Fiction: Group 4
squeezing—then to bring it over the table cloth, an ocean of white, and safe into port. One more. Two
more. Three. Mama looked askance at the four yams sitting snug in the porcelain, but said nothing, just
poked at her
pak choi
with her long hair trailing on the table. Grandma picked up a fifth yam. She put it in
her pocket.
Mei spoke up. What are you doing, Grandma?
Eyes like wolves and not humans. When Qin walked home she saw them through the door, huddled and
squatting low around a stone cooking pot, children. The mother slowly stirring with a long wooden spoon,
the room a smear of darkness, smoke snaking out between lid and pot and drifting up and disappearing. The
children moved closer, murmuring, asking why the food was so slow to come. Qin saw their eyes through
the doorframe, they looked like they were going to eat their mother. And there were stories...
Don’t look at that man, Jie said. She moved slowly through the door, the careful tread of the starving,
turning her back on the crouched frame of a man who walked the streets, a man Qin recognised as the head
of a family of five who lived a mile away from them. She poked at the coals of the fire with a metal stick,
watched the thin flame warm the bottom of the pot of thin broth Qin had slaved over for a good hour. You
don’t speak to him and when you see him coming you walk away, do you understand?
Why?
Jie straightened. They say he ate the leg off his wife.
What?
Shi de
. People say they had no food left, everything gone completely. One day they found her one-legged
body rotting in the woods.
As she took her sixth yam Grandma was focused solely on her task, paying no heed to anything else. Mei
had to say it again. What are you doing, Grandma?
What?
Mama frowned and put her chopsticks down. She means the yams, Ma. What on
earth
are you doing?
Grandma blinked. These are good yams.
Well, yes, but what are you doing putting them in your pocket?
I’m bringing these for Lan, said Grandma. She doesn’t think I should call her that but I think I am old
enough. She likes yams...
Mama’s cup clattered to the floor. Grandma went on, dreamy-sounding, We haven’t had yams in so long.
She is hungry, I am saving these yams for Lan.
When the soldiers came raiding again for food and for people it was a cloudless day, the sky cool and grey,
the earth soft and wet under their feet pounding across it. Uncle had been right the first time, if they wanted
to live, they had to go. They ran and ran, lungs on fire, every gulp of breath rattling up a storm inside Qin,
her bag drumming against her back, hitting hard and heavy.
