Free Red Azalea by Anchee Min

at the net ceilings. Loneliness penetrated me. I was no different from the cow I had been working with. I told myself to bear with life. Every day we were steamed by the sun, kneeling on the hard land, planting cottonseeds and cutting the reeds. It dulled me. My mind had become rusted. It seemed not to be functioning. It produced no thoughts when the body sweat hard. It floated in whiteness. The brain was shrinking in salt, drying under the sun.
    The cottonseeds we planted climbed out of the soil, like premature creatures with wild reeds all around them. When they first sprouted, they looked like little men with brown caps. They were cute in the early morning, but bynoon they were devastated by the bare sunshine and many of them died in the evening before the fog brought them moisture. When they died or began to die, the brown caps fell on the ground and the little men bent sadly. The ones that survived stretched and grew taller. They struggled on for another day. In a week these caps came off and the little men’s heads split themselves in half. These were the first two leaves of the plants. At Red Fire Farm they never grew to be what was expected of them, because the crazy bully reeds sucked all the water and fertilizer. The reeds spread out their arms and took all the sunshine. The cotton plants would bend to the side; they lived in the shadow of the reeds. Their flowers were pitiful. They looked like pinkish-faced widows. The fruit—the cotton bolls they finally bore—were stiff nuts, thin, crooked, chewed by insects, hiding in the hearts of the plants. It was cotton of the lowest quality. Not even qualified to be rated. If some did qualify, the cotton was rated four. We would pick the bolls and put them into bags and ship them to a paper-making factory instead of a fabric-making factory.
    I felt as if I were one of those stiff nuts. Instead of growing, I was shrinking. I resisted the shrinking. I turned to Orchid. I was thirsty. Orchid was eager to make friends with me. She invited me to sit on her bed. She chatted about patterns for knitting. She talked nonstop. She told me that it was her fourth time knitting the same sweater. She showed me the details of the patterns and said once she finished it, she would take it apart and reknit it, using the same yarn over. She said knitting was her biggest pleasure in life. She must knit. Nothing else interested her.She fixed her eyes on the needles. She did not go beyond that. Her moving fingers reminded me of a cricket chewing grass. I stared at the yarn being eaten, inch by inch. I suggested we talk about something else—for example, opera. She refused to hear me. She kept talking while her hands were busy working on the sweater. The cricket chewed the yarn, inch by inch, hour after hour, day in, day out. I began to talk about the opera. I sang “Let’s Learn from the Green Pine Tree on Top of the Tai Mountain.” Orchid dozed off. She slid down into her net. She snored, loudly. She made me want to murder her. Imagining this was how I would have to live the rest of my life drowned me in madness.
    I saw Yan setting out alone for the fields in the late evenings carrying a jar. One day in heavy fog I decided to follow her. I waited in the sea of reeds. She came, carrying a brown-colored jar. She sought something at the root of the reeds. She was trying to catch poisonous water snakes. She was quick and nimble. She put the snakes in the jar. I followed her. Mile after mile. Led by the myths she radiated. I hid and smelled the reeds, the sea, the fog and the night. I followed her the next day. Miles in the reeds. My sleep got better. I was curious about Yan’s intention, her reason for risking her life to catch the snakes.
    It had poured all day. We were ordered to wait in the room until the sky cleared up. As I sat, I prayed to the god of weather to have the rain last as long as possible. Onlywhen it rained were we allowed to rest. When it did rain, I would be so relieved. I