Within a few seconds he finished the peanuts off, then he asked, “Do you have more?”
“Uh-uh.” She shook her head, her slant eyes fixed on the ground.
He touched her sweater pocket, which was empty. She had hidden the other four peanuts in her socks. He said, “You must be nice to me from now on. Remember to save lots of goodies for me, got it?”
She nodded without looking at him.
Standing below a slide, she watched him running off on his bowlegs to join the boys who were hurling paper bombers and imitating explosions. Behind the cypress hedge, near the closed front gate, a couple of children were playing hide-and-seek, their white clothes flickering and their ecstatic cries ringing in the twilight.
That night Shaona didn’t sleep well. She was still scared of the dark room. One of her roommates, Aili, snored without stopping. An owl or a hawk went on hooting like an old man’s coughing. A steam hammer in the shipyard on the riverbank pounded metal now and then. Unable to sleep, Shaona ate a peanut, though the rules didn’t allow her to eat anything after she had brushed her teeth for bed. She took care to hide the shells under her pillow. How she missed her mother’s warm, soft belly; again she cried quietly.
It rained the next morning, but the clouds began lifting after nine o’clock, so the children were allowed to go out and play. In the middle of the yard stood a miniature merry-go-round, sky blue and nine feet across. A ring of boys were sitting on it, revolving and yelling happily. Dabin and Luwen, who was squint-eyed, were among them, firing wooden carbines at treetops, people, birds, smokestacks, and anything that came into sight. They were shouting out “rat-a-tat” as if the spinning platform were a tank turret. Shaona dared not go take a spin. The previous week she had ridden on that thing and had been spun giddy and was sick for two days.
So instead, she played court with a bunch of girls. They elected her the queen, saying she looked the most handsome among them. With four maids waiting on her, she had to sit on the wet ground all the time. Weilan and Aili were her amazons, each holding a whittled branch for a lance. The girls wished they could have made a strong boy the king, but only Dun was willing to join them. He was a mousy boy, and most of the girls could beat him easily. He should have been a courtier rather than the ruler. Soon Shaona couldn’t stand playing queen anymore, because she felt silly calling him “Your Majesty” and hated having to obey his orders. She begged other girls to replace her, but none of them would. She got up from the ground, shouting, “I quit!” To keep the court from disintegrating, Aili agreed to be a vice queen.
Because of the soggy ground, many of the children found their clothes soiled by lunchtime. Teacher Shen was angry, especially with those who had played mud pies. She said that if they were not careful about their clothes, she wouldn’t let them go out in the afternoon. “None of you is a good child,” she declared. “You all want to create more work for me.”
After lunch, while the children were napping, Teacher Shen collected their clothes to scrub off the mud stains. She was unhappy because she couldn’t take a nap.
Too exhausted to miss her parents, Shaona fell asleep the moment her head touched her pillow. She slept an hour and a half. When she woke up, she was pleased to find her sweater and skirt clean, without a speck of mud. But as her hand slotted into the sweater pocket she was surprised — the three peanuts were gone. She removed the terry-cloth coverlet and rummaged through her bedding, but couldn’t find any trace of them; even the shells under her pillow had disappeared. Heartbroken, she couldn’t stop her tears, knowing her teacher must have confiscated the peanuts.
The sun came out in the afternoon, and the ground in the yard turned whitish. Again Teacher Shen led the twenty-four children out to the turnip field. On their way they sang the song “Red Flowers,” which they had learned the week before:
Red flowers are blooming everywhere.
Clapping our hands, we sing
And play a game in the square,
All happy like blossoms of spring.
When they arrived at the field, Uncle Chang was not in view, but the water pump was snarling, tiny streams glinting here and there among the turnip rows.
The sight of the irrigation made their teacher hesitate for a moment, then she said loudly to the children, “We’re going to gather more purslanes this afternoon. Aunt Chef couldn’t cook those we got yesterday because we turned them in too late, but she’ll cook them for us today. So everybody must be a good child and work hard. Understood?”
“Understood,” they said almost in unison. Then they began to search among the turnips.
Although most of the children were as high-spirited as the day before, there weren’t many purslanes left in the field, which was muddy and slippery. A number of them fell on their buttocks and had their clothes soiled. Their shoes were ringed with dark mud.
Yet the hollow of Shaona’s skirt was soon filled with several puny purslanes, and some children had even dropped a load into the duffel, which began to swell little by little. Unlike the silly boys and girls who were still talking about what purslanes tasted like, Shaona was sulky the whole time, though she never stopped searching.
In front of her appeared a few tufts of wormwood, among which were some brownish rocks partly covered by dried grass. A swarm of small butterflies rested on the wormwood, flapping their white wings marked with black dots. Now and then one of them took off, flying sideways to land on a rock. Shaona went over to search through the grass; her motion set the butterflies in flight all at once like a flurry of snowflakes. Suddenly a wild rabbit jumped out, racing away toward a group of girls, who all saw it and broke out hollering. The animal, frightened by their voices, swerved and bolted away toward the back wall of the kindergarten. At the sight of the fleeing creature, Teacher Shen yelled, “Catch him! Don’t let him run away!”
All at once several boys started chasing the rabbit, which turned out to have a crippled hind leg. Now their teacher was running after it too, motioning to the children ahead to intercept the animal. Her long braids swayed from side to side as she was dashing away. Within seconds all the children except Shaona joined the chase. The turnip field was being ruined, a lot of seedlings trampled and muddy water splashing from the running feet. Shrieks and laughter were rising from the west side of the field.
Shaona was not with them because she wanted to pee. Looking around, she saw nobody nearby, so she squatted down over the duffel, made sure to conceal her little bottom with her skirt, and peed on the purslanes inside the bag. But she dared not empty her bladder altogether; she stopped halfway, got up, and covered the wet purslanes with the dry ones she had gathered. Then with a kicking heart she ran away to join the chasers.
The rabbit had fled out of sight, but the children were still excited, boys huffing and puffing, and bragging about how close they had got to the animal. Dabin swore that his toes, peeping out of his open sandals, had touched that fluffy tail. Luwen said that the wild rabbit tasted much better than the domestic rabbit; a few children were listening to him describe how his uncle had shot a pair of wild rabbits in the mountain and how his aunt had cut them into pieces and stewed them with potato and carrot cubes. Their teacher stopped him from finishing his story. Without delay she assembled the children and led them out of the field, fearful that Uncle Chang would call her names on account of the trampled turnips.
Before dinner Shaona was worried for fear the chef might cook the soiled purslanes for them. To her relief, dinner turned out to be more of the usual. She was thrilled. For the first time in the kindergarten she ate a hearty meal — three sweet potatoes, two bowls of corn glue, and many spoonfuls of fried eggplant. The whole evening she was so excited that she joined the boys in playing soldier, carrying a water pistol, as though all of a sudden she had become a big girl. She felt that from now on she would not cry like a baby at night again.