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This isn’t like last year, when a few elders and babies died. A lot of people are dying. Two weeks ago, we received word that my father-in-law died from a fever after working in freezing water on an irrigation project a long distance from here. Brigade Leader Lai doesn’t want anyone to know how many of their neighbors have perished, so we couldn’t tack yellow paper outside the house to announce my father-in-law’s death. We were forbidden to mourn him in public. We weren’t allowed to make offerings to help him on his way to the afterworld. So, buried far from home, he is consigned to becoming a hungry ghost, forever wandering and lost. And we can seek no solace in Buddhism or Daoism for fear of being labeled reactionaries.
Every day Fu-shee, the smaller children, and I fan out in the hills around Green Dragon to strip trees of their bark and leaves, dig up roots, and search for wild grass. We’ll eat anything, and we have. But you can’t eat a leather belt like it’s a crisp cucumber. You soak it, boil it, and chew on it for days. Once we tried eating Kwan Yin soil—named after the Goddess of Mercy. You take dirt, mix in dried grass, boil it, and then eat it. You can imagine how it tasted, and none of us ate very much. That turned out to be a good thing, because a family up the hill ate it three days in a row. The mud hardened in their stomachs and they died painfully.
I know I should be crippled from the horrors I’ve witnessed, but I’m too hungry for emotions. My hunger is all I can feel or think about. It’s like a snake slithering through my brain, down to my stomach, out to my fingers, then down my legs and back up to my brain. It never stops.
I reach the villa and go straight to the kitchen, knowing I’ll find Kumei there. We speak in clipped sentences to save energy.
“Yong died,” she announces.
“What are you going to do?” I ask.
“Hide her. Hope she isn’t found.”
“But the brigade leader lives here.”
“He moved out of the villa a few days ago. He’s gone to the leadership hall.” This is more than I’ve heard Kumei say in ages, and I can see the toll it takes. “He says he needs to protect what’s left of the commune’s grain supply.”
I think he had a different reason. The villa has twenty-nine bedrooms, but the leadership hall gives him total privacy. People will do anything for food. Many women in the commune have walked or crawled to the villa to prostitute themselves to the brigade leader in exchange for a single bun. Now they’ll go to the leadership hall, where Brigade Leader Lai won’t have to worry about anyone watching him. It’s a long way, and I wonder how many women will die either going or coming.
“The villa has lots of places to hide a body,” Kumei continues. “Yong’s too withered to stink. I hope I have the strength to keep moving her and still collect her food ration.”
Many families are doing this, hiding the corpse of mother, father, brother, sister, wife, husband, grandma, or grandpa in the house, so an extra ration can be picked up each day at the canteen.
I bite my lower lip, thinking of the old woman. She suffered so many indignities in the last ten years of her life. I swallow, and then say, “I’ll help move her, if you want.”
Starving is a grim business, but Kumei nods, grateful.
“Ta-ming is very weak,” she informs me. “He hasn’t gotten off his mat in two days.”
“Do you have anything to give him?”
She doesn’t respond. We both know the answer: no. And now that Brigade Leader Lai is gone, she can’t give his scraps to her son.
Kumei takes me to see Yong, who lies curled like a baby. Even in death she wears the white ribbon of denunciation. Kumei and I sit on the edge of the bed. I put a hand on Yong’s ankle, and then tell my two friends about having sex with Tao. Yong doesn’t respond, of course. Kumei tries to look sympathetic, but I know what she’s thinking: I need food.
We’re caught in the jaws of hunger, and our minds are tortured by this thought. And as hungry and weak as we are, we know that tomorrow and for the next six days, until next Sunday, we’ll have to work, pulling plows, digging wells, planting, and weeding from six a.m. until six p.m., followed by a political meeting or struggle session, with just a bowl of mirror soup—so thin you can see your reflection in it—to sustain us.
I catch a glimpse of myself in Yong’s mirror. My body is as thin as a ginseng root. My hands are as bony as dried twigs. My skin looks translucent. My hair hangs lifeless. My lips, which were soft and full, have shrunk to almost nothing. I’ll turn twenty-two on the twentieth of this month, but hunger has turned me into an old woman nearing death. I think of my friends Hazel and Leon back in Chinatown. Hazel’s probably gotten married, and Leon will have graduated from Yale by now. If I’d stayed home … What would be happening? Maybe I’d have a job, my own apartment, my first car…
Later, I take the long, slow walk back up the hill to my house. There’s still no activity on the terrace, but I can see my mother-in-law has put a pot of water on the outdoor stove: breakfast.
Inside, Tao, Fu-shee, Jie Jie, and some of the children are up and dressed. They sit on stools and boxes around the table. They don’t talk or make sounds. They don’t squirm or push each other. Their concentration is totally focused on something in the middle of the table. They’re waiting and watching. Their eyes somehow manage to gleam like those of animals and yet be dull as dirt.
I peer over their shoulders to see what they’re looking at. It’s something small and wrapped in a blanket.
“Samantha!” I scream.
Could she have died in the few minutes I was away? The bundle moves. As I reach forward to pick up my baby, I hear a strange barking sound. My hands draw back. It’s not Sam. I know her cry.
All the while, my husband has not moved. His eyes are like coal—dead and opaque. My body shakes as I reach over one of the children and pick up the bundle. I open the blanket. It’s Sung-ling’s baby, who looks hours, maybe minutes, from death.
“Where is Sam?” I ask.
They look at me, hungry, desperate, as though I’m holding their last meal. I step back in horror. I am holding their last meal! I’ve heard whispers about something the villagers have been doing in Black Bridge Village. They call it I Tzu, Erh Shih—Swap Child, Make Food—when mothers trade infants, let them die, and then feed them to their families.
“Where is Sam?” I shriek in terror, but no one responds.
I hold Sung-ling’s daughter close to my chest and run to her parents’ home. I push through the door and find a scene similar to the one I just left. Party Secretary Feng Jin and Sung-ling—who once were portly but now are wasted and waxy looking—stare at Sam. At least they have the decency to weep.
