Chapter 2
HIS MOM HAD SAID—
It suddenly occurred to Jiang Cheng that it might be a little absurd to refer to her that way, and this particular notion was so intrusive that it cut off his train of thought. He couldn’t remember exactly what she’d said.
In all of his seventeen-odd years, his parents and family were the only ones he’d known. Regardless of their relationship, Mom was always the woman named Shen Yiqing, and Dad was the man named Jiang Wei. And then there was the little brother whom he’d never been close with… But now, out of nowhere, he had an extra set of family members. Li Baoguo, and…some other names he’d already forgotten.
It was hard to accept.
His relationship with his family had always been tense, for sure. Whether it was his parents or his brother, every interaction with them came with a risk of explosion. It had already been about a year since he and his brother last spoke to each other. Even his mom, who was always calm, had lost her temper a handful of times.
But even though this atmosphere had lasted from the beginning of his middle school years all the way until high school, even though he was always thinking that he never wanted to go home again, never wanted to see his parents again, and especially never wanted to see that face that looked like it’d come from the same mold as their parents… When this moment had finally descended upon him like a wish fulfilled, it still completely blindsided him.
Yes, blindsided.
Extremely blindsided.
It all felt like a nonsensical dream which had started the moment his mom said, “There’s something I have to tell you,” followed by several months of cold silence and paperwork, all the way until now.
Most of the time he wasn’t too upset about it, nor was he in a lot of pain.
He only felt blindsided.
“It’s cold, eh?” said Li Baoguo as he turned to Jiang Cheng, coughing loudly. “It must be way colder than where you used to live.”
“Mhm,” Jiang Cheng answered behind his mask.
“It’ll be warmer once we’re inside,” Li Baoguo said, his loud coughs and equally loud voice spraying saliva all over Jiang Cheng’s face. “I tidied up a room especially for you.”
“Thanks,” Jiang Cheng said, pulling his mask higher.
“Well, there’s no need for that between father and son.” Li Baoguo laughed as he coughed some more, then clapped Jiang Cheng on the back. “No need for ‘thank you’ between us!”
Jiang Cheng wasn’t able to respond; the slaps were quite forceful.
Breathing in the chilly air had already left a tickle in his throat; hearing Li Baoguo cough only made the urge for him to cough even stronger. Those two slaps made him double over in a hacking fit that almost had him in tears.
“You’re not in very good health, huh?” Li Baoguo watched him. “You gotta exercise. When I was your age, I was strong as a bear.”
Jiang Cheng didn’t say anything, just gave him a thumbs-up, still bent over.
Li Baoguo laughed boisterously. “Exercise! I’m counting on you to take care of me in the future!”
Jiang Cheng straightened and looked at him.
“Come on.” Li Baoguo gave him another slap on the back.
Jiang Cheng frowned. “Don’t touch me.”
“Oooh.” Li Baoguo paused and looked at him with wide eyes. “What’s wrong?”
Jiang Cheng held his gaze for a few moments, then pulled down his mask and said, “Don’t slap my back.”
Li Baoguo’s home was on an old street lined on either side with various decrepit little shops overflowing with the flavors of life, selling food, clothes, and various sundries. Above these shops sat several stories of low-rise residential apartments.
Jiang Cheng looked up, sweeping his gaze over and past the countless cables that crisscrossed above their heads. It was tough to tell whether the outer walls were truly painted in such ambiguous colors or simply looked that way due to the darkening skies.
He followed Li Baoguo into one of the buildings, his heart a tangle of emotions. They passed through heaps of produce and junk crowding the short hallway on the first floor before stopping in front of a door.
“It certainly won’t be able to compare with what you had before,” Li Baoguo said as he unlocked the door. “But what’s mine is yours!”
Jiang Cheng stayed quiet. He stared back into the hallway at a cobwebbed lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, and imagined the lightbulb must be suffocating.
“What’s mine is yours!” Li Baoguo opened the door and turned to give his shoulder a couple of hard thumps. “And what’s yours is mine! Now that’s real father and son stuff!”
“I said don’t touch me,” Jiang Cheng snapped.
“Whoa.” Li Baoguo entered the room and flipped the lights on. “Spoiled rotten you are, talking to your elders like that. Let me tell you, I never spoiled your older brother or sister. If you grew up here at home, I’d have beat you into submission long ago… Come on, you’ll sleep in this room. It used to be your brother’s…” Jiang Cheng dragged his suitcase into the room, not bothering to listen to whatever else Li Baoguo had to say. He wondered how a whole family had managed to fit into this two-bedroom apartment in the past.
Without looking, he could tell by his nose alone that this “tidied” room probably wasn’t tidied often…or ever. The smell of dust mingled with a faint odor of mildew in the air. The room held an old wardrobe, a desk, and a bunk bed. The bottom bunk had indeed been cleared out, while the top one was still packed with junk. The sheets and covers were all freshly changed.
“Set your stuff down; you can unpack tomorrow,” Li Baoguo said. “Let’s have a few drinks first.”
“What drinks?” Jiang Cheng was a little taken aback. He glanced at his phone—it was almost 10:00 P.M.
“Alcohol, of course. It’s been more than ten years since we last saw each other. We gotta have some drinks to celebrate the occasion!”
“…That’s okay.” Jiang Cheng could hardly believe his ears. “I don’t want to drink.”
“Don’t want to drink?” Li Baoguo’s eyes widened by another degree, and he stared at Jiang Cheng for a couple of seconds before his eyes returned to their original size. He started to laugh. “Have you never had alcohol before? But you’re in high school already—” “I don’t feel like drinking,” Jiang Cheng interrupted him. “I just want to sleep.”
Li Baoguo froze in place. “Sleep…?” After a long pause, he turned and walked away with a wave of his hand, saying gruffly, “Okay, okay. Sleep. Sleep away.”
Closing the door behind him, Jiang Cheng stood in the middle of the room for nearly five minutes. Then he opened the doors to the wardrobe. An overwhelming smell of mothballs rushed at him in a wave as he did, catching him off guard. More than half of this double-door wardrobe was stuffed with a variety of comforters, old sweaters, and blankets with edges so frayed they could have been tassels.
It was hard to describe the feeling. Jiang Cheng was certain he hadn’t started to miss his old family and home, which were hours away now. What he did miss, sincerely and madly, was his old room.
He pulled out some clothes from his suitcase at random and hung them up, leaving the rest in the suitcase, which he crammed into the bottom of the wardrobe. He pulled out a bottle of fragrance and sprayed it into the wardrobe a dozen times before he finally shut its doors and sat down on the edge of the bed.
His phone rang. The call display showed “Mom.” He answered.
“You’ve arrived?” came his mom’s voice from the other end.
“Yeah,” Jiang Cheng answered.
“The environment there isn’t as good as it is back home,” she said. “You might need some time to adjust.”
“No need.”
There was a pause, then, “Xiao-Cheng, I still hope you don’t think that—” “I don’t.”
Her voice took on the usual stern note. “We didn’t treat you poorly over the years. Your dad and I never once let on that you were adopted, did we? You never knew.”
“But somehow, I know now,” Jiang Cheng said. “And I got thrown out.”
She raised her voice. “Don’t forget—it was your fault your dad had that fit and had to be rushed to the hospital on New Year’s! He still hasn’t been able to come home!”
Jiang Cheng said nothing. He didn’t understand what he had to do with his dad’s pneumonia-induced hospital stay. As to whatever else his mom had to say after that…amazingly, he didn’t catch any of it. It was his superpower: He could block things he didn’t want to hear from entering his brain.
Her severe yet hollow accusations and her completely ineffective methods of communicating with him were the catalysts for his own breakdown. He didn’t want to listen. The last thing he wanted was to get into a fight while he was in the middle of this unfamiliar environment that made him queasy all over.
By the time the call ended, he couldn’t remember the rest of the conversation. What his mom said, what he said—he’d forgotten it all.
Craving a shower, Jiang Cheng rose and opened the door. He peered into the living room—no one was there. He cleared his throat and coughed a few times. No one answered.
“Are…you there?” He walked into the living room, unsure of how exactly to refer to Li Baoguo.
It was a small apartment. Standing in the living room, he could see the doors of all the rooms with one glance: the bedrooms, the kitchen, and the bathroom. Li Baoguo wasn’t home. Must have gone off to play mahjong again, Jiang Cheng thought, since the man would steal a few minutes to play a few hands even when he was passing by on his way to pick someone up at the corner.
“Come now—play a few hands—got plenty of time anyway,” Jiang Cheng sang as he pushed open the bathroom door. “Come now—take a shower— got…”(1)
There was no hot water tank in the bathroom.
“Got…” He continued singing as he turned back to look at the kitchen next to the bathroom, but he didn’t see a hot water tank there either, only a small electrical heater attached to the top of the kitchen faucet. “…Got…” He couldn’t continue. After doing a couple rounds around the apartment to confirm that there was indeed no hot water tank, he felt a stuffiness in his chest.
He smacked the faucet.
“Fuck.”
He’d spent the whole day traveling; he couldn’t possibly fall asleep without a shower.
Finally, he had to reopen his suitcase and pull out a collapsible pail.
Stripped down to his underwear, he carried the hot water from the kitchen to the bathroom one pail at a time, and finally managed to take a haphazard “shower.”
When he was finished, a cockroach scuttled past his feet as he walked out of the bathroom. He jumped up to get out of its way, and narrowly missed hitting his head on the door frame.
It was only after he’d gotten back to his room and turned off the lights in preparation for some forced shut-eye that he noticed the room didn’t have any curtains. The reason he’d never seen the view outside the window, and thus never noticed, was because the windowpane was too dirty.
He pulled the covers over himself, hesitated, then sniffed at them. When he verified that they were clean, he let out a breath of relief; he didn’t even have the energy to sigh.
After half an hour of lying on the bed with his eyes shut, long enough that his eyes were sore from the effort, sleep still wouldn’t come. He was just about to get up for a smoke when his phone chimed with a notification.
It was a message from Pan Zhi.
– Wtf, you left already? What’s going on?
Jiang Cheng lit a cigarette and dialed Pan Zhi’s number. With the cigarette between his lips, he walked to the window and tried to open it. Dust and rust covered the window and its frame. He struggled for a while, but the window still hadn’t budged an inch even by the time Pan Zhi picked up the call.
“Cheng?” Pan Zhi said in a hushed whisper, as if they were in the middle of a heist.
“Ah—fuck.” Jiang Cheng grimaced and cursed as he pricked his finger on something sharp. He gave up on trying to open the window.
“What’s going on with you?” Pan Zhi was still whispering. “I heard from Yu Xin today that you left already. Didn’t you say you’d let me know when you were leaving? I even bought a bunch of things to give to you!”
“Just ship them over.”
Jiang Cheng put on a jacket and walked out of the room, cigarette still between his lips. He was about to head outside when he remembered he didn’t have a key and had no choice but to retreat into the living room and open a window there. The irritation in him was like a storm; all his bad mood needed was one more spark and it could all go up in flames of rage.
“So you’re there already?” Pan Zhi asked.
“Mhm.” Jiang Cheng leaned over the windowsill and looked out at the pitch-black street.
“So? How’s that biological dad of yours?”
“You got anything important to say?” Jiang Cheng said. “I don’t feel like talking right now.”
“Fuck, it’s not like I sent you over there.” Pan Zhi tutted. “What are you lashing out at me for? You didn’t hesitate for a second when your mom said they needed the adoptee’s consent, but now you’re mad?!”
Jiang Cheng blew out a puff of smoke. “Being mad and not hesitating aren’t mutually exclusive.”
In the empty street outside, a tiny figure suddenly jumped and flitted by on a skateboard with shocking speed. Blinking into the darkness, Jiang Cheng remembered the little girl named Gu Miao from earlier. Who’d have thought there would be so many skateboarders in this shitty town?
“How about I come over?” Pan Zhi said suddenly.
“Huh?” Jiang Cheng’s attention was elsewhere.
“I said I’ll come visit you,” Pan Zhi said. “There’s still a few days before school starts, right? I can bring over the stuff I bought for you.”
“No,” Jiang Cheng declined immediately.
“Don’t be stubborn, it’s not like you told anyone else about this. At this point, I’m the only one who can offer you some warmth.” Pan Zhi sighed. “Let me come cheer you up.”
“Cheer me up how?” Jiang Cheng retorted. “Are you gonna blow me?”
“Screw your uncle, Jiang Cheng, can you try having a shred of shame?!”
“What would I need that for? If you’re so passionate about coming thousands of miles just to see me, no doubt I’ll have to cooperate.”
Jiang Cheng circled the apartment a few times holding his cigarette stub before he found an old Eight Treasure Porridge can covered with cigarette ashes.
When he opened the lid, the stench of positively ancient cigarette ends almost made him vomit before he even took a look inside. He tossed the stub in and quickly closed the lid, feeling in that moment that he never wanted to smoke again.
This strange and upsetting environment, this strange and upsetting “family”… Jiang Cheng thought he’d have insomnia under circumstances like these, but when he lay down, the agonizing sleeplessness he felt earlier was gone. He found himself surprisingly drowsy. Not just drowsy—seriously tired. It was like he’d just pulled weeks of late nights to study for a test.
It came suddenly. He closed his eyes and fell into a deep sleep, as if he’d lost all senses.
It was a dreamless night.
When he woke up the next morning, the first thing he felt was a soreness all over his body. As he rolled out of bed, Jiang Cheng felt that perhaps he was actually a dock worker who hauled loads to and from the pier; some newbie who hadn’t even been working for a full week.
He checked the time on his phone: It was still pretty early, just past eight in the morning. When he got dressed and walked out of the room, he could see that everything was the same as it had been the night before—even the empty bed in the other bedroom.
Had Li Baoguo been out all night?
Jiang Cheng frowned. Once he’d washed up, he started to feel a little bad;
his attitude yesterday hadn’t been all that great. Li Baoguo didn’t mean any ill will by dragging him along for drinks, it was only a difference in their habits.
But he’d rejected him so bluntly. Was that why Li Baoguo hadn’t returned the whole night?
He hesitated for a moment, then pulled out his phone to give Li Baoguo a call. They didn’t drink together the night before, but they could still have breakfast together.
Just as he was dialing, the sound of jangling keys came from the other side of the door, followed by the sound of the lock turning. The noise went on for another twenty or so seconds before the door finally opened.
Li Baoguo walked in, bringing the chill outdoor air in with him, with a look of exhaustion on his dull, sallow face.
“You’re up already?” Li Baoguo said loudly once he spotted him. “Pretty early riser, huh? How did you sleep?”
“…Not bad.” Jiang Cheng noticed the pungent aroma of cigarettes coming off him as he answered, mixed with some other inexplicable stink—it was like the smell you got on the old green and red trains.
“Have you had breakfast yet?” Li Baoguo shrugged off his jacket and gave it a shake. The foul smell only got worse, permeating the tiny living space.
“Not yet,” Jiang Cheng said. “Maybe we can—” “There’s breakfast stalls right outside—quite a few of them. Go eat something,” Li Baoguo said. “I’m dying to sleep, let me doze for a bit. If I don’t get up by noon, you just go ahead and eat on your own.”
Jiang Cheng watched him walk into the other bedroom and throw himself onto the bed without removing any of his clothes, just pulling a blanket over himself. A little stunned, he asked, “Where did you…go last night?”
“Mahjong. Been having shitty luck lately, but yesterday wasn’t too bad!
Must be you bringing me the good fortune!” Li Baoguo yelled happily before closing his eyes.
Jiang Cheng took the keys from the table and headed out. He felt naïve for feeling bad earlier.
The snow had stopped, replaced by a bone-piercing chill that swept through the air.
The morning streets were livelier than they had been at nighttime. There were pedestrians and cars, and even the sounds of firecrackers going off. But now that the sun was out, the neglect and decay that the cover of night had concealed was out in the open along with everything else.
Jiang Cheng walked up and down the street a few times before finally entering a bun shop. After a few meat buns and a bowl of tofu pudding, the soreness in his body still hadn’t subsided. Not only that, it seemed to have gotten worse, as if it’d been awakened by the nourishment.
Feeling like he had a cold coming on, he finished his breakfast and went into the pharmacy next door to buy a pack of cold medicine. After that, he stood on the side of the road, feeling a little lost. Should he head back…? The mental image of Li Baoguo falling asleep engulfed in weird smells irritated him to no end. What was there to do if he went back? Sleep, or stare off into space?
After standing outside the pharmacy for a few minutes, he decided to take a stroll around and familiarize himself with the neighborhood. Even if he wasn’t sure how long he was going to stay here.
He wandered aimlessly from the side street to the main road, then turned a corner onto another side street parallel to the one he was on before. He wanted to see if there was a way up ahead that would take him back to where he was without having to turn around.
On this little street, he found a tiny musical instrument shop and an ice cream parlor decorated in pastel colors. But other than that, there was no discernable difference between his street and this one.
He stopped at a convenience store masquerading as a supermarket and walked in, wanting to buy a bottle of water to wash down the medicine. But just as the burst of warm, lemon-scented air greeted him, Jiang Cheng froze in the doorway. He had an urge to turn around and leave the way he came.
From where he stood, he could see four people squeezed together in the tight space behind the cash register, each one sitting or leaning on a stool. When he entered, the idle chatter abruptly halted, and all four heads turned simultaneously to stare at him.
Jiang Cheng studied the four people—their appearances and their expressions, their clothing and the way they carried themselves. Each one of their faces seemed to spell out a word:
Fresh. Out. Of. Jail.
As he wavered between turning around and leaving or going in for the water on the shelf, Jiang Cheng caught something else out of the corner of his eye—there were three other people crammed in front of a row of shelves. As he turned, before he was able to make out any faces, he noticed a shiny bald head and tufts of hair scattered all over the floor. And a pair of large eyes.
[1] Jiang Cheng is ad-libbing his own lyrics to the song Itch, by Huang Ling.