he is born that third night of storm.
that little creek, descended from ancient lake, remembers its history and rises. at the first wet touch, the sleepers in the valley dream the same dream: fish so thick they block the light. sea grass taller than trees.
at the edge of the valley, on higher ground, ma thrashes on a ruined mattress. for six months ba has praised the baby for its headstrong nature. for what made it a boy. now he curses it. he takes ma’s hand. she stares at him with eyes so shiny with pain, it looks like hate.
ba leaves to fetch the doctor. after a look at ma’s pulsing belly, sam leaves too. saying something about gathering tools from the shed.
“lucy girl,” ma growls when they’re alone. her eyes roll back, teeth a rictus. these are her first words since the jackals left, though her cheek healed so quick it’s as if it were never injured. “talk to me. distract me. anything.” her stomach ripples. “shuo!”
“it was me,” lucy says before she can lose her nerve. “i took gold out of the house—just to show the teacher, for his research—i was going to bring it back—it was just a speck—and, and, i fell and i lost it.”
as she has countless times before, ma holds lucy’s secret in silence.
“i mean,” lucy whispers into the terrible quiet, “i think those men who broke in took it. i saw someone. when i fell. it was all my fault, ma.”
ma starts to laugh. laughter that’s closer kin to rage than joy, laughter like a consuming. lucy thinks again of fire. but what’s being burned?
“bie guan,” ma says. she catches her breath, throat spasming as it did when she first took sick with the baby. “it doesn’t matter, lucy girl. what does it matter who it was? they all hate us. bu neng blame yourself for our bad luck. that’s what passes for justice in this gou shi piece of land.”
ma points to the wrecked door, and past—to the hills with faceless men lurking in every house, from every lit window. ma’s hate is big enough for all of it.
“i’m sorry,” lucy says again.
“hen jiu yi qian, i did worse without intending. when i was young, i thought i knew what was right for everyone. you remind me of myself. bellyful of anger.”
but that’s sam. lucy’s not angry. she’s good.
“gao su wo, lucy girl, my smart one, why didn’t your ba listen to me when the men came? i’ve been trying to figure. zhi yao give those men a few pouches, they would’ve left us alone. i know their kind. lazy. you heard me tell him, dui bu dui?”
ma wrings lucy’s hand. lucy can only say, miserably, “you spoke too quick, ma. i didn’t understand you.”
ma blinks. “you didn’t—understand me? wo de nu er. my own daughter and she can’t understand me.”
another wave of pain curls ma’s body like a fist. when she loosens, her voice is less certain.
“mei wen ti,” ma pants. “not too late to learn. yi ding get you into a proper school. back home.”
“or—ma, what if we went east instead? teacher leigh says there’s better schools there. it’s civilized. and i’ve already learned some of the books . . .”
lightning flashes. once, twice in quick succession. when it passes, lucy blinks dazzled eyes. the room is left dimmer, as ma’s face is dimmer. gone the anger. what remains is the sadness that stalks ma’s beauty. the ache of her.
“it’s got its claws in you,” ma says. her fingers dig into lucy’s hand. “this land’s claimed you and your sister both, shi ma?”
that’s what ba says. the jackals and their law say different. how’s lucy to know when she’s never lived any other place? she can’t answer.
“you’re hurting me, ma.” ma’s hand is smaller than ba’s. delicate when gloved. but its grip is stronger. “you’re hurting me!”
“ni ji de, what you said when we went to visit your teacher?” ma lets go of lucy. she squeezes the pouch inside her dress. though it must be empty now, though the jackals found nothing inside, ma seems to draw from it some comfort. “you wanted to go alone. you said, you didn’t need—” ma’s voice breaks. she brushes lucy’s cheek. a touch so familiar that lucy can, and will for years, call it up by closing her eyes. ma holds lucy a long moment, then lets go. they hear thudding from the toolshed.
“go help sam,” ma says. “li kai wo, nu er.”
those are the last words she speaks to lucy.
—
by the time ba returns without the doctor, ma has lost all words. lucy and sam kneel by the mattress, dampened with sweat and strange water, but ma doesn’t see them.
ba roars. he drags lucy and sam out to the shed and tells them to stay put. they fall asleep entangled for warmth. the wind shrieks through their dreams, and ma—
they wake to an impossible sun.
lucy stands. the roof of the shed is missing. below, the valley has birthed a lake. gone the creek, gone the other miners’ shacks. on the south side only roofs poke up. people huddle atop. their shack, cut off from the rest, pushed to the edge of the valley on undesirable land, is the only place untouched.
and then ba is striding over, reaching down for them. his chest: a red smell. mud, and blood.
“the baby was born dead. i buried him. and your ma—”
lucy opens her mouth. this time ba doesn’t call her da zui. doesn’t tell her to hush. he claps a hand to her lips. both of them go still as the lake water. his calluses scrape her teeth.
“not another word. none of your damn questions. ting wo?”
ba leads them to the edge of the lake. his hands are hard as he pushes them into the water. there is panic on sam’s face, a foamed thrashing. lucy floats easily; she is hollow. she helps sam. ba isn’t watching either of them. he himself stays under the water a long, long time, teaching some kind of lesson. about survival, most like. or fear. or waiting. he won’t ever say.
the ba that surfaces at last, wet sluicing off him, is a different man. lucy won’t quite grasp it for a few weeks more, when the fists come out.
—
what they lose in that three-day storm:
the roof of the shed.
the dresses.
the baby.
the medicines.
the three storybooks.
ba’s laugh.
ba’s hope.
the prospecting tools.
the gold in the house.
the gold in the hills.
all talk of gold.
ma.
and though they don’t know it for years, they lose sam’s girlhood. swept out, scoured clean. disappeared the way ma’s body disappeared. the sam who swims out of the lake doesn’t wring that long hair dry, doesn’t brush it a hundred careful strokes. sam cuts it. mourning, sam says, though sam’s eyes glitter. the washed-clean sun fierce off sam’s shorn head. one brother lost, another gained: that’s the night that sam is born.
