Tie Ning - The Bathing Women

“I’ll wipe them,” Fan would say. “I’m really going to wipe them hard.” Tiao then placed both of Fan’s dripping feet on her knees and let Fan playfully kick her feet on her knees, so foot-washing became a game, a shared silliness between them.

If they were walking on the street and Tiao had a basketful of groceries, Fan would always lend a hand. The lending a hand was precisely that, Fan putting her hand on the basket without lifting any of the weight. She just held on to the edge as if she were carrying the basket along with her sister. She loved to help with the work because she loved her sister.

If Fan was bullied by someone in the complex, Tiao would stand up for her against the bullies faithfully to the end. She put aside any shyness or reserve she had. Once, a boy, at the entrance to the building, held out a piece of soap that looked like a rice ball, and he said to Fan, “Lick it. Lick it. It’s a rice ball and tastes very sweet.” Fan stuck out her tongue and was about to lick it. Tiao happened to be passing by. She grabbed the soap and forced it into the boy’s mouth. She actually did that. She stuffed his mouth with soap until he began to cry. He bent over, squatted on the ground, and threw up over and over again. Tiao took Fan by the hand and went home with her head high. As soon as she entered the house, she told Fan, “That was soap, not a rice ball. Besides, even if it was really a rice ball, you still shouldn’t eat it. You can’t just eat other people’s stuff like that without thinking. Will you remember this?” Fan kept nodding her head. She would never forget any of Tiao’s words.

Then Quan was born a year after Wu’s return from the Reed River Farm. By then, the discipline at the farm had slackened quite a bit, and many people in the Academy had found excuses to come back and stay at home. Wu simply raised Quan in plain sight of everyone. She no longer mentioned her rheumatic heart disease, and the baby in her arms was the most convincing reason for her to be at home. As a nursing mother, she had the right to stay at home with her baby.

The house was a mess, and Tiao had to do a lot of chores. Wu made her warm up Quan’s milk one moment and wash her nappies the next. Tiao slammed the milk pot and dented it. She wouldn’t wash the nappies carefully — just dipped them into the water quickly and then snatched them out. She favoured Fan and let Fan drink all the orange juice that Wu bought for Quan. When Quan was a year old and could eat mashed pork floss, she decided to use Quan’s pork to make sandwiches for Fan. By then Fan had already realized that she had lost her mother’s favour and went around dispirited because of it. She would eat the pork-floss sandwiches in big bites and snuggle up close to Tiao, to show the whole family and the whole world: No big deal. No big deal. I have my sister who cares for me.

She exaggerated her loss of favour and fall in status to get attention. What else could she do? She resented Quan, and her resentment was the genuine article, without the least little bit of exaggeration. It was also simple, unlike Tiao’s, which was difficult to put into words. Fan hated Quan because Quan was pretty and also knew how to please people. Particularly when she could walk on her own, when she could be taken outside into the complex by an adult, her sweet and beautiful little face and naturally curly brown hair made almost every neighbour fall in love with her. The more people liked Quan, the angrier Fan got. She took every opportunity to pinch Quan with her nails on her chubby arms and legs and small shoulders. She used her thumb and index finger to pinch a little bit of flesh, just a little. It felt like being bitten by an ant, but the pain was enough to make Quan grimace and cry. Fan was not afraid at all. Quan couldn’t tell on her, because she couldn’t talk.

Wu often took Quan for a walk on the small road in front of their building. When she had things to do, she would ask Tiao or Fan to take her instead. Fan avoided this kind of chore; she didn’t like to be with Quan. The passing neighbours would stop to play with Quan and ignore her, as if she were only along to be Quan’s foil, giving Fan a sharp pang of jealousy. So Fan would knit her eyebrows and make a great show of having cramps in her legs: “Owww, my legs have cramps, owww …” moaning and falling back — butt-first — on the bed. Wu would then ask Tiao to take Quan for a walk, often just as she was going to Youyou’s home to study recipes and experiment with cooking. Quan, who loved walking and knew how to entertain people with her expressive gestures, had cost Tiao precious time and interrupted plans for quite a few high-toned banquets with Youyou. But she didn’t make up excuses, as Fan did. She obeyed Wu, brought a little stool to the front of the building, and sat down to read. She would read her book for a while and then lift her head to take a look at Quan, who would be strolling aimlessly nearby.

Occasionally her eyes met Quan’s and she would coldly study the dark little eyes of this younger sister. Something was wrong about Quan — Tiao felt it from the very beginning, and now the fact that Quan strolled around the whole courtyard in broad daylight made her feel very uneasy. She wasn’t jealous of Quan’s prettiness and perfection. She had heard from adults that if a child was too good-looking when she was little, she would go downhill and turn out to be ugly later. So she was not resentful of Quan’s good looks. Besides, what was the big deal? Why the fuss about her looks? She was almost two years old and still didn’t know how to talk. Maybe she was a mute. Tiao felt that something was wrong because she was suspicious about Quan’s origin. She believed her birth was a terrible trick Quan had played on their family. She had her reasons for thinking so after Fei came to see Quan.

Fei, abandoned by the dancer and having had the abortion, seemed to be especially observant about babies. She also seemed to talk more bluntly than she used to. One day she suddenly said to Tiao, “Whom do you think Quan looks like?” When Tiao made no response, Fei said, “She reminds me very much of my uncle. Hmm, she might be my cousin.”

Fei looked both a little bit angry and sad. Then she gulped, and a kind of miserable look came over her face.

“She reminds me very much of my uncle.” Fei’s words struck Tiao like a blow to the head, dazing her and sharpening her focus at once. She finally was clear about the question she hadn’t dared to ask, and now she had the answer. Wu and Dr. Tang made her sick, and so angry that she wanted to rage and curse at people in the street. The two were unworthy to be the cause of all Tiao’s suffering, the anxiety, and then, finally, the relief, that she had gone through because of that letter that never reached Yixun. They weren’t worth it. They weren’t worth any of it. How frightened she had been that Fei would make her face the secret. But now that it had happened, she realized she had no refuge. She had to take action. So she was determined to act, no matter how vague her idea of what she should do.

As if deliberately conspiring with Tiao, Fan had started to take action of her own. She dug earwax out of Tiao’s ear and put the light yellow slivers into Quan’s milk bottle. Tiao watched all this and said nothing. Everyone knew the folk wisdom: earwax is poison. People turn into mutes if they eat it.

Quan was probably a mute already, and, if not, she would become a mute for certain after eating earwax. Tiao watched Fan shake the milk bottle and said nothing. Saying nothing was silent approval and encouragement. Fan took the milk bottle that contained earwax and orange juice and walked over to Quan. But the plot failed because, for some reason, her grip loosened and the milk bottle dropped to the floor and broke. Tiao was disappointed, and so was Fan. They didn’t discuss their disappointment with each other. Instead, they expressed it by further ignoring Quan. They played the “sofa time” game that Tiao had invented, which was more of a way to enjoy themselves than a game. Every time Wu went out, Tiao would drag two fluffy down pillows from Wu’s big bed and lay them on two hard-backed chairs. Then she and Fan would sit on them. The warm, soft feeling under their bottoms relaxed them, body and mind. They reclined on their homemade “sofas” and cracked seeds — watermelon, pumpkin, and sunflower. They didn’t permit Quan to get near them to take part in their game. Or, to put it another way, they invented it for the very purpose of upsetting Quan. How they loved to see Quan weep because she couldn’t sit on the “sofa.” It would be even better if Wu could see the scene, Tiao thought defiantly. Wu didn’t dare criticize the way she and Fan treated Quan. And the more Wu was afraid, the more Tiao hated her; the more Wu didn’t dare, the more malice Tiao directed at Quan.