A Paper Son Read Online Free Page B

could be more relaxing than a quiet boat ride? We’ll look at the stars, and the river will rock the children to sleep.”
    â€œI’ve been on a quiet boat ride for weeks,” she says. “We’re staying here.”
    He jabs at the crowd streaming past them with his chopsticks, sauce dribbling from the corner of his mouth. “This is rest?” he says. “Nobody sleeps here. You’ll see.”
    â€œHenry is nearly asleep in his jook ,” she says. “We stay.”
    Bing curses through a mouthful of mushrooms, drops his chopsticks on the crate, and storms away. One of the chopsticks clatters to the ground. Henry picks it up, places it neatly alongside its mate, and attempts a smile at her.
    â€œWhere is Dad going?” he says.
    â€œHe’ll be back,” she says.
    He returns minutes later and points up one of the narrow serpentine roads that fan out from the wharf. “Let’s go,” he says.
    Once in their bed the children fall asleep instantly. Bing seems to forget about the delay. He holds Li-Yu and talks on and on about all the things she and the children will love in Xinhui. His voice grows quiet, his words soft and far apart as he tires and fades. Li-Yu stays awake until very late, listening to the breathing of her children and her husband, and to the sounds of voices outside, and wooden wheels rolling on stone.
    ***
    While I’d been writing, the storm had continued its siege on the city. A wind had risen and now my windows hummed and rattled. My teacup sat where I’d left it, untouched, its heat gone and its mysteries inert. My computer’s desktop was littered with a dozen open browser windows: maps and images of China, articles on its history and geography, articles on steamships and Pacific crossings. I closed them all and centered my document on the screen again. I checked the clock. I knew I was supposed to be hungry by now, but when I thought about looking in the refrigerator or in the cupboard all I could see was Li-Yu, lying awake in that room, listening.
    ***
    The next morning Bing awakens them early. After a breakfast of steamed pork buns from a street vendor they return to the waterfront, where they wait in a thick dark fog for the water taxi. By the time it is fully light they are underway. The city seems as though it will never end but finally it shrinks and clears, and soon the little boat is plying up a wide avenue of water that runs through an endless patchwork of fallow rice paddies, which are empty but for puddles of rainwater and small piles of rotting stalks left from the fall harvest.
    Rose and Henry say almost nothing, except when they lean in to whisper to Li-Yu that they have to use the bathroom. The other children on board stare at the scenery for a time, but then they scatter to find other diversions. Hills emerge from the fog, ghostlike, and then disappear back into it. The air grows colder. A breeze pushes against them. Li-Yu gathers her children and squeezes them against her sides.
    â€œWe’re almost there,” Bing says, smiling broadly. “Just one more night.” He drops to a knee in front of his children and points to the empty rice paddies all around them. “You wouldn’t know it this time of year, but the fields of Guangdong are where the best rice in China grows. And since the best rice in the world grows in China, what do you think we’ll find growing here next summer?”
    The children nod but do not answer. Li-Yu looks upriver, peering through the fog for the land Bing has described, for the memories of her parents. She sees nothing but endless paddies, and looks to Bing for an explanation. This doesn’t look like the place you described, she wants to say. Where are the valleys, the mountains, the blossoms? There is only this river, the endless mud of these rice fields, and the occasional village. But Bing is staring off into the distance, perhaps seeing things in the mists that