The Garlic Ballads

lay down on the kang, pulling the covers up over her head. Footsteps drew nearer, and as she hid herself in the darkness, she began to quake.

3.

    The days passed quickly toward the end of the eighth lunar month. Jinju wasn’t being watched as closely as before: the gate was no longer locked at night, and she was permitted outside during the day. Elder Brother, who treated her better than ever, even bought her a pair of pigskin shoes, which she merely tossed to the foot of the kang without giving them a second look.
    On the morning of the twenty-fifth, Elder Brother said to her, “Instead of spending all day moping around the house, why not come help me pick beans? Second Brother went to help Deputy Yang make briquettes, and I can’t manage by myself.”
    It seemed like a reasonable request, so she picked up her scythe and followed him out the door.
    The fields had changed dramatically in the two months since her last visit. Mature, sun-dried kernels of sorghum had turned dark red, the cornsilks had withered, and bean leaves had turned a pale yellow. Under the deep-blue sky the vista seemed endless; Little Mount Zhou looked like a broken green fan. Birds far from their nests whirred noisily in the sky, a cheerless sound that Jinju found particularly unsettling. She couldn’t bear to watch the unnatural movements of Elder Brother as he cut the beans, dragging his game leg behind him. That leg was inextricably linked to her fate, and over the two months of her confinement she had often dreamed it was crushing her; she would awake with a fright, gasping for breath, her eyes filled with tears.
    Their bean field abutted Gao Ma’s cornfield, which had not yet been harvested. Where are you, Gao Ma? She thought back to the summer before, when a tall, husky Gao Ma strolled over, whistling confidently, to help her with the millet harvest. She could still hear the sound of his voice and see his figure. But the more she dwelled on the past, the more tightly her heart constricted, for she could also hear the thud of stools crashing down on Gao Ma’s head, a liquid sound swirling in her ears. She wouldn’t have believed her kind and decent Elder Brother capable of such ferocity had she not seen it with her own eyes.
    “Sit over there if you’re afraid this will tire you out,” Elder Brother said with a grimace. “I can manage.”
    Deep lines were etched in the corners of his clouded eyes, which seemed dull and lifeless. Something was hidden behind his expression, she felt, but she couldn’t put a name to it. Yet it reminded her of the leg he dragged along the ground. The deformed limb bore the scars of un-happiness and earned him people’s pity; but it was hideous, and that earned him their disgust. Her feelings for her brother matched her feelings for his game leg: pity on occasion, disgust the rest of the time. Pity and disgust, an emotional conflict that entangled her.
    Gao Ma’s cornfield rustled as a breeze swept past, tousling her hair and slipping under her collar to cool her off.
    Thoughts of Gao Ma made it both dangerous and necessary for her to look over at his cornfield as it protested uneasily in the breeze: withered tassels and stalks retaining barely a trace of moisture no longer enjoyed the resiliency of their youth, when they had been bent before the wind, their emerald leaves fluttering gracefully like ribbons of satin with each gust to form cool green waves; just thinking about it brought tears to her eyes, for now the wind made the stalks shudder as they stood tall and rigid, their once graceful movements just a memory.
    Yellow, withered bean leaves rustled on the plants and flapped around on the ground. When a thorn pricked her finger, she looked down at her hands, which had grown soft in the months since she had last worked. She sighed, without knowing why. Sensing Elder Brother’s eyes on her increased both her disgust toward him and a longing for Gao Ma. As her scythe moved mechanically through the bean field, a sandy-colored hare was startled out of its hiding place. No bigger than a fist, with shiny black eyes, it curled into a furry little ball, flattening its ears over its back in fear and remaining motionless. Jinju threw down her scythe and bounded over to the slow-moving animal; squatting down and cupping her hand over it, she felt her heart flood with compassion as she gently pinched one of its ears, which was like a translucent petal. She picked it up carefully so as not to damage