Fiction: Group 4
The Ties That Bind
Chinese International School, Li, Sophie - 15, Fiction: Group 4
A.
ven the way she stood was loud: arms crossed, feet planted firmly on the tiled floor, shoulders set,
stubborn, strong. Mei could see her shadow, short and squat like she was, peeling away from her
feet and folding over the ground. She was fighting the first war: Mama wanted to eat out for dinner
and Grandma refused to go. She said: You didn’t know what restaurants put in the food they served you and
it could be gutter oil or rat meat or only fat bits and even if it was safe to eat it was always unhealthy and it
was much better, always better, to stay put and cook your own dishes. So she would stay at home and cook
her own dinner. The rest of them could go out, she said, but she wouldn’t be leaving.
Mama pushed air through her nose. Chinese characters speared from her lips, bitten out between teeth, and
light hit her diamond earrings, refracted, before bouncing away to cast a million different shades of glowing
white in small, vivisected panels on the living room walls. Again and again with all this trouble...! It’s a good
restaurant, Ma, it’s trustworthy.
Grandma didn’t budge. You can go if you want to, no one’s stopping you.
And Mama returned fire: Are we a family or not! Do you need to be this difficult? This is the
smallest thing
,
Ma, can we
please
—
Round and round they went, horses on an infinite carousel. Mei liked watching carousels go and liked
riding one even more, watching the world around blur into a river of colours, the yellow-white of street
lamps fizzling into each other against a blue-black background. The sky was blue-black, a heavy colour
pressed with grey cloud, brooding thunder clouds, they hulked like great beasts and gargoyles. On nights
like this one Mei knew that the sky was old and old and old, she thought it rather looked like a battle was
being fought, something was coming,
War. The grown-ups said it. Or didn’t say it, were too afraid to say it, but their eyes and anxious
hands were loud. And their worry lines said: we may not survive it.
So.
So Jie started helping in the harvest and Qin minded the house.
She stacked yams and ground corn into bowl-shaped loaves and kept the rooms stocked for the men who
slept in the day and went out crouched low when darkness came. When they returned, dusty and ravenous,
Qin handed out her wares, pressed between sheafs of rice paper, watched them shovel it into their hungry
mouths. She did her part.
So did Mama, who covered her face, rubbed charcoal around her eyes and tied strips of cloth
around the limbs of men who didn't come home quite right, and sometimes her own. Sometimes it
was Jie who did the tying, her hands sure and fast and her mouth a thin white slash slicing across her jaw.
These men had starving eyes and flinty mouths. Qin swept the floor around their feet and flung mud back
E
