Bi Feiyu - Three Sisters

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.