tall, as Gao Ma rushed forward, straight into a wattle fence, which protested loudly before toppling over, taking him with it. The fence was intended to protect the family’s vegetable garden; and later on, whenever Gao Ma relived the episode, he recalled the smell of fresh cucumbers.
“Get him off our property!” Fourth Uncle commanded.
Stepping onto the downed fence, the brothers jerked Gao Ma to his feet and dragged him out to the gate. He was such a big man that the older son was bent nearly double from the strain.
Jinju rolled on the ground, crying pitifully. “Ever since you were a baby,” her mother complained, “all you’ve known how to do is eat and dress up. We spoiled you rotten. Now what do you want from us?”
Jinju heard a thump, followed by the slamming of the front gate, and she knew her brothers had dumped Gao Ma outside. They cast distorted, awful shadows-one long, one short-that filled her with disgust. Her heart contracting, she sat on the toppled fence, where she cried and cried, until her grief and humiliation were submerged in a sense of remorse that started out as a mere trickle but grew into a flood tide. Then, having no more tears to shed, she jumped up in a mad search for something to destroy; unfortunately, she was too lightheaded to stand properly, and collapsed back onto the fence. Her hands thrust into the darkness in front of her, where they touched a thorny vine covered with young cucumbers. In her frenzy, she plucked them off as fast as she could, then tore at the vine, ripping it out of the ground and flinging it at her father as he squatted by the table sucking on his pipe. The vine twisted and writhed in the ring of lamplight, like a dying snake. But instead of hitting her father, it landed on the messy dinner table. He jumped to his feet. Mother climbed to hers.
“You little rebel bastard!” Father shrieked.
“You’ll be the death of us. Is that what you want?” Mother complained tearfully.
“Jinju, how could you do that?” Elder Brother asked sternly.
“Beat her!” Second Brother hissed.
“Go ahead, beat me!” she shouted as she climbed unsteadily to her feet and charged Second Brother, who stepped aside and grabbed her by the hair as she passed. Clenching his teeth, he shook her several times before flinging her into the garden, where she crushed or tore or broke everything within reach, screaming at the top of her lungs; when she finished with the cucumbers, she turned her wrath on her own clothing.
“Why did you do that?” Elder Brother complained to Second Brother. “As long as our parents are alive, only they have the right to discipline her. All we can do is reason with her.”
Second Brother snorted contemptuously. “I’ve had all I can take from you,” he said. “You got yourself a wife, and now you think you’re better than everyone else.”
Instead of arguing back, the crippled Elder Brother limped across the wattle fence, bent down, and tried to help his sister up. But his cold hands merely intensified her disgust, and she twisted free of his grip.
“Sister,” he implored her after straightening up. “Please do as I say. Get up and stop crying. Our parents are getting old. Starting with dirty diapers and bed-wetting, they raised us to adulthood. The last thing they need now is more heartache.”
She was still crying, but her anger had begun to wane.
“It’s all my fault. Since I can’t get a wife on my own, I have to use my kid sister as a bargaining chip…” He swung his gimp leg back and forth as he spoke, making the wattle under his foot snap and crackle. “I’m worthless…” He suddenly squatted down and began thumping himself on the head with his fists. He was soon crying like a little boy; his pain and despair softened Jinju’s heart and turned her wails into sobs.
“Go live your life. I don’t need a wife. I’ll remain a bachelor until my dying day…”
Mother walked up to him. “Get up, both of you,” she said. “What will the neighbors think if they see you fighting like cats and dogs?”
“Get up!” Father echoed her sternly.
The obedient Elder Brother made the wattle snap and crackle as he stood up. “Father, Mother,” he said between sobs, “whatever you say.”
Jinju stayed awhile longer before climbing to her feet.
By then, Second Brother had gone inside and turned the radio up full blast. An opera singer was shrieking-
Elder Brother moved a stool up behind Jinju and laid his hands on her shoulders. “Sit down, Sister. ‘Strong winds always cease, and families soon return to peace/ You can’t rely on outsiders, but your brothers will always be there for you.”
Too weak to stand, she gave in to the gentle pressure of his hands and sat down. So did Father and Mother, he to recommence smoking his pipe, she to ponder a way to bring Jinju around. Meanwhile, Elder Brother went into the house to mix some noodle paste for her injured head. But she pushed him away when he tried to daub it on her.
“Be a good girl,” he said, “and let me put some of this on.”
“Why are you treating her like that?” Father asked. “She has no sense of shame!”
“Look who’s talking,” Jinju snapped back.
“Watch that mouth of yours,” Mother threatened.
Elder Brother fetched his stool and sat with the others.
A meteor whistled as it sliced through the Milky Way.
“Jinju, remember when you were two, how I took you and your brother fishing in the river? I sat you down on the bank when we got there so he and I could put out the nets, and when I turned around, you were gone. I almost died. But Second Brother yelled, There she is!’ And when I looked, you were thrashing in the river. So I cast my net and caught you first try. Remember what Second Brother said? This time you caught a great big fish!’ My leg was fine then. The bone didn’t go soft till the next year…” He stopped and sighed, then continued with a self-deprecating laugh: “Nearly twenty years ago that was, and now you’re a grown woman.”
More sighs.
Jinju listened to the crisp hoofbeats of the chestnut colt as it ran past the gate and down the edge of the threshing floor, and to the squawking of parakeets in Gao Zhileng’s yard. She neither wept nor laughed.
Father stood up after knocking his pipe against the sole of his shoe and coughed up some phlegm. “It’s bedtime,” he said as he walked inside, then emerged with a large brass lock for the gate.
2.
The Fang compound was humming the following evening. The two sons had carried an octagonal table outside and borrowed four benches from the elementary school. Mother was inside cooking, her wok sizzling. Jinju stayed indoors-hers was the small room off her brothers’ bedroom-listening to the racket outside. She hadn’t left her room all day, and Elder Brother, who stayed home instead of tending the fields, came in to make small talk every few minutes, it seemed. But she threw the covers over her head and didn’t reward him with a single word in reply.
Father and Mother were speaking in hushed tones in the outer room. “They’re all wilted and yellow,” she said, “and wrapping them in plastic doesn’t help.”
Jinju smelled garlic.
“You didn’t seal them tightly enough,” Father said. “They won’t get dry or turn yellow if you keep the air out.”
“I don’t know how the government manages to keep them so nice and green all the way to winter, like they were fresh out of the ground,” Mother said.
“Cold storage, that’s how. Even in midsummer you have to wear a coat and lined pants in one of those places. How could they fail?”
“Leave it to the government to get things done,” Mother said with an admiring sigh.
“As long as they can squeeze us common folk.”
The wok sizzled some more, suffusing the house with the smell of garlic.
“Why not have Second Brother go talk to Deputy Yang at the township office?”
“No,” Father disagreed. “He might get tired of being asked, and not come at all.”
“He’ll come. If not for us, at least for his nephew’s sake.”
