Bi Feiyu - Three Sisters

In general terms, the residents of Wang Family Village shared common views of Secretary Wang’s daughters: Yumi was a sensible girl, as the eldest ought to be; Yusui was flighty; Yuying was well-behaved; Yuye was stubborn; Yumiao was bad-tempered; and Yuyang was sweet. As for Yuxiu, they all agreed that she was a little fox fairy, a seductive girl. How could she fit in with her sisters? She had no qualms about being in conflict with any of the others; her bold independence stemmed not only from her good looks, but also from the fact that she had a backer.

Wang Lianfang showered his attentions on his son and was indifferent toward his daughters—except Yuxiu, whom he liked.

Why?

People were drawn to her, and that was reason enough for a Party secretary to be fond of her. With Yuxiu backed by her father, no one would have dared put her in front of a firing squad even if she had been an enemy agent. People liked to say that both the palm and the back of the hand are flesh and blood, so parents love all their children the same. It is a ridiculous saying. If you don’t believe me, examine your own hand. The palm may be flesh and blood, but not the back, which is mostly bone wrapped in a thin layer of skin.

Given her natural inclinations and studied affectations, Yuxiu was secure with her father’s backing. She picked on not only her younger sisters but her older sisters as well, after which she would cozy up to her father and complain about being mistreated, a girl all alone, charmingly sweet, deserving of his sympathy, and eminently loveable. When there was trouble, she was usually at fault, yet she was always the first to complain, armed with all sorts of reasons or excuses. This trait, more than anything, upset her sisters, who found common cause to line up even more strongly in Yumi’s camp against Yuxiu, the seductive tease.

And yet, as the eldest, Yumi needed to be prudent and adopt a wellthought-out strategy to deal with Yuxiu, especially when the family needed to unite against outsiders. She had to rally all the forces available to her, which included winning over Yuxiu to seek unity. Once Yumi had taken care of those outside forces, she’d close the door and turn her attention to dealing with the internal struggle between the two camps. She could launch a determined attack on precisely that which needed fixing. Either bringing the opposition over or beating it down would solidify her head of household status, which was her goal. While there was the appearance of two camps, in reality, it was a contest between two individuals—Yumi and Yuxiu.

In fact, Yuxiu was contemptuous of Yumi, whose greatest asset was her ability to mobilize the masses. One on one, Yumi might not have been up to the challenge. But given Yumi’s pack of henchmen, Yuxiu was hopelessly outnumbered. Yumi’s advantage was that Yuxiu gave little thought to numerical inferiority, for she was obsessed with her role as a fox fairy; she saw herself as a seductive serpent. With each alluring twist of the neck and flick of her forked tongue, she slithered along captivatingly no matter where she went.

The serpent’s body had slithered along until the spring of 1971. Once that cold night had passed, Yuxiu was aware that the attractive serpent was a chimera.

The village was wild with joy on the day the incident occurred. The commune’s movie boat had glided up to the Wang Family Village pier, and the residents were about to enjoy their first movie since Wang Lianfang had lost his position and been kicked out of the Party. It was a day of irrepressible jubilation.

Yuxiu was always happy when there was a movie. She and her sister had reacted differently to their father’s troubles. Yumi appeared to be unconcerned, but that was all for show, a pretense. Yuxiu was the one who really did not care, for she had her beauty, something no one could take away. So she went to see the movie; Yumi did not. Yuxiu was smart enough to see the advantages of restraint, so she held back from grabbing a seat in the middle. Up till then, the best seats at a movie had always gone to the Wang family; no one would have dared squabble over them. Anyone who “beat the dog without seeing who owned it” was just asking for trouble.

On this evening, Yuxiu, with Yuye in tow, stood in the last row rather than work her way up through the crowd. The wife of Wang Caiguang, seeing that Yuye was too short to see over people’s heads and not caring that the Wang family status had plummeted, graciously signaled them over and gave up her seat to Yuye. Years earlier, she had been one of Wang Lianfang’s lovers. When the affair ended, she’d swallowed pesticide and jumped into the river, presenting a ghastly sight and having a significant impact on the village. Happily, that had been years before. As she stood beside Caiguang’s wife, Yuxiu was quickly caught up in the movie, and when the night turned cold and the wind blew on her neck, she buried her hands in her sleeves to keep them warm and scrunched her neck down into her collar. About halfway through the movie, Yuxiu needed to relieve herself, but by then the winds were so strong that the screen began to billow and bend the hunched figures on it out of shape. She decided to stay put. She could wait till she got home. There is truth in the saying that “Cold winds make for short necks, chilled air makes relief seem long.”

On-screen, American bombers flew overhead and dropped their bombs on the Yalu River, making muffled sounds like those of a mother urging her child to pee. Pillars of water rose from the Yalu River; a major assault was on its way, and the movie was starting to get interesting. Then without warning, a pair of hands covered Yuxiu’s eyes from behind. This was a favorite prank among local residents, and in the past, if someone had done that to Yuxiu in the middle of a movie, the prankster’s lineage would have been the target of one of her withering curses. But not this time. “Hey! Whose cold claws are those?” she said with a laugh. But this time it didn’t seem like a prank; the hands were pressing too hard.

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.