I could smell the charcoal burning in a stove and hear a woman calling out that the rice was cooked. I tried to stretch my arms and move my legs a bit, but the netting was too heavy for me. Overhead the sky brightened and a bit of sun found its way to me. A moment later someone stepped on my leg and I cried out.
A boy shrieked, “Ba Ba! A devil is caught in the netting!”
I was afraid they would go after me with one of their sharp fishermen’s knives, and I called out, “Please, I am only a girl and mean no harm.” The netting was pulled away. I looked up to see a man standing over me. I tried to leap into the water, but the man’s hand was around my arm like an iron bracelet. He lifted me from the small boat onto the fishing boat.
“It is only a girl,” a woman called out. Two boys, one older than me and the other younger, stood beside the woman staring at me.
The man shook me angrily. “What are you doing on our boat?” he demanded.
While the shaking was going on, I could find no words. The woman said, “Let her be.”
The shaking stopped. “I’ve run away,” I said.
“You are a wicked girl,” the man scolded. “You must return to your home at once.”
I thought he was going to pitch me into the water. “No, please. My ma ma and ba ba are dead, and my nai nai is going to sell me to an evil woman.”
The man and the woman looked at me and were silent. Because of Hua, it was a story that had come easily to my head. Though they were for Hua and not me, the tears they saw were real tears, and the fear real fear.
The man said, “We can have nothing to do with such running away. We do not want your misfortune on our boat,” but his voice was not so angry.
“Let me stay. I have four yuan for my passage and I can help to clean the fish.”
“Four yuan buys nothing,” the man said, “only the rice for a day or two.” He looked closely at me. “What do you know of the cleaning of fish?”
“My ye ye was a fisherman.” That was nearly the truth. “Until he died I cleaned hundreds of fish for him.” That was a lie. Ye Ye had cleaned the few fish he had caught, and I had closed my eyes while he had done it.
“Let the child stay for a bit,” the woman said, “until we find out how true her story is.”
The two boys only stared at me as if a demon had become tangled in their nets.
The man let go of my arm. “Take care of her, then. Our nets should have been cast long since.”
He gave me a push toward the woman. It was only a light push. The anger on his face was gone. He was a strong, stocky man, but I guessed that he would not use that strength unfairly.
With the small boat trailing, we drifted down the river. When man was satisfied, he dropped the anchor. The fishing boat remained moored while the two boys, keeping as far from me as they could, joined their father in the small boat where I had hidden. A moment later they were moving down the river, the man standing at the back of the boat working the oars.
The woman asked, “What is your name, girl?”
I had used up all my lies and only the truth came out.
“Chu Ju,” I said.
“Chu Ju,” the woman repeated. “Tidy. Let us hope you live up to your name. I am Yi Yi, and my husband is Wu. The older boy is Bo, and the younger Zhong.” She bent over the charcoal stove. “Come and have a bit of rice. Then you can help me turn over the fish.” She pointed to a bamboo rack where hundreds of small fish were drying. I quickly ate the bowl of rice gruel she handed me and began to turn the fish. It was easily and quickly done.
Yi Yi thrust a bundle of twigs at me. “Give the deck a good scrubbing.”
I filled a pail from the river and began the scrubbing. The woman watched me, pointing out here and there where I missed some scales or bits of fish skin that had become stuck to the boat’s deck. When I finished, the woman looked pleased.
“We are fortunate in having two sons,” she said, “but I would not mind a daughter to keep me company all day on the boat.”
Never before had I heard someone talk of her wish for a daughter. “But you already have two children,” I said. “You could not have another one.”
“No, no,” she said quickly. “It is only something I think of from time to time.” She gathered up some netting and began to mend a tear.
I watched how clever her fingers were at making knots. “Is that something I could learn?” I asked.
She looked at me for a moment. “Why not? I don’t believe you are a stupid girl.”
I felt very stupid indeed, for my fingers were so clumsy that I only made the tears larger.
“No, no. Watch me,” Yi Yi said. There was no impatience in her voice, only a little amusement.
We worked all morning on the knots, stopping at noon for a bit of rice and fish. My knots were never like Yi Yi’s, but in one way or another I mended the tears. Though I had all my worries of leaving Ma Ma and Ba Ba and Hua, and though I did not know at what moment I would be sent from the boat, still, sitting there on the boat was pleasant. A cooling breeze blew down the river and on either bank there was the bright green carpet of new rice shoots. From time to time an excursion boat full of waiguoren would pass. They would wave and call out to us in their strange languages, and we would wave back. When another fishing boat would drift by, Yi Yi would hail the fishermen, asking after the success of their catch.
“Wu and our sons are just around the bend,” she would call to them. “I hope they will be fortunate. Yesterday’s catch was no more than a handful of minnows.”
“Ours was not even that,” the other fishermen would reply, and I saw that there was no truth telling among the fishermen, for our drying rack and the drying racks of the other fishing boats were crowded with fish.
Yi Yi winked at me. “If we boast of our catch, we will have every fishing boat on the river casting their nets where we cast ours. When we pulled them in, our nets would be empty.”
At the end of the day Wu and his sons returned with nets alive with squirming fish. They emptied the nets into the boat. At once everyone went to work. The smaller fish would be cleaned and dried, the larger ones taken whole to the market. I began to grab at the fish as well. Some had their gills caught in the netting and had to be pulled loose in a most cruel way. The fish were slippery in my hands and thrashed about, so for every fish I freed, Bo, who stood beside me, loosened ten. When at last the nets were emptied, the knives came out.
“Here.” Wu thrust a wicked-looking knife at me. “You say you have cleaned fish. Get to work.”
“Like this,” Yi Yi whispered. She picked up an unfortunate fish and slapped it against the deck. The unfortunate fish ceased its flopping and lay silent. With one swipe of her knife the fish was slit open. She reached into the fish’s belly and pulled out such a handful of oozing, bloody innards, I had to look away. It was then tossed to Bo and Zhong, who sent a shower of scales over the boat.
I picked up as small a fish as I could find. As I raised it to slap against the deck, its eye fastened onto me. It is a thing with fish that their eyes do not blink, so their stare is pitiful. It was the fish or me. I closed my own eyes and with all my strength slapped the fish against the deck. When I opened my eyes, the fish’s eye was still fixed on me and its body moved weakly in my hand. Bo, who was standing beside me, stopped what he was doing and, taking the fish, quickly put an end to it. He tossed it back to me, and I went to work with the knife, sawing a ragged cut rather than the swift clean cut Yi Yi had made. I thrust my hand into that part of the fish I had no wish to know and tugged at the soft mess, tossing it, as the others had, into the river, where a hundred screeching gulls made a meal of it.
Not all the fish’s insides ended up in the river. As we worked, the bottom of the boat became slippery with blood and innards. Still we worked on. Hour followed hour until the sun’s blaze cooled and the sun was no more than a gold ball slipping into the river. When the last fish was cleaned and pails of water had been thrown on the deck to clean it, I wat
ched in amazement as Wu, Yi Yi, and the boys shed nearly all their clothes and jumped into the river. I stood there, smelly and as covered with scales as any fish. The next moment I was in the river clinging to the boat. The current and gulls had carried the innards away, and the water was nearly clean. The coolness was lovely on my sore hands and back.
Wu and Yi Yi were soon back in the fishing boat, but Bo and Zhong were like otters, slipping here and there, splashing each other and pushing each other under the water. I could not swim, and the river was large and deep. I clung to the boat trembling for fear they would come after me with their splashings and dunkings, but Yi Yi kept an eye on them, and when they came too close to me she warned them, “Mind you leave Chu Ju alone.” And they did.
The fish meant for market were loaded into buckets filled with water and the buckets fixed on shoulder poles. Wu and the boys went off with them to the village while Yi Yi and I placed the cleaned fish on the drying racks. When Wu and the boys returned, we ate our evening rice and fish. There was talk of the next place for fishing, and soon the boat was loosed from its moorings and once again we drifted downstream. The fields and villages became hills and then mountains sliced into green steps. As my ye ye had said, there was no end to where the river might carry you. When Ye Ye had spoken, he had been eager for such adventure, but I saw only how far from home the river was taking me.
Yi Yi watched me and saw the sadness on my face. “Tell me about your home,” she said, but I only shook my head, for I knew any word I spoke of home would bring enough tears to make my own river.
Wu paid no attention to me. I might have been a small dog underfoot. My lack of skill with the fish had not surprised him, and I was sure he was suspicious of my running away. Had it been up to him, I would have been put ashore long since. It was Yi Yi’s pleadings that kept me on the fishing boat, and I believe it was her wish for a daughter that made her plead that I be allowed to stay.
Bo and Zhong did not know what to do with me. Zhong was slim and quick. He darted here and there, happy to startle me with his sudden appearances. In the river he would explode from the water, laughing to see the surprise on my face. I think he did not know what to make of a girl. Bo was more quiet than his brother, going seriously about his work, more a man in what he did than a boy. He frowned at his brother’s tricks and was kind to me, though I could see that he, like Zhong, thought me a strange creature.
I became quicker with my knife and less merciful with the fish.
“She earns her rice,” Yi Yi said to Wu when he talked again of putting me ashore.
“And if we are questioned as to why there are three children on the boat?” Wu asked.
Yi Yi shrugged. “When have the authorities come onto a poor fishing boat? Each day we are somewhere else. There is no time for suspicion.” Still, when we came into a village, Yi Yi set me a task inside the boat’s hut.
At first the boys kept their distance, watching as I ate and slept, curious as to how I would do those things. When they saw I ate and slept as they did, they became bolder. Bo taught me the difference between red carp and grass carp. He had many questions about school and what was taught there, for neither Bo nor Zhong had been long enough in a village to go to a school. I brought out my pencil box and drew characters for Bo. I taught him simple ones, such as the character for “earth,” which looks like a man standing on the ground, and the character for “claw,” which looks just like the claw of a frog. He asked to see the character for “fish.” “There is the net,” I said, “and there on top is the fish going into it.” For that was what the character for “fish” looked like.
Zhong had no questions about school. When Yi Yi was not looking, he put an eel down the back of my shirt and showed me how a frog would still jump with its head cut off.
The worst of the heat and the rain was over, and along the shore the rice plants with their golden kernels had long since been harvested and a winter crop planted. Each day was like the day before, so the months glided on as silently as the boat drifted along the river. The fishing boat was my house, the river was my world. The current rocked me to sleep, and each day there was something new to see—large clumsy barges with their loads of coal, and the many qing-ting, the flies with their see-through wings and bright red or green bodies that were narrow as a thread. There were clear days when the sun danced on the water and days when curtains of mist closed over the river and everything disappeared.
The boat became as familiar to me as the home I had left. I knew every inch of it. I could tie a proper knot and coil the ropes neatly. I could mend the nets, leaving no holes for small fish to slip through. I could heartlessly slap a fish against the deck, never minding its staring eye, and the insides of the fish were nothing to me.
Wu said little to me, but he was not unkind. The boys treated me as they treated each other and teased me, but they were never rough with me. Once Bo and Zhong found a trout tangled in the net. It was a small, slim fish with pink and green and gold coloring on its side. “Like a rainbow,” Bo said, and looking to be sure their father did not see, the boys gently put the trout over the side of the boat and watched it swim away. Bo and Zhong treated me as gently as they had treated the trout.
It was Yi Yi who kept me on the boat. Once I heard her call to some woman on a nearby boat, “My husband and the boys are fishing. Only my daughter is with me.” How it pleased me to hear the word “daughter.” It was because Yi Yi was so kind to me that I made the mistake. Wu and the boys had left for the day, and Yi Yi and I were mending the nets. The winter crop had been harvested, and Yi Yi and I watched a farmer on the shore readying his fields for the planting of the spring rice.
It was the fifth day of the fourth moon, Tomb Sweeping Day. Hua would be celebrating a birthday. Only a year before, Ma Ma and Ba Ba, along with Nai Nai and me, had climbed the path to the tombs of our ancestors. This year they would have Hua with them as they made the journey.
I was sorry that I had deceived Yi Yi, and did not want a lie between us. Without thinking, I confessed that my ma ma and ba ba still lived. I told Yi Yi all about Hua and why I had run away. I was sure she would understand. Instead she was horrified.
“Chu Ju! How could you do such a thing? Think of your poor ma ma. Every minute in her heart she must be worrying about you, wondering where you are. I cannot believe your ma ma would give away her baby. I would never do such a thing.”
Quickly I said, “It is different for you. You are strong. My ma ma is weak. She is afraid of my nai nai. The evil woman had already been to our house. I could not let them take Hua.”
But Yi Yi would not listen. “Next week we will be near your village again. You must go home to your parents. I will speak to Wu this evening.”
Because of Yi Yi’s kind heart and her longing for a daughter, I had thought it was safe to tell my story, but it was that kindness and that longing that made her feel sorry for Ma Ma and made her doubt my story about Hua, for she would never have sent a child of hers away.
In the evening, as the boat floated down the river, Yi Yi whispered my story to an angry Wu. “I will take her myself to her village,” he said, and I knew I must escape that night.
I looked about to see what countryside I would find myself in. We had drifted beyond the rice paddies and were in green countryside with many trees. The trees stood in rows, so I knew someone had planted them. Perhaps they were fruit trees of some kind and I could work at picking the fruit. Though Yi Yi might wish to send him, I was sure Wu would not lose a day’s fishing by coming after me. He would not know which direction I took, nor would he wish the authorities to ask why a man with two sons was looking for a third child.
It was spring, and the darkness came slowly, yet not too slowly for me, for I did not want to leave the boat that had been my home and where Yi Yi had been like a ma ma and the boys like brothers. Only the night before, when I had exclaimed over fireflies, which I had never seen before, Zhong had waded up a muddy bank to capture some in a glass jar for
me. Now I did not know where I could go or what would happen to me.
At last the night came. Overhead there was a new moon shaped like a fingernail paring. In the light of the kerosene lantern that swung from the roof of the boat, I could see everyone was asleep. I had my bundle of clothes, a few dried fish, and the jar of fireflies. I had begun to climb over the edge of the boat when I saw Zhong sit up and stare at me. Had it been Bo, I would have trusted him to be silent, but Zhong always did the first thing that came into his head. To my amazement, what he did now was to keep very quiet. We looked at each other, and then I dropped over the edge and made my way to shore. I was glad I had taken the jar of fireflies. I imagined Zhong following their flickering as I hurried away into the darkness.
four
One place was as dark as another. After many stumbles my feet discovered the smoothness of a path. Following the path until I believed I was far enough from the river, I huddled down to wait for the morning. All about me was the rustle of leaves twitching in the warm breeze. Comforted by the small lights of my fireflies, I fell asleep.
I was shaken awake by a girl no older than myself. Her face was very round and her eyes very large. Her hair stood up in two large tufts tied with string.
“You must be new,” she said. “If Ji Rong finds you asleep, he will beat you. Where is your shoulder pole?”
“I have no shoulder pole. Who is Ji Rong?” I saw that the baskets on her shoulder pole were heaped with small green leaves. I looked around at the long rows of trees. “Why are you plucking leaves? Do these trees have no fruit?”
The girl stared at me. “How stupid you are. These are mulberry trees. They are not wanted for their fruit.”