Mother was beaming as she laid Eighth Sister in the basin with me, then picked up the loofah and gently washed us both as Pastor Malory ladled water over our heads. I shrieked happily with each ladleful, while Eighth Sister sobbed hoarsely. I kept grabbing my dark, scrawny twin.
“They don’t have names yet,” Mother said. “That’s your job.”
Pastor Malory put down his ladle. “This is nothing to be taken lightly. I need time to think.”
“My mother-in-law said that if I have a boy I should call him Little Dog Shangguan,” Mother said. “He would grow up better with a humble name.”
Pastor Malory shook his head vigorously. “No, that’s no good. Names like dog or cat are an affront to God. They also go against the teachings of Confucius, who said, ‘Without proper names, language cannot speak the truth.’“
“I have one,” Mother said. “See what you think. We can call him Shangguan Amen.”
Malory laughed. “That is even worse. Stop trying, and let me think.”
Pastor Malory stood up, clasped his hands behind his back, and began pacing feverishly in the rank atmosphere of the run-down church. His quick steps were the outward manifestation of the churning in his head, through which all manner of names and symbols – ancient and modern, Chinese and Western, heavenly and mundane – flowed. As she observed his pacing, Mother smiled and said to me, “Look at your godfather. That’s no way to think up a name. He looks like he’s about to declare a death.” Humming to herself, Mother picked up Malory’s ladle, scooped up some water, and poured it over our heads.
“I’ve got it!” he announced loudly as he stopped in his twenty-ninth trip to the closed front door of the church. “What will it be?” Mother asked excitedly. But before he could tell her, there was a clamor at the door. The noise of a crowd erupted, making the door rattle. Someone out there was shouting and carrying on. Mother stood up, seized with terror, the ladle still in her hand. Malory put his eye up to the crack in the door. At the time we didn’t know what was happening, but we saw his face redden, either from anger or nervousness, we didn’t know which. He turned to Mother. “Leave, quickly. To the courtyard out front.”
Mother bent down to pick me up. She first threw away the ladle, of course, which bounced around noisily on the floor, like a bullfrog in mating season. Left behind in the basin, Eighth Sister began to bawl. The bolt snapped in two and clattered to the floor as the double doors burst open, and a shaven-headed young man holding a musket exploded into the church. He butted Malory in the chest, sending him reeling back all the way to the rear wall. A bare-bottomed angel was suspended above his head. When the door bolt clattered to the floor, I tumbled out of Mother’s arms and thudded back into the basin, sending a spray of water skyward and nearly crushing the life out of Eighth Sister.
Altogether five musket soldiers swarmed in, but their brutal arrogance dissolved as they took in the sights of the church. The one who had nearly butted Pastor Malory into the next world scratched his head. “There are people here. Why is that?” He glanced at his four comrades. “Didn’t they say the church had been abandoned years ago? How come there are people here?”
Covering his chest with his hands, Malory walked up to the soldiers, who were frightened and embarrassed by his dignified appearance. If he had spewed forth a string of foreign words and made a flurry of hand gestures, the soldiers might well have turned on their heels and run out of the church. Even speaking Chinese with a heavy foreign accent would have stopped them from turning violent. But the unfortunate Pastor Malory spoke to them in perfect Northeast Gaomi Chinese: “What do you want, my brothers?” He bowed deeply to them.
As I lay there crying – Eighth Sister had stopped crying by then – the soldiers burst out laughing. Sizing up Pastor Malory as if he were a performing monkey, a soldier with a crooked mouth reached out and tickled the hairs in Malory’s ear with his finger.
“A monkey, ha ha, he’s a monkey.” His comrades joined in: “Look, this monkey’s even hiding a woman in here!”
“I object!” Malory shouted. “I object! I am a foreigner!”
“A foreigner, did you all hear that?” the crooked-mouthed soldier said. “Are you telling me a foreigner can speak perfect Northeast Gaomi Chinese? I think you’re the bastard offspring of a monkey and a human. Bring in one of the donkeys, men.”
Holding Eighth Sister and me in her arms, Mother came up and grabbed Malory’s arm. “Let’s go, we don’t want to anger them.”
Malory pulled his arm free and ran up to push the donkey back out of the church. The animal bared its teeth, like an angry dog, and brayed loudly.
“Back off!” one of the soldiers demanded as he pushed Malory out of the way.
“The church is a holy place, belonging to God. You can’t stable a donkey in here,” Pastor Malory said defiantly.
“You phony foreign devil!” cursed one of the soldiers, a man with a pale face and purple lips. “My old mother told me that that man,” he said as he pointed to the jujube Jesus hanging up front, “was born in a horse stable. Donkeys are cousins to horses, so if your god owes a debt to horses, he also owes one to donkeys. If a horse stable can serve as a delivery room, then why can’t a church serve as a donkey’s pen?”
The soldier, obviously pleased with his powers of logic, stared at Malory with a smug grin.
Malory made the sign of the cross and began to weep. “Punish these evil men, Lord. Strike them down with lightning, let them be bitten by poisonous vipers, let them perish at the hands of the Japanese
“Traitorous dog!” the crooked-mouthed soldier snarled, giving Malory a resounding slap. Intending to slap him in the mouth, he was slightly off target, hitting his hooked nose instead, and releasing a gush of fresh blood. With a painful cry, Malory raised his hands toward the jujube Jesus. “Lord,” he intoned, “almighty God…”
The soldiers looked first at the jujube Jesus, which was covered with dust and bird droppings, then at the bloodied face of Pastor Malory. Finally, they let their eyes roam over Mother’s body, which was covered with slimy marks that looked like the trails of snails. The soldier who knew about Jesus’ birthplace stuck out his tongue, like a footed clam, and licked his purplish lips. By then, twenty-eight black donkeys had been crowded into the church. Some moved around aimlessly, others scratched their backs on the walls or relieved themselves or misbehaved themselves, and some nibbled at the clay walls. “Lord!” Malory implored. But his Lord was unmoved.
In their anger they ripped Eighth Sister and me out of Mother’s arms and tossed us among the donkeys. Mother ran to us like a she-wolf, but was stopped by the soldiers before she reached us. That is when they began fooling around with Mother, starting with crooked mouth, who reached out and grabbed one of her breasts. Purple lips crowded up and pushed crooked mouth out of the way to wrap his hands around my doves, my precious gourds. With a loud screech, Mother clawed his face; unfazed and grinning his evil grin, he ripped off her clothes.
What happened after that will remain my secret anguish for the rest of my life. Out in the yard, Sha Yueliang was cozying up to my eldest sister, while in the eastern side room, Gou San and his pack of mongrels spread out a bunch of straw in a corner for beds; all five of the musket soldiers – the team assigned to watch the donkeys – threw Mother down on top of it. On the floor among the donkeys, Eighth Sister and I had by then cried ourselves hoarse. Malory jumped up, grabbed one of the broken halves of the door bolt, and brought it down on a soldier’s head. One of his comrades aimed at Malory’s legs and fired. An explosion tore through the room as a swarm of buckshot thudded into Malory’s legs, spraying pearls of blood into the air. The broken bolt fell from his hands and he slumped to the floor; he looked up at the bird-splattered jujube Jesus and began to murmur something in his long-forgotten Swedish tongue, the words fluttering from his mouth like butterflies. The soldiers took turns ravaging Mother; the donkeys took turns sniffing Eighth Sister and me. Their loud brays crashed through the ceiling of the church and flew up into the bleak sky. Sweat beaded the face of the jujube Jesus. Satisfied, the soldiers tossed Mother, Eighth Sister, and me out into the street; the donkeys followed us outside, but ran off following the scent of female donkeys. While the soldiers were trying to run down their mounts, Pastor Malory dragged his buckshot-honeycombed legs up the familiar, foot-worn stairs to the bell tower. He managed to prop himself up by holding on to the windowsill so he could gaze out through the broken stained glass and see the panorama of Dalan, the municipal seat of Northeast Gaomi, where he had lived and left his mark for decades: neat rows of thatch-roofed cottages; wide, gray-colored lanes; misty green treetops; shimmering rivers and streams circling tiny villages; the mirrorlike surface of the lake; the swaying thickets of reeds; pools of water rimmed by wild grasses; the red marsh that was a playground for passing birds; an expanse of open country that scrolled all the way to the edge of heaven; the golden yellow Reclining Ox mountain range; the sandy hills, with their flowering locusts… as his gaze traveled down to the street, where Mother lay like a dead fish, her naked belly exposed to the sky, deep sorrow filled his heart and tears clouded his eyes. Dipping his finger in the blood oozing from his legs, he wrote four words on the gray wall of the bell tower: Golden Boy Jade Girl.