Na Zhong is a New York-based writer, literary translator, and cultural podcaster. Her work has received recognition and support from the Center for Fiction, Tin House Workshop, NYFA, among other organizations. She tweets @nazhongwriting.

It took Jianying three years to make up her mind to pierce her ears. Now, turning her head from side to side to tickle the artificial pearl in the mirror, she decided that it had absolutely been worth it. If only someone had told her about it earlier! “But I did tell you a long time ago,” said her daughter in a recent video call; “Yes, she did,” echoed her husband at the end of the sofa. Jianying shushed them with a tyrannical tenderness, her way of admitting her ignorance, and reminisced about the horror brewing in her until the woman at the nail salon pinched her ears and told her it was over.

It had taken her six weeks for the holes to stop bleeding or itching. Plenty of time for earring shopping. Jade pendant, pearl on a ring, artificial diamond stud, various combinations of the above three. She had been indulging herself a little more than usual—on the tail of her fifties, she had suddenly developed a burning hunger for beauty. As soon as the first batch of earrings arrived, she decided to dye her hair a different color, a change from the raven black she’d been using to hide her white hair since she turned thirty. It was a yellowish brown or a brownish yellow that she picked, a hopeful color to make her age more confusing to strangers on the street.

For the reunion Jianying selected the scarlet agate drop, echoed by the choker chain with the leaf-shaped pendant. She had recycled it from a long necklace bought years ago on one of the many weekend trips to the city during her first year of teaching. She wondered if Jie and Hongmei would appreciate this gesture, a throwback to the old days. As she admired herself in the mirror, she imagined what they would show up in.

The three friends had not stayed close in the past thirty-something years. In the first months following their college graduation, frequent visits were made to each other’s workplaces and apartments, complaints traded, plans devised. Jianying seized every opportunity to get herself out of the industrial town that she was assigned to by the government, where one road led to a steel factory, the other to a chemical workshop, the river connecting the two neither green nor clear but phlegm-like. But then, the visits became unreciprocated: Every other Friday it was Jianying alone who would hop on a city-bound bus and stay over at Jie’s and linger in the city until six p.m. on Sunday, barely in time for the last bus home.

Gradually, though, Jianying’s town provided its own simple joys. A Marxist literary salon was hosted over walks by the river and picnics at the park, and two new ballrooms opened for eligible factory workers to mingle and sway with marriageable teachers and nurses. When Hongmei showed up alone at Jianying’s wedding, bringing nothing but apologies from Jie, who was busy applying for grad schools, Jianying pretended to be too euphoric to mind. After her daughter was born, she had plenty of excuses not to leave the town. Sporadically, her friends got to see her when she came to the city to attend teaching conferences. Even then she couldn’t stay for dinner; her baby girl was at home, waiting.

Now, in the chat group, the belated curiosity in each other’s lives was as strong as the desire to lay bare one’s own.

“So how old is that sweetheart of yours, Jianying?” This was Jie, who had tracked Jianying down in the six hundred-strong alumni chat group.

“Twenty-seven, going on twenty-eight towards the end of this year,” Jianying answered.

“Time flies! Married, is she?”

“Three years and a half now.”

“Good. You’ll be a grandma before you know it.”

Jianying knew enough about her daughter not to comment on it. “I saw the pictures of your son’s wedding. Very beautiful, your daughter-in-law.”

“Not without the makeup! Plain, if you ask me. Very sneaky, too. Didn’t want to sign the prenuptial agreement.”

A pause in the conversation. The temptation to ask about the assets resisted. Hongmei sent over a picture of strawberries and virgin tomatoes, firm and moist, glistening in the plastic containers.

“Sweet and juicy!” Jianying commented. “Where did you get it?”

“At a friend’s country house.”

“Hongmei knows how to enjoy herself. Me, I’d rather hang out with my young chauffeur than being alone! The fresh meat, if you know what I mean,” Jie texted.

Jianying was happy to discover that, out of the three, she alone had remained safe and secure in wedlock. Jie had divorced her husband after he was diagnosed with diabetes—that was eight years before; Hongmei had never married. By the virtue of contrast Jianying saw vividly what she had gained—a husband, a daughter, a roof over her head—wasn’t that something! She might not have achieved much career-wise (so many opportunities turned down for her little one), might not have amassed much wealth (husband turned out to be chicken-livered when it came to investment), but she’d beaten her best pals on the front of familial bliss. For this alone she could hold her head high when they met.

“So, does the time and place work for everyone? Three p.m. at the Clear Wave Teahouse?” Jie asked.

“Won’t it be too late for you to go back, Jianying?” Hongmei asked.

Jianying was delighted to report that she had moved—actually, moved back—to the city. The teahouse was but five bus stops away from where she lived.

“Good for you! Show us some pictures!”

“Enough. It’s too late. We’ll talk when we meet,” Jie declared.

. . .

At the teahouse they recognized each other without trouble. (Why should one fear otherwise?) Boisterously they clapped hands and guffawed despite themselves and asked for the glasses to be added to the table and tea to be brewed.

“Pick whatever you want on the menu, ladies. It’s on me,” Jie said.

Naturally a few rounds of refusing and insisting lasted until the generosity was accepted. Jianying lifted her hand away from the top of her glass. Chrysanthemum tea with goji berries for her, thanks. As the waiter waved the bronze kettle, maneuvering the white band of boiled water so it fell evenly among the glasses, Jianying remembered the snacks she’d brought just for the occasion. She half-turned on her seat to sink a hand into her bag. Her chubby calloused hand reemerged with a full clasp of little packets: walnut halves cupped by jujube halves, chocolate-coated biscuits, pistachios roasted and light-salted. She stored these like squirrels before the winter, for her low blood sugar crises as well as pastime delights.

“How did you know? This is my favorite.” Hongmei reached for the pistachio and sipped on her free tea. Of the three she had aged the least. From time to time, Jianying cut furtive glances at her, wondering if her complexion owed its egg-white brightness to the liberation from marriage and child rearing. Jie was the wealthiest of the three, but her skin was closer to Jianying’s in shade: Imagine the color of a white towel after thirty years of heavy-duty use in dishwater.

“Where’s your hubby, Ying? Why didn’t you bring him along?” Jie said.

“Why would I bring him? All he’d do is sit in a corner and watch us talk for a whole day. Poor man, it’s a torture for me to see him like that.”

“Shame. If we had four we could get a mah-jong table.”

“You play the game a lot, Jie?”

“No other choice if you want to climb up.”

And climb up Jie did. The journey, arduous though it must have been, was not mentioned but sufficiently hinted at: by the logo of a certain luxury brand on her windbreaker and handbag, by the way she gestured to the waiter and flirted with him, and by the fact, as Jianying noticed, that she wouldn’t touch the snacks spread over the table. Huang Jie, you think you’re too good for my food now? she thought, snatching a bag of walnuts and tearing it apart.

The conversations spun like a roulette wheel. Red meant children for Jie and Jianying, black meant love affairs for Jie and Hongmei, the occasional green being the split-second when Hongmei sought Jianying’s eyes to joke about Jie, or Jie darted a look at Jianying to suggest untold stories about Hongmei. All this unspoken communication made Jianying feel very good. She intuited that the relationship between Jie and Hongmei had been steady but never frictionless in the past years, and sensed their need for her to form a new reliable triangle.

Merrily she jumped in, forgetting the promise she’d made to her daughter to be tactful and cautious. Discretion was never Jianying's strong suit.

“Where do you live again, Ying?” Jie asked.

“Golden-Ox. At the intersection of White-Horse-River and Bridge-of-Immortals.”

Eyebrows locked, Jie was deep in her thoughts. “Are there any new luxury buildings? I’ve driven past there quite a few times. Don’t remember any in the neighborhood.”

“It’s not a luxury building. Just a small community. Originally planned for single people.”

“How big is it?”

Jianying lied and said around fifty square meters.

Behind her sunglasses Jie’s eyes widened. “You and your husband? How crowded it must be!”

“It’s alright, actually. The older one gets, the less space one needs.”

“Nonsense! Even two hundred square meters is barely enough.”

“Is that bag made by yourself, Ying?” Hongmei changed the subject before the conversation got more damaging.

Jianying swerved around and found her patchwork tote bag hanging on the ear of the chair.

“Oh that! I have a dozen now. Never hurts to have a little hobby after retirement, you know?”

The bag was passed around the table, its fabric felt, the embroidery appreciated.

“Raindrops on a lotus leaf? Very poetic, Ying. Very you,” Hongmei said.

Jianying showed them the pictures of every bag she’d made on her phone. There was the one with a bird trilling on the branch, a rose blooming above two leaves, the Chinese character that meant Peace and Quiet. The two friends cooed and nodded.

“I like the one with the wooden buttons,” Hongmei said. “Can I order one from you, Ying-er?”

“It’s yours! I’ll bring it to you next time.”

“How can I have it for free? The work you’ve put in it!”

“Don’t mention it.” Jianying shook her head with glee. “I’ll make another one in a blink!”

. . .

A few nights later, as Jianying spread her works on the bed to admire and compare, her ears caught a piece of local news. It seemed that the place where Jianying gave birth to her daughter would be turned into a shopping mall next year. A sensible move, she thought, as few young mothers these days would be so careless and choiceless to let themselves be carried to a minimally-equipped maternal and child health center in the middle of the night. The vehicle: a flat-tired three-wheeler borrowed from a neighbor who ran a grocery store. The driver: one’s very own husband.

Propped up by the quilt they’d packed for the occasion, shaking from the pain and the bumpy ride, Jianying had squinted at the moon that followed them along the way, not a step farther, not a step closer. Then it stopped at the front of the hospital. It heard them rattling the wrought-iron gate and wailing for help. “Someone’s dying here! Anyone inside?” A window blinked up and a yawning guard let them in. The moon waited outside. But it couldn’t wait long enough to hear the first cry of the infant, which didn’t break until eight in the morning.

Right before the baby was dragged out of her, Jianying was so steeped in fatigue that even pain couldn’t reach her. The next second, time started flowing again, and she felt wonderfully relieved. In her new emptiness she locked her eyes on that flushed wrinkled little thing in the nurse’s arms, eyes shut and fists clenched. Why wasn’t it crying? she asked and realized that nobody heard her because she couldn’t make a sound, her voice scorched beyond usage. The nurse’s hand, large and competent, slapped on the back of her baby. When it cried, she felt a hot torrent leaking out.

“The mother is bleeding!” were the last words she heard before she passed out.

All the stories that Jianying later repeated to her daughter would fall short of faithfulness. Only joy was emphasized—how she didn’t feel tired at all, how she greeted every visitor with the same comical recount of the night, how she rejoiced at the infant’s thick and black hair—like the mane of a lion! It never failed to amaze her. But it was the pain that gave depth to her joy—all the other pains felt small and trivial compared to it, and it seemed a natural beginning to a new chapter of her life. Until that chapter came to its end.

The more Jianying beheld her bags, the more adorable they appeared to her and the further away she was from making a decision. She called her daughter, who lived in a coastal city three hours away by flight. The video invite didn’t come through until her third try.

“Hello?” On the screen, her daughter’s small pale face.

“Did you get the pictures?”

“Of what?”

“My bags. Which one do you like? If you don’t pick one I’ll give them all to my friends.”

“It’s okay, Ma. Feel free.”

“Just take a look!”

A few seconds of silence as her daughter reluctantly judged the bag pageant and picked a winner.

“I’ll have the one with the lightning,” she said.

“That one?”

“Then why do you ask?”

. . .

With two bags in her tote at two p.m. on the next Wednesday, Jianying waited by the entrance of People’s Park for Hongmei. They’d decided to meet without Jie. Through this arrangement they tacitly agreed that thirty years of civil-servicing had turned their friend into an insufferable bully, drunk with power and prone to oppressing. It was hard to joke, even breathe, freely around her. A small thrill of rebellion lit up in Jianying as she spotted Hongmei’s long elegant figure crossing the street, striding towards her with a big stainless thermos flask.

“You’ve come prepared!” she said, a little surprised by the size of the flask.

“The way they charge for drinks these days—sheer robbery!”

They entered the free park and strolled down the flagstone walk, magnificently shaded by trees older than their grandparents. Along the road, among the bushes, people could be seen taichi-ing, tangoing, clapping, walking backwards, carrying out all sorts of exercises that only a Chinese mind was capable of conceiving and being convinced in.

“Hasn’t changed a bit, has it?” Hongmei said.

“Have we come here before?”

“You don’t remember?” Hongmei slapped her leg. “Sophomore year—summer vacation—boating on the artificial lake?”

“Oooooh!”

Together with the memory of the trip returned a stab of pain Jianying had felt when a classmate called her, in front of her friends and crush, “Miss Lenin”—because of her shortness, of course. That was how young they’d been and how old she was now. The people who had been striving for longevity were her peers now; she studied them for inspiration.

The sun came out and sharpened their shadows on the ground. Jianying took off her cardigan and tied its sleeves around her waist. She cleared her throat gently and dabbed her forehead with a piece of napkin, careful not to smudge her painted eyebrows. Hongmei was talking about her life, the loneliness of it, the bleakness of it, the boredom and fear and a dawning sense that one had forever missed something. Jianying got a sweet daughter to send her gifts and allowances. Even Jie had a son to fight with. But her? She had no one.

Complaints like this Jianying had heard before and amply sympathized with. Now as they meandered out of the shade and became more exposed to the migraine sun, she withdrew herself from Hongmei’s buzzing and became increasingly attuned to the fast weakening of her body. Head getting dizzier and dizzier, legs softer and softer. A ragged breathing in her ears, she looked around with a growing impatience and agitation. “Hongmei, you wanna grab something to eat?” She licked her lips, dampening the tiny cracks.

“Why bother? The East Exit is ten minutes away. Across the street is a Carrefour. Food samples everywhere!”

Resisting the desire to clench something for support, Jianying’s mind automatically started rehearsing what would happen if she fainted right here, right now. Would they call an ambulance? Would this stingy woman pay for the fee? What would her husband say when he found out that she blacked out because she was too hungry?

Just then, from behind the old men playing poker, sprang out a child licking greedily at what looked like an ice cream cone. A few steps ahead a blue sign board showed through the green luxuriance.

“What is that? Frozen yogurt? You want some, Hongmei?” she asked.

Mid-sentence, Hongmei squinted at the shop sign and drummed on her sturdy flask. “Not me. I’ve got no taste for that new stuff.”

Jianying was already halfway up the stairs leading to the counter. She pointed at the cone model beside the cashier. “How much is it?”

She could feel her friend standing back where she’d left her, sulking. But she couldn’t care less, could she, when it was a matter of life or death. “Your most popular one,” she said, giving it a thought. “Two please.”

With two clumps of chilly sweetness in her hands she returned to her friend. Hongmei had just finished hydrating herself, screwing the flask cap shut. She coiled from the nearness of the scoop. “No no no, I don’t want this!”

“What are you talking about?” Nibbling at her sugar, Jianying chased her friend down the bamboo-sheltered gravel path.

“Take it! I’ve paid for it!”

Hongmei’s elbow, shocked by the cold lick of the frozen yogurt, gave a violent shudder. The dessert fell to the ground, its whiteness soiled.

“Ai-ya!” Jianying cried.

Now Hongmei was apologetic. Wiping her elbow with half a piece of napkin, she watched as Jianying scooped up the frozen yogurt with the cone and trudged towards the nearest trash can. She seemed to make a difficult decision.

“Ying-er, how much is it?” Her hand dug uncertainly into her purse.

“It’s alright, it’s alright,” Jianying waved without meeting her friend’s eyes.

“Yours is melting,” Hongmei reminded Jianying.

Jianying looked down at the thing that had cost her forty yuan in effect and was not even a proper ice cream. Burying a deep sigh, she finished off the drippy mess in half a minute. She wasn’t angry, really, just fundamentally disappointed by what she’d led herself to expect.

They passed the 1911 Railway Protection Movement Monument and were on their way to the exit. The red-white-blue logo was in sight.

“Carrefour?” she asked.

Hongmei nodded.

It took them less than fifteen minutes to tour the prepared food section, pick some breakfast for tomorrow, and check out at the cashiers separately. The episode at the park had lent them a glimpse of the dark chasm the past years had thrown between them. A stranger to the journey each had made so far, they offered each other even less comfort than one’s co-workers—who had, at least, aged with one.

Leaving Hongmei at the bus station, Jianying meandered down the road, letting it bring her wherever it pleased. As she walked, she found her mind revisiting the lovely streets of Green River: the big square where she spent the summers howling in the old Stock Exchange Hall in between meals wolfed down at the dumpling joint, the Post Office Road where the family gathered to celebrate her daughter’s birthday every year at the same claypot restaurant. She had known every nook and cranny of the town, run into friends and foes from around every street corner, watched businesses flash up and burst, while here, she knew no one, no place, no direction...

Standing at the bustling crossroad, Jianying couldn’t find her way home. She called her husband at work; when he didn’t pick up after a few tries, she dialed her daughter’s number.

Surprisingly the call went through within the first three beeps.

“What’s up, Ma?”

“Where are you? Are you in a restaurant?”

“I’m waiting for Xiaoyu. Where are you?”

Jianying turned around and caught, in the distance, a corner of the familiar vermillion wall. Somehow she’d made a full circle. “I’m at People’s Park,” she said.

“Oh right! The date with your girlfriends. How did it go?”

Initially Jianying didn’t want to dwell on the topic. But once she began to dismiss it—a quick shake of her head, her brows furrowed—nothing could stop her from unleashing the steam. Out went her vexation with the miserly, miserly Hongmei; her reluctance to matchmake for the pompous Jie; her reservations about showing them her beloved apartment; her disapproval of her friends’ snobbiness; her dissatisfaction with their talk that barely, barely scratched the surface of life. The more she vented the truer her anger felt, and an ashen feeling rose up in her, a sad fury that they’d become a ghost of their past selves, and that she, too, might look equally grotesque to them. Where did it go wrong? It seemed to her no matter how genuine their intentions were, there was no way for them to touch each other with their ghostly fingers. Instead all they talked about was money, lovers, children, blabber blabber blabber!

On the screen, her daughter’s face shone with a curious, maybe sympathetic, smile.

“What are you gonna do, then?” she said. “If you hated it this much, next time when they invite you, don’t go.”

“I won’t,” Jianying blurted.

“That’s the spirit! No need to keep toxic people in your life.”

“My thoughts exactly.” Checking herself in the chat window, Jianying brushed her hair back, squared her shoulders, and squinted to admire her dangling earrings.

. . .

August came and went. Before anyone knew it, the summer was nearing its end, and the sky, after each thunderstorm, removed itself a little further away from the human world. When she wandered alone in the city, Jianying sometimes didn’t bother using the umbrella anymore. When she prowled into one of those big, aggressively air-conditioned jewelry stores, she had to drape a cardigan over her shoulders. She preferred humble jewelers with their little red baskets of trinkets on display outside. The sun had warmed the surface of the goodies when she dipped her hand into the pile and rustled a bit. Jianying didn’t care much for gold or silver or crystal, but jade she was helplessly enamored with, being the only thing that was as cool, or warm, as human skin. So it didn’t quite matter to her that these jade rings and bracelets and pendants were poorly carved or made from the leftovers of some sorry jade stone. Better than nothing. She touched them with utmost patience while nursing a bit of conversation with the woman who looked after the shop.

“Teacher, look at this necklace here. Mutton-fat jade, it is.”

With no more than a glance over her glasses, Jianying scoffed. “That’s a piece of lean mutton you’ve got there. So glassy I can see right through it.”

The woman, thus swiftly exposed, grinned, a little in awe. “I didn’t know you were such an expert, Teacher!”

“How did you know I was a teacher?”

“I might have been a bad student back in school, but I can sniff out a teacher when I see one,” the woman said languidly. “And don’t tell me—you taught Chinese?”

Jianying was tickled by the smugness in the woman’s tone. It reminded her of a few students she’d had in the length of her career. The same recklessness with life, the cunning look of a stray cat that evidently wanted something from you, the inherent vulnerability that somehow unarmed you and made you willing to give her whatever she wanted. One or two of those students ended up being her favorite: Every year they invited themselves to her apartment, bringing fruits and milk powder in exchange for golden advice on all the big decisions: college, job, husband, child-rearing. But even the most persistent ones drifted away after she moved cityward. Or maybe they had no use for her advice now.

This woman, she learned, was thirty-two and a mother of an eight-year-old. The shop wasn’t hers, though she received commission on the sales which, thanks to the location, walked in by themselves, so she wouldn’t worry about starving. Her biggest concern was her son, who read too much for his age.

Jianying was so indignant that she cast the bracelet she’d picked back into the pile and stamped her foot. “And I thought you were clever! Other parents worry their hair gray that their little ones don’t read, but you—”

The woman raised her hands, pleading innocence. “But he reads all the time! Would tuck a book under his pants when he goes to shit. And it’s not the useful ones that he read. It’s all maps, dinosaurs, trucks, and cartoons…”

Jianying shook her head at every word she’d heard, ready to enlighten and save. “What do you expect an eight-year-old to read? A dictionary? You should consider yourself lucky that he reads without you nagging him to. What a relief for you!”

The woman listened and nodded, taking mental notes, a newly converted disciple. When she took the cash from Jianying and handed over the carefully wrapped pendant, she looked as if she wanted to grab Jianying’s hands and give them a hard grateful squeeze. “Well, Teacher, well, Teacher,” was all she could say. “Lucky me that I met you.”

To this Jianying replied, “Yep, you are.” It wasn’t the first time Jianying had impressed a stranger with her altruistic eloquence. Throughout her life she’d found no difficulty making small acquaintances this way. It amused her that almost everyone could tell her occupation right away, though for what reason she could never fathom.

Her unknowing transparency had always been the butt of jokes among the family until recently, when it instead began to raise concern.

“How many pieces have you bought this month, Ma?” asked her daughter one day in a video call.

“Two? Maybe three. None of them is expensive, though. Look at the craftsmanship, the whiskers of the dragon, the scales on its back ridge—I’d say it’s a bargain!”

“Oh really?” a half-defeated eye roll on the screen.

“Don’t worry,” Jianying said placidly. “No one can fool your ma. Who knows, I might get more out of her—she offered to buy my bags!”

“For how much?”

“A hundred yuan or so each.”

Her daughter, the businesswoman, asked if that would cover Jianying’s costs: the cloth, the zippers, the buttons, the embroideries, not to speak of the time and labor that went into them.

“Oh, I don’t think they are that good.” Waving her hands, Jianying was all modesty.

“Then why did she offer to buy them? What would she use them for?”

“Why, just to hang them up in the store. She said many of her clients would love them.”

“And she’ll sell them for three hundred each.” Her daughter sighed. “I’m not stopping you, Ma. Just be careful.”

. . .

Now that they were potential business partners, Jianying frequented the woman’s jewelry shop until she earned her own seat—a wooden stool placed right behind the drawers, facing the electric fan—and was often mistaken as the owner by the first-time customers. The woman didn’t mind at all. “Teacher, go ahead, you know about it much better than I do,” she would say. Buoyed, Jianying would dazzle the shoppers with her profound knowledge and zeal for the precious stone, and even occasionally struck a deal. When the foot traffic was down, she would sieve through the piles for pure pleasure and take questions from the woman about the numerous choices she had to make in the dark to raise a sensible kid. No, she didn’t have to worry about his quietness. Yes, she should urge him to learn English. No, she had to make him drink milk and eat eggs, the earlier the better. Yes, Go chess could be a great training for logic and discipline. It was hard to say who benefited more from the conversation: Jianying, who re-lived her days of rearing her daughter, or the woman who glimpsed the easy life of an empty-nester? Sharing the snacks Jianying had brought, they could hang out for hours, until the sun glazed the stone stairs with a furry rosy-gold hue, and Jianying would stir up from her seat, pay for her newest discovery (another bargain!), and saunter across the broad street to wait for her bus.

The woman hadn’t brought up their possible collaboration again since Jianying first showed her the pictures of all her bags. The business of the shop, Jianying concluded after some quiet observation, was pretty solid, not strictly busy but steady, the customers ranging from twenty-year-olds to middle-aged ones looking for affordable pleasures. Any of them might fall in love with her bags indeed. When she wasn’t at the shop, she stayed at home ordering fabrics online and sewing away. Rather than working on a stitching machine, she preferred doing it by hand: small white steps on the blue cloth, one after one after one after one. Hours passed in a blink this way. When finally she lifted her sore neck, she could see, on the beige wall, the blue shadows of those steps, one after one after one and gone.

The bags quickly piled up. To save space, Jianying ironed them, rolled them up, and stuffed them into older bags. But when she visited the woman, she never mentioned her growing stock at home. Nor did she bring it up when speaking to her daughter, who, luckily, was so busy with her young life that she had no bandwidth to keep track of her mother’s. But there was one person whom Jianying had forgotten about, who had been watching the whole thing evolve without breathing so much as a word.

One TV-watching evening, Jianying found her phone buzzing with a call from her daughter. Was something wrong? She hurried to pick up the phone.

“How have you been, Ma?” her daughter said casually.

Such voluntary sweetness had become a small luxury these days, and Jianying had learned to seize it when she could. “Not bad, not bad,” she said. “We went to a food expo yesterday to buy some sausages. Do you want some? I can send some to you.”

“It’s okay, Ma. We’re still finishing the last batch you sent us.” her daughter said. “So, how’s your tote bag business doing? How many bags have you sold?”

Jianying smiled at the impatience of the young. “We haven’t started exhibiting them yet.”

“How many have you made?”

Jianying cut a glance at the gigantic pile of bags in the corner, gathering dust and grease from the kitchen. For the first time a sense of unease surfaced in her mind. She swallowed.

“The woman at the store, did she say when?” her daughter asked.

Hard as she tried, Jianying couldn’t recall any date, any promise. “Soon,” she finally said. “I’ll ask her this weekend!”

Her daughter scoffed. “I bet she’ll sell you another jade piece.”

“Oh no, she never tries to sell me stuff. Otherwise, I wouldn’t hang out with her!”

“Maybe that’s how clever she is. It’s okay, Ma, don’t be upset. I’m not calling to argue with you.” Her daughter was ready to end the conversation. “I’ll just ask you this: If she’s really your partner, do you know her name?”

With this question Jianying was sent tumbling back to her world: soiled floral-patterned wallpaper, underwear slowly revolving in the wind. Children could be heard scampering downstairs across the street, amid the loud whish-whoosh of cars. She picked up the phone again and dialed a number. After a brief pause, came a sweet empty voice: Hello, the number you have dialed does not ex... Before the machine could finish the sentence, Jianying took the phone away from her ear, which had started burning. A bad feeling clogged up her chest. At the corner of her eyes her husband’s slippered feet padded near and past her, sending a stealthy breeze to her cheeks.

Later, when he filled her basin with hot water, she blurted out: “Were you worried that I’d squander all the money you’ve saved, you miser?”

He raised his head and stared at her with innocent surprise: What was she talking about?

She pinched him; he let her. She laughed at his comically wincing face. As the steam brought away some of the heat, she dipped her feet into the water: It had cooled to the perfect temperature. “You sent your daughter to persuade me, didn’t you. Are you a coward?”

“It’s only her words you listen to,” he said.

She laughed again. Now that she was calmer she was capable of self-reflection. “Do you think that woman was taking advantage of me?”

“You tell me. You’re the one who’s been talking to her.”

In bed, after they turned off the light, she looked up from her phone. “That bitch. I will never go to that place again!”

“How much have you spent?”

“About a few hundred yuan.” It was one thousand and eight hundred. Her heart was bleeding.

He snickered. “Just think—if you hung out with Hongmei instead, you wouldn’t have to spend a penny!”

. . .

The rain interrupts their plan, but not that much: The restaurant where Jie has reserved a table is right beside the Bridge-with-Nine-Holes. They can have tea there and later dinner if the rain persists. Next to the window the four of them take seats—Jianying has brought her husband as the ideal wallflower, who can sip tea and listen to these women chatter about anything from celebrities to cancers and still be immersed in his serenity.

In her skewed way of showing off, Jie is complaining about her daughter-in-law’s pregnancy.

“The apartment they keep! A pigpen, no less. Haven’t washed the curtains once since they got married. Last week I had to carry ten kilos of curtains back to my place to wash.”

“At least he’s close to you,” Hongmei says.

“I’ll kill myself if he wants to move away. Seriously. We Chinese raise kids to keep them near us. Otherwise what’s the point?”

This is meant for Jianying, and she hears every word of it. It’s true: Westerners raise their children like birds, who leave the nests as soon as they start fledging, at least from what she’s seen in imported movies. Chinese, Jianying thinks, raise their children like plants. All the watering and manuring and trimming are done with a dream to grow old with a bigger leafier garden than they’ve started with. When her daughter began unrooting herself from them, it had hurt like crazy. Now, though, Jianying is but one step away from mastering this new reality.

She looks around the table—these are the closest people she’s got left. They’ve known each other from a tender age; nothing can ever change this fact. If she has to be hurt, she’d rather be hurt by someone she can trust.

I

t took Jianying three years to make up her mind to pierce her ears. Now, turning her head from side to side to tickle the artificial pearl in the mirror, she decided that it had absolutely been worth it. If only someone had told her about it earlier! “But I did tell you a long time ago,” said her daughter in a recent video call; “Yes, she did,” echoed her husband at the end of the sofa. Jianying shushed them with a tyrannical tenderness, her way of admitting her ignorance, and reminisced about the horror brewing in her until the woman at the nail salon pinched her ears and told her it was over.