my new mom moved in.”
“When was that?”
“Last year.”
“Have you seen your mom since then?”
“No, but she said she’d come soon, if I don’t make my dad and my new mom angry,” Kang says. “Granny, do you think the guards will let her in when she comes?”
“I’m sure they will,” Granny Lin says. The boy smells like a mixture of baby lotion, fresh laundry, and clean sweat. It reminds Granny Lin of Old Tang after his bath, the way a dear person smells good. The thought makes Granny Lin’s lips go dry, and she feels the boy’s arms on her neck, hot and sticky.
ON FRIDAY AFTERNOONS, the parking lot outside the school gate is full of luxury cars. Chauffeurs and nannies come, and sometimes the parents themselves show up. Teachers and dorm mothers stand inside the gate, pointing out to one another who is the daughter-in-law of a power figure in the government and who has appeared in the latest hit movie.
Kang is the only child who stays for the weekend. His father has paid the extra fee for the weekend care and has promised to come for him at the end of the semester. Sometimes Granny Lin wonders if the father will ever come and what will become of Kang if no one picks him up when summer comes. Will he be able to stay with her at the school? Then she wonders if she herself will be allowed to stay and, if not, where she will spend the two months before she is allowed back in September.
After the last student is picked up every weekend, the teachers and the dorm mothers leave on a shuttle bus for the city. Apart from the two guards, Granny Lin is the only one who stays, and she has cheerfully agreed to take care of Kang.
They stand side by side at the school gate and wave at the bus. Both sigh with relief once it is gone. Kang darts across the yard to the activity room, flipping through the picture books as fast as he can, eager to get to the next one. Granny Lin comes in and sits down at his side, stroking his hair and watching him laugh to himself. When he finishes all the new books, they go out together and play in the yard, Granny Lin pushing him in the swing until it is flying so high that Kang screams with excitement and fear.
When the weather is nice, they take long walks in the mountains. Weekend tourists swarm into the area, but Granny Lin and Kang are the only two people who do not worry about missing the bus or getting stuck in a traffic jam. They walk hand in hand, Kang’s palm touching Granny Lin’s palm, both sweating. Granny Lin tells old tales about flowers and grasses. When she runs out of stories, she makes up new ones.
After dinner, Granny Lin leads Kang to the bathroom. She waits outside with a towel and his pajamas, and he sings in the shower the song about the red dragonfly she has taught him. Always he shouts to Granny Lin after the first two minutes, asking if he can come out now. She replies it would be good if he could stay in the shower for another five minutes. The boy goes on singing, his voice pure and perfect.
Often, without turning off the water, Kang jumps out of the stall at Granny Lin. She pretends to be startled and screams, and he giggles and runs off before she can wrap the towel around his dripping body.
At night, as he sleeps, he mumbles in his dreams, his arms and legs thrown to all four directions on the blanket. Granny Lin tucks him in and watches him for a long time, the unfamiliar warmth swelling inside her. She wonders if this is what people call falling in love, the desire to be with someone for every minute of the rest of her life so strong that sometimes she is frightened of herself.
GRANNY LIN IS not the first person to have noticed the missing socks. The dorm mothers, for two weeks in a row, tell her that the girls are complaining that their favorite socks are disappearing in the laundry. Granny Lin knows then what has happened to the socks. A few times, she has seen Kang clutch a girl’s unwashed sock. He drops it into the basket when he realizes that she is watching him.
The next weekend, while Kang is playing a computer game in the activity room, Granny Lin searches his bed. She finds nothing under the mattress, where the kids usually hide things. She folds back the blanket. She picks up the pillow and unzips the pillowcase, and sees five socks inside, rolled up into small bundles like newborn bunnies.
Granny Lin unrolls them: young girls’ socks with flowered patterns or cartoon animals. She thinks of putting them in her own pocket, but stops at the thought of Kang groping in the pillowcase for the socks, something dear to him for reasons she does not know. She rolls the socks back up and stuffs them into the pillowcase.
On Monday, Granny Lin asks her supervisor for a half day off and takes the bus to the city, looking for socks with the same patterns as the missing ones. She buys several more packs of girls’ socks in different designs.
Granny Lin becomes more careful with the laundry now. She makes sure all the girls’ socks are in their bags before Kang arrives. From time to time, she scatters around socks that she has bought, all of them having been washed and dried and then rubbed across the floor.
They are still the happy couple on weekends, but Granny Lin worries as she counts the missing socks that she has put out for Kang. She wonders if she needs to talk to him and find out the reason for what he is doing. But every time she opens her mouth she loses her resolve.
On weekends, as they sit in the shadow of the wisteria, Granny Lin wonders if this is the love she missed in her younger years, hand in hand with a dear boy, not asking him to tell her the secret she is not allowed to know.
THE WEATHER GETS hot, and the dorm mothers put mosquito nets over the students’ beds. The first night, a boy in the bed next to Kang’s gets up after the dorm mother leaves. With a small flashlight in hand, he sticks his head into Kang’s mosquito net and shrieks in a low voice, letting the flashlight shine in Kang’s eyes. Kang does not cry, as the boy hopes, but the boy is surprised and pleased to find Kang stroking his own cheeks with both his hands in floral socks.
Dorm mothers are called. Seven more socks are discovered, and by the end of the next day everyone in the school knows about the sick boy who steals girls’ socks and does strange things with them.
Granny Lin watches the kids chase Kang around the school yard, calling him “sicko,” “psycho,” “porn boy,” her heart wrenching as if it were a piece of rag in the washing machine. Kang is no longer allowed to visit the laundry room. She counts the days to the weekend and is afraid that she will break down before the three days pass.
On Friday afternoon, as they stand in front of the school gate, Granny Lin has to raise Kang’s hand up and wave for him. When the shuttle bus is gone, Granny Lin turns to Kang, who is kicking a pebble in front of him.
“Kang, come to Granny’s room for a moment,” Granny Lin says.
“No, I don’t want to,” Kang says, letting go of Granny Lin’s hand.
“What do you want to do? Let’s take a walk.”
“I don’t want to take a walk.”
“How about reading some books? A new case of books came in yesterday.”
“I don’t want to read.”
“Let’s get up on the swing.”
“I don’t want to do anything,” Kang says, pushing Granny Lin’s hand away from his shoulder.
Granny Lin’s tears swell out of her eyes. She looks down at the top of Kang’s head. To love someone is to want to please
