says.”
The flower of the medical college and ultra-rightist, Qiao Qisha, felt her face turn beet red, and indignant tears swam in her eyes. “No,” she said obstinately, “I won’t do it. It flies in the face of common sense!”
“You’re being foolish, little Qiao,” the editor said.
“Of course she’s foolish. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be an ultra-rightist!” Ma Ruilian shot back, offended by the editor’s concern for Qiao Qisha.
The editor lowered his head and held his tongue.
One of the other assistants walked up. “I’ll do it, Commander Ma. Sheep sperm into a rabbit is nothing. I don’t care if you want me to inject Director Li Du’s sperm into the sow’s womb.”
The other assistants broke up laughing, while the newsletter director managed to cover up his laughter by pretending to cough. “Deng Jiarong, you bastard!” Ma Ruilian cursed, enraged. “This time you’ve gone too far!”
Deng removed his mask, exposing his insolent horselike face. With a reckless sneer, he said, “Commander Ma, I don’t have a cap, permanent or not. I come from three generations of miners, as red and upright as they come, so don’t try to intimidate me the way you did with little Qiao.” He turned and walked off, leaving Ma Ruilian to vent her anger on Qiao Qisha. “Are you going to do it, or aren’t you? If you don’t, I’ll take back your grain coupons for the rest of the month.”
Qiao Qisha held back, and held back, until she could hold back no longer. Tears coursed down her cheeks and she cried openly. She picked up the insemination utensil in her gloveless hand, stumbled over to the rabbit – it was a black animal tethered by a piece of red rope – and held it down to keep it from struggling free.
At that moment, Pandi, now Ma Ruilian, spotted me. “What are you doing here?” she asked coldly. I handed her the note from the farm management director. She read it. “Go to the chicken farm,” she said. “They’re short one laborer.” Then she turned her back on me and said to the newsletter editor, “Old Yu, go turn in your story. You can leave out the unnecessary parts.” He bowed. “I’ll bring the galleys over for you to check,” he said. Then she turned to Qiao Qisha. “In accordance with your wishes, Qiao Qisha, your transfer out of the breeding station is approved. Get your things and report to the chicken farm.” Finally, she turned back to me. “What are you waiting for?” “I don’t know where the chicken farm is,” I said. She looked at her watch. “That’s where I’m headed now, so come with me.”
She stopped when the whitewashed wall of the chicken farm came into view. We were on the muddy path leading to the chicken farm, which ran past the munitions scrapyard; the little ditch alongside the road ran red with rust, and the fenced-in yard was overrun by weeds that covered the caterpillar tracks of crumbling tanks, their rusting cannons pointing into the blue sky. Tender green morning glory vines were wrapped around the remaining half of a heavy artillery piece. A dragonfly rested on the muzzle of an antiaircraft gun. Rats scampered in and out of the gun turret. Sparrows had made a nest in one of the cannons to raise their fledglings, feeding them emerald- colored insects. A little girl with a red ribbon in her hair sat dully on the blackened tire of a gun carriage, watching a couple of little boys bang rocks against the controls of one of the tanks. Ma Ruilian, who had been staring at the scrapyard desolation, turned to me. No longer the commander who was ordering people around at the breeding station, she said, “How’s everyone at home?”
I turned away and stared at the antiaircraft gun, the morning glories appearing like little butterflies, in an attempt to hide my anger. What kind of question was that, coming from someone who’d gone and changed her name?
“There was a time when your future couldn’t have been brighter,” she said. “We were happy for you. But Laidi ruined everything. Of course, it wasn’t all her fault. Mother’s foolishness also…”
“If you have nothing more for me,” I said, “I’ll report to the chicken farm.”
“Well, I see you’ve developed a temper since I last saw you!” she said. “That’s encouraging. Now that our Jintong is twenty, it’s time to sew up the crotch of his pants and throw away the nipple.”
I swung my bedding over my shoulder and headed off to the chicken farm.
“Stop right there! There’s something you need to understand. Things have not gone well for us these past few years. Every time we open our mouths, people accuse us of rightist leanings. We’ve had no choice.” She took the slip of paper out of her pocket and reached into a little bag hanging around her neck for a pen. After scribbling something, she handed the slip to me and said, “Ask for Director Long and give him this.” I took it from her. “Is there anything else? If so, let’s hear it.” She hesitated for a moment, then said, “Do you have any idea how hard it’s been for old Lu and me to get to where we are today? Please don’t cause us any trouble. I’ll do what I can for you in private, but in public…”
“Don’t say it. When you decided to change your name, you ended your relationship with the Shangguan family. You’re no sister of mine, so don’t give me any of that Til do what I can for you in private.’“
“Terrific! Next time you see Mother, tell her that Lu Shengli is doing fine.”
Paying her no more attention, I started walking, following the rusty, symbolic fence that had gaps big enough to allow a cow in to graze among the relics of war, heading for the white wall of the chicken farm and feeling quite pleased with how I’d handled myself. I felt as if I’d won a decisive battle. Go to hell, Ma Ruilian and Li Du, and go to hell all you rusty gun barrels, like a bunch of turtles sticking your heads out of your shells. All you mortar chassis, all you artillery gun shields, all you bomber wings – you can all go to hell. I rounded some towering plants and found myself at the edge of a field covered with a sort of fishnet between two rows of red-roofed buildings. Inside, thousands of white chickens were in constant, lazy movement. A single large rooster with a bright red comb was perched high up, a king surveying his harem, crowing loudly. The clucking of the hens was enough to drive a person crazy.
I handed the slip given to me by Ma Ruilian to a one-armed woman, Director Long. One look at her cold face told me that this was no ordinary woman. “You’ve come at the right time, youngster,” she said after reading the note. “Here are your duties. Every morning you will rake up the chicken droppings and deliver them to the pig farm. Then you’ll go to the feed processing plant and bring the coarse chicken feed we’ll need back with you. In the afternoons, you and Qiao Qisha, who will be here soon, will deliver the day’s output of eggs to the farm management office, and from there you’ll go to the grain storehouse and bring back enough fine chicken feed for the next day. Got it?” “Got it,” I replied as I stared at her empty sleeve. She sneered when she saw where I was looking. “There are only two rules around here. One, no lying down on the job, and two, no sneaking food.”
The moon lit up the sky that night as I lay on some flattened cardboard boxes in the storage room of the chicken farm dorm, finding it hard to sleep amid the soft murmuring of hens. I was next to the women’s dorm, which held a dozen or so chicken tenders. Their snores came though the thin wall, along with the sound of someone talking in her sleep. Cheerless moonlight streamed in through the window and the gaps in the door, illuminating the words on the boxes:
AVIAN FLU VACCINE
KEEP DRY AND OUT OF SUNLIGHT
FRAGILE, DO NOT STACK
THIS SIDE UP
Slowly, the moonlight slipped across the floor, and I heard the roar of East Is Red tractors out in the early summer fields, driven by members of the night-shift tractor detail cultivating virgin land. The day before, Mother had walked me to the head of the village, holding in her arms the baby left behind by Birdman Han and Laidi. “Jintong,” she said, “remember that the tougher the job, the harder you have to work at living. Pastor Malory used to say that he’d read the Bible from cover to cover, and that’s what it all came to. Don’t worry about me. Your mother is like an earthworm – I can live wherever there’s dirt.” I said, “Mother, I’m going to watch what I eat so I can send you the surplus.” “I don’t want you to do that,” she said. “As long as my children eat their fill, that’s enough for me.” When we reached the bank of the Flood Dragon River, I said, “Mother, Zaohua has become an expert at…” “Jintong,” Mother said in frustration, “During all these years, not a single girl in the Shangguan family has taken advice from anyone.”
Sometime in the middle of the night, a commotion broke out in the chicken house. I jumped to my feet and stuck my face up against the window, where I saw chickens seething under the tattered net like foam-capped waves. A green fox was leaping amid them in the watery moonlight, an undulating ribbon of green satin. Raising the alarm, the women next door rushed outside half dressed, one-armed Commander Long in the lead, armed with a
