could burst. Selling scrap metal to speciality buyers did not bring in as much as the items were worth new but it did sell for more than ordinary scrap and that was how we were able to build a house with a tiled roof in five years.
After we'd loaded the scrap metal, Mother dragged over some cardboard boxes and laid them on the ground. Then she told me to draw water from the pump. This was one of my regular chores, and I knew that the handle was cold enough to peel the skin off my hands. So I put on stiff pigskin safety gloves we'd picked up on our rounds. Almost everything we owned, in fact, from foam pillows to a spatula, had come the same way. Some of our pickings had never even been used—my wool cap, for instance, which was brand-new army ration. It smelt like mothballs and had the date of manufacture—November 1968—stamped in red on the inside. My father was still a bed-wetting little boy back then, my mother a bed-wetting little girl, and me, well, I wasn't. With the gloves on, my hands were next to useless, but it was a bitterly cold day and the base of the pump was frozen solid. A leak at the edge puffed out air each time I pressed down on the handle but no water came out. ‘Hurry up!’ Mother shouted irritably. ‘Stop dawdling. “A poor child grows up fast” but you're ten years old and can't even draw water from a well. Raising you has been a waste of time and effort. All you're good at is eating—eat eat eat. If you devoted half your eating talent to getting your chores done, you'd be a model worker with a red sash.’ Mother grumbled, I seethed. Ever since you left us, Dieh, I've been eating pig and dog food and dressing like a beggar and working like a beast of burden. But nothing makes her happy. Dieh, when you left you were looking forward to a second land reform. Well, I'm looking forward to it more than you ever did. But it won't ever come. It's easier for people to get rich illegally. They're afraid of nothing. After Father left, Mother came to be known as the Queen of Trash. That should have made me the Queen of Trash's son, but in fact I was the Queen of Trash's slave. Her grumbling grew to cursing, and my self-pity shrank to despair. I took off the gloves and grabbed the pump handle with my bare hands. With a sucking sound they immediately stuck to the cold metal. Go ahead, pig iron handle, be cold, be frozen, peel the skin off my hands if you want to. It's hopeless anyway. Smash a broken jar—what difference does it make? I'll freeze to death, so what! She'll wind up with no son, and her big house with a tiled roof and her big truck will be meaningless. She's actually dreaming about my child marriage. Marriage to whom, you ask? To Lao Lan's stupid daughter, that's who. A year older, and a head taller, she doesn't even have a real name—only a nickname, Tiangua, Sweet Melon. A nose infection all year round means she always has two lines of snot above her mouth. Mother would love to improve her social standing by linking up with the Lan clan, and all I think about is setting up my mortar and flattening the Lan house. Dream on, Mother! So what if my hands stick to the pump handle! They belonged to ‘her son’ before they belonged to me. I pushed down, there was a gurgle and water gushed into the bucket. I immediately buried my face in it and began to drink. Stop that, she shouted. She didn't want me drinking cold water. But I ignored her. Best to drink till my belly ached and I was rolling on the ground like a donkey that's stopped turning a millstone. After I carried the bucket over to her, she told me to fetch the ladle. I did. Then she told me to splash water on the paper—not too much and not too little, just enough to give it a coat of ice. That done, she spread another layer of paper over the ice and I splashed on more water. We'd done this so many times it had become routine; there was no need for words. What I spread over the paper was water; what we