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 injection 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!”