Chapter 12: The Plastic Stool

The Wei feed store smelled of corn dust, and in the middle of it, on Anzhi's own stool, sat Jiang Yuan, eating dumplings.

Ma stood over him with the plate.

She was a small woman in a padded vest, with a back brace over it.

She put the dumplings in his bowl one at a time, as fast as he finished them.

"Eat," she said. "You're too thin. They don't feed you in that house."

"They do, Auntie. It's only..."

"Eat."

Dad was at the counter, leaning on it with one hand pressed flat to his chest, looking at Yuan and saying nothing.

Anzhi stood in the doorway with a bag of oranges in his hand.

Linchuan had driven him the whole way from Suzhou, with one hand on the wheel and the other, at every red light, on Anzhi's knee.

He was parking the car in the lane now, and Anzhi could still feel the print of that hand through his trousers.

Nobody noticed.

"Ma," he said.

She turned, and the plate tilted, and a dumpling rolled off and landed on a sack of rice.

"Anzhi!" She hurried over and caught his face between her hands. "You're thin too."

"I told the boy you must be thin. He says you ate a rice bowl in front of the whole city. Was it enough?"

"It was fine, Ma."

"He came at five," she said, in a rush. "He said, I'm the one they gave you."

"And I didn't know what to do. I fed him."

"I know."

Ma searched his face. "Was that wrong?"

"No," said Anzhi.

It was not wrong.

It was the most Ma thing in the world. He had known it before he got in the car.

Yet something in his chest closed.

Yuan, at the counter, was looking at him over the bowl with wet eyes, and his lips were shining with soup.

Anzhi turned around and walked out through the back, past the sacks and the cat, into the little shed behind the store.

He sat down on an upturned crate and put his hands over his face.

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