Free The Middle Kingdom by Andrea Barrett

this before, and Dr Yu smiled nervously. They might have been any family back home, the anxious parents of one of the boys I’d hung out with when I was fat and dressed in black and was everybody’s bad girl. Rocky shot me a small, conspiratorial smile, which I tried not to return but did. ‘
Liumang
,’ he said to me. ‘Means hoodlum. You like what my father calls me?’
    Dr Yu, who’d been watching all this, tugged me into the kitchen. No bigger than a closet, it had gray, unpainted concrete floors and blue-painted concrete walls. A small wooden refrigerator was jammed next to the sink, beneath a pair of rude cupboards. She unwrapped the chicken she’d bought and placed it, head and beak and all, in a covered wok. Then she opened a bottle of beer and poured it into two heavy glasses. ‘Do not mind Zaofan,’ she said, gulping at her beer. ‘He is – what do you say? – in a
stage
right now.’
    â€˜I don’t mind him at all,’ I said. My left hand found its way to my right arm, which felt hot. I stroked the skin above my elbow as if I could stroke my fever down, and Zillah with it. ‘He’s charming,’ I said to Dr Yu. ‘Your son, I mean. He seems very bright.’
    She made a wry face. ‘He likes all things American,’ she said. ‘Music, dance, sunglasses, art. All he knows of politics is the Cultural Revolution – bad times, bad food, no school, struggle sessions. Political education meetings every day. Everything is bad for him because of us. He got in some trouble selling dried sweet-potato slices he appropriated, perhaps without full permission. Also a few things later on. Now the art school refuses him because of his record, and so he has to work at this odd job. He makes his father unhappy.’
    â€˜His father seems unhappy,’ I said, thinking how much the set of Dr Zhang’s mouth resembled Walter’s.
    â€˜Always,’ Dr Yu said, making another face.
    Those were the last words Dr Yu and I exchanged alone that night. The four of us sat stiffly in straight chairs, eating dumplings and pressed
doufu
and the chicken Dr Yu had steamed with soy and ginger, and we talked as if we’d been elected by church committees to demonstrate cultural exchange. Science and daycare and education, all dry as dirt; the weather. The state of the world. My fever seemed to come and go, heat rushing from my feet to my face like a wave and then subsiding, leaving me cold and dry. ‘Women hold up half the world,’ Dr Yu said. ‘That is our slogan. We work the same jobs as men, receive the same money, have the same responsibilities. But somehow all the household chores are also still ours. Is this true for you?’
    I rolled my eyes and Dr Zhang sniffed. ‘I have marketed,’ he said. ‘Many times.’
    Dr Yu looked at him skeptically and changed the subject to my rehabbing career, not understanding that I’d put it behind me. ‘Re-habbing?’ Dr Zhang said. ‘As in re-habilitation?’
    I nodded.
    â€˜We know about rehabilitation,’ he said bitterly. ‘We have been rehabilitated ourselves.’
    â€˜Here?’ I said, misunderstanding him completely.
    â€˜Not
here
,’ he said. ‘
Us.
Ourselves. What could you do with this place? What could anyone do? And this is an excellent apartment for Beijing, we waited six years for my
danwei
to assign it to us. Excellent, of course, unless you’re a high Party cadre. You could work for
them
, perhaps …’
    â€˜What is
danwei
?’ I asked.
    Dr Zhang scowled. ‘You don’t know
danwei
?’ I didn’t; there had been no such thing in Uncle Owen’s time. ‘
Danwei
is work unit,’ Dr Zhang continued. ‘In the city,
danwei
is everything. Not just the working place but more like a village, or a tribe – our food coupons come from our
danwei.
Our apartment belongs to mine. Our