With a yelp of pain, Third Sister stumbled forward several steps, and when she turned her head back, there was no mistaking the look of bird rage on her face. Her hardened mouth pointed upward, ready to peck someone. She raised her arms, as if to fly. Not caring if she was bird or human, Mother cursed, “Damn you, who told you to accept her child?” Third Sister’s head darted this way and that, as if she were feeding on insects on a tree. “Laidi, you’re a shameless little slut!” Mother cursed. “Sha Yueliang, you’re a heartless thug and a bandit! All you know how to do is make a baby, not how to take care of one. You think that by sending her to me, everything will be just fine, don’t you? Well, stop dreaming! I’ll fling your little bastard into the river to feed the turtles, or toss her into the street to feed the dogs, or toss her into the marsh to feed the crows! Just you wait and see!”
Mother took the baby and ran up and down the lanes, repeating her threats to feed the turtles or dogs or crows. When she reached the river’s edge, she turned and ran out onto the street, then turned and ran back to the river. Gradually her pace slowed and her voice softened, like a tractor running out of gas. Finally, she plopped down on the spot where Pastor Malory had leaped to his death, looked up at the ruined bell tower, and muttered, “Some are dead and others have run off, leaving me all alone. How am I supposed to survive with a brood of hungry chicks needing to be fed… Dear Lord, Old Man Heaven, why don’t you say something? How am I supposed to survive?”
I began to cry, my tears falling on Mother’s neck. Then the baby girl began to cry, her tears running into her ears. “Jintong,” Mother said tenderly, “my pride and joy, please don’t cry.” She next turned her tenderness to the baby girl: “You poor thing, you should not have come. Grandma doesn’t even have enough milk for your little uncle. If I tried to feed you too, you’d both starve to death. I’m not hard-hearted, there’s just nothing I can do…”
Mother laid the baby girl, still wrapped in the purple marten coat, on the steps in front of the church door, then turned and started running for home as if her life depended on it. But she hadn’t gone ten steps when her legs stopjped moving. The baby was bawling like a pig under the knife, her cries an invisible rope that had stopped Mother in her tracks…
Three days later, our family now numbering nine, we were standing in the human trade section of the county seat marketplace. Mother carried me on her back and Sha Yueliang’s little bastard in her arms. Fourth Sister carried the little Sima brat. Eighth Sister was carried by Fifth Sister, while Sixth Sister and Seventh Sister walked alone.
In the city dump, we scrounged up some rotten greens to eat, steeling ourselves to go over to the human trade section, where Mother hung straw tallies around the necks of my fifth, sixth, and seventh sisters, then waited for a buyer to come along.
A row of simple wooden shacks with ugly whitewashed walls and roofs stood opposite us. Tinplate chimneys sticking up over the walls sent black smoke into the air, where it was carried to us on wind currents, changing shape as it came. From time to time, prostitutes, their hair undone and hanging straight down, showing plenty of cleavage, lips painted bright red, and sleepy eyes, emerged from the shacks, some carrying basins, others with buckets. They went to a nearby well to draw water. Steam rose from the mouth of the well. As they cranked the awkward pulley with soft, white hands not used to working, the rope gave off a dull twang. When the oversized bucket appeared at the mouth of the well, they stuck out a foot to hook the rim and drag it smoothly over to the lip, where a layer of ice had formed, with bumps like steamed buns or nipples. The girls ran to their shacks with the water, then ran back for more, wooden clogs clacking noisily on the ground, their freezing, partially exposed breasts emitting a sulfurlike odor. I tried looking over Mother’s shoulder, but all I could see were their dancing breasts, like opium flowers or valleys of butterflies.
We were standing on a wide street in front of a high wall that effectively kept the northwest wind away and afforded us a bit of warmth. Cowering on both sides were more people just like us – gaunt and jaundiced-looking, shivering, hungry, and cold. Men and women. Mothers and children. The men were well along in years and as shriveled as rotting wood; those who weren’t blind – and many of them were – had red, puffy, suppurating eyes. A child stood or squatted on the ground beside each of them – some boys, some girls. Actually, it was nearly impossible to tell the boys from the girls, since they all looked as if they’d just climbed out of one of the chimneys across the street – human soot. All had straws sticking up out of their collars, mostly rice straw, with dry, yellow leaves; you couldn’t help but think of autumn, of horses and the comforting fragrance and happy sounds as they chewed rice straw in the dead of night. Some were less choosy, using bristlegrass they’d picked up somewhere. Most of the women were like Mother, surrounded by a brood of children, although none had as many as she. With some, all the children had straw sticking up out of their collars; with others, only some had it. Again, it was mostly rice straw, with dry, yellow leaves that gave off the fragrance of cut grass and the aura of autumn. Above the children with the straw tallies, the heavy, drooping heads of horses, donkeys, and mules, their eyes as big as brass cymbals, their teeth straight and white, their thick, sensous, and bristly lips revealing glistening teeth, swayed back and forth.
At about noon, a horse-drawn wagon came down the official road from the southeast. The horse, large and white, proceeded with its head held high, threads of silvery mane covering its forehead. It had gentle eyes, a pink streak running down its nose, and purple lips. A red velvet knot hung down from its neck, on which a brass bell had been tied. The bell rang out crisply as the horse drew the wagon toward us, rocking back and forth. We saw a tall saddle on the horse as well as the brass fittings of the shafts. The wheels were decorated with white spokes. The canopy was made of white material that had been treated with many coats of tung oil to protect it from the elements. We’d never seen such a luxurious wagon before, and were confident that the passenger was far nobler than the woman who’d come to see the Bird Fairy in her Chevrolet sedan, confident too that the man sitting in front, in a top hat and sporting a handlebar mustache, was not your ordinary driver. His face was taut, glaring lights shot out of both eyes. He was more reserved than Sha Yueliang, more somber than Sima Ku; and maybe only Birdman Han could have been his equal, if he wore the man’s hat and clothes.
The wagon came to a slow stop, and the handsome white horse pawed the ground in a rhythmic accompaniment to the brass bell. The driver pulled back a curtain, and the person inside emerged. She wore a purple marten overcoat and a red fox stole around her neck. How I wished it had been my oldest sister, Laidi, but it wasn’t. It was a foreign woman, with a high nose, blue eyes, and a headful of golden hair. Her age? I’m afraid only her parents would know that. Following her off the wagon was a strikingly handsome, black-haired little boy in a blue student uniform and blue woolen overcoat. Everything about him said he was the foreign woman’s son. Everything except for his external appearance, which was nothing like hers.
The people around us stirred and surged toward her, like a gang of robbers. But they came to a timid halt before they reached her. “Madam, honorable lady, please buy my granddaughter. Madam, grand lady, just look at this son of mine. He’s tougher than any dog, there’s no job he can’t handle…” Men and women meekly attempted to sell their sons and daughters to the foreign woman. Mother alone remained where she was, mesmerized by the sight of the purple marten coat and the red fox stole. There was no doubt that she longed for Laidi. Holding Laidi’s child in her arms, her heart spun and tears clouded her eyes.
The aristocratic foreign woman covered her mouth with a handkerchief as she took a turn around the human market. Her heavy perfume made me and the little Sima bastard sneeze. She knelt in front of the blind old man and took a look at his granddaughter. Frightened by the red fox stole around the foreign woman’s neck, the girl wrapped her arms around her grandfather’s legs and hid behind him, staring at me through terror-filled eyes. The blind old man sniffed the air and smelled the arrival of an aristocratic woman. He reached out his hand. “Madam,” he said, “please save this child. If she stays with me, she’ll starve to death. Madam, I don’t have a cent to my name…” The woman stood up and muttered something to the boy in school uniform, who turned to the blind old man and asked loudly, “What is the girl to you?” “I’m her granddad, her useless granddad, a granddad who deserves to die…” “What about her parents?” the boy asked. “Starved, they all starved to death. Those who should have died didn’t and those who shouldn’t have did. Sir, be merciful and take her with you. I don’t want a cent from you, if you’ll only give the girl a chance for life…” The boy turned and muttered something to the foreign woman, who nodded. The boy bent over and tried to pull the girl away from her granddad, but when his hand touched her shoulder, she bit him on the wrist. The boy shrieked and jumped back. With an exaggerated shrug of her shoulders, a grin, and raised eyebrows, the woman took the handkerchief away from her mouth and put it around the boy’s wrist.
With feelings that might have been terror and might have been delight, we waited for what seemed like a thousand years; finally, the richly bejeweled, heavily perfumed woman and the youngster with the injured wrist was standing before us. Meanwhile, off to our right, the blind old man was waving his bamboo staff, trying to hit the little girl who had bitten the boy. But she kept darting out of the way, as if playing hide-and-seek, so all he ever hit was the ground or the wall. “You damned little wretch!” the old man sighed. Greedily, I breathed in the foreign
