Red Sorghum

slightly before it came crashing open, and a golden-hued Japanese soldier, bayonet-tipped rifle in his hands, leaped nimbly into the room. In that shrieking split second, his ratlike features and crafty expression were transformed into the black-mouthed weasel that had died at her hands. His pointy chin, his black moustache above a pointy mouth, and his sly look were the spitting image of the weasel. From a hidden recess of Second Grandma’s memory, her derangement resurfaced, stronger and more violent than before. Little Auntie, her ears still ringing from Second Grandma’s shriek, was scared witless by the sight of her mother’s mouth distorted with hate on her ash-smeared face. Straining with all her might, she broke free of SecondGrandma’s vicelike grip and jumped up onto the windowsill, where she stared at the six Japanese soldiers – the first and the last that she would ever see.
    Light glinted off the bayonets as the Japanese soldiers walked up to Second Grandma’s kang and stood shoulder to shoulder. To Little Auntie their weasely faces were like sorghum cakes right out of the pan: brown with dark-red edges, warm and beautiful, lovely and inviting. Though she was only slightly frightened by their bayonets, her mother’s face terrified her.
    The Japanese soldiers grinned, baring their teeth, some even, some bright. Second Grandma, torn between derangement and terror, stared at the soldiers’ ominous grins. She shrieked as she wrapped her arms tightly around her belly and pressed up against the wall. One of the soldiers, who must have been about five feet four and somewhere between thirty-five and forty years old, edged up to the kang, removed his cap, and scratched his balding scalp. In pidgin Chinese he said, ‘You, pretty girl, no be scared. . . .’ He leaned his rifle against the edge of the kang, then crawled up clumsily, like a fat, squirming maggot. Second Grandma wished she could crawl into the cracks of the wall.
    The tears running down her cheeks formed ruts in the ashes on her face. The Japanese soldier’s thick lips parted as he reached out with a coarse, fleshy finger and touched her face, making her skin crawl, as though a slimy toad had wriggled into the crotch of her pants. She shrieked louder than ever, and the soldier grabbed her legs, pulling her towards him, banging her head loudly against the wall. She lay there flat on her back with her belly sticking up like a little mound. The soldier rubbed it with his hand, then, his eyes nearly bursting with anger, drove his fist down into it, hard. Then, pinning her legs with his knees, he reached down and undid his belt. By then she had begun to fight back; struggling to a sitting position, she sank her teeth into his garlic-shoot nose.
    The Japanese soldier let out a strange scream and released her belt. Grabbing his bleeding nose, he glared at Second Grandma, as though seeing her in a new light. His buddies roared with laughter as he pulled a grimy handkerchief out ofhis pocket and held it against his nose. He stood up, his expression swiftly transformed from that of a poet passionately declaiming his undying love into the savage look of a jackal, which suited him better. He picked up his rifle and held the glinting tip of his bayonet against Second Grandma’s belly. The final shriek burst from her mouth as she squeezed her eyes shut.
    Little Auntie, still perched on the windowsill, read no malicious intent in the cold soldier’s fleshy round face; in fact, she even tried to grab the curious light reflected off his bald head, and was disgusted with Second Grandma for shrieking like a wild animal. But when she noticed the sudden change in his expression and saw him aim his bayonet at her mother’s belly, fear and an overpowering sense of love flooded her heart. She jumped down from the windowsill and rushed up to Second Grandma.
    The rat-faced, shrunken-cheeked Japanese soldier who’d been the first into the room said something to his fat comrade, then jumped up onto the kang and dragged him back down to the floor, mocking him with laughter. Still holding on to the rifle, he reached out his other bony yellow hand and grabbed Little Auntie by the hair, tearing her violently from Second Grandma’s grasp, as if he were yanking a carrot out of the hard ground. He flung her against the window, then back onto the kang. Little Auntie forced back the sobs in her throat as the colour drained from her face. The form and spirit of that