Three Sisters

by Bi Feiyu

  Except for mealtimes, Yuxiu avoided the living room; she was, after all, the aunty. That went on for several days and everything seemed fine, but Yuxiu was, in fact, waging an intractable war with tranquillity—a silent, lethal, and exhausting war. She wished there could be someone else in the house to liven it up and bring real peace to her. But her sister and brother-in-law had to work. After they left, the house was empty except for Guo Zuo and, of course, her. The house turned as still as the glass in the windowpanes, bright yet hopelessly fragile. Besides the steam generator at the mill, she heard nothing but her own heartbeat.

  Shortly before noon what was making her so anxious finally occurred. Guo Zuo came into the kitchen unannounced. She felt her heart tighten and pound shamelessly. He stood there quietly and awkwardly, not looking at her. Then he took out an emerald green toothbrush and laid it on a stool, saying, "Don't use your sister's toothbrush. Sharing a toothbrush is unsanitary." His voice carried palpable concern. He then left the kitchen and resumed reading in the living room.

  Yuxiu held the toothbrush in her hand and stroked the bristles with her thumb, which created a downy feeling that was replicated in her heart. She quickly lost herself in the feeling and, without being conscious of it, picked up a tube of toothpaste, squeezed some of its contents onto the brush, and began to brush her teeth. In a daze, she kept brushing the same spot with the same motion. When Yumi came home more than an hour earlier than usual, she was surprised to see her sister standing by the bed brushing her teeth, because Yuxiu normally used Yumi's brush in the morning after she was done with it.

  "What's wrong with you, Yuxiu?" she asked softly.

  "No," Yuxiu replied, making little sense, as she was caught between swallowing and spitting out the foamy paste.

  That aroused Yumi's suspicions, so she lowered her voice even more. "Why are you brushing your teeth again?"

  "No," Yuxiu said. This really got the attention of her sister, who spotted the new brush.

  "Buy a new brush?"

  With foamy liquid now spilling out of the corners of her mouth, Yuxiu said, "No."

  "Then who gave it to you?" Yumi persisted.

  Yuxiu stole a quick glance through the window into the living room. "No."

  Following Yuxiu's gaze, Yumi spotted Guo Zuo, who was reading in the room, and she knew at once what was going on. But she just nodded and said, "Hurry up and make lunch."

  That night Yumi lay quietly in bed, breathing evenly. Her eyes were closed, but when Guo Jiaxing started to snore, and she heard his breathing level out, she opened her eyes and clasped her hands behind her head. Yuxiu had hurt her feelings quite badly. Apparently she was an incorrigible flirt who had inherited Wang Lianfang's lecherous genes. Yumi knew that the girl was hopeless and that she couldn't depend on her. No matter where she went, trouble followed. Owing to her promiscuous nature, Yuxiu stopped dead in her tracks whenever she saw a man. This could not continue, and it was up to Yumi to stop it. A nephew and his aunt! Could anything be worse? If they got into trouble and people heard about it, the Wang family would be disgraced. And what about the Guo family? Things like that cannot be hidden. Good news never gets out the door, but scandals travel far. No, she had to send Yuxiu home as soon as the sun rose. She couldn't stay another day.

  But Yumi had no sooner made up her mind than she hesitated. Yuxiu could not go back to Wang Family Village after all; Guo Zuo could follow the fox fairy home, where there would be no one to watch them, a recipe for disaster. So sending her home would not solve the problem. Yumi sighed, rolled over, and saw that this was becoming a big headache. The only answer was to send Guo Zuo away. But how could she convince him that it was the thing to do? She couldn't possibly talk to Guo Jiaxing about it; things would get ugly if she could produce no evidence of a problem. Unable to find a workable solution, Yumi slipped out of bed.

  Guo Zuo was still up. He habitually went to bed late and slept in late. The earliest he'd consider going to bed was ten o'clock, even if he had to fuss about until then. Casting a glance into the kitchen, Yumi opened the door to the west room, and the light quickly went out in the kitchen. Now she knew what Yuxiu had been up to every day right under her nose. Shameless! Yumi cursed silently before putting a smile on her face. She stood in front of Guo Zuo. "Still reading?" she asked.

  Guo Zuo lit a cigarette and mumbled a response. She sat down across from him and said, "You read all day long. Can there really be that many books to read?"

  "Yes," he replied, absentmindedly.

  Guo Zuo, I never expected you to be the playboy type, Yumi said to herself. You're nothing like your father.

  She chatted casually as the night deepened and the sound of the generator grew more distinct. He obligingly answered all her questions. Then, as if it had just occurred to her, she asked about the boys he'd gone to school with. "Keep an eye out for someone suitable, will you?" He just stared at her, not knowing what she was getting at. With a sigh, she said, "For my younger sister."

  So that was it: Yumi was asking him to help find a husband for Yuxiu.

  "So long as he has a solid background and isn't incurably stupid, I wouldn't care if he was missing an arm or a leg."

  Guo Zuo laughed awkwardly. "You must be joking. It's not as if your sister would have trouble finding a husband."

  Yumi held her tongue and, with a grief-stricken look, turned away. Her eyes glistened with tears. Finally she managed to say, "Guo Zuo, you're a member of the family so it's all right to tell you. Yuxiu—we really don't expect much for her." He tensed and waited for her to continue. "Yuxiu, she was spoiled by seven or eight men. It happened this past spring."

  His mouth opened slowly. "That's impossible," he blurted out.

  "It's all right if you think that makes things hard. I don't expect much anyway," she said.

  "Impossible," he repeated.

  As she dried her tears, Yumi stood up, looking sorrowful. "Guo Zuo, no woman would make up something like that about her own sister. I realize I shouldn't ask for your help, and I understand perfectly, but please keep it a secret." Guo Zuo's eyes lost their focus as the cigarette in his hand burned down dangerously low. Yumi turned, walked slowly back to her room, closed the door behind her, and climbed into bed. She drifted off to sleep.

  Guo Zuo cut his visit short, leaving one morning without saying good-bye to anyone. But the afternoon before he left, he did something totally unexpected—he took Yuxiu by force in the kitchen. He had often asked himself if he'd really fallen for her, but had not been able to produce an answer. He avoided the issue and found his justification in Yumi's comment: "Yuxiu, she was spoiled by seven or eight men. It happened this past spring."

  The more he thought about it, the greater the pain he felt, until his pain turned to anger mixed with affection and other unrelated emotions, including rabid jealousy and a certain inability to accept what he'd been told. It was on that same night that he decided to have sex with Yuxiu; after seven or eight men, one more shouldn't matter. Startled by his own thoughts, he tossed and turned that night, reproachfully calling himself a no-account bastard. He rose early the next day and, in a half-awakened state, spotted Yuxiu brushing her teeth in the courtyard.

  Oblivious to the turmoil Guo Zuo had experienced the night before, she brushed with an exaggerated motion while looking around with her pretty marelike eyes. When their eyes met, he looked away as sadness swept through his heart. He managed to hold off all that morning before packing up his stuff and making up his mind to leave. When he was done, he saw Yuxiu still in the courtyard, now washing clothes. She was leaning over the washboard, her hands busy with the wet clothes, the board pressed up against her belly, her breasts swaying with every movement. He felt an indescribable force rise up inside him. Unable to control himself, he bolted the door to the courtyard, walked up and wrapped his arms around her from behind, shocking them both. With her in his arms, he felt awful, but this feeling then manifested itself in rash actions. Planting his lips on the nape of her neck,
he began kissing her frantically. She was too stunned to react. When she finally realized what was happening, instead of struggling, she placed her wet hands over the backs of his and caressed them tenderly. Then she spun around and draped her arms around him. The courtyard seemed to turn and move as they held each other tightly before ending up in the kitchen. He wanted to kiss her lips but she avoided his mouth; then he grabbed her head, trying to push her face up to his, but she held on and he failed. His arms, too, failed to bend her legs or her neck. After a while, however, her neck went limp and he pulled her face around little by little until they were looking at each other. "Is it true?" he asked with red-eyed indignation, wanting to know if what Yumi had said was true. But, unable to ask her outright, he had resorted to a vague and seemingly nonsensical question.

  Not knowing what he meant, Yuxiu became confused. Her mind went blank while her body felt an urge to do the one thing she feared most. So she nodded like a little sister then shook her head like an aunt. She kept nodding and shaking her head weakly, as if her body was asking and answering its own questions. Then she stopped nodding; she just shook her head, slowly and weakly at first, but soon she did it with heartbreaking determination. Tears began to well up, stopping her from moving because she knew they would stream down her face if she continued to shake her head. A bright yet confused gaze shone through her tear-veiled eyes before she suddenly cried out. He covered her mouth with his lips and pushed his tongue inside, blocking her cry and forcing it back down into her, where it died.

  Their bodies clung together, but their minds were on different things. Thoughts flashed past quickly and violently as Guo and Yuxiu focused on the other person and forgot themselves. Moving fast and almost savagely, he began to undress her; a piercing fear flickered in her mind, a fear of men, a fear for her lower body. She was shaking as she fought, so violently that even the weight of his body could not suppress her. On the brink of total collapse, she opened her eyes and realized that it was Guo Zuo. Her body went slack like a sigh. What had been a tremor turned into an undulation, waves rolling in with a simplicity that was impossible to recollect. Afraid she might be carried away alone, she wanted Guo Zuo to take her with him, to float away together. She wrapped her arms tightly around him and pressed her body against his.

  Yumi began to show when September arrived, but it was the warm weather and thin clothes that highlighted her curves. When she walked, she leaned backward, her feet splayed outward, which made her appear to be affecting a look of superiority by holding her head high and thrusting out her chest. Her office mates joked that she "now looked like an official's wife." Yuxiu was led by her sister—head held high, chest thrust out—to the grain-purchasing station. Although still languid, Yuxiu was happy that at least she had a job with a monthly wage. She had wanted to be a bookkeeper, but Yumi spoke "on behalf of Director Guo," hoping that the organization would place Yuxiu on "the front line of production," in charge of the scale and that she "would make the organization happy with her work." So that was what Yuxiu ended up doing. September was the purchasing season, which meant that people from Wang Family Village came frequently and Yuxiu saw them each time.

  At first she was anxious, for they all knew of her shameful past, but it did not take long for her mind to be at ease. Envy was written on the face of everyone from Wang Family Village when they saw her, which satisfied her vanity. She could literally look down on them in their boats from her vantage point on the shore. Things were not the same anymore, and that realization gave her confidence, particularly since the villagers were turning over their grain to the nation, and she sat there, more or less a representative of the nation.

  As she sat behind the scale, Yuxiu's thoughts naturally turned to Guo Zuo. She wondered what he was doing. She thought mostly about that afternoon. But "that thing" meant little to her. After so many men, what did one more matter? What saddened her was his departure; he should not have left so suddenly and in such haste, without a word to her, as if she would have clung to him and not let him go. He had broken her heart. Yuxiu was not stupid and would have refused even if he had wanted to marry her. She was ruined and had enough self-awareness not to try to tie him down.

  What made it hard was missing him. At first she just missed having him around, but after some time, her body longed for him and that mystified her. She had been afraid of "that thing" but after Guo Zuo, and after such a long time, how had she come to want it as if it were an addiction? It was an unusual longing that would come with a vengeance, as if claws were gouging her heart. But Guo was nowhere to be found. She tossed and turned in bed and finally pressed down on herself with a pillow; she felt better, but only slightly. Gasping for breath, she was convinced she was a slut. Why else had she become so shameless?

  One night her longing took on a new guise; it was her mouth that longed for something, a strange longing, a craving that made her wish she could stuff a handful of salt into her mouth. In the end, she got out of bed and tried some salt. It took her breath away, but it didn't help. Opening the cupboard, she made a careful inspection, but turned up nothing to eat but garlic, leeks, soy sauce, vinegar, MSG, and sesame oil. She decided on the vinegar, the sight of which made her drool. A small sip energized her immediately, the tart taste reaching down into her heart and taking the edge off of her hunger. Problem solved. Relieved and comforted, she tipped her head back and took one big gulp after another, realizing that she was more than just a slut—she was also a glutton. No wonder the old folks in Wang Family Village said, "A male glutton is poor for a lifetime, a female glutton has loose pants."

  Unaware of what was happening in her body, Yuxiu was not convinced that she was pregnant until the third month, in mid-October. Still young, she was little bothered by morning sickness, which lasted but a short time, and since she was busy with work at the purchasing station, she ignored the symptoms. Her first missed period ought to have alerted her that something was out of the ordinary, but at the time she was preoccupied with Guo Zuo. She carried on imaginary conversations with him, quarreling, then making up, then quarreling again. Immersed in thoughts of him all day along, she forgot about herself. When her period didn't come the second month, she was momentarily concerned, but then she reflected on what had happened in the spring. She didn't get pregnant after being raped and didn't think she would this time because Guo Zuo had been the only one.

  More men meant more virility. How could a single man be more virile than all those others combined? Comforted by the false certainty that nothing would happen, she teased herself that being pregnant with Guo's child would give her the perfect excuse to go see him in the provincial city. That thought put her in a happy mood; although she couldn't be certain, she was convinced that everything would turn out fine, that her period would come in a few days. When it still hadn't arrived nearly a week into the third month, she began to feel uneasy, yet continued to hope that luck was with her. When the pregnancy was confirmed, she was, of course, afraid, but still she hoped for the best, anticipating a miscarriage. Deep down, however, her heart grew increasingly heavy, and her mind filled with apprehension, up one minute and down the next, as if she were stumbling along on a gimpy leg.

  By the middle of October Yuxiu's concerns multiplied. She knew she had to come up with a plan. The most important thing was that Yumi could never know; for if she did, Yuxiu would be as good as dead. There was only one path out of her predicament—to get rid of the thing inside her. And the best way to do that was to go to the hospital; but she'd be exposed if she did, which would make things worse than if she didn't go at all. She decided she had to find her own solution, the first of which was to jump up and down. She recalled how, back in Wang Family Village, Wang Jinlong's wife had miscarried as a result of jumping up and down after a fight with her mother-in-law. She'd slapped herself on the buttocks, then leaped around, cursing until she cried out and lost the baby.

  That's what I'll do, I'll jump up and down. And Yuxiu began carrying out her plan right away. Whene
ver she had a free moment, she'd find a secret place with a cement floor and jump forty or fifty times; she then increased it to seventy or eighty times and eventually to just under two hundred. She jumped higher and higher, but after two weeks, all that happened was that her appetite improved. So she told herself that she ought to slap her buttocks the way Jinlong's wife had done; so she did that four or five times, only to be disappointed by the false efficacy of a shrew's behavior. She had to find another solution. She was reminded of Zhang Fagen's wife, whose miscarriage had been caused by medicine prescribed by the co-op clinic when she had the shakes from malaria. Zhang's wife had lost a three-and-a-half-month-old fetus, which, according to the barefoot doctor, was caused by the quinine pills; the medicine bottle had indicated that pregnant women should avoid taking them. Now she knew how to take care of her problem—get hold of some quinine pills.

  Despite being a common medicine, it took a great deal of effort to acquire them. She made some new friends, whom she called older sister or aunt, and after four or five days, she got what she needed. Her mind was finally at ease that morning when she went to work and took the pill bottle with her. She sneaked into the public toilet, where she dumped a handful of the pills out of the bottle and tossed them into her mouth. Denied water to help her swallow them, she had to chew the pills, crunching away as if she were eating fried broad beans; tears welled up in her eyes from the bitterness. She forced the pieces down, which filled her with assurance and happiness before returning to sit behind the scale and carry on conversations with the other workers. The medicine began to work after about as long as it takes to smoke a cigarette. Her lips turned purple and her eyes lost their focus; her neck hung limp and lolled around like a sick chicken's. Her mind, though, was still lucid; afraid that the others might try to send her to the hospital, she got up with a smile and walked toward the warehouse. She had to hold on to the wall when her body began to fail her and groped her way inside to climb onto sacks of grain before she passed out. Yuxiu slept till dark, during which time she had countless strange dreams. At first she dreamed that she had cut open her belly, taken out her intestines, and wound them around her neck before she began to squeeze out one of Guo Zuo's fingers from them. She kept squeezing, producing nine fingers, which she held in her hands and said, "Guo Zuo, these are all yours. Put them on." Guo took a look and picked one out to affix to his hand, which was missing a finger. Staring at the extra fingers in her hands, she wondered why there were eight more. Why? She didn't know the answer. Guo Zuo just stared at her. She panicked and woke up to find him standing in front of her. Greatly relieved, she leaped with joy. "You're back," she said. "I dreamed about you. I just dreamed about you." But, in fact, she was still dreaming.