Clearly upset, she was about to complain, when someone stuffed straw into her mouth. She was then hauled away and immediately set upon by many hands, which lifted her off the ground. She heard rapid footsteps. She fought, using all her strength; it was, however, a silent struggle.
The sound of exploding bombs and gunfire from the film retreated into the distance as Yuxiu was flung down onto a haystack and blindfolded; then someone pulled her pants down, exposing the lower half of her body to the night winds. She shuddered and was shocked when her bladder betrayed her. The noise around her stopped abruptly, except for the raspy sounds of heavy breathing. All thoughts left her, everything but the will to save face. She tried to stop the flow of urine, but could not. She heard a hissing sound as it escaped. As soon as she finished, the racket around her started up again, and she heard the muted voice of a woman growl, “Don’t go crazy. One at a time, one at a time.” It sounded like Caiguang’s wife, but Yuxiu couldn’t be sure. Young as she was, she knew that her lower body was in danger, so she closed her legs as tightly as she could. Four hands pulled them apart again and held them. Then something hard pressed down on her thigh, and then it was inside her.
In the end, Yuxiu, who was crumpled up like a pile of rotting straw, was helped home by Yumi, joined by Yuye. The younger girl cried and said it hurt, but after she was cleaned up, she fell asleep. Not Yuxiu. Seventeen years old that year, she knew what had happened. She lay in bed in the arms of her older sister all night without shutting her eyes. The tears never stopped flowing, and before the night was over, her eyes were so swollen from crying she could barely open them. Yumi never left her side, drying her tears and shedding her own. They had never been so close; it was as if their mutual survival depended on it. Yuxiu spent the entire next day in bed, neither eating nor drinking, and tormented by nightmares. Yumi brought food and then took it away, over and over. Yuxiu refused to eat.
Finally, on the fourth day, she opened her mouth; her lips were flaked with dead skin. Holding a bowl of sticky rice porridge in her hand, Yumi fed her sister one slow spoonful at a time, and as Yuxiu looked up at Yumi, she abruptly wrapped her arms around her sister’s waist. Weak though she was, she held on with all her might, her hands like those of a corpse. Instead of trying to pry them apart, Yumi ran her fingers through Yuxiu’s hair, then combed and braided it. Finally, she told Yuyang to fetch a basin of water to wash Yuxiu’s face.
When that was done, she took her sister’s hand and said, “Get up and come with me.” She said it softly but with authority.
Blurry-eyed, Yuxiu looked up at her sister and shook her head.
“Are you just going to hole up here? How long do you expect to do that? Our family has never been afraid of anyone, don’t you know that?” Yumi said.
She opened a drawer, took out a pair of scissors, and handed them to Yuxiu. “Cut off your braids and then come with me,” she said.
Yuxiu shook her head again, but the meaning behind it was different this time. Then she was afraid to go outside; now it was the refusal to part with her braids.
“What do you want to keep them for? It was your seductive manner that got you into this trouble in the first place,” Yumi said, as she snatched the scissors out of her sister’s hand and— snip —one of Yuxiu’s braids fell to the floor— snip —then the other braid joined it. She picked the braids up off the floor and tossed them into the commode, then tucked the scissors into her waistband, took Yuxiu by the hand, and started out the door.
“Come with me,” she said. “I’ll cut the tongue out of anyone who says a word.”
So Yumi strolled through the village with Yuxiu, who shuffled along, her limp body seemingly weightless and quite ugly. Her hair, now minus the braids, looked like a nest of straw and chicken feathers. Yumi, armed with the scissors, was her protector. One look was all it took anyone to figure out her intentions, and they dared not meet that glare; they either turned away or walked off.
She kept telling her sister, who trailed behind her, to hold her head up. Yuxiu did as she was told. Though she was drawing strength from her sister’s fierce demeanor—the fox parading along behind the tiger—at least she was out in public.
Unspoken feelings of gratitude toward Yumi rose up inside her, tempered by an inexpressible sense of loathing. It was an unfounded loathing, utterly unreasonable, and yet there it was, deep in the marrow of her bones. They had fought for years, but in the end, she had no choice but to rely on Yumi’s authority and her sympathy.
Why had Yumi been born a girl? she wondered. How wonderful it would have been if she were a boy, my older brother.
But she wasn’t; Yumi was her older sister, and now she was getting married and moving away. The wedding boat was tied up at the pier, and Yuxiu had not gone to see her off. Yuxiu was afraid to. She might hate her sister, but she wished that Yumi didn’t have to leave Wang Family Village. Yuxiu the fox was lost without Yumi the tiger. No longer would she find the courage to mix with people, to be in a crowd. She slipped over to the concrete bridge to the east, where she leaned against the railing and waited, looking far off in the distance. Her lovely eyes, now filled with melancholy and anxiety, were trained on the jubilant scene at the distant pier; none of that joy reached far down the river to Yuxiu. Sunlight danced crazily on the surface of the river, fragmented and blinding. The boat was coming her way, and as it neared the bridge, Yumi spotted Yuxiu. The sisters, one in a boat, the other on a bridge, exchanged gazes as the distance closed and they could see each other more clearly. The boat sped under the bridge, and both girls spun around to keep looking at each other, although now the distance increased and their figures grew more indistinct. Then Yuxiu saw Yumi stand up in the boat and shout something. The wind carried it up to her. She heard every word: Don’t forget to carry a knife when you go out.
The roar of the motor faded as the boat turned at a bend in the river and disappeared from view. The waves it had created had smoothed out, and now only a bright scar was left on the surface. Yuxiu was still on the bridge, still looking down the river, seemingly focused but actually in a daze. The sun had migrated to the western sky, casting a red patina over the river and elongating Yuxiu’s shadow on its surface, at once docile and quivering. She looked down at that shadow, staring at it so long that it turned into an optical illusion, looking as if it were being carried along by the ripples on the water. But by regaining her focus, she saw that it had stayed put and was not going anywhere. If only my shadow could transform itself into a speedboat, she was thinking, I could leave Wang Family Village and go anywhere I wanted.
Yuxiu was surprised to see a dozen or more little girls standing in a circle in front of her door when she turned into the lane. She walked up to see what they were doing and spotted her second sister, Yusui, in the middle, showing offa spring-and-autumn blouse Yumi had left behind, the one Liu Fenxiang had worn as the propaganda troupe’s program announcer; it had a decidedly urban look—a turned-down collar and a narrow waist. Yumi would never have considered wearing any of that woman’s clothes, but she hadn’t the heart to throw anything that pretty away.
Yuxiu was a different matter altogether. She had kept her eye on the blouse for some time. There is a popular saying that goes “Men never turn down a drink, and women never say no to clothes.” Who cares whom it belonged to? A pretty blouse is a pretty blouse was how Yuxiu looked at it. But she hadn’t worn it yet, out of a fear of Yumi. Imagine her surprise when Yusui claimed it the minute Yumi was out the door. Something that nice on Yusui was like a hungry dog with a turd in its mouth—it cannot be pried out.