Katherine by Anchee Min Read Free Book Online Page B

I ate noodles with eggplant his grandmother cooked on the porch. We looked down at the “mobile market” below. Thousands of heads were moving like ants.
    “Do you know why Katherine rides her bicycle in red?” I asked Lion Head as he served me tea. “Is it for fashion?”
    “No,” replied Lion Head. “She doesn’t want to be hit by a bus. Bus drivers in this country are vindictive, like your own brother; there’s never a day when they’re in a good mood. Katherine is a foreigner. She doesn’t care whether people think she’s crazy for wearing a loud jacket. She cares about her safety!”
    I remember someone in class once scared Katherine by telling her that if she got hit she would be left on the street to die without any help, because life was not worth much in China. She didn’t know how to take Chinese jokes. She believed that she would be slipped snake or blowfish if she went to a Shanghai restaurant.
    “You just can’t convince her that people are just joking with her,” I told Lion Head. “She’s got a strange mind.”
    “I wonder what makes an American mind,” said Lion Head. “From what I know, they eat cheese as their main meal, and that stuff stinks—it clots the brain tubes you know.”
    “What exactly did she do, I mean, to her bicycle?” I asked.
    “First she painted it red to warn other drivers. Then she had her friends ship a jacket with shiny red strips from America. It looks a lot like the uniform patients wear at the Shanghai Mental Hospital. She’s so identifiable when she passes you. She zips here and there like a red dragonfly. Now all she has to do is dye her skin red.”
    I laughed.
    “Her hair color is quite interesting,” Lion Head continued. “I would like to touch her hair someday. I doubt if her hair is real. I mean, in America they do all kinds of odd things. I am sure they would mate with animals for money.”
    We heard the sound of light footsteps on the staircase. Lion Head went out and did not come back for a long while.
    I went to check what was going on and saw Jasmine standing downstairs talking to Lion Head. Just by looking at her eyes I knew she was angry at him.
    Jasmine did not say hello to me. She stared at Lion Head. In an instant I noticed that her eyebrows looked unnaturally long, as if painted on. I was sure that she had carefully done something to them. These flying eyebrows did not suit her tiny face. Her cheeks receded because of the strong emphasis of the eyebrows. The O-shaped mouth was knotted into a Q.
    I dared not say a word.
    Lion Head carefully selected his words. He said: “You should be resting. You are too tired. Bad temper produces poisonous chemicals which can harm your body. You must not get upset.” With his arm he made a big-brother gesture, patting her on the shoulder. With great tenderness, he said, “Come on, be a good girl.”
    Lion Head’s words did not help Jasmine; on the contrary, they made her even more desperate. She fixed her eyes on me, and Iknew she was seeking an enemy. I could tell she was suspicious of me. The little lips shrank and wrinkled. She began to weep but her anger was strong. Her eyes were saying “He is mine—don’t you touch him” with such pitifulness. She made me nervous.
    I said, “It’s time for me to take off.” I went down the steps. I heard Jasmine break down and cry.
    *   *   *
    O ne afternoon, three weeks later, on our way back from the library, walking on the early autumn leaves, Lion Head told me about his relationship with Jasmine.
    She was her father’s doll. Mr. Han was the president of our school and a cadre in Mao’s Long March. Jasmine was the old man’s life ever since her mother was beaten to death by the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution as a “capitalist promoter.” Her mother was a beauty. Mr. Han wanted every possible good thing to happen to his daughter. He worked hard as the first assistant to the former Party secretary of the school. He was later