The Garlic Ballads

The middle-aged woman rolled over and buried her face in her blanket, crying so bitterly her shoulders heaved. So Fourth Aunt climbed unsteadily off her cot, went over and sat down beside her. “Sister-in-Law,” she said softly, patting her back, “don’t do this to yourself. Try to see things as they are. The world wasn’t made for people like us. We must accept our fate. Some people are born to be ministers and generals, others to be slaves and lackeys, and there’s nothing anybody can do about it. The old man upstairs decided that you and I would share this cell. It’s not so bad. We’ve got a cot and a blanket, and free food. If the window was a little bigger, maybe it wouldn’t be so stuffy … but don’t let it get you down. And if you really can’t go on, then you have to find a way to end it all.”

The sounds of crying intensified, drawing the attention of the guard. “Number Forty-six, stop that crying!” she ordered, banging the bars with her fist. “Did you hear me? I said stop crying!”

The order had the desired effect on the sounds but did nothing to lessen the spasms wracking the poor woman’s body.

Fourth Aunt went back to her own cot, where she removed her shoes and sat with her legs under her. Swarms of flies buzzed around the cell, loud one moment, softer the next. Feeling an itch under her waistband, Fourth Aunt reached down and plucked out something fat and meaty. It was a louse, gray in color and very big. She squeezed it between her thumbnails until it was no more than a crusty shell. Since her home was louse-free, this one must have come from the bedding. She held up her gray blanket and, sure enough, the folds were teeming with the squirming insects. “Sister-in-Law,” she blurted out, “there are lice in our blankets!” Gaining no response, she ignored her cellmate and brought the blanket up close to subject it to a careful search. Soon realizing that squeezing each one between her thumbnails slowed down the process, she began flipping them into her mouth and popping them with her molars — she lacked teeth up front to do the job — then spitting out the shells. They had a light syrupy taste, so addictive that she soon forgot her suffering.

2.

Fourth Aunt listened with alarm to the sound of the middle-aged woman retching. She rubbed her eyes, grown tired from her louse hunt, and wiped the remnants of shells from her lips; those that stuck to the back of her hand she scraped off on the wall.

Her cellmate was doubled over with dry heaves, her mouth spread wide, so she shuffled across the cell and began patting her on the back. After wiping the spitde from the corners of her mouth, the woman lay back wearily and closed her eyes; she was gasping for breath.

“You’re not … you know, are you?” Fourth Aunt asked.

The woman opened her dull, lifeless eyes and tried to focus on Fourth Aunt’s face, not understanding the question.

“I asked if you’re expecting.”

The woman responded by opening her mouth and wailing, “My baby” and “My little Aiguo.”

“Please, Sister-in-Law, stop. No more of that,” Fourth Aunt urged. “Tell me what’s bothering you. Don’t keep it bottied up inside.”

“Auntie … my littie Aiguo is dead I saw it in a dream … head cracked open … blood all over his face … chubby little angel turned into a lifeless bag of bones … like when you were killing those lice…. I held him in my arms, called to him … his rosy cheeks, pretty big eyes … so black you could see yourself in them … flowers all over the riverbank, purple wild eggplants and white wither gourds and bitter fruits the color of egg yolks and pink hibiscus … my Aiguo, a little boy who loved flowers more than girls do, picking those flowers to make a bouquet and stick it under my nose. ‘Smell these, Mommy, aren’t they pretty?’ They’re like perfume,’ I said. He picked a white one and said, ‘Kneel down, Mommy’ I asked him why. He told me just to kneel down. My Aiguo could cry at the drop of a hat, so I knelt down, and he stuck that white flower in my hair. ‘Mommy’s got a flower in her hair!’ I said people are supposed to wear red flowers in their hair — white flowers are unlucky, and you only wear them when someone dies. That scared Aiguo. He started crying. ‘Mommy, I don’t want you to die. I can die, but not you.

By this time the poor woman was sobbing uncontrollably. The cell door opened with a loud clang, and an armed guard stood in the doorway with a slip of paper in his hand. “Number Forty-six, come with us!” he ordered.

The woman stopped crying, although her shoulders continued to heave, and her cheeks were still wet with tears. The guard was flanked by white-uniformed police officers. The one to the left, a man, held a pair of brass handcuffs, like golden bracelets; the other one was a short, broad-beamed woman with a pimply face and a hairy black mole at the corner of her mouth.

“Number Forty-six, come with us!”

The woman slipped her feet into her shoes and shuffled toward the door, where the policeman snapped the golden bracelets onto her wrists. “Let’s go.”