Chasing Down the Moon

by Carla Baku

  “No, Mā. No, Mā.” She said it over and over, and her mother rocked her back and forth. She cried until her throat was raw and she was no longer making real sound, just a keening that she felt in the center of her head. When she had no more strength to weep, she sagged against her mother and simply breathed in the light, earthy smell of her.

  “It is not a lucky thing to be born a woman,” her mother said. “Your fate will be in the hands of your husband now.”

  By the time her father brought Hong-Tai back into the hut, nearly asleep on his feet, Ya Zhen’s mother had wrapped the girl’s few possession in a bundle: a wooden comb, a second shirt, a small pile of sunflower seeds twisted in a corner of the paper her father had packed the parcels in. She also wrapped the bits of food left over from dinner, and finally the wedding robe. Before she tied everything up, she went to the bed and got on her hands and knees. From far underneath she pulled a small wooden box. It was plain, no scrollwork of any kind, but the finish gleamed like pooled honey. Her mother set the box on the table and lifted the lid. She brought out a pair of chopsticks, polished ebony. On the end of each one was a jade inlay, a meticulous dragon with a small seed pearl eye.

  “My mother gave these to me when I married,” she said. “They have fed all your grandmothers.” She tucked the chopsticks into the bundle and tied it in a snug roll. “This will bring luck,” she said.

  “But I don’t want to go. Please. Don’t let him.”

  “Your husband has already paid.”

  “I want—”

  “You must learn to want differently.” Her mother leaned her head close to Ya Zhen’s, her face grim. “Now you are the daughter of your husband’s mother.” The words were so simple, the way she said them, and each one fell like a stone onto Ya Zhen’s heart. Her mother took up the broom, swept ashes back into the hearth with her back turned. It seemed to the girl that her mother grew smaller, receding even as she stood in one place, while the little sounds of the stiff bristles making their whist, whist raised an impenetrable hedge between them. After what might have been a very long time, or only moments, there were footsteps outside. Ya Zhen’s mother touched her own bruised and swollen face.

  “Your father is coming. Get in your bed.”

  All night she lay awake and shaking beneath her blanket. Her father had said she would marry a wealthy man. No wealthy families lived in this village, nor in the village where her mother’s aunt lived, most of a day’s walk to the east. All her life she had known that her parents would arrange her marriage, but she imagined there would be some warning, that perhaps she would know the family of which she was to become part. In no scenario had she imagined being far from Hong-Tai. What would happen to him when their mother got lost in the ghost world, as she had during their father’s absence, which she often did during the dark months of winter? All her life, Ya Zhen had acted as a buffer between Hong-Tai and the temper of their father, distracting the little boy when his demands became wearisome and irritating to the adults. She kept remembering her father, standing over their mother after striking her, panting while his wife bled into her own palm. Would he strike Hong-Tai? Ya Zhen felt as if some vital part of her belly had torn loose from the fear trampling inside her.

  Her mother wept off and on during the night, small sounds like a kitten. Once her father spoke softly, and her mother had stopped crying. Long before the first cockcrow, her mother rose, built the fire and put the kettle on. Ya Zhen feigned sleep when her mother shook her shoulder.

  “You must wash now, daughter,” she said.

  Ya Zhen opened her eyes. “I am not your daughter.”

  Her mother blinked and drew back. Her mouth was less swollen than it had been the night before, but a dark bruise mottled the side of her face and her eyes were puffy from crying. She smoothed the hair back from Ya Zhen’s forehead. “Just for this last morning,” she said. “Come and wash for the journey.”

  She got up, her joints stiff from lying awake all night. The reflection of the small flames leapt up on the earthen walls of the house. Hong-Tai and her father still slept, the little boy’s arms and legs flung wide across his mat, his face smooth and careless.

  While she poured hot water into a bowl and undressed to her thin undergarments, her mother tied her bedding into a roll. She placed this with Ya Zhen’s other small bundle of belongings next to the door. Ya Zhen watched all this from the corner of her eye. She felt that perhaps it was a dream, that she really had fallen asleep in the night and would soon wake to find her mother cooking more rice porridge, Hong-Tai pulling one of her eyelids open as he loved to do when she slept longer than he did. But the rough rag on her face and arms, her own breath steaming from her lips, and now the sound of a rooster from the village—these were not a dream. Her mother stirred millet into a pan, a sense of hurry in all her movements.

  Then there were voices and the sound of horses on the road. Her mother looked toward the closed door. She dropped the stirring spoon and rushed to wake her husband.

  Later, Ya Zhen remembered the last moments with her family in disjointed blocks of motion. Her father opened the door and went into the yard and Hong-Tai ran out with him. Her mother combed and braided her hair, whispering advice. “Be submissive to his mother. If she likes you, your life will be easier. The first time…after the wedding, you must try to stay calm. There will be a small pain, but a calm spirit will bring you a strong son.” She went on and on like this, but Ya Zhen could hardly hear any of her words. All she could hear was the sound of men talking, rough voices, her father placatory and cajoling in a way she had never heard him before. Then he called to her mother to bring Ya Zhen out.

  Her feet were so heavy and without feeling, they seemed to have turned to clay. When she crossed the threshold into the early morning, there were two men on horseback. Another man drove an oxcart filled with sacks of wheat and millet, and a barrel of fish, salt bleeding out and coating the sides in crusty white streaks.

  One of the horsemen, a lean and muscular man whose expression was flat as slate, dismounted. He motioned at Ya Zhen with one hand. “Bring her here.”

  Her father clasped her arm and led her forward. The other mounted man and the ox driver looked on, silent. The first man took Ya Zhen by the shoulders and turned her around, looked at the back of her, ran his hands down her back, over her buttocks, and down the length of her legs. Ya Zhen could hear her mother crying again. “Peasant feet,” he grunted, for her feet were not bound. He grasped her chin. “Open your mouth,” he said quietly. Was this her husband? She tried to catch her mother’s eye, until he gave her jaw a small jerk. “Open,” he said, scowling. People spoke to misbehaving dogs in such a voice. She opened her mouth. The man hooked a finger inside and pulled, looked at her teeth. Hong-Tai, who had been standing behind his mother’s legs, roared and ran at the man.

  “Don’t hurt my sister!” he shouted. Before their father could stop him, Hong-Tai had thrown a punch at the man’s arm. The man knocked him aside and he sprawled in the dirt of the yard.

  “Hong-Tai.” Ya Zhen lurched toward her brother, but the man had her by the arm, twisting just enough to keep her from breaking free. Their mother lifted Hong-Tai, wiping the dirt off his face with the edge of her sleeve.

  Suddenly someone grabbed Ya Zhen from behind and hoisted her, the other horseman. Though not much taller than she, he was powerfully built. He slung her astride his horse and climbed up, clamped an arm around her waist. The first man mounted his own horse and turned for the road.

  “Wait,” cried Ya Zhen’s mother, “her things, her bed.” She pointed at the door of the house. Ya Zhen’s father, whose face had gone as white as milk, ran for the bundles, even as the group moved out of the yard.

  “Throw it in the wagon,” said the first man, not looking back.

  Ya Zhen’s father tucked the two bundles among the sacks of grain, walking alongside as the oxen gathered speed, but did not look at Ya Zhen. This done, he turned his back, shoulders bowed. Hong-Tai bello
wed, screaming her name. Her father tried to subdue him, but Hong-Tai slapped his face. Ya Zhen’s mother stumbled under the weight of the flailing boy and lost her hold. He tried to run after them, but they were already far down the road and his father caught him and carried him, howling, back to the mud house.

  Ya Zhen felt each of his cries like a stroke of lightening in her belly, in the place where the horseman had clamped his hand. She tilted back her head and a cry rose from her gut that sounded like an animal.

  “You should save that voice for your wedding night,” the horseman said in her ear. “You will be the wife of a hundred men. So much pleasure will surely make you sing.” He and the other men laughed. Ya Zhen closed her mouth and tried to stop the violent shaking in her arms and legs.

  Two hours outside Ya Zhen’s village, the lead horseman ordered them off the road and announced he would be the first to congratulate the new bride. He told her to take off her clothes. When she only stood still, shaking her head, he pulled out a short blade. He grabbed her wrist and made a shallow gash between her fingers. Ya Zhen cried out and held her bleeding hand to her chest.

  “This will heal quickly and your new owners will never see the scar,” he said. “There are many places on your body like this. I will show you each one unless you do as I say.” He waited.

  Their faces registered only a species of impassive hunger. All around her the day looked as she might have expected, bright, the sun just skimming through the eastern peaks, the up-and-down song of little yellow-throated birds. In that moment, she understood the nature of her life: an outlier.

  They wiped themselves clean with her clothing, and when she couldn’t stand or walk, the cart driver pulled her by one arm and heaved her in with the bags of grain. He threw her stained clothes on top of her and climbed into the front of the cart. The ox grunted and the wagon lurched forward. She was so grateful for the air in her lungs, so relieved to be off the ground, her body, even in its pain, belonging to herself again, that she lay silent, heavy as stone. There was no birdsong now, only the sound of grit passing under the wagon’s wheels and her breath in, then out.

  Come nightfall she was feverish, by turns shaking and burning. The men stopped and made a camp, leaving her in the cart. She had pulled her clothes back on and dragged her bedroll on top of her without the strength to open it, and before she lost consciousness the men argued over her. The lead horsemen said they must be careful or risk losing the rest of their pay when they got her to Guangdong.

  “That demon will not pay for her if she is dead,” he said in his quiet voice, and that finished the argument.

  When the cold shaking swept her, her teeth rattled together like the sound of pebbles in a gourd. This roused her and she stared through the slats of the cart at the fire, wishing she could get closer to warm herself. Then a vast heat ran through her, starting deep in her body, creating a terrible thirst. The lead horseman came to the cart and looked at her lying among the sacks. He gave her a bowl of tea, which she gulped until she choked. When she coughed, she felt more blood soak her trousers and a wave of dizziness knocked her backward. She fainted then. He must have opened her bedroll because she woke some time later with her blanket spread over her. It smelled like the inside of her home, of her mother’s cooking fire and the sweet, woody smell of huo xiang, the strong herb used to discourage moths. Ya Zhen was surprised to find that this did not make her cry. Perhaps she was too ill or too exhausted. She thought she might be dying and found that even this did not upset her. Her whole body felt hollow as a gallnut because her spirit was ready to fly into the night sky with the sparks rising from the campfire.

  She rose and fell through consciousness all night. At one point, she found herself back in the village, sitting above the river in the old camphor tree. Hong-Tai was fishing and she called to him from her place on the branch. But her voice was the small bleat of a cuckoo. He picked up stones and threw them at her, laughing. She burst through the branches and the tiny white camphor flowers showered into his hair. Then it was dark again and the fire gone out, the men asleep. There was deep breathing near the side of the cart and at first she was afraid one of the men watched her in the dark. Then she realized it was the ox, staked nearby. She could see its flank through the slats. She tried to put her hand through and touch the warm hide, but she couldn’t reach it. She fell asleep that way, hand and wrist stretched through the staves. Finally there was a trace of light in the sky, but she could not so much as lift her head to look around. Everything in her belly and deep inside where the men had hurt her was a roaring fire.

  When the men woke, the lead horseman brought a bowl of water to the cart. Ya Zhen just looked at him and closed her eyes again. He lifted her head and told her to drink. She did as he said, and the water was like cool silk going down her throat, but moments later she vomited it up again. The force of this caused a great searing pain through her lower body that made her want to scream, but she could only gasp like a fish pulled out of the river, clutching her belly, which was hard and hot.

  The man’s face looked tight and worried. He spoke to the others over the fire while they drank their tea. The second horseman frowned and shook his head; they were engaged in another argument, but Ya Zhen couldn’t make sense of what they said. She drifted out of the world again.

  The next time she opened her eyes, she was out of the cart, inside a dark room and lying on a pallet. She was naked again and an old woman washed her, dipping and rinsing the rag in a wooden bowl that smelled of red elder flowers. Her skin felt cool. When she tried to lift her head, the woman put her palm on Ya Zhen and pressed her back.

  “No, little bud, mò qǐ lái. Don’t try to get up.” This was an ēn mā, a granny shaman from some village. She took a cloth from Ya Zhen’s forehead and rinsed it in the bowl, replaced it. The smell was light and sweet and she wished she could drink something that smelled like that. As if reading her mind, the woman brought a cup to her lips. The tea was not sweet, but deeply bitter. She was thirsty, though, and took several deep swallows. Immediately, her body broke out in a hard sweat.

  “Good,” the woman said, nodding and wiping Ya Zhen’s skin again. “This hot wind must blow through you.” She rinsed the rag and smoothed it over Ya Zhen’s face, the way her mother had when she was very small. Large tears formed at the corners of her eyes and rolled into her ears and hair. The woman nodded again. “You have come to great pain,” she said, “and you will have to bear this burden for a long time.” Her gray hair was pulled back severely and was so thin her weathered scalp showed through. The ēn mā smiled. “You are lucky, though.” She laughed at Ya Zhen’s expression, showing a few worn-down teeth. “Oh yes,” she said, as if the girl had contradicted her. “You will not die. You will slide through the bars of your cage, like the shadow of an eel sliding through the water. Here, open your mouth.” She held a smooth piece of wood as long as her finger. “Put this between your teeth.”

  With great care, the woman bent Ya Zhen’s knees. Her thighs began to shake and she gripped the edge of the pallet. Slowly, the woman extracted a matted bundle of herbs from inside Ya Zhen’s body. The girl ground her teeth into the stick. “Now I put fresh medicine inside. This will draw the fire out.” She packed a wad of damp herbs into a thin cloth, wetting it with the elderflower water. “You bite the stick,” she said, and Ya Zhen did, until her jaws ached. When the woman finished, the sweat poured off Ya Zhen. The woman wound a soft rag between the girl’s legs and around her hips and covered her with a loosely woven sheet of homespun cloth.

  “They will take you tomorrow,” she said. “I told them I would buy you. I have an extra pig and some chickens—good laying hens. I need help here.” She poured the elderflower water into a bucket and threw the fouled bolus on the fire, where it sizzled. “They won’t sell. They want gold, and I don’t deal in anything I can’t eat or grow.”

  “I have some food,” Ya Zhen said. “Where are my things?”

  “Everything is right here,” said
the woman, patting the little bundle under Ya Zhen’s head. “I’ve already eaten your food. You won’t be able to take anything solid for a day or two.” She tamped something into a small pipe, leaning close to the fire to see. “They didn’t bother with it, I know, because they’ll take the chopsticks if they see them. Don’t let anyone see them.”

  She lit the pipe and took a breath, blew smoke out her nostrils. Then she took another, and before Ya Zhen realized it, had gently clamped her old lips over Ya Zhen’s nose and exhaled. The girl inhaled reflexively. She felt a sensation like warm water break over her, spread into her limbs.

  “You’ll mend,” said the woman, “if they stay off you.” She took another speculative draw on her pipe, watching Ya Zhen sleep. She sat on a bench by the fire and stretched her feet out, farted, scratched herself. She pulled a knife from the old pigskin booties she wore, laid it in her lap and began to hum an unnamed cradle song her grandmother had sung to her long decades ago, a song about a foolish man who got into his boat to try and catch the moon. Thinking it was a huge pearl that would make him rich, he chased the moon all night, until it set in the west, and he was forever lost at sea.

  They took her in the morning. Before they did, the ēn mā closed the door in their faces so she could speak to Ya Zhen alone. The lead horseman was furious, but when he made threats, she made sport of him.

  “You almost killed your treasure here, didn’t you?” She laughed and did a little dance in the doorway, thrusting her hips back and forth. “I’ve doctored her, but you’ll probably fool yourself anyway, take her all over again, this one who could weigh your pockets with gold. Probably do her in with your pecker, because that’s how it goes with little roosters. Makes you feel fierce, almost like a man.” She laughed again, spat into her palm and rubbed her hands together briskly.