The year the factory assigned Dad our flat I was seven. The door handle sat under my chin; to open the door I had to get up on my toes, hook the handle, and hang my weight off it. Our housing compound sat north of the mill — five rows of red-brick buildings, a stretch of concrete in the middle, and one pole standing on it with four speakers lashed at the top, facing four directions. Everyone in the yard called it the broadcast pole.
The broadcast room was the eastmost room on the ground floor of the mill office. Master Qiao kept it alone. His enamel mug went wherever he went, a ring of tea grime around the bottom that no scrubbing would lift. Morning news was his shift. Evening news too. In the afternoon he ran the mill's notices, meeting recordings, and the storytelling serials. The serial ended at three forty, and he never shut the machine off after — he let the snow hiss underneath. Master Qiao said it was called riding an empty channel, cushioned to protect the machine, same as a spindle spinning bare. We didn't care about any of that. We called it snowing.
Mom worked the early shift. At four fifty her light came on first, then the one on the third floor, then two more households — one after another, in the same order the mill started its machines.
The snow didn't pick its days, and it didn't pick its speakers. It fell on the pole, and it fell in the radios at home too. When the snow came down, the yard went quiet for a spell. The dogs stopped barking. The pigeons went back to the loft. Grandma said that was the electricity moving. The electricity moved all the time, though. It didn't need to wait for three forty in the afternoon.
That winter the cold came early. The water pool froze over; in the mornings you had to knock a hole in it before you could rinse a rag. The coal shed lock broke and Dad twisted it shut with wire, three turns. Cold is what I remember. Most other things I don't.
The days they handed out cabbages, the cabbages sat stacked at every door and you had to walk sideways in the stairwells. When the snow came down, the sound landed on the cabbages and came back different — muffled. I was the only one who noticed. I told Grandma. Grandma said, cabbages soak up sound.
The first Sunday before the twelfth month, in the afternoon, every kid in the yard was out on the concrete — hopscotch, marbles. At three forty the storyteller finished his last installment, ended on come back for the next one, and the snow fell in the speakers.
We all stopped.
The hopscotch girl stopped on one foot, mid-square. A marble rolled off to the base of the wall and nobody chased it.
I looked up too. Four speakers on top of the pole, snow coming down from all four. And in the snow, someone talking.
The first word he said meant bright. The word fit in my mouth. When it came out, my left cheek went warm — the warm of a mouthful of hot porridge held in. I said it back.
After I said it, the snow went on falling. I said it again, and he gave me another bright. He says, I answer. The grown-ups upstairs kept on with whatever grown-ups do. Mom called from the third floor to bring in the quilts, called twice before I answered her. Answering her, I felt a little wronged. What she'd interrupted was the other one.
I wasn't the only one who looked up. Kids from Building Three, Building Five, a few steps' difference one way or the other. Wang Chaosheng looked up too; he stood under the ping-pong table with half an icicle in his mouth. But I was the only one who answered. I only found that out later. At the time I figured everyone had answered, each their own, quiet.
Dayong from Building Two said he'd heard it too. He said it was a humming, the same tune as his mom. Each person had their own in their own ears. None of it pooled together.
At dinner I said, the man on the broadcast talked today. Mom was ladling soup. She said, there are no programs in the afternoon. I said, after three forty, when the snow fell, he talked. Dad shoveled rice. Grandma tapped her chopsticks on the rim of her bowl and said, eat. I said, he said bright. Mom set the ladle down and pressed the back of her hand against my forehead.
That night Grandma had me spit three times at the door. She did it like she'd done it many times, asked no why, and pulled the door shut behind her.
Next day at school the teacher wrote on the blackboard and I answered him from below. He was there the whole time. The classroom fluorescent buzzed, and he was under the buzz. The teacher said, Lin Wanzhao, drifting off again. I stood up and did the problem on the board. I got it right, and the teacher let it go.
After school I went around under the broadcast-room window. Master Qiao was wiping the machines, his mug sitting on the mixing console. I said, Grandpa Qiao, somebody talks in the speakers. He said, which speakers. I said, the ones on the pole. He lifted the mug, drank, and said, that's an empty channel. Nobody's in there. I said, he talks at three forty. He took his hand back off my shoulder and said, go on home, it's snowing — go put on something warm.
A few days later I went back. He dug the almanac out of a drawer and showed me: the sixteenth, a big-tide day; damp in the air, speakers crackling is normal. He rapped the sound column with a screwdriver. The pole didn't stir. He said, the machine's sound. It's older than your dad, and steadier than you.
The mill clinic was west of the office building. You passed the sizing workshop on the way, a smell of starch in the wind that stuck to your padded coat and wouldn't wash out. Dad took me on a Wednesday. He told Doctor Qu, the kid keeps answering people's talk — have a look at her ears. Doctor Qu shone a little mirror in, tapped the left side, tapped the right, and said, these ears are excellent. Better than mine. She pulled the wax out of my ears and showed it to Dad: there's your trouble, this little wad. Dad stood alongside and said nothing. Doctor Qu said, talking to herself — that's a child growing. Some walk off somewhere, some mutter. Dad said, oh. On the way home he bought two sticks of fried dough, one for him, one for me. He said, don't tell your mom about the fried dough.
Mom ran the looms in the weaving shop, eight hours a day throwing the shuttle. Her voice carried — one call from the stairwell entrance and windows opened from the first floor to the fifth. She said her ears weren't dull, just worn. She said, a person needs a script to talk. The stuff you listen to has no script. I asked, with no script, what would they say. She said, with no script, they don't say anything at all. I had no answer to that, so I didn't answer.
Mom was at the pool beating laundry with Aunt Zhang. Aunt Zhang said, we've got one in our shop too — answers the sewing machine. His dad wrapped the machine head in cloth. Mom said, there's nothing wrong with the machine, the mill measured it. Aunt Zhang said, and the kid? Mom wrung the clothes one more time, didn't answer, and hung them up.
From that Sunday on, I answered him every day. He didn't talk often. One sentence of his took a long walk to reach me. If I didn't answer, he'd have walked all that way for nothing.
His words came faster, one more each day. Some were direction words: he'd say over there and my chin would go east — past the yard wall lay the river, and past the river the wheat fields. He never said which place was over there. Just over there. Some words, when they came out, went cold at the ankles first — the cold of the pool thawing, water creeping up little by little.
The night of the power cut in the twelfth month, every room lit candles. I lay at the window watching the yard, the pole dark, snow falling just the same. He said a new word that meant dark. When he said it, the candle flames stood a notch shorter. That dark had no fear in it. It had rest in it — the rest of a long walker leaning against a wall to catch his breath.
The night the power came back the whole yard cheered. I didn't. The snow had stayed bright for three days, and then he took the dark back. He never said that word again.
And there was one word heaviest of all. Saying it was like setting a bowl down onto a stack of bowls: you set it on, and it has to sit steady, and only then is it done. When he said that one, I always wanted to sit down.
Not one of those words did I learn one at a time. He'd say them three times, five times, and they were in my mouth — like yarn coming off a spindle: catch one strand, that's one strand. A strand snapped, no matter. A broken end can be joined again; one pass of the hand and it runs smooth.
I checked the words against the characters I'd learned at school. None of them matched. The teacher's bright was the sun's bright. His bright had no sun in it. It had water-vapor. Once I put over there into a make-a-sentence exercise and the teacher marked it with a cross and wrote underneath: Which side? The final exam essay was My Sunday. I wrote over there in that too. That one got a Good, with the comment: true to life, mind your word choice.
He counted, too. One. One. No hurry. He'd count to eleven and stop a long while, then start over from the top. The ping-pong table stood seven steps from the broadcast pole — I counted. He wasn't counting steps. What he was counting, I never found out.
When the snow stopped, he stopped. Past the fifteenth the snow grew thin and he talked less, rationing it. By the next fifteenth it was thick again. This I never told anyone.
Wang Chaosheng came after me. His family was in Unit Two; his dad was a maintenance fitter. He opened a few days later than I did, and once he opened, he was loud — stood in the middle of the yard answering, audible two rows of buildings away. He was also the one the grown-ups caught first. His grandma chased him with a broom and beat him, and the beating didn't stop him. He answered with relish.
Later on, people came to his house — people not from the mill. The next day he stood in the yard and announced to us: Dad says we're getting a color TV next year. I said, yesterday he said over there. Wang Chaosheng said, fourteen-inch. We weren't talking about the same thing. We stood side by side a while, then went home our separate ways.
In the last stretch of the twelfth month he took me to the river embankment. The radio rode inside his padded jacket, antenna pulled out, and at the edge of the wheat fields the snow fell clearer than it did in the yard. He asked, what's over there? I said, just over there. He pushed his chin east a little, copying me — not bad, except the shape of his mouth was wrong. The word he made fell on the ground. It didn't stand up. He said, what kind of mouth-shape is that? Like you've got fried dough packed in your cheeks. We squatted on the embankment until the cold soaked all the way through us. On the way back he didn't talk. In the radio the storyteller had reached the part where Qin Qiong sells his horse.
At school, morning exercises ran off the big loudspeakers, and the big loudspeakers snowed too. When the snow came down, the rows of faces turned up on the drill ground, front to back. The PE teacher blew his whistle and clapped his hands — he thought a plane had gone over. No plane went over. At dismissal he kept me back and asked what I'd been looking at. I said, listening. Listening to what? The speakers. He squeezed the whistle in his fist and waved me off.
After that there was a rule in the yard: children were not to gather and answer. Erya answered with the best of them; her mom twisted her ear and hauled her home, and the whole stairwell heard her cry. The day after crying, she looked up all the same. The grown-ups called what we had being bewitched, and the cure for bewitched was to eat more pork liver.
The homeroom teacher had every class take a tally: whoever answers at home, raise your hand. Nobody raised a hand. She called on Wang Chaosheng. He stood up and said, I sing. The whole class laughed, and the teacher laughed too, and that was the end of it.
In nature class we drew the things we heard. I drew four speakers with slanted lines falling over them. The teacher pinned the drawing in the middle of the display board and said this child had a generous sense of composition. The lines were snow. That part I didn't say.
My deskmate wore two braids. One day she leaned over and asked, what are you muttering about? I said, I'm not muttering to myself. She said, my mom says your yard's kids are all bewitched. I said, he talks slow. I have to wait. She thought about that, then pushed her pencil case across the desk: use it. And don't tell anyone I asked. It was a pencil case with a magnetic latch — a crisp click when it opened. I used it for one class and gave it back. She never asked again. The magnet went loose after a while and wouldn't click, and she used that case all the way through elementary school.
The teacher had one talk with me. There was a kettle on the stove in the office. The teacher said, concentrate in class. What's your mouth doing? I said, I can hear it. Hear what? The fluorescent light. The teacher said, everyone can hear the fluorescent light. That was true. It buzzed, and we all sat underneath it. The water boiled. The teacher poured me half a mug and sent me back to class.
Grandma couldn't read. She watched me do homework and stitched shoe soles, thimble push, thread pull. I was halfway through an answer when she stopped her needle and asked, with who? The broadcast, I said. She stared at me a while and said, children's eyes are clear. Then back to her soles. Whether there was a second half to that, I can't remember.
Before the registration, the family moved the radio from the windowsill to the top of the chest of drawers. A Red Lamp brand, green cloth over the speaker. On top of the chest I couldn't reach it. I stood on the square stool, and on the stool I laid the washboard. Mom said the move was against damp. The windowsill was plainly the damper spot. Later the washboard got taken away, so I went out to the yard and stood under the broadcast pole to listen.
Mom didn't hold with superstition. She filed a repair ticket at the mill: the home radio has too much crackle. The mill sent the electrician, Old Ji, canvas bag on his back, multimeter in hand, and he measured every flat in turn. At ours the needle stood dead straight. Old Ji said, wiring's normal. More normal than new-run wiring. Mom said, then what's all that crackle? Old Ji packed up his meter and said, winters are like that. Once the door was shut, Mom said to me: you see. Nothing wrong with the machine. Her words were exactly Master Qiao's words, and the two of them had never met.
Dad borrowed a tape recorder from the workshop, thick as a brick. The tape was one of the storytelling tapes washed clean; the label still said Sui and Tang. He pressed record and told me to talk. I waited until three forty, and when the snow came down I answered three sentences. He rewound the tape and played it. Out of the speaker came snow and nothing else. He played it three times and said, the machine's no good. He rubbed his thumb over the two characters Sui and Tang on the label and took the recorder back the next day.
Mom kept a knitting notebook. One night under the lamp she turned back a page, and on the back of it were my words, written down the way they sounded coming out of my mouth, horizontals and circles, a good half page of it. I saw that one time. Later the notebook went to wrap the rolling pin, and the paper took the oil, and the writing soaked through.
The night before the registration, Dad sat smoking under the lamp. When the cigarette was done he wrote on the back of the cigarette pack, wrote and crossed out, crossed out and wrote. I woke from sleep and the light was still on. The pack was empty. Not one character left on it.
In the first month, two people came. One in a blue padded jacket, one carrying a black bag. They went to Wang Chaosheng's home first and sat a whole afternoon, then came up to ours.
The blue jacket took out a booklet with names in it, column after column. He ran his finger up the columns, found Dad's name, then found mine. He asked, how long has the child been answering? Dad said, answering what? The blue jacket said, talking to herself in foreign words — that kind of thing. Dad said, she just likes to mutter. The blue jacket looked at Mom. Mom said, mutters. Talked early, ever since she was small. Dad put both hands up his sleeves, took them out again, and at last they came down on the edge of the table.
They asked me, who do you talk to? I said, the one in the broadcast. The two of them traded a look. The black bag took a tin box out of the bag; on the box's face was one round glass. He said, say a couple of sentences, let me hear. I waited. Three forty hadn't come yet, and the snow hadn't fallen. I said, he's not awake yet. The blue jacket pressed the cap back onto his pen and said, all right.
They went downstairs. I stood at the stairwell entrance. Half a flight down, the blue jacket stopped, opened the booklet, uncapped his pen, and added one character after my name. What character it was, I couldn't see — the stairwell was dark. Out through the unit door, the brass clasp of the black bag sounded once, outside.
At the evening news that day, Master Qiao read out a notice, slower than usual: any school-age child showing answering behavior, families are to register with the neighborhood office. This is a normal phenomenon. There is no cause for alarm. Then the snow came in underneath.
While the notice was being read I stood in the stairwell, and I heard the radios in every flat turn themselves down one notch at the same moment. One notch. No more, no less.
I opened half a window. At three forty the snow came down. He said his, and I answered mine. Mom was in the inner room knitting, bamboo needles touching down one against the other. At the ninth word of my answering, the needles stopped for one beat. Then they moved again.