husband’s strong liquor. With her niece seated across from her, she placed one green cup in front of each of them. Candlelight cast her shadow on the wall behind as she filled both cups with liquor. Xuan’er saw that her hand was shaking.
“Why are we drinking liquor, Aunty?” Xuan’er asked. She had the uneasy feeling that something was about to happen.
“No reason. It’s a rainy, sultry day, and I thought we could stay inside and talk, just the two of us.” She raised her cup. “Drink up.”
Xuan’er held out her cup and looked at her aunt with fear in her eyes. The older woman clinked glasses with her before tipping her head back and draining the cup.
Xuan’er emptied her cup.
“What do you plan to do?” Xuan’er’s aunt asked.
With a sorrowful look, Xuan’er just shook her head.
Her aunt refilled both cups. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to accept things the way they are,” she said. “The fact that their son is sterile is something we have to keep in mind. They owe us; we don’t owe them. Girl, I want you to understand that in this world, some of the finest deeds are accomplished in the dark, out of sight. Do you know what I’m getting at?”
Xuan’er shook her head, completely mystified. Her head was already spinning from the two cups of strong liquor.
That night, Big Paw Yu visited Xuan’er’s bed.
When she awoke the next morning, suffering a splitting headache, she was surprised to hear someone snoring loudly beside her. With difficulty she opened her eyes, and there, lying naked beside her, was her uncle, one of his big paws cupping her breast. With a shriek, she pulled the blanket up to cover herself and burst out crying, waking Big Paw from his sleep. Like a child who’s gotten himself into trouble, he jumped out of bed, grasping his clothes around him, and stammered, “Your aunt… made me do it…”
The following spring, shortly after the Grave-Sweeping Festival, Xuan’er gave birth to a scrawny, dark-eyed daughter. Her mother-in-law knelt before the Bodhisattva’s ceramic icon and kowtowed three times. “Thanks to heaven and earth,” she announced gratefully. “The seam has finally split. Now I ask the Bodhisattva to look over us and deliver a grandson next year.”
She went into the kitchen and fried some eggs, which she brought in to her daughter-in-law’s room. “Here,” she said, “eat these.”
As Xuan’er looked into her mother-in-law’s face, her eyes filled with tears of gratitude.
Her mother-in-law looked down at the infant lying in the tattered cloth wrapping and said, “We’ll call her Laidi – Brother Coming.”
5
My second sister, Zhaodi – Brother Hailed – also came from Big Paw Yu’s seed.
After Xuan’er delivered two daughters in as many years, Grandmother’s unhappiness showed clearly. It didn’t take Mother long to realize the cruel reality that for a woman, not getting married was not an option, not having children was not acceptable, and having only daughters was nothing to be proud of. The only road to status in a family was to produce sons.
Mother’s third child was conceived in a reedy marsh. It happened at noon on a day shortly after Zhaodi was born. Grandmother had sent Mother to the reed pond southwest of the village to catch snails for the ducks. That spring a man had come to the village selling ducklings. A tall, husky stranger with a piece of blue cloth over his shoulder and hemp sandals on his feet, he carried two baskets filled with downy yellow baby ducks. A crowd quickly gathered to gawp at the furry little animals, with their pink beaks and tiny quacks, as they tumbled all over each other in the baskets. Shangguan Lu stepped up and bought a dozen; others followed her lead, quickly snapping up the rest. The peddler took a turn around the village and left. That evening, as it turned out, Sima Ting was taken from Felicity Manor by bandits and not returned until the family had paid a ransom of several thousand silver dollars. People said that the duck peddler had really been an informer for the bandits, who wanted a detailed report on the layout of Felicity Manor.
But those were good ducks he sold. In five months they had grown to the size of tiny boats. Shangguan Lu, who loved those ducks, sent her daughter-in-law out to look for snails, anticipating the day when the ducks would begin laying eggs.
So Mother took an earthenware jar and a wire strainer on a pole wherever her mother-in-law told her to go. The ditches and ponds near the village had been picked clean of snails by villagers who were raising ducks, but on her way to the market at a place called Liaolan the day before, Shangguan Lu had seen that the shallows in a nearby pond were alive with snails.
When Mother got there, however, the surface of the pond was covered with green-feathered ducks that had eaten all the snails. Knowing she would be yelled at if she returned empty-handed, she decided to follow a muddy path that skirted the pond to see if she could find some water that hadn’t been visited by ducks, where there still might be snails she could take home. Sensing a heaviness in her breasts, she thought about her two small daughters at home. Laidi had just begun to walk and Zhaodi was barely a month old. But her mother-in-law placed greater value on her ducks than on her granddaughters, whom she refused to even pick up when they were crying. And as for Shangguan Shouxi, well, to call him a man was a terrible exaggeration. He was as useless as a gob of snot outside the house and totally subservient in front of his mother. But abject cruelty characterized his treatment of his wife. He had no use for either of the children, and whenever he abused Mother, she mused angrily, “Go ahead, you ass, beat me. Neither one of those girls is yours, and if I have another thousand babies, not one of them will have a drop of Shangguan blood running through their veins.” In the wake of her intimacy with Big Paw Yu, she did not know how she could face her aunt again. So that year she did not go home. “They’re all dead,” she said when her mother-in-law pressed her to return home for a visit, “so there’s nothing to go home to.” Big Paw, obviously, could give her only daughters, so she began the search for a better donor. Go ahead, Mother-in-law, Husband, beat me and curse me all you want. Just you wait, I’ll have my son one of these days, but he won’t be a Shangguan, and to hell with you!
Caught up in these thoughts, she walked on, parting the reeds that all but sealed off the path. The scraping sound and chilled, mildew-laden odor of water plants evoked a pale fear in her. Water birds cried out from the surrounding foliage as breezy gusts swirled among the plants. Up ahead, no more than a few paces, a wild boar blocked her path. Mean-looking horns poked out from the sides of its long snout; tiny staring eyes, surrounded by bristly brows, glared hatefully at her, accompanied by snorts of intimidation. Mother shuddered and awoke to unknown surroundings. How did I get here? she wondered. Everyone in Northeast Gaomi knows that the bandit hideouts are somewhere deep among the reeds. No one, not even armed troops, dares to set foot here.
Anxiously, Mother turned to head back, but she quickly discovered that human and animal traffic had formed a checkerboard of footpaths, and she couldn’t tell which one had brought her this far. Panic-stricken, she tried several of the paths, but they led nowhere, and she wound up crying over her predicament. Scattered shards of sunlight shone down on the ground, where years of fallen leaves rotted. Mother stepped into a pile of loose excrement, which, though foul-smelling, actually boosted her spirits; it could only mean there were, or had been, people in the vicinity. “Hello!” she shouted. “Is there anyone out there?” She listened as her shouts careened off of densely packed reed stalks before being swallowed up. When she looked down at her feet, she saw coarse vegetation amid the squashed pile of excrement, which meant it wasn’t human after all, but the droppings of a boar or other wild animal. Once again she headed down a footpath, but soon lost heart and sat on the ground, where she cried tears of despair.
Suddenly she felt something cold on her back, as if sinister eyes were watching from a hiding place behind her. She spun around to look – nothing but interlaced leaves of reed stalks, the top ones pointing straight up into the sky. A light breeze was born and died among the reeds, leaving behind only a soft rustle. Birdcalls from deep in the patch had an eerie quality, as if made by humans. Danger lurked everywhere. All those green eyes hidden amid the reeds, whose tips played host to will-o’-the-wisps. Her nerves were shattered, the hair on her arms stood on edge, her breasts hardened. As all rational thoughts fled, she shut her eyes and took off running, until her feet sank into
