A Paper Son Read Online Free Page A

Francisco, where her sisters now live, far behind her. She knows the sound of twenty men speaking Cantonese all to each other at once, and she knows the smells of roasted duck and dumplings and the steam of rice. She knows the shops and their wares, and the textures of jade and ivory and bamboo and silk. But there is nothing familiar about this city that now reaches for them with its claw of a wharf and pulls them into its shroud of twilight and smoke. The quays teem with cargo and equipment, and the sounds of hundreds of shouting voices rise up over the growl of the ship’s engines. The mouths of streets appear, revealing narrow corridors that twist from the docks into the city’s interior.
    Li-Yu tightens her grip on Rose and Henry. Bing turns from the railing, where he has been smiling and breathing in great draughts of the smelly air. He squats down next to the children. “This is China, our home,” he says, steadying himself with a loose hug around their legs. “What do you think?” Neither of them speaks. He looks back and forth at their blank faces. “You’ll love it,” he says. “Ask your mother.” He looks up at Li-Yu. “Tell them,” he says.
    Neither of her children looks to her, and Li-Yu offers nothing. Bing stands and leans toward her ear. “I thought we were supposed to be together,” he says.
    â€œWe are,” she says.
    â€œI thought you were going to talk to them,” he says.
    â€œWhat can I tell them?” she says, looking out across the dark city. “What do I know?”
    But Bing has already stopped listening; he’s gazing down at the wharf, which is now just beneath them, and crawling with people. The ship docks with a bump and a heightened groan as the engines work to check the rest of its momentum. The deck rings with footfalls as the passengers clamor for the stairs. Li-Yu gives each of her children a small canvas bag to carry, tells them to hang on to the back of her coat, and hoists her bags. Bing takes his own suitcases and plunges into the crowd. Li-Yu chases after him, and though she can feel the tug of both children’s hands, she imagines how easy it would be for them to be pulled away into the crowd, like fruit plucked from a tree. They make it onto the dock without getting separated, but Henry is fighting tears, and Rose’s jaw is hard and set. The wharf is nothing like Li-Yu imagined. The signs are in Chinese, but the faces are from all over the world. She hears a dozen different languages before they have gone a hundred steps. Bing is jubilant. He is congratulating strangers, laughing, turning and calling things out to Li-Yu and the kids, his words garbled like he’s been drinking. At one point she loses sight of him completely. She stops, gathers her children against her sides, and searches the crowd before her. Just when she is about to panic he comes bounding in from the side.
    â€œOver here,” he says, smiling, pulling them toward the edge of the crowd. There is an open-air restaurant, little more than a cart with a few upturned wooden crates around it. Bing gestures at them to squat and after a quick exchange with the cook he returns with bowls of rice porridge, slices of grilled pork, boiled peanuts, a dish of lotus root and tree fungus in a rich brown sauce.
    â€œEat, eat,” he says, spreading the dishes on the crates, beaming as if he has just cooked them himself. He tousles Henry’s hair. “Real food!” he says. “Eat up, we only have half an hour.”
    â€œUntil what?” Li-Yu says, picking up her chopsticks.
    â€œUntil the boat to Xinhui!” he says. “We’ll be there before the sun sets tomorrow!”
    Li-Yu shakes her head.
    He points somewhere, vaguely inland. “Nearly there now!” he says.
    â€œNot tonight,” she says. “The children need to rest. I need to rest. Even you need to rest.”
    â€œWe’ll rest! What