Gold Boy, Emerald Girl. Yiyun Li

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      Neither my father nor I talked on the bus ride to the train station. He looked older, moving more slowly than I remembered. Men his age should be thinking about retirement, but I knew he could not retire before I could support them. I felt guilty about escaping home and leaving the burden of my mother to him. How was he managing while I was not home? I asked him as we waited in the long line at the boarding entrance. He seemed surprised by my question. Nothing much to manage, he replied, and said that things were as they always were. This talk, neither here nor there, left us embarrassed, and I could see his relief when we finally boarded the train. He lifted my suitcase to the luggage rack and carefully stored the duffel bag with the eggs under my seat. Be well, then, he said, shaking my hand, again solemnly. I told him not to wait for the departure of the train, knowing he would not obey my wish. When the whistle blew, he stepped off the train and waved behind the gray and grimy window when the train inched forward, and I waved back once, thinking perhaps we were the loneliest family in the world because we were meant to be that way.

      No one questioned my lie when I arrived. The camp was empty, no rushing steps on the staircase for the early morning training, no singing contest before meals so that Major Tang could determine which platoon would enter the mess hall first. The senior officers, who had families at the compound across the street, showed up once a day, and only when they were present did the junior officers—Lieutenant Wei and the other two platoon leaders, the company supply officer, and the clerk—assume a military appearance.

      I began to eat with the cooking squad in the kitchen so that the officers would not be reminded of my presence. The conscripts, boys my age or younger, had joined the army to seek a future that was otherwise not available to them. I knew there were girls who were particularly close to the cooking squad—whether for friendship or an extra bite or two I could not decide. Before, I had talked to the conscripts only when our squad was on cooking duty, so I worried that they would resent a stranger, but they seemed happy that I—or perhaps any girl for that matter—chose to eat with them. They told jokes, making fun of people that I had never met, or of one another, and I tried my best to smile, since I knew they were doing it for my sake.

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