Red Sorghum

wine casks from a thin-necked gourd. She did it grandly, with an air of sublime mystery, in case there were prying eyes, for the astonished peeping Toms would assume that she was communing with spirits to seek divine assistance for the business. From then on, our wine prevailed over all our competitors’, nearly cornering the market.

2
    AFTER THE WEDDING, Grandma returned to her parents’ home to spend three days before heading back to her in-laws’. She had no appetite during those three days, her mind distracted. Great-Grandma cooked all her favourite foods and tried to coax her into eating, but she refused everything and moped around the house like the walking dead. Even then her appearance didn’t suffer: her skin remained milky, her cheeks rosy; her bright eyes, set in dark sockets, looked like small moons glowing through the mist. ‘You little urchin,’ Great-Grandma grumbled, ‘do you think you’re an immortal or a Buddha who doesn’t need to eat or drink? You’ll be the death of your own mother!’ She looked at Grandma, who sat as composed as the Guanyin bodhisattva, two tiny white tears slipping out of the corners of her eyes.
    Great-Granddad awoke from his drunken stupor on the second day of Grandma’s return, and immediately recalled Shan Tingxiu’s promise to give him a big black mule. His earsrang with the rhythmic clippety-clop of the mule’s hooves as it flew down the road. Such a mule: fetching black eyes like tiny lanterns, hooves like little goblets. ‘You old ass,’ Great-Grandma said anxiously, ‘your daughter won’t eat. What are we going to do?’
    Great-Granddad glanced out of the corner of his drunken eyes and said. ‘She’s spoiled, spoiled rotten! Who does she think she is?’
    He walked up to Grandma and said angrily, ‘What are you up to, you little tramp? People destined to marry are connected by a thread, no matter how far apart. Man and wife, for better or for worse. Marry a chicken and share the coop, marry a dog and share the kennel. Your dad’s no high-ranking noble, and you’re no gold branch or jade leaf. It was your good fortune to find a rich man like this, and your dad’s good fortune, too. The first thing your father-in-law did was promise me a nice black mule. That’s breeding. . . .’
    Grandma sat motionless, her eyes closed. Her damp eyelashes might have been covered with a layer of honey, each thick, full lash sticking to the others and curling like a swallowtail. Great-Granddad glared at her, his anger rising. ‘Don’t you act deaf and dumb with me. You can waste away if you want to, but you’ll be the Shan family’s ghost, because there’s no place in the Dai family graveyard for you!’
    Grandma just laughed.
    Great-Granddad slapped her.
    With a pop, the rosiness in Grandma’s cheeks vanished, leaving a pallor behind. But the colour gradually returned, and her face became the red morning sun. Her eyes shining, she clenched her teeth and sneered. Glaring hatefully at her dad, she said: ‘I’m just afraid . . . if you . . . then you can forget about seeing a single hair of that mule!’
    Lowering her head, she picked up her chopsticks and gobbled down the still-steaming food in front of her, like a whirlwind scooping up snow. When she was finished, she threw the bowl high into the air, where it tumbled and spun, sailed over the beam, and picked up two cobwebs before falling to the floor; it bounced around in a half-circle before settling upside down. She picked up another bowl and heaved it; thisone hit the wall and fell to the floor in two pieces. Great-Granddad was so shocked his mouth fell open, his sideburns quivered, and he was speechless. ‘Daughter,’ Great-Grandma exclaimed, ‘you finally ate something!’
    After throwing the bowls, Grandma broke down and cried. It was an agreeable, emotional, moist sound, which the room couldn’t hold, so it spilled outside and spread to the fields, to merge with the rustling of the pollinated late-summer sorghum. A million thoughts ran through her mind; over and over she relived what had happened from the time she had been placed in the bridal sedan chair until she had returned on the donkey’s back to her parents’ home. Every scene from those three days, every sound, every smell entered her mind . . . the horns and woodwinds . . . little tunes, big sounds . . . all that music turned the green sorghum red. It pounded a curtain of rain out of the clear sky: two cracks of