When the adults finished work for the day and came back in from the fields, Bunny was still not home. Grandma Er Chiang was asleep at the foot of a wall. Enbo shook her awake:
"The child, where's the child?"
Father Enbo, Mother Ler Kymcog, and great uncle Jamcan Gonbo left the courtyard at speed and hurried towards the village square. Ler Kymcog called Bunny's name, but her voice made it sound like she was calling the name of a ghost rather than a living person, as if Bunny had already died. The search team was soon bolstered by Bunny's cousins. In the middle of it all, Sangdan emerged from her house with Bunny in her arms, smiling happily at the family that was now running towards her across the square.
"You grown-ups can just leave him at my house when you go out to work, if you like. The little darling is so much fun!" she began to enthuse.
No one replied. Two hands reached out and snatched the boy from her.
Having recovered their precious, sickly little child, Enbo's assembled family members disbanded. Cooking smoke diffused through the falling dusk and hung low over the village, while Sangdan stood alone in the square. A gentle breeze came to life, blowing some scattered dust particles from one side of the square to the other, and then back again.
The sunset clouds were especially dazzling that night.
Sangdan walked back inside, still smiling.
"Gela, bring Bunny to our house a little earlier tomorrow" , she said in a happy sing-song voice.
Gela didn't reply.
Sangdan took the flat-cakes out of the oven and poured a bowl of tea:
"Good boy, time to eat."
"Leave me alone Ah-ma, I don't want to eat" , Gela replied.
Sangdan tucked in, eating with far more relish than usual. While she ate she kept up a constant monologue, mostly about how much fun 'that little darling' was. Gela told himself not to hate his stupid mother. But the truth was, Sangdan's only child truly did hate how ditzy she was and her total inability to understand how other people think or to judge the way people reacted to her. But Gela was all too aware of how tightly he was bound to her—without her, he couldn't survive. It had been this way since the day he was born. That she was looked down upon and even despised by everyone in the village was just something that he had to deal with as best he could. So, whenever he felt he could no longer bear her, all he said was:
"Ah-ma, eat up your food. Don't talk about other people's business anymore."
As he spoke his familiar line once more, Sangdan's cheeks were bulging with a big piece of flat-cake that she was chewing on. Once she heard what he said, she kicked her chewing into high speed, finishing by stretching out her neck, eyes bulging, and swallowing the flat-cake at one gulp. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but belched instead. Loudly. A wave of warm, sour air blasted Gela's face. He almost threw up then and there. Although he was born into poverty and squalor, he was extremely sensitive to all kinds of the odours and smells that populated Ji village. His rare sensitivity made it very difficult for him to stomach many of these smells, including some that could be found on the person of his mother—so ghastly did he find some of her odours, he would often have to run off to find a corner out of sight where he would vomit loudly and expressively.
Bunny's grandmother had borne witness to some of Gela's bizarre vomiting fits. She would tell people with a sigh that a poor little darling like him wasn't fated to live long in this world. She also said that if he'd been born somewhere else he surely would have been a prodigy, "but, you know what kind of place Ji village is … it's a stinking swamp, and who ever saw a tree grow straight and tall in a swamp? No one, that's who. All that grows in the swamp is crooked, little trees, and you can never tell when they stop growing and start rotting. Don't you think? That's exactly how Ji village is today."
This was always the end of the exchange, because there was no one in the village who would dare to continue such a conversation.
The way Bunny's grandma talked was different to how the people in the workers' teams talked, and different again to how the people in the newspapers and radio talked. When she talked, her words drew sighs from those in village society with greater authority and so-called 'life experience'than her. They would shake their heads and say amongst themselves:
"We can't have addled old biddies like her going around babbling bogus proverbs like that—it's inauspicious."
Sangdan and Gela were never really in the know about who was saying what in the currents of mainstream village society. They simply lived, nothing more. Often, Gela would feel disgust and a violent repugnance that couldn't be reduced or broken into components—it just was. In his head, he fought the irreverent thoughts about his mother that plagued him, resolved that at least in the house he would have something that somewhat resembled a real mother, albeit a half-baked one.
With no warning, she burped again, and then one more time, neglecting to turn away from Gela. Two waves of steamy, rancid gas assaulted his senses, and nausea gripped him by the stomach. Fortunately, there would be no more burps after this one. The piece of flat-cake finally settled down into the bottom of her stomach, and when she opened he mouth next it was to speak, her face beaming pure, choir-girl innocence:
"That little darling really is just sooo much fun!"
With nothing else to say, Gela just cried out, helplessly: "Ah-ma, I don't want to talk. I feel bad. I'm going to be sick."
This breathy scatter-brain of a woman rolled her eyes, and said:
"So go and be sick then, you'll feel better!"