Third Sister came home empty-handed, her eyes red from crying. Mother asked what was wrong. “Birdman Han was dragged off by armed men in black uniforms on bicycles,” she said.
A dozen or so young men had been taken away with him, tied up and strung together like so many locusts. Birdman Han had struggled mightily, the powerful muscles in his arms bulging as he strained to break the ropes binding him. The soldiers had hit him on his buttocks and waist with rifle butts and kicked him in the legs to keep him moving. Anger had welled up in his eyes, which were so red they seemed on the verge of spewing blood or fire. “Who said you could arrest me?” Birdman Han shouted. The squad leader scooped up a handful of mud and rubbed it in Birdman Han’s face, temporarily blinding him. He howled like a trussed-up wild animal. Third Sister ran after them, then stopped and yelled, “Birdman Han -” After they’d moved off down the road, she ran after them again, stopped and yelled, “Birdman Han -” The soldiers turned to look at Third Sister and laughed maliciously. At the end, Third Sister shouted, “Birdman Han, I’ll wait for you.” “Who the fuck asked you to wait?” he shouted back.
That noon, as we looked down at a pot of wild herb soup so light we could see ourselves in it, we – that included Mother – realized how important Birdman Han had become in our lives.
For two days and nights Third Sister lay sprawled on the kang, crying without end. Nothing Mother tried to get her to stop worked.
On the third day after Birdman Han was taken away, Third Sister got up off the kang, barefoot, shamelessly tore open her blouse, and went outside, where she jumped up into the pomegranate tree, bending the pliant branch into a deep curve. Mother ran out to pull her down, but she leaped acrobatically from the pomegranate tree onto a parasol tree, and from there to a tall catalpa tree. From high up in the catalpa tree she jumped down onto the ridge of our thatched roof. Her movements were amazingly nimble, as if she had sprouted wings. She sat astride the roof ridge, staring straight ahead, her face suffused with a radiant smile. Mother stood on the ground below looking up and pleading pitifully, “Lingdi, Mother’s good little girl, please come down. I’ll never interfere in your life again, you can do whatever you please…” No reaction from Third Sister. It was as if she had changed into a bird, and no longer understood human language. Mother called Fourth Sister, Fifth Sister, Sixth Sister, Seventh Sister, Eighth Sister, and the little Sima brat out into the yard, where she told them all to shout up at Third Sister. My sisters called out to her tearfully, but Third Sister ignored them. Instead, she began pecking at her shoulder, as if preening feathers. Her head kept turning, as if on a swivel; not only could she peck her own shoulder, she could even reach down and nibble at her tiny nipples. I was sure she could reach her own buttocks and the heels of her feet if she wanted to. There wasn’t a spot anywhere she could not reach with her mouth if she felt like it. In fact, as far as I was concerned, as she sat astride the roof ridge, Third Sister had already entered the avian realm: she thought like a bird, behaved like a bird, and wore the expression of a bird. And as far as I was concerned, if Mother hadn’t asked Third Master Fan and some strong young men to drag her down with the help of some black dog’s blood, Third Sister would have sprouted wings and turned into a beautiful bird – if not a phoenix, a peacock; and if not a peacock, at least a golden pheasant. But whatever kind of bird she became, she would have spread her wings and flown off in pursuit of Birdman Han. But the end result, and the most shameless outcome, was: Third Master Fan sent Zhang Mao-lin, a short, agile fellow everyone called The Monkey, up onto the ridge with a bucket of black dog’s blood; he sneaked up behind Third Sister and drenched her with the blood. She sprang to her feet and spread her arms to soar into the sky, but merely tumbled off the roof and landed on the brick path below with a thud. Blood streamed out of a deep gash in her head, the size of an apricot, and she passed out.
Weeping uncontrollably, Mother grabbed a handful of grass and held it to Third Sister’s head to staunch the flow of blood. Then, with the help of Fourth Sister and Fifth Sister, she cleaned off the dog’s blood and carried her inside, laying her on the kang.
At around dusk Third Sister came to. With tears in her eyes, Mother asked, “Are you all right, Lingdi?” Third Sister looked up at Mother and appeared to nod her head, but maybe not. Tears seeped from her eyes. “My poor, abused child,” Mother said. “They’re taking him to Japan,” Lingdi said frostily, “and he won’t be back for eighteen years. Mother, I want you to make an altar for me. I am now a Bird Fairy.”
The comment struck Mother like a thunderbolt. A welter of mixed feelings filled her heart. As she gazed into the now demonic face of Third Sister, there was so much she wanted to say; but not a single word emerged.
In the brief history of Northeast Gaomi Township, six women have been transformed into fox, hedgehog, weasel, white snake, badger, and bat fairies, all a result of love denied or a bad marriage; each lived a life of mystery, earning the fearful respect of others. Now a Bird Fairy had appeared in my house, which both terrified and disgusted Mother. But she didn’t dare say anything that went against Third Sister’s wishes, for a bloody precedent had been set in the past: a dozen or more years earlier, Fang Jinzhi, the wife of the donkey dealer, Yuan Jinbiao, was caught in the arms of a young man in the graveyard. Members of the Yuan family beat the man to death, and then beat Fang Jinzhi to within an inch of her life. Overwhelmed by shame and anger, she took arsenic, but was saved when someone forced human waste down her throat. When she came around, she said she was possessed by a fox fairy and asked that an altar be set up for her. The Yuan family refused. From that day on, the family’s woodpile often caught fire; their pots and pans and other kitchenware frequently broke apart for no apparent reason; when the old man of the family tipped over his wine decanter, out came a lizard; when the old woman of the family sneezed, two front teeth came flying out of her nostrils; and when the family boiled a pot of meat-filled jiaozi dumplings, what came out of the water instead were toads. The Yuans finally gave in and set up an altar for the fox fairy and installed Fang Jinzhi in a meditation room.
The meditation room for the Bird Fairy was set up in a side room. With my fourth and fifth sisters in tow, Mother cleaned up the bits and pieces left behind by Sha Yueliang, swept the walls clean of cobwebs and the ceiling of dust, and then put fresh paper coverings in the windows. They put an incense table up against the northern wall and lit three sticks of sandalwood incense left over from that earlier year when Shangguan Lü had worshipped the Guanyin Bodhisattva. They ought to have put an image of a Bird Fairy up in front of the incense table, but they didn’t know what one looked like. So Mother asked Third Sister for instructions. “Fairy,” she said piously as she knelt on the floor, “where can I obtain the image of an idol for the incense table?” Third Sister sat primly in a chair, her eyes closed, her cheeks flushed, as if enjoying a wonderful erotic dream. Not daring to hurry or upset her, Mother asked again even more piously. My third sister opened her mouth in a wide yawn, her eyes still closed, and replied in a twittering voice somewhere between bird and human speech, making her words nearly impossible to understand, “There’ll be one tomorrow.”