Red Sorghum

suffering, she laid him down on the brick floor and stood up to survey the walls around her. They were damp, of course, and the luxuriant appearance of moss briefly gave her new hope; but it offered no relief for their thirst, and it wasn’t edible. She squatted down and picked up a brick, then another. They were very heavy, as though water was stored up inside them. A red centipede crawled out of the hollow where the bricks had been, and Mother jumped away, not daring to pick up any more. Nor did she dare sit down, for something horrible had occurred the morning before that made her realise she was now a woman.
    Years later, Mother told my wife that her first menstrual period had come while she was down in that dark, dank well, and when my wife told me, the two of us felt enormous compassion for the fifteen-year-old girl who would later give birth to me.
    Mother had no choice but to pin her final scrap of hope on that puddle of filthy water in which the toad was soaking, no matter how much its hideous features frightened or disgusted her. Nothing had changed from the day before: the toad hadn’t moved, its sombre eyes still glaring at her with hostility, its warty skin still making her skin crawl. Her new-found courage quickly evaporated. Poison darts emanating from the toad’s eyes prickled her all over. She averted her eyes, but that didn’t blot out the terrifying image of the toad.
    Mother turned to look at her dying brother, and as she did so, her eye caught a tiny clump of milky-white mushrooms growing beneath two bricks. Her heart racing with excitement, she slid the bricks away and picked some of the mushrooms. Her innards twisted into knots as she gazed at the food in her hand. She shoved a mushroom into her mouth and swallowed it whole. It tasted so good that her hunger pangs returned in a flash. She put another in her mouth. Little Uncle moaned softly, but Mother consoled herself with the thought that she should try them first, in case they were toadstools. That’s right,isn’t it? Of course it is. She put one into Little Uncle’s mouth, but his jaws didn’t move; he just looked at her through tiny slits. ‘Harmony, eat it. I found it for you. Eat it.’ She held up another and waved it under his nose. His jaws twitched, as though he were chewing, so she fed him another one. But he coughed and spat them both out. By then his lips were so chapped they bled. He lay on the brick floor, close to death.
    Mother swallowed a dozen or so little mushrooms, and her intestines, which had gone into hibernation, suddenly came to life, writhing painfully and making a huge racket. She was sweating more than she had at any time since being lowered into the well; it would be the last time. Sweat drenched her clothes; her armpits and the backs of her knees were wet and sticky. The chilled air seemed to penetrate the marrow of her bones, and she slumped unaware to the floor and lay beside her baby brother. At noon on her second day in the well, Mother fell into a swoon.
    When she woke up, dusk was falling. She saw reddish-purple rays of light on the eastern wall as the sun sank in the west. The ancient windlass was bathed in the sunset, giving her the contradictory sensations of seeing remote antiquity and the approach of doomsday at the same time. The ringing in her ears, which hardly ever stopped, was now joined by the sound of footsteps out there, but she couldn’t tell if it was real or an illusion. She no longer had the strength to cry out, and was so thirsty her chest seemed to be baking in a fire. Even the act of breathing brought excruciating pain. Little Uncle was already beyond suffering, beyond joy; he lay on the brick floor, a pile of withered yellow skin. When Mother looked down into his glazed eyes, everything turned dark in front of her: the black shroud of death was settling over the dry well.
    The second night at the bottom of the well seemed to fly by; Mother passed it in a semiwakeful state. Several times she dreamed she’d sprouted wings and was circling ever upward towards the opening of the well. But the shaft seemed endless, and no matter how far she flew she never drew any closer to the opening. She tried flapping her wings faster, but the elongation of the shaft kept pace with her. Once during the night she awoke briefly to feel her brother’s cold body besideher. Unable to bear the thought that he was dead, she tried to convince herself that she must be hot and feverish. A curved ray of