On the way, their teacher turned around to face them, flourishing her narrow hand and saying, “Boys and girls, you’ll eat sautéed purslanes this evening. It tastes great, different from anything you’ve ever had. Tell me, do you all want to have purslanes for dinner or not?”
“Yes! We do,” a few voices cried.
The teacher smacked her lips. Her sunburned nose crinkled, a faint smile playing on her face. As she continued walking, the ends of her two braids, tied with green woolen strings, were stroking the baggy seat of her pants. She was a young woman, tall and angular, with crescent eyebrows. She used to sing a lot; her voice was fruity and clear. But recently she was quiet, her face rather pallid. It was said that she had divorced her husband the previous summer because he had been sentenced to thirteen years in prison for embezzlement.
When they arrived at the field, Teacher Shen plucked a purslane from between two turnip seedlings. She said to the children, who were standing in a horseshoe, “Look, its leaves are tiny, fleshy, and egg-shaped. It has reddish stems, different from regular veggies and grass. Sometimes it has small yellow flowers.” She dropped the purslane into her duffel bag on the ground and went on, “Now, you each take charge of one row.”
Following her orders, the children spread out along the edge of the field and then walked into the turnip seedlings.
Shaona lifted up the bottom of her checked skirt to form a basket before her stomach and set out to search. Purslanes weren’t difficult to find among the turnips, whose greens were not yet larger than a palm. Pretty soon every one of the children gathered some purslanes.
“Don’t stamp on the turnips!” Uncle Chang shouted at them from time to time. Sitting under an acacia, he was puffing away at a long pipe that had a brass bowl, his bald crown coated with beads of sweat. He was in charge of a few vegetable fields and the dilapidated pump house.
Shaona noticed Dabin, a rambunctious boy, sidling up to her, but she pretended she didn’t see him. He nudged her and asked, “How many did you get?” He sniveled — two lines of dark mucus disappeared from his nostrils, then poked out again.
She lowered her skirt, showing him about a dozen purslanes.
He said with one eye shut, “You’re no good. Look at mine.” He held out his peaked cap, which was full.
She felt a little hurt, but kept quiet. He turned away to talk to other children, telling them that purslanes tasted awful. He claimed he had once eaten a bowl of purslane stew when he had diarrhea. He would never have touched that stuff if his parents hadn’t forced him. “It tastes like crap, more bitter than sweet potato vines,” he assured them.
“Not true,” said Weilan, a scrawny girl. “Teacher Shen told us it tastes great.”
“How can you know?”
“I just know it.”
“You know your granny’s fart!”
“Big asshole,” Weilan said, and made a face at him, sticking out her tongue.
“Say that again, bitch!” He went up to her, grabbed her shoulder, pushed her to the ground, and kicked her buttocks. She burst out crying.
Their teacher came over and asked who had started the fight. Shaona pointed at Dabin. To her surprise, the teacher walked up to the boy and seized him by the ear, saying through her teeth, “You can’t live for a day without making trouble. Come now, I’m going to give you a trouble-free place to stay.” She was dragging him away.
“Ouch!” he cried with a rattling noise in his throat. “You’re pulling my ear off.”
“You’ll have the other one left.”
Passing Uncle Chang, Teacher Shen stopped to ask him to keep an eye on the children for a short while. Then she dragged Dabin back to the kindergarten.
Shaona’s mouth fell open. The boy would be “jailed,” and he might get even with her after he was released. On the second floor of their building was a room, a kitchen used only for storage, in a corner of which sat three bedside cupboards. Sometimes a troublesome boy would be locked in one of them for hours. Once in a while his teacher might forget to let him out in time, so that he had to go without lunch or dinner.
About ten minutes later, Teacher Shen returned, panting hard as though she had just finished a sprint. She counted the children to make sure nobody was missing.
Shaona soon forgot Dabin, immersed in looking for more purslanes. For most of the children this was real work. Few of them had ever tasted anything they had gathered themselves, so they were searching diligently. Whenever their little skirts or caps were full, they went over to unload the purslanes into the duffel bag, from which their teacher was busy picking out grass and other kinds of herbs mixed into the purslanes. The children were amazed that in just one and a half hours the bag was filled up, and that they had almost combed the entire field. Their teacher kept reminding them of a proverb they had learned lately—“Many hands provide great strength.”
When they had searched the field, they were lined up hand in hand behind the pump house, ready to return to the kindergarten. But before leaving, for some reason their teacher gave several handfuls of purslanes to Uncle Chang. With grudging eyes they watched her drop almost a third of their harvest into the old man’s wicker basket, but none of them made a peep. The old man went on smiling at the young woman, saying, “All right, enough, enough. Keep the rest for yourself.” As he was speaking, spittle was emitted through his gapped teeth.
Shaona’s mind was racing, and she couldn’t wait for dinner. She thought, If purslane tastes real good, I’ll pick some for Mom and Dad. She knew a place in the kindergarten — inside the deserted pigsty — where she had seen a few purslanes.
To her dismay, dinner was similar to other days’: corn glue, steamed sweet potatoes, and sautéed radishes. There wasn’t even a purslane leaf on the table. Every one of her classmates looked upset. Not knowing what to say, some children were noisily stirring the corn glue with spoons. Shaona wanted to cry, but she controlled herself. She remembered seeing her teacher leave for home with the bulging duffel clasped on the carrier of her bicycle. At that moment Shaona had thought the green bag must have contained laundry or something, because it was so full. Now she understood, their teacher took their harvest home.
Shaona liked sweet potato, but she didn’t eat much. Anger and gas filled her stomach. Despite their sullen faces and disappointed hearts, none of the children mentioned purslanes. Everyone looked rather dejected, except for Dabin. He had kept glaring at Shaona ever since he was let out of the cupboard for dinner. She knew he was going to take his revenge. What should she do?
In the dusk, when the children were playing in the yard, Shaona caught sight of Dabin. She called and beckoned to him. He came over and grunted, “What’s up, little tattletale?”
“Dabin, would you like to have these?” In her palm were two long peanuts. Her father had given her six of them when she was coming back to the kindergarten two days ago.
“Huh!” he exclaimed with pursed lips, “I never saw a peanut with four seeds in it.” He snatched them from her hand and without another word cracked one. His eyes glittered and his mouth twitched like a rabbit’s while he was chewing the roasted kernels.