by Dorothy Tse
English Wikipedia page - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Tse
Based on the enormous coop on the street, in February the city will probably increase chickens like cows.
I went with them to the main road, however, bulking up on grains didn’t help. We still weren’t ready for the coop’s gorgeous and colorful chickens, it was bursting with hens, like the women at Fengman district. Among the bamboo coops, they showed their angry faces and spoke in their various mother languages, so they were just as hard to understand as angry chickens squawking at each other. Squatting by the road, we watched the rouge disappear from their faces, exposing their extremely pale skin, and with every dab of a handkerchief the red disappeared from their lips.
Perhaps all the chickens have already been sampled, we wondered but there were policemen standing guard so we crossed to the other side. They had used black tape on quite a few of the street’s chicken coops. The police tightened their overcoats, grumbling that they’ve been standing there all day. The street was blistering cold, “What can they do? It’s not like the prison has any empty cells.” Unless they leave, we won’t find out what those women are doing in the coops.
“They’re mothers who illegally entered the city; you can buy them with money.” commented a turban wearing boy leaning on a railing. He gave each of us a cigarette he stole from his father’s store, then briefly let us see a picture he had hidden on his person. (At the time, we included him because we still didn’t know what was going on with the beautiful big breasted women, who the boy had just called mothers.) That’s why none of us believed him. The next few days we decided to never go back to the tediousness of school, rather we would sell things from home on the street.
The street became increasingly cold. Most of the time we squatted with our heads together. We left our cheeks and the back of our heads out to get some sunlight, deluding ourselves into thinking that there wouldn’t be other more colorful birds, agitating their wings and flying pass the top of our heads. However, when I open my eyes, the street is always crowded with the women’s coops cold and silent as the arctic, like the cold will never pass and become bright again. The policemen sometimes dragged the stubborn women out, because of the overcoats, we can barely hear how they transport them out, the chirping. This time the boy with the decorated turban was expressionless, smoking alone, not even sharing a single puff with us.
We only found out recently, that gradually more strangers treat our goods with disdain, they only stand on the street to pass the time, fidgety and restless around the women in the coops. After all why do crowds gather? We ran across the two overhead walkways, the first time it happened the men cityfolk looked like mice, a queue of people down the street all the way to the seaside– the mothers abandoned the place. Our town was left with only these men. We sadly lost awareness, fell like that, until the women in the coop diminished to a pitiful amount. We couldn’t tell any woman from the others.
When the boy with the turban left, my batch of new and shiny stainless steel school badges and the handkerchiefs, flip-flops, and candles the others had brought … also vanished. We no longer had a spot either since others had flocked around the police and coops. Our only option was to find a way to leave.
When I returned home, the living room was flooded with water and everything was soaked. My younger sister was sitting in a large plastic bathtub with her whole body submerged in the steaming water. Her tiny head the was only thing peeping out.
“I didn’t eat anything tonight; Father took all our pocket money.”
Strangely, I didn’t feel hungry. I deliberately opened my hands, and exaggeratedly commented, “You didn’t see but they have breasts as big as playground balls.”
Unfortunately, my sister did not look remotely interested. Instead she was absorbed in playing with the towel on the water’s surface, forcing the air out. First she would gather it up in a sphere like shape, then she would squash it flat. “It’s hard to believe I will be like them one day, treated as a mother substitute, going to another city to sell myself.”
“Until that time, you will negotiate my selling price.” With that thought my sister smiled, then abruptly rose out of the water.
I felt an indescribably angry urge to push my sister back into the water, causing the bathtub to overflow, the steaming water and bubbles to flow out. If my sister screamed and fought it would be useless, she already understood, Father and the rest of the men have probably already stolen everything from the coops on the street. If we climb onto the bridge again all we would see is the abandoned street, dried up like river water from a riverbed, stretching out until the darkness of the night.