John Sayles - A Moment in the Sun

“They dance naked to stop the rain,” he said. “They poisoned our donkey and called the locusts onto the field. They steal the part that comes out after a baby is born and keep it in a jar to make potions, and they dig up the dead to steal their eyes.”

Ma only looked away and rocked Mei, waiting to see if he would tire and lie down first or if she would be beaten, but then there was shouting outside and someone banging on their door.

It was the lantern-bearer for Zhou, the sheng-yuan . Zhou himself was behind, sitting in the wheelbarrow that Mr. Chan’s eldest son wheeled him around in. Baba could not speak at first, the sheng-yuan never having stopped at their hut before, certainly not on a winter night, and could only kowtow with his mouth hanging open.

“The sheng-yuan is looking for Ling-Ling,” said the lantern-bearer.

Baba only stared, not understanding, as smoke from the fire poured past him out into the dark night.

“Ling-Ling is his dog,” Ma hissed softly from the k’ang .

The sheng-yuan pointed through the doorway at Mei.

“I am told this girl plays with it. And steals dung from my fields.”

Mei still trembling, chilled to her bones with fear, could only shake her head. The sheng-yuan , who could barely read and had bought his position, had eyes like the wolf.

“She has not seen it,” said Ma softly, not looking at anybody.

“She says she has not seen it,” said Baba, his voice shaking. “I am sorry.”

The sheng-yuan made a grunt then, and immediately the lantern-bearer was trotting away in front as Mr. Chan’s eldest son hustled Zhou away in the wheelbarrow.

Baba shut the door and sat heavily on the floor and began to weep.

“Now we are ruined,” he said between sobs. “He thinks she has killed his dog.”

After that there was no more Ling-Ling to play with in the ditch and at night when they rolled their mattresses out on top of the k’ang Baba was always on the far side and then Eldest Brother and then Second Brother and then Mei and then Ma. Ma’s legs started to hurt her more than ever, though she never complained about it. Sometimes before Baba came home she would sit on the k’ang and stretch them out one at a time for Mei to rub.

“I used to feel bad,” she said to her daughter, “and sometimes I wondered if it was not too late to turn your toes under. But now I know. If we have lotus feet the wolves will catch us.”

For two years there was no rain and the next year there was too much rain and there was only boiled millet to eat with no salt or soy and sweet potatoes that were rotten by the end of the winter and even the sheng-yuan , who grew his sorghum to brew into baijiu , began to look hungry. He was the only one in the village who lived in a house behind walls like the yang gweizi in Weifang did, the only one who wore clothes of cloth that was not spun at home. There were mulberry orchards in the next village, and oak for pongee , and years ago Ma’s family had all been silk weavers, but now nobody had the money to buy silk unless it was for a wedding. For a wedding people bought it to make a dress and hired a boy as a crier to warn you there was a bride coming by and Mei would stand out front of the hut with her mother, her mother’s hand on Mei’s shoulder for balance, and watch the bride be carried past in her chair. Mei would always look first to the red veil, trying to see through to the girl’s face and know if she was crying or smiling, and then her eyes would go to the tiny feet, delicate triangles in beautiful beaded slippers. The men carrying the brides were professional porters, paid by the number of li they had to travel, and kept the chair as steady as if it was floating down a peaceful river.

“Don’t worry,” Ma would always say, reading Mei’s thoughts when the procession passed out of sight. “When this kalpa ends things will be different. Men will want girls with feet like yours.”

At the rumor of the next spring Baba kicked her awake and told her she was coming with him and her brothers to work in the field. The field was full of weeds and every one of them had to be pulled and burned before the ground could be broken to receive the seed. Baba stood over Mei, scolding whenever she missed a weed or broke the stem without pulling up the roots.

“If you are going to look like a man,” he said, “you will learn to work like one.”

Mei didn’t mind the work, which was different than what Ma did in and around the hut. You breathed less smoke. She only felt bad when people would stop on the road to stare at her.

“You have a mule there,” said Yip who did not own land but lived in a hut where men went to drink baijiu and gamble and meet with wicked women. “Neither a horse nor a donkey.”

A week later Baba hired her brothers out to work in the sheng-yuan ’s fields. Most days after that he would just sit and smoke tobacco and watch Mei work, shouting if he disapproved of something she did or did not do. Mei missed being with her mother and wished she had a puppy like Ling-Ling to walk along with her and chase butterflies while she was pulling weeds or driving the young ox rented from Mr. Hong around the wet field with a switch or poking holes with a stick and planting seed or spreading the dung from the pile next to the door or pulling up the next growth of weeds. But when there was not too little rain nor too much and the locusts decided not to come, the millet began to grow, and Mei was proud. She had made that happen. She began to watch the sky and smell the air like the other farmers did, began to search the stalks for insects whenever she walked in the field, began to dream about things that might hurt her crop. Sometimes, if she watched very carefully, she could see it growing taller.

One day while she was pulling more weeds and Baba was sitting on the little stone wall smoking tobacco, Feng, who hired men for the sheng-yuan ’s fields and supervised his harvest, stopped to talk to him.

“This soil is weary of millet,” he said looking out at the crop, which was then no more than two feet high. “It will yield very little.”

“I would grow pearls,” said Baba, who according to Ma had been a clever man when he was young, happy even without drink, “if only I could afford the seed.”

“There is something better than pearls,” said Feng. “Everybody in Dang-shan is planting it.”

Baba tried not to look the foreman in the eye, instead staring out past Mei to his little ten mu .

“Is the sheng-yuan going to grow it in his fields?”

Feng shook his head. “He is not so hard-hearted. He would not deprive his neighbors of their sorghum wine.”

“Growing poppy flowers in forbidden,” said Baba, looking into the sky.

“What is forbidden here,” smiled the foreman, “is determined by the sheng-yuan . If you decide to change your crop, as many here are doing, I can give you the seeds without charge. But when you gather the gum you must sell it to me.”

“How much is it selling for?”

Feng put his finger to his lips. “We must not speak of such things. I only wish to leave you something to consider.”

Baba left the field in millet and it was the best crop in years. But the men who had grown poppy flowers were boasting and wearing real metal coins strung around their necks after their harvest and every night there was noise from the crowd at Yip’s hut.

“Pay no mind to those people,” Ma told Baba. She was saying her sutras more than ever and calling on the Eternal Mother even though she could no longer kneel like a Christian. “What is won too easily does not last.”