His words hung in the air when a chorus of millions of chirping insects rose all around him.
2
It was on the morning of the Mid-Autumn Festival, a hundred days after my sister and I were born, when Mother took us to see Pastor Malory. The church gate facing the street was tightly shut and marred by blasphemous, antireligious graffiti. We took the path to the rear of the church, where our raps on the door echoed in the wilderness. The emaciated goat was tied to a stake beside the door. She had such a long face that she looked more like a donkey or a camel or an old woman than a goat. She raised her head to look gloomily at Mother, who clipped her on the chin with the toe of her shoe. After a lingering complaint, she lowered her head to continue grazing. A rumbling noise was accompanied by the sound of Pastor Malory’s coughs. Mother rang the bell. “Who is it?” Pastor Malory asked. “Me,” Mother replied softly. The squeaky door opened a crack, and Mother slipped inside with us in her arms. Pastor Malory shut the door behind her, then turned, reached out and embraced us with his long arms. “My adorable little ones, the fruit of my loins…”
Sha Yueliang and his newly formed band of men, the Black Donkey Musket Band, walked spiritedly up the road we’d just taken on the funeral procession, heading straight for our village. On one side of the road, sorghum grew tall amid the wheat; reeds stretched to the edge of the Black Water River on the other side. A sun-drenched summer, with plenty of sweet rain, had made it a wildly fruitful growing season. The leaves were fat and the stalks thick, even before there were silks atop the head-high sorghum; river reeds were lush and black, the stems and leaves covered by white fuzz. Even though it was already mid-autumn, there wasn’t a hint of autumn in the air. And yet, the sky was the rich blue of autumn, the sun autumnally beautiful.
Sha Yueliang had a band of twenty-eight men, all riding identical black donkeys from the hilly south country of Wulian County. With their thick, muscular bodies and stumpy legs, the donkeys were easily outrun by horses; but they had amazing stamina and could be ridden for long distances. Sha had selected these twenty-eight donkeys from over eight hundred: not gelded, blessed with loud, strident voices, young, black, and energetic. Those were their mounts. The twenty-eight animals formed a black line, like a flowing stream. A milky white mist floated about the road; sunbeams were reflected off the donkeys’ backs. When he spotted the battered clock tower and watchtower, Sha reined in his lead donkey. The ones behind kept coming stubbornly. Looking back into the faces of his band, he told the men to dismount, then ordered them to wash up and clean their donkeys. A look of sobriety and seriousness adorned his dark, gaunt face as he dressed down his band of men, who lazed around after dismounting. He had elevated washing up and cleaning mounts to glorious heights. He told his men that the anti-Japanese guerrillas were popping up everywhere, like mushrooms, and that the Black Donkey Musket Band was going to take its place ahead of all others, owing to its unique style, until it became the sole occupying force of Northeast Gaomi Township. In order to impress the villagers, they needed to carefully watch what they said and did. Under his mobilization, the band’s morale surged; after taking off their shirts and spreading them on the ground, they stood in the shallows of the river and sent water spraying as they washed up. Their newly shaved heads glinted in the sunlight. Sha Yueliang took a bar of soap from his knapsack and cut it into strips, which he handed out to his men, telling them to wash every speck of dust off their bodies. Joining them in the river, he bent down until his scarred shoulder nearly touched the water, so he could scrub his dirty neck. While their riders were washing up, the donkeys grazed among the leafy water reeds or chewed the leaves of sorghum stalks or nibbled at one another’s rumps; some just stood there deep in thought or slipped the meaty clubs out of their sheaths and beat them against their bellies. As the donkeys busied themselves with whatever pleased them, Mother struggled free of Pastor Malory’s embrace. “You’re crushing the babies, you foolish donkey!”
Pastor Malory smiled apologetically, revealing two neat rows of white teeth; he reached out to us with one of his big red hands, paused for a second, then reached out with the other. Grabbing hold of one of his fingers, I began to gurgle. But Eighth Sister lay there like a log, neither crying nor squirming nor making any noise at all. She had been born blind. Cradling me in one arm, Mother said, “Look at him, he’s laughing.” She then deposited me into those big, sweaty waiting hands. He put his head down next to mine, so close I could see every strand of red hair on his head, the brown whiskers on his chin, his hawkish nose, and the benevolent gleam in his eyes. Suddenly I felt sharp pains up and down my back; taking my thumb out of my mouth, I let out a howl and a gusher of tears as the pain seemed to penetrate the marrow of my bones. I felt his whiskery lips on my forehead – they seemed to be trembling – and got a powerful whiff of his goat’s milk and oniony breath.
He handed me back to Mother. “I frightened him,” he said sheepishly.
Mother handed Eighth Sister to Pastor Malory after taking me from him. She patted and rocked me. “Don’t cry,” she purred. “Do you know who he is? Are you afraid of him? Don’t be, he’s a good man, your very own… very own godfather…”
The pains in my back continued, and I cried myself hoarse. So Mother pulled open her blouse and stuck a nipple into my mouth. I seized it like a drowning man clutching at a straw and sucked desperately. Her milk had a grassy taste as it poured down my throat. But the shooting pains in my back forced me to let go so I could cry some more. Wringing his hands anxiously, Pastor Malory ran over to the base of the wall, where he pulled up a tasseled weed and flicked it back and forth in front of me to stop me from crying. It didn’t work. So he ran back and pulled up a sunflower, as big as the moon and ringed with golden petals, then brought it over to wave in the air for me. I was drawn to the flower’s smell. All during Pastor Malory’s frantic running back and forth, Eighth Sister slept peacefully in his arms. “Look at that, darling,” Mother said. “Your godfather plucked the moon out of the sky for you.” I reached out for the moon, but was stopped short by more shooting pains. “What’s wrong with him?” Mother asked, her lips pale, her face bathed in sweat. Pastor Malory said, “Maybe something’s pricking him.”
With Pastor Malory’s help, Mother took off the red outfit she’d made for me in celebration of my hundredth day in this world, and discovered a needle caught in one of the folds. It had drawn dozens of bloody pinpricks on my back. She flung it over the wall. “My poor baby,” she said tearfully, “it’s all my fault! My fault!” She slapped herself, hard. Then a second time. Two crisp smacks. Pastor Malory grabbed her hand, then walked behind her and put his arms around both of us. He kissed Mother on her cheeks, her ears, and her hair with his moist lips. “It’s not your fault,” he said. “It’s mine. Blame me.” His tenderness had a calming effect on Mother, who sat in the doorway and stuffed the nipple back into my mouth. Her sweet milk moistened my throat, as the pain in my back gradually disappeared. With my lips around a nipple and my hands cupping one breast, I kneaded and protected the other one with my foot. Mother pushed my foot away, but as soon as she let go, it sprang right back up there.