Wild Ginger - Anchee Min [20]
"I am glad that you have figured it all out," I murmured.
"Don't worry," she said with appreciation.
"The market won't officially open till five-thirty, which means that you'll have to wait in the cold to guard your spot for three and a half hours."
"I'll make use of the time," she said. "I'll practice reciting Mao quotations."
I was unable to hold in my sadness. I went to Evergreen to tell him about Wild Ginger. He was silent after I finished speaking. He said that our best help would be to check on her every now and then. "Tell her that if she needs me to help her in preparing for the Mao Quotation-Citing Contest I will feel privileged."
The month of December went by quickly. My father was allowed to join the family for the New Year. Mother wanted us to spend as much time with him as possible. She took up all the housework, including going to the market. My father sent us children out to the recycling station to collect books on history. Most of those books were looted goods. The Red Guards had removed them from the shelves of houses and libraries. They burned most of the books and dumped the rest in the trash. The pickers fetched them from bins and sold them to the station by the pound. My father wanted to buy some of the books back. He thought that it was a good deal to buy books by the pound. At five cents per pound, he could get an average of four books for under ten cents. "What do you say when the comrade in charge asks why you'd like to buy the books?" my father drilled us.
"To use as toilet paper!" we answered in one voice.
I was kept busy. Not a day passed that I didn't think about Wild Ginger. Especially during New Year's Eve dinner when all family members and relatives gathered at the table and the firecrackers started to brighten the sky. The school was closed for the holidays and I hadn't seen Wild Ginger for weeks. I wondered how she had been doing with her stall. The last time we parted at the school, I invited her to come over to celebrate New Year's Eve. She accepted, but her tone was reluctant. When I asked why, she confessed that she wouldn't want to be reminded that she was all alone. "Well, do what you feel like then," I responded. "My door will always be open to you."
She didn't come for dinner. And I missed her. I asked mother if tomorrow I could go and buy father's favorite food—snails. "I'll have them prepared in the market."
"It takes too long to have the snails' butts removed. One pound takes about one hour. Unless you don't mind waiting," Mother said.
"I sure don't," I said happily and went to sleep early that night.
It was three o'clock in the morning when I woke. The night was icy. The wind that came through the windowsills sounded like an old woman sobbing. I took my clothes and got off the bed. My legs were trembling in the cold. I picked up my socks from the floor. They were like two frozen fish. I stood on them and crunched the ice before I put them on. My toes ached with the numbing cold. I pushed my feet into my shoes. Taking a basket I stepped out of the door. The streets were wrapped in darkness. I walked fast toward the market. The wind on my skin felt like tiny cutting knives. Soon I saw the light from the market's bare bulbs. I went to check the fish booth first. There were already lines of people encircling the booth. A man with a stub of chalk wrote numbers on people's sleeves to make sure no latecomers would cut in. I got my number and put down my basket. My fingers were beginning to freeze. Like everyone else I stamped my feet and wiggled my toes to keep warm.
The clerk at the fish booth took out a big wooden hammer. He chopped an ice pack of fish and eels. The stinking smell indicated that the seafood was not fresh. Most of the fish were already rotten. The squid had big bones and paper-thin flesh. The beltfish, too, were stick thin. Only