Page 11 - My FlipBook

of study, but I’m lucky to have found it—and lucky that Mama
and Baba agreed to let me go and help me with the tuition,
which is far cheaper than a regular college or university. Before
I had heard about the school, they had wanted me to go straight
to work.
Mama’s face clouds briefly, but she says, “Yes. You’re done
for the summer. Did you do well on your exams?” The lights
from the streets flash in her eyes and the distracted look creeps
back in before she turns away to the window. I imagine Bao-bao
and the gaokao have just shot back into her mind, so I just give
a noncommittal murmur instead of a real answer.
The bus mounts an overpass in a tangle of interchanges
and now we’re on the outskirts of the city, where it’s not so
bright. Blocks of dingy white high-rises loom in rows and rows
along both sides of the highway, clearly visible in the darkness.
We lurch and stop several times before Mama gestures for us to
get off at a massive complex called Glorious Towers.
Lugging my bags, we file past several identical buildings
before we enter one through a dirty glass door. I remember the
spartan, grubby lobby from when I came last summer to help
them move from the small third-floor apartment of another
building to the basement floor of this building—one of the
sublevel units that were framed in as an afterthought as a way
to squeeze more rents from the property. We pass the grid of
mailboxes, the elevators, and flyers covering the walls offering
services for remodeling, drivers, “massage.”
I follow Mama down the stairs. The air changes. It’s cooler,
but the subterranean atmosphere is stifling. The wan light
has a sickly cast in the long, narrow passageway where I see
only a single short fluorescent tube tacked to the low ceiling.
I remember being taken aback when I first saw the place last

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