Bi Feiyu - Three Sisters

Shortly after three in the afternoon, a knock at the gate interrupted her reveries. Most of the time the gate was left open, but Yumi had decided it wasn’t a good idea for the people who worked in the government offices to see all that nice clothing—expensive woolens, fine silks, khakis, and an array of knitting yarns—displayed out in the open. So she’d closed the gate and bolted it. It’s always best to get rich quietly.

Since the clothes had belonged to Guo Jiaxing’s first wife, Yumi had every right to own and wear them. Even if she chose not to wear all of them, she could send some back to Wang Family Village to be altered and handed out as new clothes for her sisters. They would be the beneficiaries of nice things to wear, and Yumi would gain considerable face. The sisters would enjoy the fruits of her magnanimity.

Yuxiu went up to the gate and opened it. A young man she’d never seen before stood there; a faux leather briefcase with the word SHANGHAI stamped on it was sitting on the step beside him. He was good-looking and obviously cultured; his shirt, with a pen in the pocket, was tucked into his pants. To still be so neat and trim on such a hot day spoke of a rare vitality. Yuxiu and the young man stood on opposite sides of the gate sizing each other up for a long moment.

“Big sister,” Yuxiu called out, “Guo Zuo’s home.” By the time she’d reached down and picked up the briefcase, the young man was standing beneath the eaves next to Yumi, who stared at him, momentarily at a loss for words.

“Aiya,” she blurted out finally and stepped down into the yard, where she managed another “aiya.”

“You must be Yumi,” he said with a smile. He looked to be roughly the same age as she was, which caused her embarrassment. But he treated the situation better than she had imagined he would. She waved her fan in front of him a couple of times. By then Yuxiu had walked up with a washbasin. Yumi dipped a towel in the water, wrung it out, and handed it to him. “You’re sweaty. Here, wipe your face.”

Guo Zuo had called Yumi by her name, which she found pleasing. That eliminated the possibility of all sorts of awkwardness and introduced an instant rapport that would make it easier for them to get along. He appeared to be a couple of years older than she, and while their roles in the family were mother and son, they were actually of the same generation. Yumi liked what she saw; he had made a good first impression. There is certainly something to be said for sons, she told herself. Qiaoqiao was a strange, unpleasant girl who did not know what was good for her. This one was much better behaved.

Once he’d wiped his sweaty face, Guo Zuo looked cool and fresh as he sat in his father’s rattan chair, picked up his father’s cigarettes, and lit one. He took a deep drag as Yumi told her sister to gather up all the clothes in the yard while she went into the kitchen to make a bowl of light soup with noodles. However one looked at it, Yumi was a mother, so she needed to act like one. By the time Yuxiu had steeped some tea for Guo Zuo, he was quietly reading a thick brick of a book. Yuxiu, who had been in a decent mood to begin with, was now feeling even better. So good, in fact, that the seductress abruptly resurfaced. It had been a long time, and she welcomed the return of her old self. She might not have been able to put these feelings into words, but there was no mistaking the sense of delight they brought.

She wasn’t singing now, but there were songs in her heart, and the arias from the local operas were accompanied by gongs and drums. Her spirits were on the rise, thanks to this happy turn of events. On each of her repeated trips in and out of the room, she cast a glance in Guo Zuo’s direction, intentionally or not. It was an impulsive act that she couldn’t resist.

Guo Zuo noticed. He looked up at Yuxiu, who was standing just beyond the door under the blazing sun, wearing a straw hat with a wide brim on which a saying from Chairman Mao was printed: MUCH CAN BE ACCOMPLISHED IN THIS VAST WORLD. When their eyes met, Yuxiu smiled at him for no apparent reason. She was happy and exuberant, and this seemingly vacuous display was a genuine expression of the feelings that flowed from her heart. The sun, which had migrated to the western sky, lit up her teeth and made them sparkle.

There have been so many changes, Guo Zuo thought. It no longer seems like my house. The place feels so full of life. When his mother died, Guo Zuo ought to have come home for the funeral and stayed for a while, using up his accumulated vacation days. But his father was busy delivering the body to the crematorium the day after she died, and when he returned home, he wrote a long letter to Guo Zuo, filled with serious philosophical issues. Guo placed great importance on expounding upon materialism and the dialectics of life and death. So Guo Zuo did not return home.

But now he was back, not for a vacation, but to recuperate from a work-related injury. During a training exercise for an outpost team he had suffered a concussion and was sent home to recover.

When Guo Jiaxing returned from the office, father and son greeted each other with simple nods of the head. Guo asked his son a question or two; Guo Zuo replied in the same perfunctory manner, and that was it—nothing more was said.

What an intriguing family, Yuxiu said to herself. Blood relations who treat each other as comrades. Even their greetings are in the same hurried manner as if they were making revolution or promoting production. There can’t be many fathers and sons like this.

Guo Zuo stayed close to home, spending his waking hours walking or lying around or sitting in the living room with a book. An enigma like his father, Yuxiu thought. But it took only a few days for her to see that she was wrong. Unlike his father, Guo Zuo had a penchant for conversation and enjoyed a good laugh. On a day when both Guo Jiaxing and Yumi were at work, Guo Zuo sat in his father’s chair with a book resting on his knees as he smoked a cigarette, the blue smoke curling into the surrounding silence then fanning out until only a tail was left, which flickered briefly and then disappeared. After a nap, Yuxiu walked into the living room to straighten things up and pour Guo Zuo a cup of tea. He appeared to have just gotten up from a nap himself; marks from the straw mat still creased his cheek like patchwork corduroy. That struck Yuxiu as funny, but she smothered her laugh in the crook of her arm when he looked up.

“What’s so funny?” he asked, puzzled.

Yuxiu dropped her arm; the smile was gone, replaced by a look of innocence, as if it had been nothing at all. She coughed.

“I haven’t even asked you your name,” Guo Zuo said, closing his book.

Yuxiu blinked a couple of times and, with her dark eyes fixed on his face, raised her chin and said, “Guess.”

For the first time Guo Zuo noticed that her eyelids were as wide as leek leaves and deep—utterly bewitching with their double-folds.

“That’s a tough assignment,” he said, looking stymied.

“Well,” Yuxiu said to help him, “my sister’s name is Yumi, which means I have to be ‘Yu’ something. The ‘mi’ in her name means ‘rice,’ so you wouldn’t expect me to be called ‘da mi’—big rice—would you?

Guo Zuo laughed and struck a thoughtful pose. “So, it’s ‘yu’ what?”

“Xiu,” Yuxiu said, “as in ‘youxiu,’ you know, ‘outstanding.’”

Guo Zuo nodded and went back to his book. She had assumed he was in the mood to talk. But he wasn’t.

How can a book be that engrossing? Yuxiu wondered. She took a corner of the book between her thumb and forefinger, bent over, cocked her head, and read “Spar—ta—cus.” She kept staring at it, knowing the Chinese characters, but having no idea what she was reading.