A Single Swallow

by Ling Zhang

  “You dare to talk like that in front of a child!” She spat, as if extracting a fly she had accidentally swallowed.

  Ah May must have been frightened by her mother. She wailed, on the verge of tears.

  “Mommy, I’m . . . I’m hungry!” she whimpered.

  “Eat, eat, eat! All you do is eat the bread of idleness! You can’t even pick up firewood chips from the floor. If you don’t work, who’s going to feed you?” Ah Yan shouted.

  Ah May had never heard her mother speak like that. She was so shocked, she forgot to cry.

  Scabby also fell momentarily silent. Something was stuck in his throat too. He tried several times to clear it before he finally succeeded.

  “Honey, don’t kick the door while scolding the wall. I know you’re talking about me. Aside from laziness, there’s nothing wrong with me. And as far as laziness goes, it was my father who spoiled me. From when I was small, he never even let me pick up my own chopsticks. The only person I haven’t done right by in this life is my old man. I didn’t steal, I didn’t rob, I didn’t desecrate anyone’s grave. I’ve relied on my mouth, singing for my meals. What right has everyone in the village to dislike me?” he said indignantly.

  Then, I heard the bamboo spoon hit the edge of the pot and the bowl. It was probably Ah Yan scooping a bowl of starchy water to satisfy Ah May’s belly.

  “You should go home and say all this to your wife,” Ah Yan said.

  “We’re having a good talk. Why’d you have to bring her up? It’s a mood killer. She’s like a stone, and I can’t squeeze a word out of her all day.”

  The soup in the bowl was hot. Ah May blew on it.

  “Ah Yan, dear, you know what I mean. You and I are the last rotten vegetables at the bottom of the basket, fit only for pigs and dogs.” He let out a long sigh, but it was very thin. You could reach the anxiety underneath it with a gentle touch.

  “We’re more or less in the same boat. We shouldn’t fight.”

  Those words must have hooked Ah Yan’s kind heart. She was silent for a long time before she finally let out a sigh of her own.

  “It’s dark. Go home now. Your mother and wife are waiting for you.” There were still no wrinkles or ripples in her tone, but I could hear a hint of pity.

  “Even pigs and dogs have their own way of living. I’ll move between the top of the mountain and here in the future. I’ll live the life at the top of the mountain when I’m there, but when I’m here, let’s get together. I’ll learn to be more diligent. You just tell me what you want me to do, and I’ll do it. I’ll . . .”

  Before he had finished, I heard a loud noise. It was the bowl falling to the ground and shattering. It seemed the water had spilled and burned Ah May. She cried like a pig being slaughtered.

  “Get out! Get out now, or I’ll scream for help,” Ah Yan snapped.

  Scabby had probably not prepared himself for such a rapid change of mood in Ah Yan. He was stunned for a moment, then chuckled and went over to sweet-talk Ah May.

  “All right, no one is hurting you. Uncle wants to be good to you. Your mother is a stupid woman. She doesn’t know what’s good for her . . .”

  There was a series of noises from the front rooms, like pushing and shoving, tearing, a collision, and a soft object struck by a hard one. All these sounds happened almost simultaneously. My senses went into overdrive, and I couldn’t discern the order of things.

  “No! I don’t want you!”

  This sound rose above it all, and it was like an awl driven into my eardrum. It was Ah May screaming.

  The blood rushed to my head and crashed into my temple like a rock. Unable to bear the pain, I leaped out the window and ran toward the front rooms. I tightened every muscle in my body and curled up like an iron ball, crashing through the cabinet blocking the corridor. The cabinet wasn’t as heavy as I’d thought. It gave way instantly, making me lose my balance and fall through the gap. Everything fell silent. The only sound was the frantic chirping of the startled purple cricket in its cage.

  Sitting up from the floor, I assessed the scene. Scabby was holding Ah May, and Ah Yan stood less than a foot away from him, holding something in her hand. It was very small, and in the flickering light of the kerosene lamp and stove, it emanated ominous coldness. It was a Browning pistol.

  Scabby was like a leech smeared with salt, his whole body going as soft as mud. Ah May broke free from his grip, jumped to the ground, ran toward me, and hugged my leg tightly.

  “Uncle, Uncle! Oh, Uncle . . .”

  She panted and called me over and over, with every sort of tone and expression—surprise, resentment, shock, grievance . . . I didn’t even know what other emotions were contained in the word “uncle.” I could only feel that my heart was broken, and a kind of warmth flooded over me. I held her tightly.

  “Aren’t you a soldier . . . how . . .” Scabby looked at the cabinet I had knocked over. He looked terrified and suspicious.

  Ah Yan kicked a stool toward me and motioned for me to sit.

  “You don’t need to hide anymore. Things have changed in the city, and the world belongs to the Communists now. The Communist Party welcomes deserters like you.”

  I understood immediately. She was giving me the news from Hawk right there in front of Scabby. Scabby’s eyes flinched as he avoided the object in Ah Yan’s hands.

  “You . . . you put that thing away. It’s . . . scary,” he stuttered.

  “Don’t ever let me see you again. My fist won’t be restrained,” I said to Scabby. I tried to keep my voice soft, not wanting to upset Ah May.

  “I just wanted to see how she’s doing. I didn’t mean anything by it,” he said, already halfway out the door.

  “Stay there,” Ah Yan said to him. “I know your wife is four months pregnant. Right now, I am the only midwife for dozens of li.”

  Ah Yan slowly lifted the edge of her shirt and rubbed the gun with it. When she finished polishing the gun, she squinted and aimed it at a bird’s nest outside her window. Then, she turned back and gave Scabby a sidelong look.

  “When your wife is ready to have your baby, you’ll need me. When your little one has a fever or boil, you’ll need me. When you step on a rock and cut a hole in your foot or fall down the mountain and dislocate your arm, you’ll need me too. I hold the lives of your family in my hand. You better behave if you don’t want to cut off your family line,” she said.

  “No . . . no need . . .” Scabby’s mouth opened and closed like a fish’s, but he couldn’t spit the whole sentence out. Scabby stepped on his own shadow as he backed away, not daring to turn around for fear of being shot in the back. It wasn’t until he was out of Ah Yan’s line of sight that I heard the slap of his feet as he sped away.

  It was finally quiet in the house. The fire in the stove gradually dimmed, and the rice sizzled as a crust formed on the bottom of the pot. Ah May had spent the whole day bumping on the back of Ah Yan’s bicycle, and then suffered a shock when she got home. Weary, she fell asleep in my arms, but the hunger continued to gnaw at her belly.

  “Where’d that thing come from?” I asked, nodding at the Browning where it lay on the table.

  “Pastor Billy left it with me,” Ah Yan said.

  “Be careful with it, especially when there’s a child around,” I said.

  “I carry it when I go out. When I’m at home, I keep it somewhere that even a ghost couldn’t find,” she said.

  “You haven’t had any news from Pastor Billy?” I asked cautiously.

  “He’s dead.”

  I was surprised. “How did you hear that?”

  “I didn’t need anyone to tell me. If he were alive, he would’ve contacted me. My mother and father might leave me, but he never would have done so.”

  Her tone was light, but there was a conviction on her face, as if sure that the sun would always stop the rain, no matter how long it took, and daylight would always end the night. In her tone, I heard a single word: trust. It was the feeling that allowed her to j
ump from any precipice, because she believed there was someone to catch her at the bottom of the long fall. I felt a sting in my heart, like a wasp. In the past, Ah Yan had trusted me in that same way. Then, when I watched her fall from the highest point, I let her fall, crushing every bone in her body.

  “Uncle,” Ah May called softly.

  Thinking she was waking, I looked down, but she was still asleep. The space between her eyebrows was knitted into a soft line, and one hand was balled into a fist, holding the corner of an imagined garment. I opened her fist and put my finger in her palm.

  “Everything has changed. There’s peace now. I don’t need to hide. I can stay in Sishiyi Bu,” I said.

  Ah Yan didn’t reply. She pulled three sets of chopsticks from the bamboo holder and set them on the stove.

  “I can set up a school here and teach the children to read. There aren’t any schools here. It’s a dozen li just to reach the missionary school. If the adults can’t get there, their children never learn to read.”

  Ah Yan’s bamboo spoon quivered, and rice spilled onto the stove.

  “I won’t charge tuition. I just need each family to feed me,” I said.

  Ah Yan picked up the spilled rice with her fingers, popping each grain into her mouth.

  “You should be discussing this with your mother, not me,” she said, spacing her words.

  “I don’t intend to discuss it with anyone. I’m just telling you,” I said. “And when our Ah May is older, I’ll teach her to read.”

  As soon as the words were out, I realized I had used a word that surprised even myself: “our.”

  Scabby didn’t return to Sishiyi Bu for a very long time. Even when his wife was ready to have the baby, it was his mother and another woman who brought her to Ah Yan to deliver it. Scabby’s mother said he’d gone to the county seat after someone had come and invited him for singing lessons. She never said whether he was teaching someone to sing or learning to sing. Scabby’s wife had a boy weighing 4.72 jin. Scabby had left instructions saying that if it was a boy, he would be named Jianguo, and if a girl, she would be Jianhua, meaning “building the Chinese people.” It was a popular name at the time, with the new government in place. So the baby was named Yang Jianguo, meaning “nation building.”

  When Yang Jianguo was born, the umbilical cord cut and his body cleaned up, the first person he saw wasn’t his mother. The poor woman was so exhausted, she’d passed out. It also wasn’t his grandmother. She was busy in the kitchen making brown sugar water. Rather, it was Ah May, who was drawn into the room by his cries. She saw that wrinkly face, no bigger than a rice cake, looking like he wanted to smile, or maybe cry. In fact, Yang Jianguo wanted to have a good cry, but he didn’t have the strength. He only half opened his mouth and made a squeaking sound, like a rat whose back leg has been caught. Ah May stuck one of her fingers into his mouth, and Yang Jianguo sucked on that muddy, sticky finger, which perhaps even smelled a little sour, and suddenly calmed down.

  Many years later, when Ah Yan spoke of the day when Yang Jianguo was born, Ah May didn’t remember any of it. But Yang Jianguo claimed, with a mischievous smile, to remember every detail clearly. He said that the minute he opened his eyes, he fell in love with the girl standing in front of him. When he said this, Yang Jianguo was a twenty-nine-year-old research student at the China Central Academy of Fine Arts. He was desperately studying English, in hopes of going to the US to continue his education.

  Scabby’s mother, an honest woman, didn’t know how to express her thanks in words, but as a gift of gratitude to Ah Yan, she left a stack of cloth shoes of different sizes, tied together in a bundle with a straw string. Until she started middle school, Ah May always wore shoes made by Scabby’s mother.

  I next saw—no, actually, heard—Scabby on the second day of the first lunar month the following year. It had snowed the previous day in Sishiyi Bu, and a heavy wind followed close on its heels, lasting throughout the night, covering the snow in a layer of ice so thin even a mouse couldn’t run on it without it creaking. That day, even the chickens refused to go out looking for food, but early that morning, a group of people in gray uniforms carrying bedrolls came into the village. The dogs didn’t know them, so they poked their heads out and barked. Then, a sharp whistle sounded, as if pulling everyone from their beds, and someone began to sing. The song was unfamiliar, both the tune and lyrics. It didn’t sound like a funeral or wedding, but a little like a song welcoming the spring.

  Hey-oh!

  The land reform comrades are here

  On both sides of the mountain

  The plum blossoms open

  And the peasants rejoice

  Welcoming their loved ones

  The dogs quieted down. They recognized the voice. It was singing a new song Scabby had learned.

  Over the next few months, some earth-shattering things happened in Sishiyi Bu. Please don’t take the cliché “earth-shattering” as merely a rhetorical device or figure of speech. Understand it in its most direct, most literal sense here, because these things were in fact connected to the division of the land. To explain simply, people who didn’t own land, such as the families of Scabby and Ah Yan, suddenly acquired land. Those who owned land found that, while they slept, their land had been given to others.

  My family was assigned a scrawny plot of land of a few acres, but I wasn’t really involved, because my mind was completely occupied with plans for the school. After much discussion with several highly respected villager elders, I got permission to open up a school in the front courtyard and hall of the unused temple of the bodhisattva, at the end of the village. Several younger villagers and I moved the clay statues of the bodhisattva to the back courtyard, then cleaned and painted the front hall, turning it into a classroom. I compiled the textbooks myself, using the local method of carving into wax tablets to print material like the leaflets we’d gotten at the police academy. My biggest problem was students. The villagers were all tea farmers, not very cultured or educated. No matter our gender, from the time we could walk, we all worked on the tea plantations. No one wanted their children spending their time learning to write. In their view, there was already a literate person in the village, just as there was a butcher, a fortune-teller, a tailor, and a barber. Since we already had Yang Deshun, it was not only a waste of time to write but also practically stealing his livelihood.

  I went to every household in the village, asking them to send their children. Sometimes I felt as if I were asking for a virgin to be offered to the Dragon King. When my little school finally opened, I had five boys between six and ten years old, and I knew that when it was time to harvest the Qingming tea, this group would shrink further. But I wasn’t discouraged. I knew that words were like magic. As long as the first seed was sown, it would sprout, and more seeds would be generated, eventually growing into a whole forest. All I had to do was plant that first seed. At the time, I didn’t know that the initial flame of “bringing words to the door” that my Chinese teacher had stoked in my heart would burn throughout my life, and even on my deathbed, I’d still be clutching a piece of chalk.

  I was looking forward to the day a girl’s voice would mingle with those from my group of unruly boys. I hoped she would learn to read and write as well as any man and take charge of the family finances when she grew up to be a woman. I also had a private wish that I couldn’t tell anyone then, but I will tell you in a while. In hopes of recruiting my first female student, I brought Ah May to my classroom. I hoped she would be like those magical words and draw other girls into my school with her presence. She was younger than the boys, not at an age when she could sit still and study, so I let her bring a rag doll Ah Yan had made for her and a butterfly cage I’d given to her, then told her to sit in the corner and play. I was, however, in for a big surprise. I found that from the moment I started teaching, she put her toys aside, and her eyes grew as round and deep as bottomless pits. There was a whirlwind in the depths of those pits, greedily sucking into it everyth
ing I said. By the end of the lesson, she was the only child who wasn’t distracted. Her expression called to mind Ah Yan when she was a child.

  To reward her, I bought her a gridded notebook and a box of crayons. When I got to class the next day, I found that a child’s name was written across the front of the pink notebook in blue: Yao Enmei. It was Ah Yan’s handwriting. In my mind, she’d always been Ah May, and I never thought to ask her full name. Whether consciously or not, I was probably avoiding the labyrinth her full name might reveal. When I inadvertently learned her full name that day, I guessed that the word “en,” meaning “grace,” was a reflection of Ah Yan’s love for Pastor Billy. I’d known a few Christians in Nantong, and they often had this character in their names. Ah May’s full name meant “beautiful grace.” It was still several years before I came to know the full meaning of her name.

  When I taught the children to read, I didn’t begin with books of ancient poetry, but with general terms, such as sun, moon, water, fire, mountain, rock, field, and soil. From there, I went on to words related to names, numbers, units, crops, and other practical knowledge. I knew it was unlikely that my students would go to middle school. In fact, only a few would even finish the two years of primary school. I didn’t expect them to become scholars, though there was a slim possibility their children or their children’s children might. I just hoped these students would be able to read contracts, write simple letters, and know how to calculate their daily shopping without being cheated. I had to roll up my sleeves and fight against time, desperately scattering my seeds in the narrow space between one tea season and the next. But I was wrong. One of the seeds I dropped ultimately grew into a huge tree in my own lifetime. That was Ah May. More than a decade later, she became the first person to leave Sishiyi Bu to study at the university.

  After the busy Qingming tea harvest season, the students who had been diverted from my already slim group actually returned, bringing the numbers back to what they had been before. One day, I walked into the classroom to find that I had seven students, and one of the new students was a girl. The girl, seven years old, was the great-granddaughter of the old village scribe, Yang Deshun. He was the only man in Sishiyi Bu who understood the importance of literacy, aside from my poor father. When I first started the school, he’d been a bit nervous, fearing my students might snatch the rice bowl from his family’s hands someday. Over the years, he’d quietly taught his oldest grandson his special skill, reluctant to let the task of writing letters and contracts flow into someone else’s hands. When he saw that my students were returning, he realized it was useless to oppose it. Instead of allowing the children of other families to soak up all the light, then, he decided to send his own family’s little ones to learn to read, so he sent his own great-grandson and great-granddaughter to my school to learn from me. When I pushed the door open and caught sight of the girl in a floral blouse that day, I was almost dizzy with delight. The sign has finally come, I said to myself.