Grass Life

The north wind on the twenty-third day of the twelfth lunar month felt like it was packed with knife blades. As it swept over the loess slopes of Liujiatun, it kicked up tiny shards of ice. Chen Alian curled up in a pile of wheat straw in the corner of the mill. The tattered quilt beneath her was soaked through with amniotic fluid and had frozen into a cold, hard lump. Each time a contraction seized her, her nails scraped white streaks into the edge of the millstone. The grains of wheat embedded in the stone from years of use now dug into her bare thighs, scraping them raw in bloody patches.

“Push harder! The head’s almost out!” Auntie Wang crouched between Alian’s spread legs. Her rough fingers, smeared with rapeseed oil, rubbed haphazardly around the birth canal. The kerosene lamp hanging from the beam swayed, casting the pregnant woman’s contorted shadow on the mottled earthen wall like a paper cutout torn to pieces.

Alian bit down on the rag in her mouth and tasted rust. The blood was from yesterday, when she’d been embroidering a wedding dress for the young mistress. Mrs. Liu had complained that the stitches were too loose and struck her with a thimble, knocking out half a tooth. Now the stench of blood mingled with the musty smell of moldy bran in the mill, congealing in her throat into a sticky paste. Suddenly she remembered the twelfth lunar month two years ago, when she had watched a donkey in difficult labor being cut open alive so its foal could be pulled out.

“Ahhh!” Another wave of pain tore through her body