Little Gods

Yongzong

Midday, when we lay in the hot sleep of noon, my father stalked the house with a flyswatter. Splat. Splat. Little corpses dropped to the ground. I pressed my ear against the bamboo mat and listened for the sound of crushed wings. I heard—

My father’s foot crashing down.

My father creeping steadily across the room, flyswatter up and alert, his shuffling broken by another splat.

My father had good reason. The house was big and pristine. The walls were painted white, the floors tiled. The windows were filled with glass to keep dust outside. Who else had a house like this?

In the mornings while my mother boiled porridge for breakfast, my father ran a damp cloth over each piece of furniture. His ragged finger penetrated every groove—he kept even the carved designs on the backs of the chairs dust-free. He had worked hard to earn and keep all this, he reminded us. He took nothing for granted.

For my father, I was another one of these things—the house, the furniture, the glass windows—to be kept fly-free.

I didn’t understand this until I was much older. As a boy all I knew was that at times I envied my two older sisters. My envy confused me. I had no chores. I picked the best pieces of meat at