Mother looked down at the wild rabbit, a trickle of blood congealing at the corner of its mouth, and stood frozen to the spot. Then she pointed to the mute son of the Sun family and said, “Uncle, I’d like the two of you to stick around. Don’t go home yet. We’ll stew the rabbit with some carrots for an engagement dinner.”
Laidi’s wails erupted in the eastern room. At first she sounded like a little girl crying, shrill and childish. That lasted a few minutes, and was quickly replaced by throaty, jagged wails wrapped around a succession of frightful, filthy curses. After about ten minutes, when the moisture was gone, those gave way to arid, brittle cries.
Laidi was sitting on the dirt floor of the eastern room, in front of the kang, soiling her precious coat, and not caring. She was staring straight ahead, no tears on her face, her mouth hanging slack and looking like a dried-up well. Arid-brittle cries were emerging from that dried-up well, endlessly. My six other sisters were sobbing softly, tears rolling over a bear hide, dancing atop a roe deer hide, shimmering on a weasel hide, wetting a sheep hide, and soiling a rabbit hide.
Third Master Fan stuck his head in the door; as if he’d seen a ghost, his eyes bugged out and his lips twitched. He backed out of the room, turned, and stumbled off as fast as he could.
The mute son of the Sun family stood in our living room, twisting his neck to gaze curiously at everything within eyesight. Besides the idiotic grin, the expression on his face revealed a host of impenetrable thoughts, a fossilized bleakness, a numb sorrow. Eventually, I even spotted a fearful expression of rage on that face.
Mother ran a wire through the rabbit’s mouth and hung it from a rafter. The wails of terror from my eldest sister fell on deaf ears. The mute’s strange expression did not register with Mother, who attacked the rabbit with her chipped, rusty cleaver. Sha Yueliang walked out of the eastern side room, his musket slung over his back. Without even looking up, Mother said icily, “Commander Sha, today is my eldest daughter’s engagement day, and this rabbit is the engagement gift.”
“What an extravagant gift,” Sha Yueliang said with a laugh. Mother chopped down on the rabbit’s head. “Today she is engaged, tomorrow the dowry will be settled, and the day after that she will be married.” Mother turned and stared at Sha Yueliang. “Don’t forget to join us at the wedding banquet!” “How could I forget?” Sha replied. “I definitely will not forget.” He then turned and walked out through the gate with his musket, whistling a loud tune.
Mother continued skinning the rabbit, although it was clear her heart was not in it. When she finished, she hung it over the doorway and went inside, with me on her back and the cleaver in her hand. “Laidi!” she shouted. “The bonds between parent and child are formed by enmity and kindness. Go ahead, hate me!” This angry outburst was barely out of her mouth when she began to weep silently. As tears wet her face and her shoulders heaved, she sliced the turnips. Ke-chunk! The first turnip separated into two white, greenish halves. Ke-chunk! Four halves. Ke-chunk! Ke-chunk! Ke-chunk! Faster and faster Mother sliced, her actions more and more exaggerated. The now dismembered turnips lay on the cutting board. Mother raised her cleaver one more time; it nearly floated down as it left her hand and landed on the pile of dismembered turnips. The room was suffused with their acrid smell.
The mute son of the Sun family gave Mother a respectful thumbs-up along with a series of grunts. Mother dried her eyes with her sleeve and said to him, “You can leave now.” He waved his arms and kicked out with his feet. Raising her voice, Mother pointed in the direction of his home. “You can leave now. I want you to leave!”
Finally grasping Mother’s meaning, he made a face at me; the mustache atop his puffy upper lip looked like a swipe of green paint. First he made as if to climb a tree, then he made as if to fly like a bird, and finally he made as if he had a struggling little bird in his hand. He smiled as he pointed to me, and then pointed to his chest, over his heart.
Once again, Mother pointed in the direction of his home. He froze for a moment, then nodded in understanding. Falling to his knees before Mother – who quickly backed out of the way, so that he was now facing the sliced turnips on the cutting board – he banged his head against the floor in a kowtow. He then got to his feet and walked off proudly.
Worn out by all the activity of the day, Mother slept soundly that night. When she awoke the next morning, she saw wild rabbits hanging from the parasol tree, the cedar tree, and the apricot tree in the yard, as if laden with exotic fruits.
Holding on to the frame of the door, she sat down slowly on the threshold.
Wearing her marten coat, the red foxskin wrapped around her neck, eighteen-year-old Shangguan Laidi ran off with the leader of the Black Donkey Musket Band, Sha Yueliang, taking the black mule with them. Those wild rabbits were Sha Yueliang’s engagement gift to my mother, as well as a display of his arrogance. My second, third, and fourth sisters were accomplices in First Sister’s plan to run away. It was carried out in the middle of the night, while Mother was snoring loudly, deep in an exhausted sleep, and my fifth, sixth, and seventh sisters were fast asleep. Second Sister climbed out of bed; walking barefoot, she groped her away over to the door and removed the objects Mother had piled up behind it, after which my third and fourth sisters opened the double doors. Earlier that evening, Sha Yueliang had oiled the hinges with rifle grease, so the doors swung open without a sound. Standing under the cold, late-night moonbeams, the girls hugged each other and said their good-byes. Sha Yueliang grinned furtively at the rabbits hanging from the trees.
The day after that was to be the mute’s and my eldest sister’s wedding day. Mother sat on the edge of the kang, silently patching clothes with needle and thread. Just before noon, the mute, unable to curb his impatience, showed up. Using hand gestures and facial expressions, he signaled Mother that he had come to fetch his woman. Mother stepped down off the kang, pointed to the eastern side room, then to the trees in the yard, where the rabbits, now frozen stiff, still hung. She didn’t have to say a word – the mute understood exactly what had happened.
That evening, we all sat around the kang eating turnip slices and slurping wheat congee, when we heard someone pounding on the gate. Second Sister, who had gone over to the western side room to take food to Shangguan Lü, ran in and announced breathlessly, “Mother, there’s trouble. The mute and his brothers are at the gate, and they’ve brought a pack of dogs with them.” My sisters were thrown into a panic, but Mother sat there calmly feeding my twin sister Yunü – Jade Girl – then turned her attention back to the turnip slices, which she chewed loudly. She looked as calm as a pregnant rabbit. The commotion outside the gate died out as suddenly as it had arisen. In about the time it takes to smoke a pipeful, three dark, red-faced figures clambered over the wall on the south edge of the yard. It was the three mute brothers of the Sun family. Three black dogs, their glistening coats looking as if they had been smeared with lard, entered the yard with them. They glided over the wall like black rainbows and landed noiselessly on the ground. The mutes and their dogs froze for a moment in the deep red sunset, like statues. The eldest held a glistening Burmese sword; the second wore a blue steel hunting knife at his waist; and the third carried a large, rusty short-handled sword. They all had little cotton bundles – blue with white flowers – over their shoulders, like men about to set off on a long journey. My sisters sucked in their breath fearfully, but Mother sat calmly slurping her congee. Without warning, the eldest mute roared, followed by his two brothers, and then the dogs. Spittle from human and canine mouths danced in the dying rays of the sun like glowing insects. The mutes then made a show of their skill with their knives and swords, a reprise of their battle with the crows during the funeral in the wheat field. On that winter evening, knives and swords flashed as three stocky men, looking a bit like hunting dogs, leaped into the air, stretching their bodies as far as they’d go to hack at dozens of dead rabbits hanging from the trees in our yard. Their frenzied dogs howled and swung their big heads around as they flung the rabbits’ broken corpses right and left. When the men finished, our yard was littered with dismembered rabbits. A few lonely rabbit heads still hung from branches, like unpicked, wind-dried fruit. Leading their dogs, the satisfied mutes strutted around the yard a few times in a show of authority before skimming over the wall like swallows, the same way they’d entered, and disappearing in the gloom of falling night.