Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Elder Brother was a man of few words, spending most of his time working in silence.

When it came to watering my cornfield, the plastic hoses were heavy and I couldn’t drag them. Without saying a word, he would take them from me, heave them over his shoulder, and the water would go rushing into the furrows.

During the autumn harvest, I would stagger under the weight of a half-filled basket of corn. He would emerge from his own field and reach out an arm to snatch it away. “It’s on my way.”

Sometimes he would squat under the old locust tree at the village entrance, listening to people gossip. When he saw me, he would sometimes nod and other times act as if he hadn’t seen me at all.

But I knew it was different.

Whenever those idlers whistled at me or said something crude, as long as Elder Brother was nearby, their voices would automatically drop and their eyes would shift away.

The village aunties would crack sunflower seeds and say to me, “You little thing, why haven’t you figured it out yet? Wang Yang wants to get with you-all men are like that.”

I would nervously clutch my collar tight.

One evening, I went to the village shop to buy soy sauce. On my way back, I passed the threshing floor.

I was afraid of the haystacks there; they felt like ghosts.

Elder Brother stepped out from the shadows.

He had just finished helping someone fix a tractor. His hands were stained with black grease, and a dirty jacket was draped over his shoulder.

He walked closer and closer.

I could smell the sweat and engine oil on him-a strong, unfamiliar scent that belonged to a grown man.

He reached his hand out toward me.

All those filthy images involving my Mother, the looks from those idlers, the teasing words of the village aunties…

“Ah-!!”

I let out a scream.

I hugged my chest tightly. “Don’t-don’t come over here! Don’t touch me! Go away! Please…”

Elder Brother froze in his tracks.

The look in his eyes shifted from stunned to a slow, dazed confusion.

Finally, they dimmed bit by bit, like firewood burned to nothing in a stove, leaving only a few pale grey embers.

He opened his hand. Resting in his palm was a White Rabbit Milk Candy.

“…They gave it to me. I… didn’t eat it. I thought… you might…”

In the distance, Grandma stood on the low slope in front of our house, looking our way.

That was 1997.

My Mother finally ran off with a man who collected mountain goods.

The morning she left, the sun hadn’t fully risen. The sky was a murky grey, like an overturned pickling jar.

She had ironed her semi-new Dacron shirt over and over again, and applied a thick layer of hair oil to her hair.

As she stepped over the threshold, her pace was so fast she nearly stumbled, as if she were afraid someone would chase after her.

I watched my Mother’s frantic, scrambling departure.

Tears came crashing down instantly.

Mother, couldn’t you have looked back at me just once? Just one look.