Mother jumped out of bed, wrapped her arms around her mother-in-law’s legs, and pleaded, “Mother, be merciful, please. For my sake, after taking care of you all these months, spare the little one …”
“That makes sense,” her mother-in-law said, lowering her voice. “But this business with the monk, is it true?”
Mother said nothing.
“Tell me! Is this a bastard I’m holding?”
Mother shook her head resolutely.
Her mother-in-law tossed the baby onto the bed.
9
In the fall of 1935, while Mother was on the bank of the Flood Dragon River cutting grass, she was gang-raped by four armed soldiers fleeing from a rout.
When it was over, she looked out at the river and decided to drown herself. But just as she was about to walk to her death, she saw the reflection of Northeast Gaomi’s beautiful blue sky in the clear water. Cool breezes swallowed up the feelings of humiliation in her breast, so she scooped up handfuls of water to wash her sweaty, tear-streaked face, straightened her clothes, and walked home.
In the early summer of the next year, eight years after the birth of her previous child, Mother gave birth to her seventh, Qiudi. The birth of yet another daughter threw her mother-in-law into despair. Stumbling as she walked, she retrieved a bottle from a trunk in her room and gulped down great mouthfuls of the strong liquor before dissolving into loud wails. Mother, too, was dejected, and as she looked with disgust into the wrinkled face of her newborn child, her only thought was: God in Heaven, why are you so stingy? All you had to do was add a smidgeon of clay to this child to make it a son.
Her husband then stormed into the room, pulled back the blanket, and staggered backward. The first thing he did after recovering from the shock was reach behind the door, pick up the club for pounding wet clothes, and bring it down on his wife’s head. Blood splattered on the wall as the crazed little man turned and ran outside, fuming. Snatching a pair of red-hot tongs out of the blacksmith furnace, he ran back to his wife’s room and branded her on the inside of her thigh.
Wisps of yellow smoke and the stench of burning flesh quickly filled the room. With a shriek of pain, Mother fell out of bed and curled into a ball on the floor, her body twitching.
When Big Paw Yu heard that Lu Xuan’er had been branded, he rushed over to the Shangguan home with a hunting rifle, and without saying a word, aimed it at the chest of Shangguan Lü and pulled the trigger. The rifle misfired. By the time he’d readied the weapon for a second try, Shangguan Lü had run into the house and slammed the door behind her. His anger building, he fired at the closed door, blowing a hole in it with buckshot and drawing a fearful shriek from Shangguan Lü on the other side.
Big Paw Yu then began battering the door with the butt of his rifle, breathing heavily but saying nothing. He looked like a bear, his burly figure rocking back and forth. Mother’s daughters huddled fearfully in the side room as they watched what was happening out in the yard.
Mother’s husband and father-in-law, one brandishing a steel-headed hammer, the other the pair of tongs, cautiously approached Big Paw. Shouxi was the first to act, rushing up and hitting Big Paw in the back with his tongs. Big Paw turned and roared at his attacker. The tongs fell from Shouxi’s hand, and he would have run away, if only his rubbery legs had let him. He tried to force a smile. “I’ll kill you, you son of a bitch!” Big Paw bellowed as he knocked Shouxi to the ground with his rifle, with such force that it snapped in two. Shouxi’s father rushed Big Paw with his hammer, but missed his target altogether, and nearly lost his footing in the process. Big Paw helped him along with a swat on the man’s shoulder, sending him sprawling alongside his son. Big Paw took turns kicking both men, then picked up the hammer, raised it over his head, and cursed, “Now I’m going to crack that melon head wide open, you son of a bitch!” just as Mother hobbled out into the yard. “Uncle,” she shouted, “this is family business. I don’t need your help.”
Letting the hammer drop to the ground, Big Paw, a pained expression on his face, looked at his niece standing there like a dried-out tree. “Xuan’er,” he said, “how you’ve suffered …”
“When I left the Yu home,” Mother said, “I became a member of the Shangguan family, and whether I live or die because of it is not your concern.”
Big Paw Yu’s rampage succeeded in deflating the arrogance of the Shangguan family. Realizing how she had mistreated her daughter-in-law, Shangguan Lü finally began treating her more humanely. Shangguan Shouxi, having barely escaped death, also began to see his wife in a different light, and subjected her to less abuse.
Meanwhile, Mother’s scalded flesh began to fester and smell. This time, she thought, I won’t survive, so she moved into the side room.
Early one morning, she was awakened from a half-sleep by the church bell. Although the bell was rung daily, on this day it seemed to be talking to her, the enchanting peal of bronze on bronze stirring her soul and sending ripples through her heart. Why haven’t I heard that sound before? What was stopping up my ears? As she pondered this change, the pain racking her body slowly went away. Her thoughts weren’t interrupted until some rats climbed up and began nibbling at her putrefying flesh. The old mule that had brought her over from her aunt’s house gave her a melancholic look, consoling her, inspiring her, encouraging her.
Mother stood up with the help of a cane and dragged her festering body out onto the road, one faltering step at a time, all the way up to the church’s gate.
It was a Sunday. Pastor Malory stood at the dusty pulpit, Bible in hand, intoning a passage from Matthew for the benefit of a handful of gray-haired old women:
“When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not wanting to make her a public example, was minded to divorce her privately. But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, ‘Joseph, son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shall call His name Jesus; for He shall save his people from their sins.’“
This passage brought tears to Mother’s eyes, tears that fell on her collar. She tossed away her cane and fell to her knees. Looking up into the face of the cracked jujube Jesus on the iron cross, she sobbed, “Lord, I’ve come to You late …”
The old women stared uncomprehendingly at Shangguan Lu, the stench from her rotting flesh crinkling their noses.
Pastor Malory laid down his Bible and stepped down off the raised platform to lift Lu Xuan’er up off her knees. Crystalline tears filled his gentle blue eyes. “Little sister,” he said, “I have been waiting for you for a very long time.”
In the early summer of 1938, in the dense grove of locusts in a remote corner of Sandy Ridge Village, Pastor Malory knelt reverently beside Mother, whose injury had begun to heal, and gently rubbed her body with trembling reddened hands. His moist lips quivered, his limpid blue eyes blended in with the fragments of Northeast Gaomi Township’s deep blue sky that filtered in through the gaps between the flowering locusts. “Little sister,” he stammered, “my lovely mate … my little dove … my perfect woman, your thighs are as glossy as fine jade, formed by a master craftsman, your navel is like a perfectly round cup filled with a mixed drink … your waist is like a sheaf of wheat tied with a string of lilies … your breasts are like twin fawns, like the sagging fruit of a palm tree. Your nose is as fragrant as an apple, your mouth smells like fine liquor. My love, you are beautiful, a sheer delight. You make me deliriously happy!”
Basking in the approving words and gentle fondling of Pastor Malory, Mother felt as light as goose down floating in the deep blue skies of Northeast Gaomi and in Pastor Malory’s blue eyes, as the subtle perfume of red and white locust blossoms flowed over her like waves.
Chapter Three
1
After getting an inje
ction to stop the bleeding, Mother slowly came around. I was the first thing she saw — more specifically, what she saw was the little pecker standing up like a silkworm chrysalis between my legs — and the dullness in her eyes was replaced by light. She picked me up and kissed me, like a hen pecking rice. Crying hoarsely, I sought out the nipple, which she stuck in my mouth. I began to suck, but instead of milk, all I got was a taste of blood. I was bawling, Eighth Sister — the girl born just before me — was whimpering. Mother laid me alongside my sister and struggled to get down off the kang. She walked unsteadily over to the water vat, bent over, and drank a ladleful of water. Numbly she looked out at the corpses in the yard. The adult donkey and her baby mule stood trembling beside the bed of peanuts. My older sisters walked into the yard, cutting a sorry figure. They ran to Mother and wept weakly before crumpling to the floor.
White smoke billowed out of our chimney for the first time since the catastrophe. Mother broke open Grandma’s trunk and removed some preserved eggs, dates, rock candy, and a piece of old ginseng that had lain there for years. She threw it all into the wok, and when the water began to sizzle, it set the eggs in rapid motion. Finally, Mother called all the girls in and sat them around a large platter. “All right, children,” she said, “eat.”
My sisters scooped the hot food out of the platter and ate ravenously. Mother only drank the broth, three bowlfuls, until there was nothing left. They were quiet for a while, but then threw their arms around each other and wailed. Mother waited until they had cried themselves out before announcing, “Girls, you have a little brother, and another little sister.”
Mother suckled me. Her milk tasted like dates, rock candy, and preserved eggs, a magnificent liquid. I opened my eyes. My sisters looked at me excitedly. I returned their looks bleary-eyed. After draining Mother’s breast of its milk, surrounded by the cries of my baby sister, I closed my eyes. I heard Mother pick up Eighth Sister and sigh. “You’re one I didn’t need.”
Early the next morning, the clang of a gong shattered the quiet of the lane. Sima Ting, the Felicity Manor steward, called out hoarsely: “Fellow villagers, carry out your dead, bring them all out.”
Mother stood in the yard holding Eighth Sister and me in her arms and wailing loudly; there were no tears on her cheeks. She was surrounded by her daughters, some crying, some not; there were no tears on their cheeks either.
Sima Ting walked into the yard with his brass gong, looking like a dried-out gourd, a man of inestimable age, his face deeply wrinkled. He had a nose like a strawberry, deep black eyes that kept rolling in their sockets, the eyes of a little boy. His aging stooped shoulders gave him the look of a candle guttering in the wind, but his hands were fair and plump, the palms nicely dimpled. He walked up to Mother and struck his gong with all his might. A gravelly klong wah-wah-wah-wah emerged from the cracked gong. Mother swallowed a sob, straightened her neck, and held her breath for at least a full minute. “What a tragedy!” Sima Ting said with an exaggerated sigh. Desperate grief was written on his lips, in the corners of his mouth, on his cheeks, even on his earlobes. And yet, despite the obvious sense of righteous indignation, there was an unmistakable hint of a smirk hidden in the space between his nose and eyes, a look of furtive glee. He walked up to the rigid body of Shangguan Fulu and stood woodenly beside it for a moment. Then he went over to the headless body of Shangguan Shouxi, where he bent down and looked into the dead eyes of the severed head, as if wanting to establish an emotional link. Saliva dribbled from the corner of his mouth. In contrast to the peaceful expression on Shangguan Shouxi’s face, Sima looked somewhat stupid, and savage. “You people wouldn’t listen to me, why wouldn’t you listen to me?…” He was scolding the dead men in a low voice, talking to himself. He walked back up to Mother: “Shouxi’s wife, I’ll get someone to take them away. In this weather… well, you see.” He looked heavenward, and so did Mother. The sky was an oppressive leaden gray, and off to the east, the sunrise, blood red, was being beaten back by dark clouds. Our stone lions were damp. “The rain, it’s coming. If we don’t carry them away, once it starts raining, and then the sun comes out, you can imagine what it will do to them.” Mother held my sister and me in her arms and knelt in front of Sima Ting. “Steward,” she said, “I am a widow with a brood of orphaned children, so we will have to rely on you from now on. Children, come bow to your uncle.” All my older sisters knelt in front of Sima Ting, who hit the gong — bong bong—with all his might. “Fuck his ancestors!” he cursed, as tears streamed down his face. “It’s all the fault of that bastard Sha Yueliang. His ambush infuriated the Japanese, who went on a murderous rampage against us common people. Get up, girls, all of you, and stop crying. Yours is not the only family that has suffered. Just my luck that the county head put me in charge of this town. He fled for his life, but I’m still here. Fuck his ancestors! Hey there, Gou San, Yao Si, quit your dawdling. Are you waiting for me to send a sedan chair for you?”
Gou San and Yao Si came running into the yard bent at the waist, followed by some of the town idlers. They were Sima Ting’s errand boys, his honor guard and his followers, his prestige and his authority, the means by which he carried out his duties. Yao Si held a notebook with a ragged-edged straw-paper cover under his arm and had a pencil stuck behind his ear. Gou San strained to roll Shangguan Fulu over, so he could look up into the red morning clouds. He sang out: “Shangguan Fulu — head crushed in — head of the family.” Yao Si wetted a finger, opened the household registration notebook, and thumbed his way through it until he found the Shangguan page. Then he took the pencil from behind his ear, knelt on one knee, and rested his notebook on the other; after touching the tip of his pencil to his tongue, he struck out Shangguan Fulu’s name. “Shangguan Shouxi” — Gou San’s voice suddenly lost its crispness — “head separated from body.” A wail tore from Mother’s throat. Sima Ting turned to Yao Si: “Go ahead, record it, you hear me?” Yao Si drew a small circle over Shangguan Shouxi’s name, without listing the cause of death. Sima Ting raised the mallet in his hand and thumped Yao Si in the head. “Your mother’s legs! How dare you cut corners with the dead, thinking you can take advantage of me because I can’t read, is that it?” With a drawn look on his face, Yao Si pleaded: “Don’t hit me, old master. It’s all right up here.” He pointed to his head. “I’ll not forget any of it, not in a thousand years.” Sima Ting glared at him. “And what makes you think you’ll live that long? A thousand years, you must be some sort of turtle spawn.” “Old master, it was only a figure of speech. Why start a fight?” “Who’s starting a fight?” Sima Ting thumped him on the head again. “Shangguan” — Gou San, who was standing in front of Shangguan Lü, turned to Mother and asked, “What was your mother-in-law’s maiden name?” Mother shook her head. Yao Si tapped the notebook with the tip of his pencil and said, “It was Lü.” “Shangguan nee Lü,” Gou San shouted as he bent down to look at the corpse. “That’s strange, there are no wounds,” he muttered, turning Shangguan Lü’s gray head this way and that. A thin moan escaped from between her lips, straightening Gou San up in a hurry. He backed off, gaping in astonishment and stammering, “She’s come back … back to life.” Shangguan Lü opened her eyes slowly, like a newborn baby, glazed and lacking focus. Mother shouted, “Ma!” She handed me and my eighth sister to two of the older girls and ran up to her mother-in-law, stopping abruptly when she noticed that the old woman’s eyes had settled on me as I lay in First Sister’s arms. “Everyone,” Sima Ting said, “the old woman has returned briefly from death to see the child. Is it a boy?” The gaze in Shangguan Lü’s eyes made me squirm, and I began to cry. “Let her look at her grandchild,” Sima Ting said, “so she can leave us in peace.” Mother took me from First Sister, got down on her knees, and shuffled up to the old woman, where she held me up close to her. “Ma,” she said tearfully, “I had no choice” … A light flashed into Shangguan Lü’s eyes when her gaze alit on that spot between my legs. A rumble emerged from her abdomen, followed by a rank odor. ??
?That’s it,” Sima Ting said, “this time she’s really gone.” Mother stood up with me in her arms and, in front of a crowd of men, opened her blouse and stuffed a nipple into my mouth. With my face nestled against her heavy breast, I stopped crying. Sima Ting announced, “Shangguan née Lü, wife of Shangguan Fulu, mother of Shangguan Shouxi, has died of a broken heart over the deaths of her husband and her son. All right, take her away!”
The corpse detail walked up to Shangguan Lü with metal hooks, but before they could place them under her, she stood up slowly, like an ancient tortoise. With the sun shining down, her puffy face looked like a lemon, or a New Year’s cake. She had a sneer on her face as she sat with her back against the wall, like a miniature mountain.
“Elder sister-in-law,” Sima Ting said, “you have a tight grip on life.”
Covering their mouths with towels sprayed with sorghum liquor to ward off the smell of rotting corpses, the town head’s followers carried up a door plank on which the remnants of a New Year’s couplet could nearly be made out. After laying the plank on the ground, four town idlers —- now designated as the official town corpse detail — quickly picked Shangguan Fulu up by his arms and legs and laid him out on the plank. Then two of them carried the plank out the gate. One of Shangguan Fulu’s rigid arms hung off the side of the plank and swung like a pendulum. “Drag the old lady away from the gate!” one of the idlers shouted. Two men rushed over. “It’s old Aunty Sun. How could she have died there?” someone in the lane wondered aloud. “Put her on the cart.” The lane was buzzing with comments.
The door plank was laid out beside Shangguan Shouxi, who lay in the position in which he died. Transparent bubbles floated skyward from his mouth, opened in his screams to the heavens, as if a crab were hidden inside. The corpse detail hesitated, not sure what to do. “Oh, hell,” one of them said, “let’s get on with it.” He picked up his metal hook, but was stopped short by Mother’s shout: “Don’t use hooks on him!” She handed me to Shangguan Laidi, then, with a loud wail, threw herself on the headless corpse of her husband. She reached out to drag the head over, but drew her hand back when it touched flesh. “Let it go, sister-in-law!” one of the idlers said, his voice muffled by the towel covering it. “That head cannot be reattached. Go take a look in the cart out there. All that’s left of some of those bodies is a leg, after the dogs got to them. He could be in worse shape. Step aside, you girls. Turn your heads and don’t look.” He wrapped his arms around Mother and half-carried, half-pushed her to one side, along with my sisters. “Close your eyes, all of you!” he warned us once more.