‘No, I didn’t die.’ Meili missed the long-distance bus yesterday, so she had to spend the night in Dexian station, huddled up on a metal bench.
‘You’re dirty, and you stink,’ Nannan says, sniffing Meili’s neck. Before she left the landfill site, she took the mad dog to a petrol station and scrubbed him with soap and water. By the time she’d finished, the dog was as white as snow but she was splattered with mud. The dog waited with her by the roadside for hours. After a truck finally pulled up and gave her a lift, he chased after it for as long as he could, then gave up and shrank into a tiny white speck.
Unable to control his anger any longer, Kongzi jumps to his feet, slaps Meili across the ear and shouts, ‘So, where the hell have you been these last four weeks? We’ve all been worried sick. When your grandmother heard you’d gone missing, she had a heart attack and died.’
Meili slumps onto the floor, buries her head in her hands and weeps. ‘I was arrested,’ she cries out. ‘Taken to a Custody and Repatriation Centre. It’s a miracle I’ve made it back.’
‘And what are you doing dressing like a prostitute?’ Kongzi barks, veins bulging from his neck.
‘You merciless beast! I’ve suffered ten thousand hardships to get here, and this is how you welcome me . . .’ The only sparks of light on Meili’s drawn face are the tears in her blue-black eye sockets.
‘I sent people to check every custody centre in the county, but you weren’t there. Your brother’s been with us for two weeks, and has gone searching for you every day.’ He sits back down on the crate of beer, his temper subsiding a little.
‘When did my grandmother die?’ Meili asks, wiping snot and lipstick on the bed sheet.
‘October the 9th – your birthday,’ Kongzi replies, taking out a cigarette.
Meili bursts into tears again. Nannan jumps off the bed, crawls into Meili’s arms and starts weeping too. The bamboo hut is shaken about so much that dried mud falls from the walls.
Kongzi goes outside. The last segment of the sun is reflected on the surface of the duck pond. A car moves below the black hills in the distance, leaving a thin trail of light. Through the reeds, he sees Meili’s brother returning from the village, and waves to him. They enter the hut together and find Meili lying on the floor like a wounded creature, howling at all the miseries and wrongs inflicted on her, her cries beating through the mud, the swamp and the cold autumn wind.
A few hours later, calm finally descends. The kerosene lamp hanging from the wall lights up the four faces in the hut, leaving everything else in darkness. Meili’s brother looks just like her, but his eyebrows arch downwards, giving him a crestfallen air. ‘I should leave tomorrow,’ he says. ‘It wasn’t easy getting time off from the mine.’ Nannan is lying asleep at the end of the bed. Meili’s eyelids are swollen from weeping. She bites into a cob of sweetcorn and chews slowly. When Kongzi turns his face towards the lamp, he looks much older. The tobacco smoke streaming from his mouth makes even the darkness seem sluggish.
‘There’s a detergent factory downriver, a vinyl factory, a fire retardant foam factory,’ Kongzi says to the brother, the reflection of the lamp’s flame flickering across his pupils. ‘They’re all looking for workers. Why not stay here and get a job in one of them? I met a guy the other day who used to be a miner. He told me there was an explosion at his mine last year. The director didn’t want news of it to leak out, so he immediately sealed up the mine and refused to let rescue workers winch up the trapped men.’
‘Yes, coal mining is treacherous,’ Meili says. ‘Accidents happen all the time.’ Now that she’s washed off her make-up, she looks more awake than the two half-inebriated men.
‘No, I couldn’t live here,’ the brother says. ‘The smell is too foul. Look at the rashes that have broken out on my skin.’ He scratches the red patches on his hands. He’s wearing a blue down jacket with a grease-stained collar. His chin and neck are ingrained with coal dust. The conversation dries up. Nannan rolls onto her side, making the hut’s bamboo walls creak.
‘Dad, I need to wee,’ she says, waking up and rubbing her eyes.