Jin usually danced alone, holding the air, as if the person he loved was in his imagination. Since I was new and the only child, everyone teased me mercilessly, and everyone wanted a dance, making it difficult to pursue my prey. My father’s health prevented him from taking part. The only time to observe them, therefore, was Tuesdays and Thursdays between 7 and 9 p.m., when my mother and others of her generation would emerge, wearing their plastic sandals, ready for ballroom dancing in nearby Emerald Goose Park. She kept to herself.Įavesdropping at Naomi’s door was out of the question. Naomi was half-Japanese but had grown up in Shanghai where, according to Grandmother, her parents were world-renowned scientific researchers at the celebrated People’s Reserve. She wore long skirts and rollover sweaters, and she taught music. Naomi was thirty-five years old and had lived in Block Six for my whole life. Conspiracy and melodrama, blackmail, sex, piano lessons, shared lunch boxes: Anything could be happening in there. Around 2 p.m., when the old people had retired for their naps, he would emerge from his flat and walk over to the piano teacher Naomi’s door, knock quietly, and be let inside.įictions bloomed inside me. Just as I was losing interest, Jin started a new routine. Grandmother was right it did seem as if half his watermelon was missing. He always wore hats and preferred the shadows. During the day he rarely went out at all, though sometimes at dusk he would step out carrying a Polytechnic Two satchel, dressed up like a professor. I kept close watch on Jin’s front door, convinced he was a plaincoat, a spy.
Grandmother and Mother would shake their fists and tell me what an ungrateful little girl I was, and how desperately they had hoped for a boy-that was how my family demonstrated love, except for my father, who had once been a scholar and translator but now said very little. I used to vow to run away at the first opportunity. I knew I was going to be stuck in Block Six forever because my family needed me to buy their vegetables, cook their meals, take them to their medical appointments, and eventually pay the bills for the next hundred years they planned to live. I was the only child on the twentieth floor. He has the kind of face that can never look sad.” The first thing she asked him was where his wife was and how many children he had.īack home, Grandmother said, “He’s only half a watermelon. Not long after he arrived, my grandmother met him in the corridor. He looked like a northerner, quite practical, had strong eyebrows and teeth, and when he smiled you felt he wasn’t plotting against you and that, in fact, he’d be happy to see you do well in life. Jin moved into an apartment on the twentieth floor of Block Six, down the corridor from us, when I was nine years old.
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