bucket,' Mae said airily.
'Oh!' Tsang pretended to hit her. 'You are as bad as me!'
'What do you think I get up to in the City?' asked Mae, who arched an eyebrow, lying.
Love, she realized later, walking back down the track and clutching her cloth bag of secrets, love is not mine. She thought of the boy's naked calves.
On Thursday, Kwan wanted her teeth to be flossed. This was new. Kwan had never been vain before. This touched Mae, because it meant her friend was getting older. Or was it because she had seen the TV models with their impossible teeth? How were real people supposed to have teeth like that?
Kwan's handsome son ducked as he entered, wearing his shorts, showing smooth, full thighs, and a secret swelling about his groin. He ducked as he went out again. Guilty, Mae thought. For certain it is him.
She laid Kwan's head back over a pillow with a towel under her.
Should she not warn her friend to keep watch on her son? Which friend should she betray? To herself, she shook her head; there was no possibility of choosing between them. She could only keep silent. 'Just say if I hit a nerve,' Mae said.
Kwan had teeth like an old horse, worn, brown, black. Her gums were scarred from a childhood disease, and her teeth felt loose as Mae rubbed the floss between them. She had a neat little bag into which she flipped each strand after it was used.
It was Mae's job to talk: Kwan could not. Mae said she did not know how she would finish the dresses in time. The girls' mothers were never satisfied, each wanted her daughter to have the best. Well, the richest would have the best in the end because they bought the best cloth. Oh! Some of them had asked to pay for the fabric later! As if Mae could afford to buy cloth for six dresses without being paid!
'They all think their fashion expert is a woman of wealth.' Mae sometimes found the whole pretence funny. Kwan's eyes crinkled into a smile; but they were almost moist from pain. It was hurting.
'You should have told me your teeth were sore,' said Mae, and inspected the gums. In the back, they were raw.
If you were rich, Kwan, you would have good teeth; rich people keep their teeth, and somehow keep them white, not brown. Mae pulled stray hair out of Kwan's face.
'I will have to pull some of them,' Mae said quietly. 'Not today, but soon.'
Kwan closed her mouth and swallowed. 'I will be an old lady,' she said, and managed a smile.
'A granny with a thumping stick.'
'Who always hides her mouth when she laughs.'
Both of them chuckled. 'And thick glasses that make your eyes look like a fish.'
Kwan rested her hand on her friend's arm. 'Do you remember, years ago? We would all get together and make little boats, out of paper or shells. And we would put candles in them, and send them out on the ditches.'
'Yes!' Mae sat forward. 'We don't do that anymore.'
'We don't wear pillows and a cummerbund anymore, either.'
There had once been a festival of wishes every year, and the canals would be full of little glowing candles, that floated for a while and then sank with a hiss. 'We would always wish for love,' said Mae, remembering.
Next morning, Mae mentioned the wish boats to her neighbour, Old Mrs Tung. Mae visited her nearly every day. Mrs Tung had been her teacher during the flurry of what had passed for Mae's schooling. She was ninety years old, and spent her days turned towards the tiny loft window that looked out over the valley. She was blind, her eyes pale and unfocused. She could see nothing through the window. Perhaps she breathed in the smell of the fields.
When Mae reminded her about the boats of wishes, Mrs Tung said, 'And we would roast pumpkin seeds. And the ones we didn't eat, we would turn into jewelry. Do you remember that?'
Mrs Tung was still beautiful, at least in Mae's eyes. Mrs Tung's face had grown even more delicate in extreme old age, like the skeleton of a cat, small and fine. She gave an impression of great merriment, by continually laughing at not very much. She repeated herself.
'I remember the day you first came to me,' she said. Before Shen's village school, Mrs Tung had kept a nursery, there in their courtyard. 'I thought: 'Is that the girl whose father has been killed? She is so pretty.' I remember you looking at all my dresses hanging on the line.'
'And you asked me which one I liked best.'
Mrs Tung giggled. 'Oh yes, and you said the butterflies.' Blindness meant that she could only see the past. 'We had tennis courts, you know. Here in Kizuldah.'
'Did we?' Mae pretended she had not heard that before.
'Oh yes, oh yes. When the Chinese were here, just before the Communists came. Part of the Chinese army was here, and they built them. We all played tennis, in our school uniforms.'
The Chinese officers had supplied the tennis rackets. The traces of the courts were broken and grassy, where Mr Pin now ran his car-repair business.
'Oh! They were all so handsome, all the village girls were so in love.' Mrs Tung chuckled. 'I remember, I couldn't have been more than ten years old, and one of them adopted me, because he said I looked like his daughter. He sent me a teddy bear after the war.' She chuckled and shook her head. 'I was too old for teddy bears by then. But I told everyone it meant we were getting married. Oh!' Mrs Tung shook her head at her foolishness. 'I wish I had married him,' she confided, feeling naughty. She always said that.
Mrs Tung, even now, had the power to make Mae feel calm and protected. Mrs Tung had come from a family of educated people and once had had a house full of books. The books had all been lost in a flood many years ago, but Mrs Tung could still recite to Mae the poems of the Turks, the Karz, or the Chinese. She had sat the child Mae on her lap and rocked her. She could recite now, the same poems.
