Really… Li Man lightly shook her head as she watched from the side. His hands were very big. When he was holding the large bowl, it looked a like child’s toy. Moreover, he seemed skillful enough when he was doing other tasks, so why did he look so awkward with washing bowls? He only needed to swipe the dishcloth a few times on the bottom before washing the rest of the bowl. Why did he keep moving the dishcloth in circles on the bottom. There were several times when the bowl looked as if it was going slip out of his grip. Each time made Li Man’s heart jump in alarm. There weren’t many bowls in this home.
As she was watching, her eyes widened when a bowl did slip from Li Mo’s hand, plop into the pot of water, and splash Li Mo’s face.
It really did fall. Li Man involuntary laughed.
Li Mo wiped his face in embarrassment. He looked at her and stammered, “The bowl was too slippery.”
“Really, just let me do it.” Li Man took the initiative of approaching him, nudging him over, taking the dishtowel from him, and started to wash a bowl.
Li Mo’s face was flushed red. “Actually, I have washed bowls before.”
“En.” He was good at heavy manual labor, but he clearly wasn’t good at careful work like washing bowls and scrubbing pots.
Li Mo stood next to her for a while. He watched as Li Man scrubbed the bowls, then rinsed them with water and dried them off one by one. After that, she neatly put them away in the cabinet, poured out the water in the pot, wiped the pot lid and the top of stove clean, neatly arranged the jars for oil and salt…
Li Man knew that he was watching her from the side. Once she was done with everything else, she washed the dishtowel and spread it out on the stove to dry. This way, the dishtowel wouldn’t have any lingering smells the next morning.
“I’m done,” she said to him.
“Oh.” Li Mo had blanked out a bit from watching her nimble work. It wasn’t until she said something to him that he partially returned to his senses. But, his mind couldn’t erase the images of her working. She had looked so at ease and comfortable. It had even looked quite graceful to him. Even as a person watching from the side, he had felt a sense of delight.
Seeing that he was still somewhat blankly looking at her, Li Man asked, “Should I boil some hot water so you guys can take a bath?”
“Oh, sure, I’ll boil the water,” said Li Mo.
“En, I’ll leave that to you then.” She normally didn’t do any work after dinner like heating up the water, so she was about to leave after saying this.
Li Mo took one step forward to follow her and asked, “Where you going?”
Li Man turned her head to look at him, “Back to my hut.”
“Your hut is still too wet,” Li Mo said, “You can’t sleep there tonight.”
It was only now that Li Man remembered this. Somewhat vexed, she bit her lip. Then tonight…
“Wait here.” Li Mo walked to a corner of the kitchen and moved the random bits and bobs off the bamboo couch. “I’ll move this bamboo couch over there and set up a new bed for you.”
“Okay.” This really was the only alternative, but… “You don’t need to take that much trouble. I can just move my quilt and sleep here.”
“No,” Li Mo firmly refused, “The window paper is already torn here. It’s not secure. What if… Anyways, it’s not safe here.”
After saying this, he found a rag and started wiping off the dust on the bamboo couch.
“Let me do it. You can go boil the water,” said Li Man.
“Okay,” Li Mo didn’t insist. He handed the cleaning rag to her.