Outside, we play House. My cousin Mandy, my cousin Yangyang, and me. We invite our neighbor Xiaocai to join us in the yard, which is nothing more than a tilted kumquat tree and yellowed weeds. It is morning, and my aunts have left for the factory. Their departures describe them perfectly: Cold-Blooded Ayi—so named because her blood is cold and can

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only be heated to a human temperature with the consumption of soups, period dramas after work, and killing a particularly acrobatic fly on the first try—insists on kissing Mandy on the cheek before she leaves, and today she pins the kiss with such force that a blood vessel breaks. Aunt Elizabeth, Yangyang’s mother, never kisses anyone or anything, not even the rim of her cup when she drinks. Instead, she tilts the water into her mouth so that it unfurls like a ribbon into her throat.…