sentimental shoes

Picked up by the Wuhan police, the boy with blue eyes awaits his release.

The police uncles give the boy a blanket and a police aunt brings him a bowl of hot dry noodles. She whispers for him to Eat Slowly and after she leaves the boy wolfs down the meal.

He sits on a cot waiting. He doesn’t know where the other boy is. He hears the police uncles talking, He’s on his way. Fuck me, those eyes? He isn’t a Chinese, and the boy is going to tell them about mother they will take him home and this is a story he will tell for years. Only…

Mother works in the alley with no license.

The boy lives in the city with no hukou.

What then? Mother says Don’t trust police uncles. Then maybe he can convince them to let him go and when the door finally does open a police uncle announces the boy has a visitor and stands aside. A man enters the room. Native of this land save eyes an unsettling fairytale blue. He walks with the proud stature of the soldiers the boy saw in a National Day parade. Long fingernails and long hair he squats eyelevel with the boy and for a long time there is nothing. Then he reaches behind his back and holds out the shoes. These belong to your mother, don’t they?

The boy leaves the station in the blue-eyed man’s care. No paperwork. The blue-eyed man informs the boy that changes need to be made, First some clean clothes, and he takes the boy to a mall a few blocks from the policestation. Store after store selling the same goods. They visit several children’s stores and the other children stare and the adults do too but this is different. Out with mother people make remarks His eyes are so strange or ask questions Where is he from? but in the company of the blue-eyed man they venture no opinions. The blue-eyed man chooses several sets of clothes and buys them with a Union Pay card. In the stairwell they push through plastic flaps into a restroom of doorless stalls where an uncle squats hollering into a cellphone and smoking a cigarette. The blue-eyed man leads the boy into an empty stall and holds out the stack of clothes, Put on, and the boy disrobes leaving his dirty clothes on a linoleum floor stained with brown shoeprints. He changes into the topmost pair on the stack and the blue-eyed man drops the other new clothes back in the bag and admires the boy, So handsome, and a few paces outside the stall he looks back. The clothes? The boy nods. Sentimental? The boy doesn’t nod but they both know it’s true. The blue-eyed man takes a knee unconcerned with the smells or the dirty floor. Listen to me, I know those clothes mean a lot to you. You are a dutiful son who loves his mother very much. I love mine too and I am a grown man. It’s only natural. I have your shoes in my bag. Do you want me to hold on to them for you? The boy nods. But I can’t. These shoes belong to your mother, so when we go home I want you to places these shoes on the shelf above your bed. That way you will never forget them. He holds out his hand his fingernails evenly filed. The boy takes his hand, those eyes tracking apart from all else. A world to themselves. The boy leaves the dirty clothes in the stall and they pass the uncle again still squatting smoking and yelling into his cellphone.

The Boy with Blue Eyes is available for pre-order.