Hunger by Chang Lan Samantha

Author:Chang, Lan Samantha [Chang, Lan Samantha]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780393344776
Goodreads: 16175969
Publisher: W. W. Norton Company
Published: 2000-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

WATER NAMES

SUMMERTIME AT DUSK WE’D GATHER on the back porch, tired and sticky from another day of fierce encoded quarrels, nursing our mosquito bites and frail dignities, sisters in name only. At first we’d pinch and slap each other, fighting for the best—least ragged—folding chair. Then we’d argue over who would sit next to our grandmother. We were so close together on the tiny porch that we often pulled our own hair by mistake. Forbidden to bite, we planted silent toothmarks on each others’ wrists. We ignored the bulk of house behind us, the yard, the fields, the darkening sky. We even forgot about our grandmother. Then suddenly we’d hear her old, dry voice, very close, almost on the backs of our necks.

“Xiushila! Shame on you. Fighting like a bunch of chickens.”

And Ingrid, the oldest, would freeze with her thumb and forefinger right on the back of Lily’s arm. I would slide my hand away from the end of Ingrid’s braid. Ashamed, we would shuffle our feet while Waipuo calmly found her chair.

On some nights she sat with us in silence, the tip of her cigarette glowing red like a distant stoplight. But on some nights she told us stories, “just to keep up your Chinese,” she said, and the red dot flickered and danced, making ghostly shapes as she moved her hands like a magician in the dark.

“In these prairie crickets I often hear the sound of rippling waters, of the Yangtze River,” she said. “Grand-daughters, you are descended on both sides from people of the water country, near the mouth of the great Chang Jiang, as it is called, where the river is so grand and broad that even on clear days you can scarcely see the other side.

“The Chang Jiang runs four thousand miles, originating in the Himalaya mountains where it crashes, flecked with gold dust, down steep cliffs so perilous and remote that few humans have ever seen them. In central China, the river squeezes through deep gorges, then widens in its last thousand miles to the sea. Our ancestors have lived near the mouth of this river, the ever-changing delta, near a city called Nanjing, for more than a thousand years.”

“A thousand years,” murmured Lily, who was only ten. When she was younger she had sometimes burst into nervous crying at the thought of so many years. Her small insistent fingers grabbed my fingers in the dark.

“Through your mother and I you are descended from a line of great men and women. We have survived countless floods and seasons of ill-fortune because we have the spirit of the river in us. Unlike mountains, we cannot be powdered down or broken apart. Instead, we run together, like raindrops. Our strength and spirit wear down mountains into sand. But even our people must respect the water.”

She paused, and a bit of ash glowed briefly as it drifted to the floor.

“When I was young, my own grandmother once told me the story of Wen Zhiqing’s daughter. Twelve hundred years ago the civilized parts of China still lay to the north, and the Yangtze valley lay unspoiled.

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