Red Sorghum

pants, a green silk shirt, and red satin embroidered slippers, a gentle smile on her face, her chest rising and falling, frailly yet tenaciously.
    At noon Father spotted a cat as black as ink pacing the ridge of the roof and letting out blood-curdling screeches. He hurled a broken piece of brick at the cat, which sprang out of the way, landed on one of the roof tiles, and pranced off.
    When it was time to light the lamps, the distillery handswalked up with the coffin and laid it down in the yard. Grandma lit a soybean-oil light with three wicks, because it was a special moment. Everyone stood around waiting anxiously for Second Grandma to breathe her last. Father hid behind the door staring at her ears, which in the lamplight looked like amber, and were just as transparent, evoking a sense of mystery that danced in brilliant colour in his heart. At that moment he knew that the black cat was stepping on a roof tile again, that its black eyes were flashing, and that it was rending the darkness with obscene screeches. His scalp burned, his hair seemed to stand up like porcupine quills.
    Suddenly Second Grandma’s eyes snapped open; and although her gaze was fixed, her lids fluttered, her cheeks twitched, and her thick lips quivered – once, twice, three times – followed by a screech more hideous than that of a cat in heat. Father noticed that the golden light from the soybean-oil lamp had turned as green as onion leaves, and in that flickering green light, the look on Second Grandma’s face was no longer human.
    ‘Little sister,’ Grandma said, ‘little sister, what’s wrong?’
    A stream of epithets poured from Second Grandma’s mouth: ‘Son of a whore, I’ll never forgive you! You can kill my body, but you can’t kill my spirit! I’ll skin you alive and rip the tendons right out of your body!’
    It wasn’t Second Grandma’s voice, Father was sure of that, but the voice of someone well over fifty.
    Grandma shrank from the force of Second Grandma’s curses.
    Second Grandma’s eyelids fluttered as rapidly as lightning; one minute she was screaming, the next cursing, the sound shaking the rafters and filling the room. Her breath was glacial. Father saw that from the neck down her body was as stiff as a board, and he wondered where she found the strength to scream.
    Not knowing what to do, Granddad told Father to summon Uncle Arhat from the eastern compound. Even there you could hear the terrifying screams.
    Uncle Arhat walked into the room, glanced at Second Grandma, and quickly led Granddad outside by the sleeve.Father followed them. ‘Manager Yu,’ he said softly, ‘she’s already dead. She must be possessed.’
    ‘He’d barely got the words out when he heard her curse him loudly from inside: ‘Arhat Liu, you son of a whore! No easy death for you! Skin you alive, rip the tendons out of your body, cut off your prick. . . .’
    ‘Wash her with river water to exorcise the demon,’ Uncle Arhat said after a thoughtful pause.
    Second Grandma’s curses kept coming.
    When Uncle Arhat walked inside with a jug of filthy river water, he confronted waves of laughter. ‘Arhat, Arhat, pour it, pour the water, your auntie’s thirsty now!’
    Father watched one of the hired hands force a funnel into Second Grandma’s mouth, and another pour the water, which eddied momentarily, then disappeared so fast it was impossible to believe it was actually emptying into her stomach.
    Second Grandma quietened down. Her belly was as flat as ever, but her chest heaved, as though she were gasping for air.
    Everyone breathed a sigh of relief.
    ‘Okay,’ Uncle Arhat said, ‘she’s old now!’
    Once more Father sensed the patter of paws on the overhead tiles, as though the black cat were on the prowl again.
    Second Grandma’s rigid face parted in a bewitching smile. She screamed once or twice before a stream or turbid water gushed from her mouth. The fountain rose straight up, at least two feet in the air, then came straight down, fanning out as the drops splashed like chrysanthemum petals on her newly made funeral clothes.
    Second Grandma’s fountain trick sent the hired hands running from the room in fright. ‘Run,’ she shouted, ‘run, run, you can’t get away, the monk can run but the temple will never get away!’
    Uncle Arhat looked imploringly at Granddad, who returned the look, as Second Grandma’s curses grew more spirited again. Now they were accompanied by spasms in her arms and legs. ‘Jap