Shifu, You'll Do Anything For a Laugh

my aunt. A plastic-covered obstetrics textbook for nurses lay on the table.
    “What are you doing back here?” she asked lazily. “After you were here last year, you went back and wrote a book that made me look like some kind of demon!”
    “It wasn't well written,” I said with an embarrassed smile.
    “Want to hear a story about a fox fairy?” she asked. “If I'd known that even a fox fairy tale could wind up in a book, I'd have given you a whole trainful of them.”
    Without any encouragement from me, and no regard for how exhausted she was after having delivered a baby, she told me a story. During the previous winter, she began, an old man out gathering manure early one morning encountered a fox with a broken leg. He picked it up and carried it home on his back as a pet. The fox's injured leg was nearly healed when the old man's son came to visit. This son, an impetuous young fellow, was a battalion commander. The moment he laid eyes on the fox, he took out his revolver and, without a word, shot it dead. As if that weren't enough, he skinned the animal and nailed its hide to the wall to dry out. The old man nearly died of fright, but his son merely hummed a little tune, unfazed by what he'd done.
    At noon the next day, the old man's son made fox dumplings for lunch: he sliced the meat; chopped up coriander, leeks, and onions; and added sesame oil, soy sauce, pepper, and MSG — a cornucopia of flavors. The skins he fashioned out of turnip flour — white and shiny, like pieces of fine ceramic. When they were all wrapped, he dumped them into a pot of boiling water — once, twice, three times, until they were ready to eat. But when he scooped them out, all that came up were little donkey turds. He scooped up some more. More donkey turds. And again, with the same result. The son's hair stood on end. That night, when every door and window in the house began to rattle, the son took out his revolver; but nothing happened when he pulled the trigger. Finally, they had no choice but to perform funeral rites for the fox.
    My aunt knew so many fox and ghost stories it would have taken her three days and nights to tell them all, and since the time, place, and other details were based on fact, you had to believe them. Her talents were wasted, I was thinking. She should have been busying herself editing a New Tales of Strange Events .
    Relating all those ghost stories invigorated my aunt. The newborn baby in the delivery room was still wailing when the nurse flung open the door, fuming mad, and said, “What kind of mother is that? She has her baby, dusts herself off, and runs away.”
    I cast a questioning glance at my aunt.
    “She's the wife of a man from Black Water Village who's already had three children, all girls. She was hoping for a boy, but no such luck. And when her husband heard she'd had another girl, he simply drove off in his horse cart. Not the sort of father you see every day. Well, when she saw him run off like that, she jumped down off the delivery table, pulled up her pants, and ran out crying, leaving her new baby behind.”
    I followed my aunt into the delivery room to look at the newly abandoned baby. She was scrawny as a sickly kitten, nowhere as plump and healthy looking as the baby I'd found, and not nearly as cute; nor, for that matter, were her cries as robust. For some reason, that was a comforting thought.
    My aunt poked her belly gently. “Slothful little thing,” she said. “Why couldn't you grow one more little piece of meat? With it you'd have been the apple of their eye; without it you're nothing but an offensive little turd.”
    “What do we do with her?” the nurse asked. “We can't just leave her here, can we?”
    My aunt turned to me. “Why don't you take her home with you? I've seen her parents, and there's nothing wrong with them. Tall, sturdy peasants, both of them. So this one ought to turn out just fine, maybe even a real beauty.”
    I was on my way out of the room before she'd even finished.
    I sat in the sunflower field transfixed, my rear end and legs turning numb from the damp ground. I had no desire to stand up. The petals of the dish-shaped sunflowers had curled up and turned black, like eyelashes. Countless black, seedy eyes were staring at me. Dark cottony clouds blocked out the sun. The floral heads hung down in a state of disorder, as if in sad stupefaction. Black ants were busy rebuilding their tiny fortresses on the flat, muddy ground, making them taller