Red Sorghum

sobs and tears merged.
    Dawn was breaking, as Mother could tell from the pale light above her. Somehow they’d got through the long night. An eerie, frightening silence hung over the well. She looked up and saw a ray of red light illuminate the walls far above her. The sun was up. She listened carefully, but the village seemed as still as the well, although every once in a while she thought she heard what sounded like a peal of thunder rolling across the sky. She wondered if her parents would come to take them out of the well on this new day, back to the world of light and air, a world where there were no banded snakes or skinny toads. The events of the previous day seemed so far away that she felt as though she’d spent half her lifetime at the bottom of the well. Dad, she was thinking, Mom. If you don’t come, Brother and I surely will die down here. She resented her parents for casting their own children into the well and simply vanishing, not caring whether they were dead or alive. The next time she saw them, she’d make a huge scene to release the bellyfull of grievances she’d already stored up. How could she have known that, as she was being carried away by these hateful thoughts, her mother – my maternal grandmother – had been blown to pieces by a Japanese mortar shell, and her father – my maternal grandfather – had exposed himself to enemy gunfire on the wall, only to have half of his head blown away by a bullet that seemed to have eyes?
    Mother prayed silently: Dad! Mom! Come back, hurry! I’m hungry, I’m thirsty, and Brother’s sick. You’ll kill your own children if you don’t come fast!
    She heard the faint sounds of a gong from the village wall, or maybe it was from somewhere else, then a distant shout: ‘Is there anybody here – is there anybody left – the Japs are gone – Commander Yu’s here –’
    Mother picked Little Uncle up in her arms and got to her feet. ‘Here!’ she shouted hoarsely. ‘Here we are – we’re down in the well – save us, hurry –’ She reached up and began to shake the rope hanging from the windlass, keeping at it for nearly an hour. Gradually her arms grew slack, and her brother fell to the ground with a weak groan. Then silence. She leaned against the wall and slid slowly down, until she was sitting on the cold broken bricks, drained and totally dejected.
    Little Uncle climbed into her lap and said calmly, ‘Sis . . . I want my mama. . . .’
    A powerful sadness overcame Mother as she wrapped her arms around Little Uncle. ‘Harmony,’ she said, ‘Mom and Dad don’t want us any more. You and I are going to die here in this well. . . .’
    He was burning up with fever, and hugging him was like holding a charcoal brazier. ‘Sis, I’m thirsty. . . .’
    Mother’s gaze fell on a puddle of filthy green water in a corner of the well. A scrawny toad sat in the middle of the pool, its back covered with ugly bean-sized warts, the yellowish skin beneath its mouth popping in and out, its bulging eyes glaring at her. She shuddered, her skin crawled, and she squeezed her eyes shut. Her mouth was parched, too, but she’d rather have died of thirst than drink that nasty toad-water.
    Since the previous morning, not a minute had passed when Mother wasn’t in the grip of terror and panic: terror caused by the sounds of gunfire in and around the village, panic over her baby brother’s struggle to survive. At fifteen, she was still a frail child, and it was a strain to have to carry her pudgy little brother all the time, especially when he was constantly squirming and making the pitiful sounds of a dying kitten. She spanked him once, and the little bastard responded by sinking his teeth into her.
    Now that he was feverish, Little Uncle drifted in and out of consciousness and lay limp in the arms of my mother, who sat on a piece of broken brick until her buttocks were painfully sore, then totally numb. The gunfire, dense one minute and scattered the next, never completely stopped. Sunlight crept slowly over the western wall, then the eastern wall, asdarkness spread inside. Mother knew she’d spent a whole day in the well, and that any time now her parents would be coming back. She stroked her baby brother’s scalding face; his breath burned her fingers. She laid her hand over his rapidly beating heart and could hear a wheeze in his chest. At that moment it occurred to her that he might very well die, and she shuddered. But she forced the