The Keys

Number 17 Wutong Lane was an old walk-up—three floors, wooden stairs that creaked underfoot. Old Sun had been its keeper for twenty-three years. At his waist hung a ring of keys, brass, each one etched with a number: 101, 202, 301… All forty households, and he held them all. The residents trusted him. Someone going away left a key on his windowsill: 'Uncle Sun, water the plants.' Someone locked out knocked at his little window, and he'd look up and hand it over. In his hand, the keys were an old kind of courtesy. In 401 lived Teacher Zhou, a retired Chinese teacher, living alone, past seventy. Last winter she brought her key and left an extra on the sill. 'Xiao Sun, keep this one. If I haven't come down for milk in three days, let yourself in and check.' Old Sun said he would. But he never really thought he'd use it. After spring came, Teacher Zhou still came down each day, cloth bag to the market, nodding at his window on the way. Then one day the milk box was full—two days, three. Old Sun stared at that key, its brass worn bright by handling. He remembered her words, and he remembered the rule: open a door without leave, and who answers for what happens? On the fourth evening he picked up the key anyway. The wooden door swung; a smell of medicine and old paper. The room was dim. Teacher Zhou lay on her side on the floor—she'd fallen, couldn't move, but she was awake. Seeing him, she smiled first. 'I knew you'd come.' By the time the ambulance arrived, dusk had settled. Old Sun hung the key back at his waist, the brass cool. He stood below and watched 401's light come on, then go out. Someone in the building was cooking; someone watched television; the stairs still creaked. He understood, suddenly, that a key's weight isn't in which door it opens, but in someone's willingness to hand you the door.