“Just about,” Old Zhang replied as he ran outside.
“Feed the children first,” the commissar said. “I’ll have the clerk replace the rations for the soldiers.”
Old Zhang promised he would.
Then the commissar said to Mother, “Ma’am, our commander would like to meet you. Will you come with me?”
Mother was about to hand the baby to Fifth Sister when the commissar said, “No, bring her along.”
We followed the commissar – actually, Mother did the following; I was on her back, the baby girl was in her arms – out the lane and across the street, all the way to the gate of Felicity Manor, where two armed sentries saluted us by clicking their heels, holding their rifles vertically in their left hands and bringing their right hands across until they touched the gleaming bayonets. We walked through one corridor after another until we were in a big hall, where two bowls of steaming food sat on a purple rectangular table: one held cooked pheasant, the other cooked rabbit. There was also a basket of steamed buns so white they were nearly blue. A bearded man walked up with a smile. “Welcome,” he said, “welcome.”
“Ma’am,” the commissar said, “this is Commander Lu.”
“I understand we have the same surname,” the commander said. “We were members of the same family way back when.”
“What are we guilty of, Commander?” Mother asked.
Momentarily taken aback, the commander laughed and said, “Where did you get that idea, ma’am? I didn’t ask you here because you’d done anything wrong. Ten years ago, your son-in-law, Sha Yueliang, and I were close friends. So when I heard you’d returned, I ordered food and wine to welcome you back.”
“He’s not my son-in-law,” Mother said.
“There’s no need to hide the fact, ma’am,” the commissar said. “Isn’t that Sha Yueliang’s daughter you’re holding?” “This is my granddaughter.”
“Let’s eat first,” Commander Lu said. “You must be starving.”
“Commander,” Mother said, “we’re going home.”
“Don’t hurry off,” Commander Lu said. “Sha Yueliang sent me a letter asking me to look after his daughter. He knows how tough things are for you. Little Tang!”
A strikingly beautiful soldier ran into the room.
“Take the lady’s baby from her so she can sit down and eat.”
The soldier walked up to Mother, smiled, and reached out for the baby.
“This is not Sha Yueliang’s child,” Mother insisted. “She’s my granddaughter.”
We passed through the same corridors, crossed the same street, and walked down the same alleys on our way back home.
Over the next few days, the beautiful young soldier called Little Tang brought food and clothing to us. Included in the food were tins of animal crackers, milk powder in glass bottles, and crocks filled with honey. The clothing consisted of silks and satins, padded jackets and pants with fancy trim, even a padded cap with rabbit fur earflaps. “These,” she said, “are gifts for her from Commander Lu and Commissar Jiang.” She pointed to the baby in Mother’s arms. “Little Brother can eat the food, of course,” she said, pointing to me.
Mother gave the soldier, Miss Tang, with her apple red cheeks and apricot eyes, a look of disinterest. “Take these things away, Miss Tang. They’re too good for children from poor families.” Mother then stuck one nipple into my mouth and the other into the mouth of the baby daughter of the Sha family. She sucked contentedly; I sucked angrily. She touched my head with her hand; I kicked her in the rear, which made her cry. I also heard the soft, light sobs of my eighth sister, Shangguan Yunii, the sort of weeping that even the sun and the moon like to hear.
Miss Tang said that Commissar Jiang had given the baby girl a name. “He’s an intellectual, a graduate of Beiping’s Chaoyang University, a writer and a painter and fluent in English. Zaohua – Date Flower – how do you like that name? Please, ma’am, keep your suspicions in check. Commander Lu is doing this out of the goodness of his heart. If we wanted to simply take this child, it would be as easy as snapping our fingers.” Miss Tang took a glass baby bottle fitted with a rubber nipple out of her pocket. Then she put some honey and the milk powder into a pot – I detected the odor of the foreign woman who had taken Xiangdi away with her, and knew that the milk powder had come from a foreign woman’s breast – added hot water, stirred, and poured it into the bottle. “Don’t let her and your son fight over your milk. They’ll suck you dry sooner or later. Let me give her a bottle,” she said as she took Sha Zaohua from Mother. Zaohua held on to Mother’s nipple with her mouth, stretching it out like one of Bird-man Han’s slingshots; when finally she let go, the nipple shrank back slowly, like a leech over which boiling water has been poured, taking its own sweet time to return to normal. The pain I felt was for the nipple; the loathing I felt was for Sha Zaohua. But by then, the loathsome little demon was in Miss Tang’s arms, frantically and contentedly sucking up the imitation milk from the imitation breast. I didn’t envy her at all, since once again, Mother’s breasts were mine alone. It had been a long time since I’d slept so soundly. In my dream, I sucked to intoxication and bliss. The dream was filled with the fragrance of milk!
I owed Miss Tang a debt of gratitude. After she’d finished feeding Zaohua, she laid down the bottle and opened up the purple marten overcoat, releasing the rank smell of fox that clung to the baby. I noticed how milky white Zaohua’s skin was. I’d never imagined that someone with such a dark face could have such pale skin elsewhere. Miss Tang dressed Zaohua in the satin padded coat and the rabbit fur cap, all to transform her into a beautiful baby. She flung the purple marten coat off to the side, held Zaohua in her arms, and tossed her up in the air. Zaohua was giggling happily when Miss Tang caught her.
I felt Mother tense as she readied herself to grab Zaohua away. But Miss Tang walked over and handed her back. “This baby would make Commander Sha very happy, aunty,” she said.
“Commander Sha?”
“Didn’t you know? Your son-in-law is the garrison commander of Bohai City,” Miss Tang said, “with a complement of more than three hundred men and his own personal American Jeep.”
Miss Tang took out a red plastic comb and combed the hair of Fifth Sister and Sixth Sister. While she was combing Sixth Sister’s hair, Fifth Sister stood there gaping, her gaze like a comb that moved from Miss Tang’s head down to her feet, and then back up to her head. Then when Miss Tang was combing her hair, Fifth Sister had goose bumps all over her face and neck. When the two girls’ hair was combed, Miss Tang left. “Mother,” Fifth Sister said, “I want to be a soldier.”
Two days later, Pandi was wearing a gray army uniform. Her primary job was helping Miss Tang change and feed Sha Zaohua.
Our lives took a turn for the better. As a song from those days went:
Little girl, little girl, your worries are done,
If you can’t find a youngster, then try an old one.
As you follow your comrades out on the run,
Cabbage and stewed pork await in the sun,
While still in the pot, a hot steamy bun…
We saw precious little cabbage or stewed pork, and, for that matter, hot steamy buns. But turnips and salted fish were often on our table, as was cornbread.
“Garlic never dies in a drought, and a soldier never starves,” Mother said with a sigh. “The army has become our benefactor. If I’d known this would happen, I’d never have had to sell my children. Xiangdi, Qiudi, my poor little girls…”
During those days, the quality and amount of Mother’s milk were as high as they’d ever been. I finally climbed out of the pouch that had been my home and was able to take some twenty steps, then fifty, then a hundred; then, no more need to crawl. My tongue, too, took on a new life – I could curse with the best of them. When the Sun family mute squeezed my pecker, I cursed angrily: “Fuck you!”