The fire went out.
Rain poured.
“What are you looking at?” She heard Zhu Yin’s voice behind her.
“The rain is so heavy.”
“I brought an umbrella. How about you come home with me first….”
“Where did you get that umbrella?”
“A friend.”
“You should go change.”
Jiaming went to her room and changed into fresh clothes, the wet bundle at her feet like shed snakeskin. The rain was so heavy that the umbrella hadn’t done much good.
She returned to the living room, where silent images danced on the TV screen. She picked up the remote and clicked through the channels, pausing at each briefly. In their home, no one ever unmuted the TV, but no one turned the TV off, either.
“Do you have any homework?” a voice asked from behind the piles of architectural plans.
“All finished.”
“I’ll get off work early the day after tomorrow. We can go out for dinner together.”
For a second, Jiaming was silent as she stared at dozens of Mk 82 bombs dropping from the sky on TV; the next scene showed burning fields. She remembered.
“Your birthday is in two days,” she said.
“What would you like as a gift?”
“Isn’t it a bit bizarre to give me gifts when it’s your birthday? Do you have something to tell me?”
The man ignored this.
“A Sarah Brightman CD then.”
“Write it down for me. It’s time for bed.” The man went into the kitchen and returned with a glass of milk; he handed it to Jiaming and watched as she drank it down.
Every night, before bed, her father gave her a glass of warm milk so that she could sleep soundly.
“So ugly!” The pale woman stared at the hairband in her hand, shocked. “Who would buy this?”
“They sell very well, in every color. Lots of girls at school wear them.”
They glanced at each other and laughed at the same time.
“Long hair is too much trouble.”
“But I like you with long hair. You look particularly well behaved.” The pale woman caressed Jiaming’s short hair. Her hand was so white that it looked like a beam of moonlight was shining on Jiaming.
“I prefer it like this.”
“How’s school?”
“Same old same old. It rained yesterday.” Her voice softened, but returned to normal almost immediately. “I didn’t bring an umbrella, so Zhu Yin lent me hers.”
She waited for the pale woman to ask her, Does Zhu Yin still act really petulant sometimes? Then she would know what to say next.
But the pale woman didn’t.
“It rained yesterday,” she repeated what Jiaming had said.
“The day after tomorrow is Dad’s birthday,” said Jiaming.
The pale woman was quiet.
The woman reached into her pocket. “Let’s look at the stars,” she said.
She retrieved a folded-up sheet of paper and began to spread it, infinitely patient and gentle. Each time she opened another fold, her skin grew brighter, as if lit from beneath with a pure white light, of which, like her joy, it was impossible to say whether it was warm or cold. The paper, which had appeared about the size of her palm at first, gradually expanded and spread out in every direction under her careful, repetitive movements until the edges could no longer be seen.
The symbols and lines on the paper coiled and extended, as strange as the first time she had seen them. A rapidly spinning disk.
ἀστρολάβος
astrolabos
The Star-Taker
“Look, these are your stars.” The pale woman laughed.
2.
For PE, they were supposed to do an 800-meter run. But after the first lap, few girls could be seen on the track.
From a distance, Jiaming saw the PE teacher chasing girls back onto the track who had been trying to get out of running by hiding in the shade of trees. Reluctantly, they minced their way down the track. As soon as girls hit puberty, they seemed to lose the ability to run properly; it wasn’t only because of their bouncing breasts—overall they became indolent, or perhaps they were learning that this was part of the art of being coy.
“You’re in a good mood today,” Zhu Yin said.
Jiaming looked at her, surprised. They were hiding among the girls on the basketball court, pretending to be practicing their shots.
Zhu Yin came closer, like a mouse who has scented cake. “I bet there’s something.”
Jiaming said nothing.
“Did you dream about her?”
When she was seven, Jiaming had told Zhu Yin that she dreamed of a woman who was so pale that her skin appeared pure white. Zhu Yin had never forgotten about her.
“What did you talk about last night?”
“I told her about my dad’s birthday.”
“Were you able to see her face clearly this time? Did she look like your mom?”
Jiaming had always been able to see the pale woman’s face clearly, but she couldn’t remember what her mom looked like. Her mother had died in an accident at sea when she was four.
“Hey, you two!” a male voice next to them interrupted. “Is that your teacher?”
The man coming toward them with the whistle in his mouth was indeed their PE teacher. Jiaming and Zhu Yin looked at each other and then slipped onto the track, hurrying to catch up with the group ahead of them.
“Thanks!” As they passed the boy who had warned them, Zhu Yin winked at him.
Jiaming and the boy locked eyes for a moment. She recognized him.
“You know the guy we just passed?” Jiaming asked.
“I know of him. He’s in the cram class. A bit of a freak.”
“What’s his name?”
“Zhang Xiaobo.”
Without the storm; without the trees thinking of escape; without the wild, mad fire; without him sitting on the wall he looked calm and friendly, perfectly normal. Jiaming told herself not to look back; there was no need for suspicion.
The pale woman had told her that the stars wished her luck.
She hadn’t even noticed her own smile.
“What are you so happy about?” asked Zhu Yin.
“I was thinking of my dream from last night. I showed her the hairbands that are so popular right now, and she thought they’re really ugly, too.”
“Which kind?”
Jiaming looked at the girl sitting on the bench next to the track without speaking. Only someone who had gotten a note from the nurse could sit there so openly, excused from having to run up a sweat. As they crossed the finish line, the girl on the bench got up and walked toward them.
“You saw the ones she’s wearing?”
Zhu Yin laughed. “Yeah, pretty ugly.”
The new girl approached Jiaming but hesitated when she saw Zhu Yin.
Zhu Yin rolled her eyes. She turned to Jiaming. “I’ll wait for you back in the classroom.”
“Jiaming!” The bright sun made the new girl squint as she smiled.
“Lina.”
Lina was one of the first girls to attract the attention of the boys. Once she turned twelve, her body lost its baby fat and began to acquire curves and contours, giving off a warm scent and unconsciously attracting the gazes of the opposite sex onto the bulges in her school uniform. She was always surrounded by boys, and not only boys her age.