Father, worn out from the beating he had administered, sat on the doorstep smoking his pipe. Mother, equally tired, sat on the bellows to catch her breath and wipe her tear-filled eyes. Jinju lay curled atop a pile of grass and weeds, neither crying nor complaining, a grin frozen on her face.
Her brothers returned, the older one carrying a couple of metal pails and a string of dried peppers, the younger one pushing a nearly new bicycle with some military uniforms on the rack. They were breathless. “He didn’t have much worth taking,” the younger one said. “I had to stop this one from smashing the pot,” chided his older brother, “so we could leave him something.”
“Tell me, do you still plan to run away with Gao Ma?” Father’s anger was rekindled.
The sound of music from Gao Ma’s cassette recorder filled her ears. Father’s words, out there somewhere, were irrelevant.
“Are you deaf? Your father asked if you still plan to run away with him!” Mother shouted, jumping down off the bellows and tapping her daughter on the forehead with a poker.
She closed her eyes. “Yes,” she replied softly.
“Beat her! Beat her! Beat her!” Father jumped up from the doorstep and stomped his feet. “String her up! I’ll show this little whore what it means to defy me!”
“I can’t, Father,” the older son dissented. “She’s my sister. She doesn’t know what she’s doing right now, that’s all. Go ahead, yell at her, that’ll do it. Jinju, you’re smart enough to know you’re bringing shame to the family by what you’re doing. People will be laughing at us for generations. Admit you’re wrong and start living a normal life. Mistakes are part of growing up. Be a good girl and say you’re sorry.”
“No,” she said softly.
“String her up!” Father repeated. “What’s the matter with you?” he railed at his sons. “Are you dead, or deaf, or what?”
“Father, we…” The older son was full of misgivings.
“She’s my daughter, and if I say she dies, she dies! Who’s going to stop me?” He stuck his pipe into his waistband and gave his wife a malignant look. “Go out and bolt the gate!”
She was quaking. “Let her do what she wants, all right?”
“Are you looking for a beating, too?” He slapped her. “Get out there and bolt the gate, I said.”
Mother backed up a couple of steps, her eyes starting to glaze over, then turned, like a marionette, and staggered out toward the gate. Jinju felt sorry for her.
Father took a coil of new rope down from the wall, shook it out, and ordered his sons, “Strip her!”
The older brother turned white as a sheet. “Dont beat her, Father. I don’t need to get married.”
Father lashed out with the rope, wrapping it around his son’s waist. That straightened him up in a hurry. He and his brother went up to Jinju and looked away as they groped for her buttons. But she jerked their hands away and removed her own jacket, then her trousers, and stood before them in a tattered undershirt and red underpants.
Father tossed one end of the rope to Elder Brother. “Tie her arms,” he commanded.
Holding the rope in his hand, Elder Brother begged Jinju, “Please, ask Father’s forgiveness.”
She shook her head. “No.”
Second Brother pushed Elder Brother away, then jerked Jinju’s arms behind her and tied them at the wrists. “The fact that this family has produced a Communist Party member who’d actually rather die than surrender amazes me.”
She laughed in his face. He tossed the loose end of the rope over the roof beam and looked over at his father.
“String her up!”
Jinju felt her arms jerk out and up. Her tendons went taut; her shoulders popped. All the slack went out of the skin on her arms, and sweat oozed from her pores. She bit down on her lip, but too late to hold back the pitiful wails that burst from her throat.
“Now what do you say-still plan to run away?”
She strained to raise her head. “Yes!”
“Pull, pull harder-pull her up!”
Green sparks flew past her eyes; the sound of crackling flames exploded around her ears; jute plants swayed in front of her. The chestnut colt was standing beside Gao Ma, licking his face clean of dried blood and grime with its purplish tongue as golden layers of fog rose from the roadside, from thousands of acres of jute plants, and from the pepper crop in Pale Horse County. The colt disappeared, then reappeared in the golden fog Elder Brother’s face was ashen, Second Brother’s was blue, Father’s was green, and Mother’s was black; Elder Brother’s eyes were white, Second Brother’s were red, Father’s were yellow, and Mother’s were purple. As she hung in the air, she looked down at them and felt enormously gratified. Another shout from Father. She stared into his green face and yellow eyes; with a grin she shook her head. He ran into the yard, fetched the whip from the oxcart, and lashed her with it; wherever the tip landed, her skin erupted in flames.
She regained consciousness in a corner of the wall; people were talking, including, it seemed to her, Deputy Yang. She struggled to her feet; lightheaded and leg-weary, she collapsed at the foot of her parents’ kang. A hand reached out to help her up; she didn’t know whose it was. She found her parents’ faces. “You can beat me to death if you want, but even then I’ll belong to Gao Ma, because I slept with him and I’m carrying his baby.” With that she dissolved in tears and loud wails.
“I give up,” she heard Father say. “Tell Gao Ma to bring me ten thousand yuan. We’ll hand over the girl when he gives us the cash.”
Jinju smiled.
2.
Gao Ma’s scowling son roared, “Let me out of here! Let me out this minute! What kind of mother wouldn’t even let her own son out?”
Her eyes bled. Pushing away the cool head of the chestnut colt, she said, “Don’t come out, child. Mother knows what’s best for you. What do you plan to do out here? Do you have any idea how tough life is?”
He stopped struggling. “What’s it like out there? Tell me.”
The chestnut colt tried to lick her face with its warm, purplish tongue. “Can you hear the cries of the parakeets, child?” she asked. “Listen carefully.”
His ears stood straight up as he concentrated on the sound. “Those are parakeets in Gao Zhileng’s yard-yellow ones, red ones, blue ones, every imaginable color. They’ve got curved beaks and topknots on their crowns. They eat meat, drink blood, and suck brains. Do you still have the nerve to come out, child?”
This struck fear into the boy, who drew into himself.
“Look, child, see how that broad expanse of garlic looks like a nest of poisonous serpents, all intertwined? They’re also meat eaters, blood drinkers, and brain suckers. Do you still have the nerve to come out, child?”
His hands and feet curled inward; his eyes frosted over.
“I wanted to come out and see the world when I was like you, child, but once I got here, I ate pig slops and dog food, I worked like an ox and a horse, I was beaten and kicked, I was even strung up and whipped by your grandfather. Do you still want to come out, child?”
He scrunched his neck down between his shoulders, becoming a virtual ball with staring, pathetic eyes.
“Child, your father’s a fugitive from justice, and his family is so poor they cant even raise rats. Your grandfather was struck down by a car, your grandmother has been arrested, and your uncles have divided up all our property. The family no longer exists-some members are gone, others are dead, and there’s no one to turn to. Do you still want to come out, child?”
The boy closed his eyes.
The chestnut colt stuck its head in through the open window to lick her hand with its warm tongue. The bell around its neck clanged loudly. She stroked its smooth head and sunken eyes with her free hand. The colt’s hide had the cool sheen of costly satin. Tears welled up in her eyes; there were also tears in the colt’s eyes.