The slack-skinned innkeeper, whose face was covered with moles, was alarmed by Mother’s shouts and dragged his sagging body to our room in a panic. He reached out to touch Mother’s forehead, but jerked his hand back and said anxiously, “Send for a doctor right away, or you’ll lose her!” He asked Fourth Sister, “Are you the oldest?” She nodded. “Why haven’t you sent for a doctor? Why don’t you say something, girl?” Fourth Sister burst into tears. Falling to her knees in front of the innkeeper, she said, “I beg you, uncle, save our mother.” “Girl,” the innkeeper said, “let me ask you, how much money do you have left?” Fourth Sister took the remaining bills out of Mother’s pocket and handed them to the innkeeper. “Here, uncle, this is the money we got from selling our seventh sister.”
Once the money exchanged for Seventh Sister disappeared, Mother opened her eyes.
“Mother’s eyes are open, her eyes are open!” we cried out joyously with tears in our eyes. Mother lifted a hand and stroked our cheeks, one by one. “Mother … Mother … Mother … Mother… Mother …” we said. “Granny, Granny,” the wretched little Sima heir stammered. “Her, what about her?” Mother asked as she pointed. Fourth Sister picked her up in her purple marten coat and held her out for Mother to touch. Once she was able to touch her, Mother closed her eyes; two tears squeezed out of the corners.
Hearing the sounds from the room, the innkeeper walked in with a long face and said to Fourth Sister, “I don’t want to sound cruel, girl, but F ve got my own family burdens, and the money for the room over the past couple of weeks, and the food, and the candles and oil…”
“Uncle,” Fourth Sister said, “you are this family’s great benefactor. We’ll pay you what we owe, but please don’t throw us out now. Our mother is sick …”
On the morning of February 18, 1941, Xiangdi handed a packet of money to Mother, who had just recovered from her illness. “Mother,” she said, “I’ve paid the innkeeper. This is for you.”
“Xiangdi,” Mother asked nervously, “where did you get this money?”
Fourth Sister laughed mournfully. “Mother, take my brother and sisters away with you. This is not our home …”
Mother paled, grabbing Fourth Sister’s hand. “Xiangdi, tell me …”
“Mother,” Xiangdi said, “I sold myself… I got a good price, thanks to the innkeeper, who bargained for me …”
The whorehouse madam had given Fourth Sister the sort of examination she’d have given a piece of livestock. “Too thin,” she said. “Boss lady,” the inkeeper said, “a sack of rice will take care of that!” The madam extended two fingers. “Two hundred, and that shows what a generous person I am.” “Boss lady, the girl’s mother is sick, and she has many sisters. Please give a little more …” “Ah,” the madam said, “it’s hard to do good at times like this.” But the innkeeper persisted. Fourth Sister fell to her knees. “All right,” the madam said, “I’m too softhearted. I’ll give another twenty. That’s absolutely top price.”
The news rocked Mother. Slowly she fell to the floor.
Then we heard the hoarse voice of a woman outside. “Let’s go, girl. I don’t have all the time in the world.”
Fourth Sister knelt down and kowtowed to Mother. After getting to her feet, she rubbed the head of Fifth Sister, patted the face of Sixth Sister, tugged the ear of Eighth Sister, and gave me a hurried kiss on the cheek. Then she grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me. Her emotional face looked like a plum blossom in a snowstorm.
“Jintong, my Jintong,” she said. “Grow up quickly, and grow up well. The Shangguan family is in your hands now!” She then took a look around the room as sobs emerged from her throat. She covered her mouth, as if she needed to run outside and throw up. She disappeared from sight.
7
We came home expecting to find Lingdi and Shangguan Lü dead. Nothing of the sort greeted our eyes. All manner of things were going on in the yard. Two men with freshly shaved heads were sitting against the wall of the house, bent over at the work of sewing clothes. They were wizards with needle and thread. Two other men, sitting nearby, heads also freshly shaved, as caught up in their tasks as the first two, were intent on cleaning the black rifles in their hands. There were two more men under the parasol tree, one standing holding a gleaming bayonet, the other seated on a bench, his head lowered, a white cloth wrapped around his neck, white, soapy bubbles popping on his water-soaked head. The man on his feet stood with his knees bent and, from time to time, wiped his bayonet clean on his pants; he then grabbed the other man’s wet, soapy head with his free hand and took aim with his bayonet, as if looking for the right spot to bury it. Laying the blade against the scalp, soapy bubbles popping right and left, he stuck his backside nearly straight up in the air and drew the blade from one end to the other, scraping off soapy hair and leaving behind a patch of pale skin. Still another man stood where we had once stored peanuts, a long-handled ax in his hands, his legs spread wide, facing the gnarled roots of an old elm tree. Firewood was stacked behind him. He raised the ax over his head, holding it steady for a moment, as sunlight glinted off the blade, then brought it sharply down and grunted as the blade buried itself deep in the gnarled roots. Then, with one foot planted against the roots, he rocked the ax handle back and forth with both hands to free the blade. He took two steps backward, resumed his early stance, spit in his hands, and again raised the ax over his head. The gnarled roots of the elm tree cracked and split loudly, one piece flying into the air as if from an explosion. It hit Fifth Sister, Shangguan Pandi, in the chest. She shrieked. The men who were sewing and those who were cleaning their rifles all looked up. The man doing the shaving and the man cutting firewood both turned to look. The one being shaved tried to lift his head, but it was immediately pushed back down by the man with the bayonet. “Don’t move,” he said. “We’ve got some beggars,” the man cutting firewood exclaimed. “Old Zhang, we’ve got some beggars here.” A man in a white apron and a gray cap, his face a mass of wrinkles, emerged from the door of our house, almost at a crouch. His sleeves were rolled up, exposing a pair of flour-coated arms. “Elder sister,” the man said in a friendly tone, “go try somewhere else. We soldiers are on rations and have nothing left for you folks.”
“This is my house!” Mother replied icily.
Everyone in the yard abruptly stopped what they were doing. The man with the soapy head jumped to his feet, wiped his dirt-streaked face with his sleeve, and greeted us with loud grunts. It was the mute from the Sun family. He ran over to us, grunting and waving his hands to let us in on all sorts of things we could not grasp. We looked into his coarse face with puzzled looks on ours, as fuzzy thoughts began to materialize in our minds. The mute rolled his murky yellow eyes; his blubbery jowls quivered. Turning on his heel, he ran into the side room of the house and returned with the large chipped ceramic bowl and bird scroll, holding them up in front of us, as the man with the bayonet walked up. He patted the mute on the shoulder. “Do you know these people, Speechless Sun?” he asked.
The mute put down the bowl, picked up a piece of firewood, squatted down, and wrote a line of oversized, squiggly words in the sand: “SHE IS MY MOTHER-IN-LAW.”
“So, the lady of the house has returned,” the shaver said warmly. “We are Squad Five of the Railway Demolition Battalion. I’m the squad leader. My name is Wang. Please accept my apologies for occupying your house. Our political commissar has given your son-in-law a new name — Speechless Sun. He’s a good soldier, brave, fearless, a model for us all. We’ll move out of your house right away, ma’am. Old Lu, Little Du, Big Ox Zhao, Speechless Sun, Little Seventh Qin, go in and clear your things off the kang for the lady of the house.”
The soldiers put down what they were working on and went inside. They returned in a few minutes carrying bedding and wearing leggings and cotton shoes with padded soles, with rifles strapped over their arms and grenades draped around their necks; they lined up in formation in the yard. “Ma’am,” the squad leader said to Mother, ??
?you may go in now. My men will stay out here while I report to the political commissar.” The squad of soldiers, including the man now called Speechless Sun, stood at attention, like a row of pine trees.
The squad leader ran off, rifle in hand, and we entered the house, where two bamboo and reed steamers lay atop the cookpot, and a wood fire blazed in the stove, sending steam up through the gaps in the steamers. We smelled steamed buns. The elderly cook nodded apologetically to Mother as he shoved more kindling into the stove. “I apologize for making alterations to your stove without first getting your permission.” He pointed to a deep groove under the stove and said, “That groove is better than ten bellows.” The flames were so hot it almost looked as if the bottom of the pot might melt. Lingdi, her cheeks flushed and ruddy, was sitting in the doorway, her eyes narrowed as she stared at the steam oozing up through the gaps in the steamers and spi-raling into the air above the stove, where it formed layers.
“Lingdi!” Mother shouted tentatively.
“Sister, Third Sister!” Fifth Sister and Sixth Sister shouted.
Lingdi cast us a nonchalant glance, as if we were strangers, or as if we’d never been away.
Mother led us around the neat, tidy rooms, feeling increasingly ill at ease, walking on eggshells. She decided to go back outside.
The mute made a face at us from where he stood in formation. The little Sima heir, too small to be afraid, went over to touch the soldiers’ tightly wrapped leggings.
The squad leader returned with a middle-aged, bespectacled man. “Ma’am, this is Commissar Jiang.”
Commissar Jiang was a pasty-faced man with a smooth upper lip. He wore a wide leather belt and had a fountain pen in his shirt pocket. After nodding politely to us, he took a handful of colored objects out of a little leather bag on his hip. “Here’s some candy for you youngsters.” He distributed the hard candy evenly among us; even the baby girl in the purple marten coat got two pieces, which Mother accepted for her. It was my very first taste of candy. “Ma’am,” Commissar Jiang said, “I hope you’ll agree to put this squad up in the east and west side rooms of your house.”
Mother nodded numbly.
He pulled back his cuff to check his watch. “Old Zhang,” he shouted, “are the steamed buns ready?”
“Just about,” Old Zhang replied as he ran outside.
“Feed the children first,” the commissar said. “I’ll have the clerk replace the rations for the soldiers.”
Old Zhang promised he would.
Then the commissar said to Mother, “Ma’am, our commander would like to meet you. Will you come with me?”
Mother was about to hand the baby to Fifth Sister when the commissar said, “No, bring her along.”
We followed the commissar — actually, Mother did the following; I was on her back, the baby girl was in her arms — out the lane and across the street, all the way to the gate of Felicity Manor, where two armed sentries saluted us by clicking their heels, holding their rifles vertically in their left hands and bringing their right hands across until they touched the gleaming bayonets. We walked through one corridor after another until we were in a big hall, where two bowls of steaming food sat on a purple rectangular table: one held cooked pheasant, the other cooked rabbit. There was also a basket of steamed buns so white they were nearly blue. A bearded man walked up with a smile. “Welcome,” he said, “welcome.”
“Ma’am,” the commissar said, “this is Commander Lu.”
“I understand we have the same surname,” the commander said. “We were members of the same family way back when.”
“What are we guilty of, Commander?” Mother asked.
Momentarily taken aback, the commander laughed and said, “Where did you get that idea, ma’am? I didn’t ask you here because you’d done anything wrong. Ten years ago, your son-in-law, Sha Yueliang, and I were close friends. So when I heard you’d returned, I ordered food and wine to welcome you back.”
“He’s not my son-in-law,” Mother said.
“There’s no need to hide the fact, ma’am,” the commissar said. “Isn’t that Sha Yueliang’s daughter you’re holding?” “This is my granddaughter.”
“Let’s eat first,” Commander Lu said. “You must be starving.”
“Commander,” Mother said, “we’re going home.”
“Don’t hurry off,” Commander Lu said. “Sha Yueliang sent me a letter asking me to look after his daughter. He knows how tough things are for you. Little Tang!”
A strikingly beautiful soldier ran into the room.
“Take the lady’s baby from her so she can sit down and eat.”
The soldier walked up to Mother, smiled, and reached out for the baby.
“This is not Sha Yueliang’s child,” Mother insisted. “She’s my granddaughter.”
We passed through the same corridors, crossed the same street, and walked down the same alleys on our way back home.
Over the next few days, the beautiful young soldier called Little Tang brought food and clothing to us. Included in the food were tins of animal crackers, milk powder in glass bottles, and crocks filled with honey. The clothing consisted of silks and satins, padded jackets and pants with fancy trim, even a padded cap with rabbit fur earflaps. “These,” she said, “are gifts for her from Commander Lu and Commissar Jiang.” She pointed to the baby in Mother’s arms. “Little Brother can eat the food, of course,” she said, pointing to me.
Mother gave the soldier, Miss Tang, with her apple red cheeks and apricot eyes, a look of disinterest. “Take these things away, Miss Tang. They’re too good for children from poor families.” Mother then stuck one nipple into my mouth and the other into the mouth of the baby daughter of the Sha family. She sucked contentedly; I sucked angrily. She touched my head with her hand; I kicked her in the rear, which made her cry. I also heard the soft, light sobs of my eighth sister, Shangguan Yunii, the sort of weeping that even the sun and the moon like to hear.
Miss Tang said that Commissar Jiang had given the baby girl a name. “He’s an intellectual, a graduate of Beiping’s Chaoyang University, a writer and a painter and fluent in English. Zaohua — Date Flower — how do you like that name? Please, ma’am, keep your suspicions in check. Commander Lu is doing this out of the goodness of his heart. If we wanted to simply take this child, it would be as easy as snapping our fingers.” Miss Tang took a glass baby bottle fitted with a rubber nipple out of her pocket. Then she put some honey and the milk powder into a pot — I detected the odor of the foreign woman who had taken Xiangdi away with her, and knew that the milk powder had come from a foreign woman’s breast — added hot water, stirred, and poured it into the bottle. “Don’t let her and your son fight over your milk. They’ll suck you dry sooner or later. Let me give her a bottle,” she said as she took Sha Zaohua from Mother. Zaohua held on to Mother’s nipple with her mouth, stretching it out like one of Bird-man Han’s slingshots; when finally she let go, the nipple shrank back slowly, like a leech over which boiling water has been poured, taking its own sweet time to return to normal. The pain I felt was for the nipple; the loathing I felt was for Sha Zaohua. But by then, the loathsome little demon was in Miss Tang’s arms, frantically and contentedly sucking up the imitation milk from the imitation breast. I didn’t envy her at all, since once again, Mother’s breasts were mine alone. It had been a long time since I’d slept so soundly. In my dream, I sucked to intoxication and bliss. The dream was filled with the fragrance of milk!
I owed Miss Tang a debt of gratitude. After she’d finished feeding Zaohua, she laid down the bottle and opened up the purple marten overcoat, releasing the rank smell of fox that clung to the baby. I noticed how milky white Zaohua’s skin was. I’d never imagined that someone with such a dark face could have such pale skin elsewhere. Miss Tang dressed Zaohua in the satin padded coat and the rabbit fur cap, all to transform her into a beautiful baby. She flung the purple marten coat off to the side, held Zaohua in her arms, and tossed her up in the air. Zaohua was giggl
ing happily when Miss Tang caught her.
I felt Mother tense as she readied herself to grab Zaohua away. But Miss Tang walked over and handed her back. “This baby would make Commander Sha very happy, aunty,” she said.
“Commander Sha?”
“Didn’t you know? Your son-in-law is the garrison commander of Bohai City,” Miss Tang said, “with a complement of more than three hundred men and his own personal American Jeep.”
Miss Tang took out a red plastic comb and combed the hair of Fifth Sister and Sixth Sister. While she was combing Sixth Sister’s hair, Fifth Sister stood there gaping, her gaze like a comb that moved from Miss Tang’s head down to her feet, and then back up to her head. Then when Miss Tang was combing her hair, Fifth Sister had goose bumps all over her face and neck. When the two girls’ hair was combed, Miss Tang left. “Mother,” Fifth Sister said, “I want to be a soldier.”
Two days later, Pandi was wearing a gray army uniform. Her primary job was helping Miss Tang change and feed Sha Zaohua.
Our lives took a turn for the better. As a song from those days went:
Little girl, little girl, your worries are done,
If you can’t find a youngster, then try an old one.