In 1985, on the way to a bathhouse, Bà’s headwas a gong eclipsing the sun. His ground-loving flip-flopsmaking a broken ragtime on the street.Walking past. I was five. I had knowna few dangers. Those hot Bāozi coming outof a steamer, for example. Those fast bitesand a scorched mouth. Sān Kuài Qián. Wŭ Kuài Qián.They were five cents back then, dancing on my tiny fingers.In the barbershop, I learned to close my eyeswhen they washed my hair. Let it go, I hoped.Leave 1 cm, Bà said. Then the barber cut it all off.For whom did I want my hair long? Certainlynot girls, for I hated them back thenfor being different from me. How counter-revolutionary it seemed to pee while sitting. Walking past.The bookstore where I rummaged like a squirrelfor new comics, the owner chasing me awaywith a feather duster: Mā never used a feather dusterbut a towel cropped out of a shabby tee shirt.You don’t want the dust everywhere, she said.And that’s how I clean my room now, gladI still have spare, shabby tee shirts. Walking past.At the butcher’s, an assortment of broken duckneckswas a local cuisine we couldn’t affordso we brought home some squishy stuff, still warmfrom a pig, which Mā wok-fried with celery. It tasted goodand was cheap, which was also good. As if goodness is the sameas saving up, as starving ourselves; thin=good. Walking past.A shop, crowded at the Spring Festivalsold kids firecrackers that exploded when hurled at the ground.It sounded dangerous. Use them upbefore grownups confiscated them. Walking past.A decent restaurant. A makeshift chimney. A narrow doorwayto a half-lit staircase, where people lived upstairs, inhaling smokeand dreaming from time to time. Maybe about steam engines.Every now and then, Bà would stop for an acquaintance—Call Uncle!—while I would wait to morph into a dinosaur, a policeman, a truckuntil I ran out of words, was reduced to a tedious kid on the street.Thought everyone was bored like me but they kept movingin different paces and directions. We finally moved on, slippingour shadows into a crowd’s, while I gasped for fresh air amid trousers and fists.Maybe we had a real plan to visit somewhere, I thought,like touring a castle or a graveyard of fighter jets. So many secretsoutside my street that others must have discoveredand got bored with! But we descended the rampto the smell of soap and grown men’s backs. To meit was alluring: the rubbing of Bà’s palmsagainst my armpits, my clogged ears for two days,my penis that wrinkled and lengthened like a snail.Should I tell Bà that an old man was staring at me,long and long? But soon Bà’s head lowered,his voice in a soft, fake-casual mannerlet me to him. And the man smiled,his gold tooth a dark shine through the mist:Yes I will take your son to my school.Yes I will beat him and educate him.