When the super glue had dried to a half-tacky state, Susan Wright pressed the patch onto the inner tube, covering the hole made by the shard of glass, and hammered it with a wooden mallet. Then she inflated the tube and submerged it in a basin of water; after checking that no more bubbles leaked out, she stuffed the inner tube back into the outer tire, screwed on the valve core, and pumped it up fully.

The bike owner, a middle-aged man with a scholarly look, stood to the side reading his newly bought "Xinmin Evening News," his face sullen. When Susan Wright said the tire was fixed, he lowered the newspaper, revealing his face, and asked how much it cost. Susan Wright told him one yuan. He nodded, finished reading the news article, exhaled, and tossed the money into the white enamel bowl on the ground. Susan Wright caught a glimpse of the page he was reading—the headline was about a writer named Raymond Hamilton who had died.

“Master Marcus Hamilton, I’m heading home now,” Susan Wright said to the owner of the repair stall, who was working on the hinge of another trendy gear bike.

“Alright, take your own pay.”

Susan Wright responded, washed her hands in the basin, took eighty cents from the bowl, and slung her backpack over her shoulder.

“It’s getting cold and dark early. Just work a few more days, that should be enough. Don’t let your hands get rough from the cold. A girl shouldn’t let her hands end up like mine.”

Susan Wright smiled and looked down at her own hands.

As she walked into the old street, she greeted the neighbors along the roadside with a cheerful smile. A stranger with blood on his forehead burst out from a side alley, chased by Chuck, one of the idle men from the old street. Chuck was wielding half a brick, cursing as he chased, while the stranger ran with his head down. Susan Wright stepped aside against the wall, but Uncle Alan, who was sitting on a small stool selling fruit, couldn’t get out of the way. The stranger knocked over his basket of pears, and then Chuck’s brick struck him on the face. Uncle Alan let out a string of curses, grabbed his carrying pole, and chased after them. Soon he returned, whistling with the pole on his shoulder, and now had a rolled-up ten-yuan bill clipped to his left ear. Seeing that the overturned bamboo basket had been set upright and the pears picked up, he thanked Susan Wright, who had stayed nearby.

“No need to thank me, Uncle Alan,” Susan Wright said. “Just a few pears got bruised.”

Uncle Alan rummaged through the basket, picked out a damaged pear, and handed it to Susan Wright.

Susan Wright thanked him, wrapped the pear in a handkerchief, and put it in her backpack.

“Are you taking this home for your sister?” Uncle Alan asked.

Susan Wright smiled with her lips pressed together.

Uncle Alan shook his head and took out two more pears for her. “One for your dad, one for each of you.”

Susan Wright said, Uncle Alan, you’re really a good person. He laughed heartily and said, don’t curse me. After a few laughs, he suddenly sighed and said, your family’s had it tough, thinking of your dad back in the day… Susan Wright said, I know, I know, uncle, you’ve told me so many times. I have to hurry home now.

The old street wasn’t just a single street. Even Susan Wright couldn’t say how many little lanes wound around it. It was like a constantly growing spider web, with new crossings appearing when you weren’t looking. She weaved her way through, sometimes slowing down to greet people. She was well-liked; there weren’t many people as gentle and harmless as her on the old street, not even among the children.

Susan Wright turned into an alley just wide enough for one person—not even the narrowest, as there were some half as wide. Voices came from an open window above, and then a large bowl was handed out, received by a hand from the window across the way. Susan Wright glanced up. Someone in one window said, “Little Juan is back.” Another window said, “Out fixing bikes again, huh? If only our kid was half as good as you. All he does is fight, comes home every day with a bruised face, damn it.” Susan Wright just smiled, waved, and kept walking—home was just ahead.

Adrian Wright was squatting at the door, smoking, and when he saw Susan Wright coming from afar, he stubbed out his cigarette and went inside. Susan Wright called, “Dad,” and he answered, lifting the lid to check the meat soup simmering on the stove.

“It’s about ready,” said Shirley Wright, who was keeping watch by the coal stove. She could never stand the smoke and was coughing again. When she saw her sister come in, she smiled through the haze and greeted her.

The first thing Susan Wright did was take out the pears, saying they were from Uncle Alan: one for Dad, one for Mom, one for Sister. Shirley Wright asked, “What about you?” Susan Wright said, “I was greedy, ate mine on the way.”

There was also a bowl of thin porridge on the table, mixed with the meat soup and left to cool. As usual, Adrian Wright finished his meal in a few bites, checked the temperature of the porridge, and carried it into the inner room to feed Beatrice Collins through her feeding tube. Susan Wright also put down her bowl and chopsticks, peeled and cored a pear, chopped it into tiny pieces, and pounded it in a small jar with a wooden pestle, making a rhythmic thumping sound. Only her sister was left at the table, who hurried to finish eating, cleaned up, and watched as her sister strained the pear juice through gauze into another bowl.

“Did you wash your hands?” Shirley Wright asked.

“Not yet, but I remember,” Susan Wright said, going to wash her hands. She wrapped the pear pulp in gauze, squeezed out the remaining juice, and looked up at Shirley Wright with a smile. “Don’t worry, sis.”

She carried the half bowl of pear juice into the inner room just as Adrian Wright finished feeding the porridge. Feeding was a slow job, requiring patience and a steady hand, so the liquid wouldn’t come back up and Beatrice Collins would suffer less.

“From now on, Sis and I can handle this. Dad, you don’t have to make a special trip home,” Susan Wright said, taking over and slowly pouring the pear juice into the funnel attached to the feeding tube.

Adrian Wright stood by, watching, saying nothing.

Susan Wright wasn’t surprised by the lack of response. For so many years, her father had rushed home for every meal to cook for her mother, missing out on who knows how much business, and it had become a habit. She didn’t expect one sentence to change that.

“Slower,” Adrian Wright said, then peeled the gauze from the corner of his eye and tossed it in the trash. Shirley Wright went to get a clean piece, but Adrian Wright said, “No need. It’s too conspicuous on my face—makes people uncomfortable, and customers don’t want to get in the car.”

The injury had happened the night before. At People’s Square, he’d picked up a local hood returning to the old street—one of the younger generation, but he fancied himself a real tough guy. After drinking, he opened the window for some cold air, vomited all over the passenger seat, and for some reason got angry. When it came time to pay, he pushed open the door, staggered outside, reached in and punched Adrian Wright in the corner of the eye, and tried to drag him out for a fight. Adrian Wright called the police.

On the old street, if you got into trouble, who would call the police? You just fought back, even if you got beaten down. Because Adrian Wright called the police, none of the younger generation on the old street would look him in the eye anymore. That’s why Alan Wright had hesitated with his words. Alan Carter was from Adrian Wright’s generation and knew what he used to be like, which made him all the more wistful. Adrian Wright hadn’t gotten into a fight for eleven years now. When Beatrice Collins first married into the old street, she was famous for her beauty. Everyone envied Adrian Wright’s luck and asked her what she saw in him. Beatrice Collins said she liked his heroic spirit. Alan Carter still remembered the look in her eyes when she said that—the kind of admiration that shone from deep inside, utterly hopeless. At the time, he thought, it’s just fighting—who on the old street can’t fight? Girls don’t know any better; Adrian Wright got lucky.

Back then, Adrian Wright was a bus driver and Beatrice Collins was his conductor. Beatrice Collins was pretty, and on her second day at work, a punk groped her. There were three of them. Adrian Wright stopped the bus, called them off, and broke the bones of two of them. He was suspended for three months for that, and before he could return to work, the two of them had gotten together. They married at the end of the year; the next year, Shirley Wright was born, and the year after, Susan Wright. Beatrice Collins was a little disappointed—she’d hoped for a son, a man like his father.

The turning point came in 1981. Beatrice Collins’s eldest brother, who had been sent down to work in Geliping, Sichuan, died suddenly. She went to bring his ashes back to Shanghai. In the early morning of July 9, the most tragic train accident since the founding of the country occurred on the Chengdu-Kunming Railway: a mudslide destroyed the Lizi Yida Bridge over the Dadu River, and the train Beatrice Collins was on, No. 422, plunged straight into the river. Adrian Wright took a train for three days and two nights to Chengdu, then on to Hanyuan. The list of the dead hadn’t been released yet. He rushed into the county hospital, checking every emergency bed, and found Beatrice Collins lying there, seemingly unhurt. He didn’t dare disturb her, and kept vigil for five hours, until a doctor came and told him they couldn’t say when she’d wake up. That was when he first heard the term “vegetative state.” He raged, cornered the doctor, demanded that his wife be woken up, and was dragged out by the police. He sat dazed at the hospital entrance for a long time, then lay down in the street, staring at the sky, swearing he would make this woman wake up.

After bringing Beatrice Collins back to Shanghai, he did everything he could, called in favors, sold off the family’s twenty-some silver dollars, and transferred to the Qiangsheng Company, becoming one of Shanghai’s first taxi drivers, so he could earn a bit more. After that, no matter what happened, he never fought again. Alan Carter once asked him about it. He said he couldn’t afford to fight, couldn’t risk getting hurt. Alan Carter thought, Beatrice Collins hadn’t married the wrong man. What a pity.