Life and Death are Wearing Me Out

I turned and ran. A woman’s tears always rattle me. As soon as a woman starts to cry, I get nose-aching sad. I get lightheaded. I’ve suffered over that sign of weakness my whole life. Ximen Jinlong dumped red paint in my dad’s eyes, I shouted back, and I have to find my sister to save his eyesight. . . Serves him right. Your family, dog eat dog . . . Her hateful comment chased me down. I guess you could say I’d broken free from Huzhu at that moment, though my growing hatred for her was tempered by the same amount of lingering fondness. I knew she had no feelings for me, but at least she’d told me where my sister was.
    The elementary school was located at the west end, near the village wall. It had a large yard encircled by a wall made of bricks from gravesites, which ensured that there would always be spirits of the dead hanging around, coming out at night to wander. A large grove of pine trees beyond the wall was home to owls whose chilling screeches struck fear into anyone who heard them. It was a miracle those trees hadn’t been cut down as fuel during the iron- and steel-smelting campaign, something that can be attributed to a single old cypress tree that actually bled when they tried to chop it down. Who’d ever seen blood from a tree before? It was like Huzhu’s hair, which bled if it was cut. By all appearances, the only things that were preserved were the unusual ones.
    I found my sister in the school office. There was no romanticizing with Ma Liangcai; she was treating a wound on him. Someone had hit him, opening a gash in his head, and my sister was wrapping a bandage around it, leaving exposed only one eye so he could see where he was going, his nostrils so he could breathe, and his mouth so he could eat and drink. To me he resembled the Nationalist soldiers we’d seen in movies after they’d been beaten bloody by Communist forces. She looked like a nurse, but totally devoid of expression, as if carved out of cold, polished marble. All the windows had been smashed, and all the shards of broken glass had been scooped up by children who had taken them home to their mothers, mostly for use in peeling potatoes. People had put the larger pieces in papered-up window frames so they could see outside and get some sunlight. Late August evening winds blew in from the pine grove, carrying the smell of pine tar, blowing papers off the office desktop onto the floor. My sister took a little vial from her reddish brown leather medical satchel, poured out a few tablets, and wrapped them in a piece of paper she picked up off the floor. Two at a time, three times a day, she told him. After meals. He forced a smile. Don’t waste them, he said. There’s no before or after meals, I’m not going to eat. I’m going on a hunger strike as a show of resistance against the savagery of those Fascists. I come from three generations of poor peasants, red to our roots, so why did they beat me? My sister gave him a sympathetic look and said softly: Teacher Ma, don’t get upset, it’ll make your injury worse. . . . He thrust out his hands and grabbed hold of my sister’s hand. Baofeng, he said almost hysterically, Baofeng, I want you to like me, I want you to be mine. ... All these years, I think of you when I’m eating, when I’m sleeping, when I’m out walking, I don’t know what to do with myself, I’m in a daze. I don’t know how many times I’ve walked into a wall or a tree, and people assume I’m thinking about my studies, but I’m really thinking about you. ... I found all that lovesick claptrap emerging from a little hole in the bandages preposterous; his eyes were strangely bright, like wet lumps of coal. My sister struggled to free her hands; she drew her head back and shook it from side to side to get away from the hole in the bandages that was his mouth. Don’t fight me, he said, do it my way. . . . Ma Liangcai was beginning to rant. The guy was unscrupulous. Sister! I shouted as I kicked open the door and ran into the room armed with my spear. Ma Liangcai abruptly let go of my sister’s hands and stumbled backward, knocking over the basin stand and spilling water all over the brick floor. Kill! I shouted as I jammed my spear into the wall. Ma Liangcai lost his balance and sat down hard on the pulpy wet newspaper, obviously scared witless. I pulled the tip of the spear out of the wall and said to Lan Baofeng, Sister, Jinlong had people brush red paint into Dad’s eyes. When I left he was