Spring Branch

Chunzhi was just past nineteen when she was married off to Majiacha. Her mother led her over from the village beyond the mountains and said the Ma family had two brick rooms; she would get by. Chunzhi had barely seen Ma Degui before, only remembered his dark face, calloused hands, and yellow teeth when he smiled. She said nothing, and her mother had nothing more to say. In the mountains, marrying off a daughter had always been this way, like carrying a bundle of firewood from one hill to another; the firewood never speaks for itself.

The first year passed in peace. Ma Degui worked on houses in town, leaving at dawn and sleeping the moment he came home. Chunzhi fed the chickens and sewed soles in the yard, and soon carried Xiaoman in her belly. She thought life would simply go on like this, pots and bowls, bits and pieces; a woman's fate was probably just so.

The trouble began on the winter night Xiaoman was born. The baby cried loudly, and Ma Degui, listening outside the door, was suddenly vexed and kicked over the washtub. Chunzhi held the newborn and dared not make a sound. That was the first time he beat her. He said she did not know how to bear children, and a girl was no reason to wail so. Only then did Chunzhi learn that, in both her mother's home and her husband's, bearing a daughter was a fault, one not even worth crying out loud about.

After that, the days were like a bucket with a hole in the bottom, impossible to plug. When Ma Degui had a little liquor, or lost at cards, or merely found her disagreeable, his hands came up. First open palms, then the broom handle, then the shoe sole. Chunzhi's face had been bruised, her lip split; the worst time, her ribs ached for half a month, and she cooked bent over the stove while sweat ran down her temples and Xiaoman cried on the kang, and she had no strength even to soothe her.

She had thought of running. One night she slipped to the village gate with Xiaoman, only to be dragged back by the hair and pulled through the yard gate. Aunt Zhao across the way heard the commotion and switched off her light. The next day she met Chunzhi and said only this: “When husband and wife fight, they make up in the same bed; just endure it.” Chunzhi lowered her head, saw the blood seeping into her cuff, and dared not answer.

She went home to her mother once. Her mother saw the swelling on her face and sighed: “Which woman does not live like this? Your father raised his hand too. Endure until the child grows up, and it will be better.” Chunzhi sat on the edge of the kang and remembered the muffled sounds from her mother's side of the house when she was small, and suddenly felt that the women of this world are probably all shut in the same dark room, the door locked from within, the key in someone else's hand, and even the light leaking through the windowcrack given only as others please.

Later she went to the town fair and heard talk of the women's director, that there were policies from above and beating one's wife was against the law. Summoning her courage, she took Xiaoman to the village committee. Director Liu was cracking sunflower seeds; she frowned when Chunzhi finished. “Chunzhi, it is not that I will not help. Even an upright official cannot judge a family dispute, and he has not done you any real harm; among village folk, gossip travels. Go home and live well, and provoke him less.” Chunzhi stood there; Xiaoman had fallen asleep in her arms, drool soaking her collar. She wanted to say something, but her throat was stuffed with cotton, and not a word would come.

After that she stopped going to the committee. Once Ma Degui beat her badly, and a neighbor, unable to bear it, quietly called the police. Two men in uniform came and scolded him; Ma Degui bowed his head and said again and again he would never dare again. As the officers left they turned to Chunzhi: “He has admitted his fault, do not press your advantage; harmony at home brings all good things.” Chunzhi nodded and saw them out, then turned to find Ma Degui squatting by the wall smoking, his gaze sliding over her, cold. That night he did not raise his hand, but with her eyes shut Chunzhi heard her own bones ring.

The days went on as before. Xiaoman learned to run and to call her mother, and also to slip behind Chunzhi when her father came through the door. Once, drunk, Ma Degui raised his hand to strike, and Xiaoman threw herself at his legs, crying, father, do not hit mother. Ma Degui froze, let his hand fall, patted his daughter's head, and walked out. Chunzhi held Xiaoman close; the child still trembled. She was suddenly afraid, afraid that this child too would one day be led into that dark room.

Chunzhi stopped crying. Not because she understood, but because there was no longer anywhere to cry. She hid her bruises beneath her hair and wrapped the noise in her heart layer by layer, the way she wrapped the cloth shoes she sewed for Ma Degui year after year. When the villagers saw her again they said Ma Degui had lately come to himself, and Chunzhi had grown quiet, a dutiful wife.

Only at night, when the family slept, did Chunzhi dare sit up in the dark and move her lips toward the moon outside the window. She made no sound. After all these years she could no longer remember the last time she had spoken in a loud voice.

When Xiaoman was eight, a film crew came to town and showed a movie in the threshing ground. Chunzhi took her. On the screen was a woman from elsewhere who had been beaten, had run, and later appeared on television, and someone had helped her. Xiaoman looked up and asked, “Mother, why did she not go back to that home?” Chunzhi paused and said, “She could get out.” Xiaoman asked, “Mother, can you get out too?” Chunzhi did not answer, only tightened her grip on the child's hand. The lights went down, the people on the screen laughed, and Chunzhi's face in the dark showed no expression.

Walking home, they passed the village committee, its sign reading Women's Home pale in the moonlight. Chunzhi did not break her step. She led Xiaoman into the deep night of Majiacha. Wind poured down from the mountain pass and snapped her clothes. Xiaoman shivered and leaned closer. Chunzhi took off her outer jacket and wrapped the child, leaving herself in a single thin layer, yet feeling no cold; after these years she had long grown used to it.

Many years later, Xiaoman reached the age Chunzhi had been. The night in Majiacha was still that dark, and the wind still poured from the same pass. Only this time, when the muffled sounds came from within the house, the light across the way went out again, one more lamp.