A Thousand Years of Good Prayers: Stories Read Online Free

Kang clutch a girl’s unwashed sock. He drops it into the basket when he realizes that she is watching him.
    The next weekend, while Kang is playing a computer game in the activity room, Granny Lin searches his bed. She finds nothing under the mattress, where the kids usually hide things. She folds back the blanket. She picks up the pillow and unzips the pillowcase, and sees five socks inside, rolled up into small bundles like newborn bunnies.
    Granny Lin unrolls them: young girls’ socks with flowered patterns or cartoon animals. She thinks of putting them in her own pocket, but stops at the thought of Kang groping in the pillowcase for the socks, something dear to him for reasons she does not know. She rolls the socks back up and stuffs them into the pillowcase.
    On Monday, Granny Lin asks her supervisor for a half day off and takes the bus to the city, looking for socks with the same patterns as the missing ones. She buys several more packs of girls’ socks in different designs.
    Granny Lin becomes more careful with the laundry now. She makes sure all the girls’ socks are in their bags before Kang arrives. From time to time, she scatters around socks that she has bought, all of them having been washed and dried and then rubbed across the floor.
    They are still the happy couple on weekends, but Granny Lin worries as she counts the missing socks that she has put out for Kang. She wonders if she needs to talk to him and find out the reason for what he is doing. But every time she opens her mouth she loses her resolve.
    On weekends, as they sit in the shadow of the wisteria, Granny Lin wonders if this is the love she missed in her younger years, hand in hand with a dear boy, not asking him to tell her the secret she is not allowed to know.
    THE WEATHER GETS hot, and the dorm mothers put mosquito nets over the students’ beds. The first night, a boy in the bed next to Kang’s gets up after the dorm mother leaves. With a small flashlight in hand, he sticks his head into Kang’s mosquito net and shrieks in a low voice, letting the flashlight shine in Kang’s eyes. Kang does not cry, as the boy hopes, but the boy is surprised and pleased to find Kang stroking his own cheeks with both his hands in floral socks.
    Dorm mothers are called. Seven more socks are discovered, and by the end of the next day everyone in the school knows about the sick boy who steals girls’ socks and does strange things with them.
    Granny Lin watches the kids chase Kang around the school yard, calling him “sicko,” “psycho,” “porn boy,” her heart wrenching as if it were a piece of rag in the washing machine. Kang is no longer allowed to visit the laundry room. She counts the days to the weekend and is afraid that she will break down before the three days pass.
    On Friday afternoon, as they stand in front of the school gate, Granny Lin has to raise Kang’s hand up and wave for him. When the shuttle bus is gone, Granny Lin turns to Kang, who is kicking a pebble in front of him.
    “Kang, come to Granny’s room for a moment,” Granny Lin says.
    “No, I don’t want to,” Kang says, letting go of Granny Lin’s hand.
    “What do you want to do? Let’s take a walk.”
    “I don’t want to take a walk.”
    “How about reading some books? A new case of books came in yesterday.”
    “I don’t want to read.”
    “Let’s get up on the swing.”
    “I don’t want to do anything,” Kang says, pushing Granny Lin’s hand away from his shoulder.
    Granny Lin’s tears swell out of her eyes. She looks down at the top of Kang’s head. To love someone is to want to please him, even when one is not able to. “Think of something you want to do, and we’ll do it together. Think of something you want, and Granny will get it for you. You know Granny loves you.”
    “I want to go home. I want to see my mom,” Kang says. “Granny, do you think we can catch the train and go home for two days?”
    Granny Lin looks down at Kang’s upturned