Bi Feiyu - Three Sisters

But Yumi just stared dreamily at the glowing lamp wick. Shi Guifang sighed heavily, her breath bending the wick and making it seem as if it were trying to hide from her. Yumi’s thoughts began to wander as if they were being transported away on an airplane. The room darkened slightly, and so did the illuminated half of Yumi’s face. Her mother sat up abruptly and belched several times before smacking the bed with her open hand. “This is better,” she said. “Yes, it’s better this way.” This abrupt outburst startled Yumi, who watched as her mother blew out the lamp.

“Time to sleep,” she said.

By the time Yusui returned home with Yumiao, Yumi had dozed off. Yuying was the next to come home. Yumi woke up and sat on the edge of the bed to watch the girls wash up. The sister she was really waiting for was Yuye, a lazy little tomboy who would not wash up unless she was forced to. When she got into bed and her feet warmed up, the stench was nearly overpowering. Only Yumi was willing to sleep with her; the other girls all complained that she smelled bad.

The movie was over, and Yuye was still not home, which could only mean that she was with Yuxiu, who was probably up to no good. Yumi knew Yuxiu well. Since Yuye was with her, she could dump all the blame for coming home late on her younger sister. Yumi waited until it was all quiet outside, and there was still no sign of Yuxiu and Yuye. Finally, having run out of patience, she threw a jacket over her shoulders, slipped on a pair of shoes, and stormed out the door.

Her search took her to a haystack beside the threshing floor, where she found her sisters among a crowd of moviegoers who had lingered around a blazing lantern.

“Yuxiu!” she shouted.

“Yuye!”

No answer, although all the heads turned to see who it was. Disembodied faces silhouetted in the light of the lantern lit up the surrounding darkness, creating a strange tableau of dark and light. Not a word emerged from the expressionless faces carved into the ghostly night. As Yumi stood dazed by the sight, a premonition of dread burst from her chest. The crowd parted for her as she walked up to where Yuxiu and Yuye sat dumbly on a bed of straw, both naked from the waist down. Straw clung to their bodies, stuck to their hair, and poked out from between their teeth and the corners of their mouths. The only movement from Yuxiu was the rapid blinking of eyes that were virtually lifeless. Yumi, who knew at once what had happened, stood there staring at her sisters, her mouth hanging slack. Now that Yumi was among them, the crowd left the lantern where it was and drifted off. The outlines of their backs bled into the darkness. There was no one left, but it felt as if no one had left.

Yumi knelt down on the straw and put her sisters’ pants back on. Both girls’ crotches were soaked in blood that was mixed with another sticky substance. A strange and eerie odor rose from their pants. After cleaning them off with handfuls of straw, Yumi took each of them by the hand and led them home in the darkness. The lantern remained on the ground, throwing its light on the haystack, a mound of gold ringed by inky darkness. A passing breeze tossed Yumi’s hair, which nearly covered her face. Yuxiu and Yuye shivered. They looked like a pair of wobbly scarecrows. Yumi stopped suddenly, turned, and grabbed Yuxiu by the shoulders.

“Tell me, who did this?” she asked, shaking her. “Who did it?” she shouted. The shaking sent her own hair flying. “Who…” she screamed.

It was Yuye who answered. “I don’t know. Lots of them.”

Yumi sat down on the ground—hard.

Even though he was far away from the village, news of the incident still managed to reach Peng Guoliang. His next letter was but a single sentence: “Tell me, did someone take you to bed?” The accusatory tone was obvious to Yumi more than one thousand li away and ushered in a dramatic change in her situation. That one sentence knocked the wind out of her; suddenly, she felt cold, her strength gone. Fear gripped her. She saw a hand circle over Yuxiu and Yuye before slowly turning to point at her. Even though the sun lit up the area, she could not identify the hand as it vanished into total darkness. Not only had her fellow villagers read Peng Guoliang’s letters, but they had also written to him for her. How was she going to answer him now? How could she tell him what had happened? She thought and thought until her brain virtually stopped functioning. Peng Guoliang was the family’s last potential mainstay. If this airplane flew away, Yumi’s sky would fall. She took out her packet of stationery and laid it on the desk. After crumpling up several sheets and ripping up several more, she began to see herself as a sheet of paper floating in the air, and no matter where the winds took her, the result was always the same—she was either ripped to shreds or trampled into the ground. Which of those passing feet would willingly pass up the chance to step on it? The curiosity of feet would determine the fate of the sheet of paper. As a veil of silence settled over the deepening night, Yumi picked up her red Hero fountain pen with its iridium nib, not to write a letter, but to start a conversation with Peng Guoliang, even though she knew it was an empty gesture. She dawdled for the longest time until she discovered that she had actually written something, lines that she found utterly shocking. When had she written that? How incredibly brazen it was—and incredibly self-indulgent. This is what she’d written: “Elder Brother Guoliang, I hold you fast in my heart. No one is closer to me. You are the love of my life.” Already sensing that she was not overburdened with shame, Yumi was surprised to discover that she had the nerve to write such things.

When she wrote them a second time, she felt her chest swell. Her eyes fell on the lantern wick, which would now take Peng Guoliang’s place. His warmth and brightness were arrayed before her. “Elder Brother Guoliang, I hold you fast in my heart. No one is closer to me. You are the love of my life,” she wrote again; it was the only thing she was able to write, since nothing else came to her. They were, after all, words that had been hidden in the deepest recesses of her heart, and it took all the courage she possessed to bring them out into the open. Now, for the first time ever, she found the boldness to “say” them. What else was there for her to say at this point? Only this, over and over, just these few words. And so she filled five sheets of paper with them and would have filled more if she’d had them. Five sheets of paper all covered with those few words. The next morning she read every word on those five sheets of paper several times until she could no longer bear it and bathed all five with her tears. If Guoliang cannot hear the words that fill my heart, she told herself, then everything I say will fall on deaf ears, separated as we are by tall mountains and long rivers.

She mailed her letter, after which she looked for something to keep herself busy; but she found nothing. So she decided to simply rest, and as she sat in a chair, she fell asleep.

During the days that Yumi waited for a return letter, she turned Hongbing over to Yusui, since she wanted to wait for the postman at the bridgehead. She fretted over the contents of Peng Guoliang’s return letter. If he was going to tell her he no longer wanted her, that letter must not fall into the hands of anyone else. She was prepared to take a knife to anyone who even attempted to open her letter. That would be too great a loss of face. So she waited at the bridgehead, but no letter came. What arrived in its place was a bundle that included Yumi’s photographs and all the letters she’d sent to Peng Guoliang. All those ugly missives in her own hand. As she looked down at her photographs and handwritten letters, the anguish she’d anticipated did not materialize for some reason. What she felt instead was a crippling embarrassment, such a deep-seated embarrassment she felt like jumping off the bridge.