Free Colors of the Mountain by Da Chen Page B

“I’m a carpenter and I know how heavy a chair is.”
    “Then you better ask your hooligan son not to beat me up anymore,” I said, doing most of the talking as my family looked on.
    “Don’t say that,” Mom jumped in.
    “He
is
a hooligan!” I shouted. “You don’t know the bad things he does. He even uses money to buy things to bribe his friends against me.”
    “Money? What money?” his dad asked.
    I gauged the man’s surprise. “He has a lot of money. He buys cigarettes and smokes with his friends.”
    “A lot of money and smoking?” his dad said, taken aback.
    “Where does he get the money?” his mom asked. “Do you know?”
    “From home, I heard,” I replied, still crying.
    “That rat!” His parents abruptly left.
    I knew I was the winner of this match. It would do Han good to get a beating at home and taste the flavor of being ratted on.
    Normally, my righteous family would have scolded me, telling me how wrong I was to fight, making me sit in the corner. But that night they didn’t. At dinner, with the door closed, everyone laughed and chatted. There was tacit forgiveness, even a sense of victory in the air. They listened to my fishing stories and my version of life on the island.I demonstrated “the right way” to eat the mackerel, and they laughed and relished the seafood I had brought home.
    But in bed that night, I knew what lay before me during this New Year’s holiday. The threesome wouldn’t leave me alone. I couldn’t hang out in the regular places where the children normally played. Nor could I skip town again. I just had to make do and fight as I went along. I tucked myself in, thought about the island and the kids a little more, then fell asleep with a smile on my face.
    On New Year’s Eve, money was traditionally handed out to children in small red envelopes called “
hon baos
,” which meant
red bags.
The good kids spent money on toys, candies, movies, and plays. The bad ones hit the gambling pits, where they cheated, hustled, and hoped to win enough money to lead a good life of bad habits. Smoking, drinking, and women were never far from their minds. I collected five yuan and thought about what weapons to buy to protect myself.
    Early in the morning on New Year’s Day, I helped Mom prepare all kinds of sacrifices before our makeshift shrine of numerous gods. There was Buddha, his Kitchen God, the Earth God, Rice God, Water God, and all our dead ancestors. It was pretty much like the administration of a government, Mom explained. There were local gods, provincial gods, and the big Buddha on top. She had designated a spot for each, with different displays of food as sacrifices. There was chicken, fish, shrimp, clams, crabs, whole piglets painted in red, greasy ducks, colored eggs, wine, peaches, pears, bananas, rice, and a lot of incense and paper money to burn.
    With incense clutched in her hands, Mom knelt and said the prayers. I waited on the side and kowtowed as many as fifty to a hundred times before each god, doing extras for my sisters and brother. I couldn’t remember how I had gotten into the business of kowtowing for my siblings. All I knew was that I was a little more religious than they were. I had always been afraid of ghosts, and believed in the power of good gods. I prayed like a monk and didn’t mind bending down on my skinny knees to kowtow for as often as Mom thought appropriate, usually imagining a hundred to be her lucky number.
    By the end of the ceremonies, though my back and knees ached, I was quietly content with the prospect of having bought my insurancewith gods at all levels for the new year to come. I told my sisters and brother that I had also done favors before the gods in their stead and had them pay me back in monetary terms. They believed enough to pay me five fens each.
    For breakfast on New Year’s Day, long, thin, handmade noodles were prepared, served in elegant little bowls and decorated on top with slices of fried egg, marinated