Chapter 21: The Orphanage

Lu Chen had not been inside Sunrise House since the day he left for the university, and he did not want to go now.

"It's a visit," Mrs. Su said, in the car, with the baby on her knee. "Not a debt."

"You've brought a truck."

"Two trucks."

"Mrs. Su."

"Mother," said Mrs. Su, firmly. "You can try it on your tongue. It won't bite."

Lu Chen looked out of the window at the grey wall, the iron gate, the same chipped step.

Behind their car came the first truck, loaded with forty beds.

Behind that came the second, which held a boiler and, for reasons that were not clear to him, roses.

"Those are Su Ye's," said Mrs. Su. "From December. The florist potted what survived, and I thought the yard might as well have them."

The director met them at the gate.

She was older, and her hair had gone white.

She looked at Lu Chen and said, "You've got thin," and he was nine years old again.

"I eat," he said.

"You always said that."

She took them down the long corridor.

Lu Chen knew every board in the floor.

On the wall by the dining hall was the pencil line where the older children measured themselves each spring, with names beside the marks.

His was near the bottom, in his own childish writing, and under it, in the director's hand, was a date.

The fourth of November.

"I wrote it on a Thursday," the director said. "You asked if you could have a birthday, and I said I would find you one."

"I didn't remember that."

"I did."

Lu Chen stood in front of the pencil mark and found he could not speak.

Mrs. Su put her hand on his arm.

She said nothing, and then she said, "Come and see the little ones. I've got forty pairs of slippers in the second truck."

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