Chi S.

 In a Village That No One Has Ever Heard Of

Second Runner-Up in the 2024 American Literary Review fiction contest, Judged by SJ Sindu

I’ve never been sick on a Sunday before. Time to get up, Ma sings. I sleep on a mattress in the living room, and there’s no divide from the kitchen, so I can hear her start to rifle around in the drawers and pad across the wooden floors on her socked feet.

I know what she’s doing. There’s the crunch of her biggest wicker basket on the last uncluttered space of the kitchen counter. The ticking of our gas stove sputtering to life. Soon enough, the sizzle of something falling onto an oiled wok.

My joints ache, fever pounds at my temples hard enough, I think, to crack my skull. But my stomach still manages to growl. No cooking like Ma’s.

I know it’s not for me. I can smell scallions, sesame oil — she’s going to fry up some leftover rice. She’ll make a chicken dish, probably red wine chicken. Some mustard greens. The Sunday usuals. She’ll load those onto covered plates to put into the basket.

Ma, I call from the mattress. I’m sick.

Aw, she says. Sorry. I’ll make you some tea when we get back.

I don’t think I can come with you today, I say.

Yes, you can, she says.

—

Ba always tells me: smell is the most important thing, more than anything your eyes can tell you, when it comes to watching for wildfires.

That is what he goes away for days at a time to do, posted at a watchtower, located somewhere neither me nor Ma really know. More than a half day’s walk through dense redwoods, across boulders, the haunts of the banana slugs. The cabin where Ma and I live is somewhere close to the Oregon border, according to the small map printed inside my geography book and Ba’s help deciphering it.

Every three days, Ba comes back for more supplies to take to the watchtower. He stays the night, talks to me about what I’ve been reading, and begins the walk back to his domain before dawn. I’ve only been up there once. His post makes our cabin look like a mansion — he has room only for a single sleeping pad, one small desk and a radio, all surrounded by clear glass. No curtains, no shades.

Whenever he returns, I pepper him with questions, cover him with my curiosity like tree-bark. How does he stay awake? What does he think about?

The tower is like a tree among the never-ending trees, he says. You can see all sides, like an owl can turn its head in a full circle. You become just another point of the whole forest. You are the forest’s eyes and ears, its mouth that it uses to call for help from the firefighters.

How do they fight fires?

Ba says, Sometimes, they burn the forest before it can burn itself.  

Wouldn’t we just jump into the water? I would ask Ma and Ba together, during the few mealtimes we shared. Wouldn’t the ocean save us, just a fifteen-minute walk away, when the fire comes?

Already a when, not an if.

No, Ma always replies. Never do that.

Now, she’s almost done packing her basket. She says, Hurry up.

Some chill, maybe from the wind outside, has entered my bones and is clattering around, refusing to leave, making me shiver, even though it’s July. I have my two sweaters on, one on top of the other. The sun is just peeking over the horizon. The world is pink and golden like jewelry. I follow Ma who marches with purpose, wicker basket swinging at her side.

Our cabin is in a clearing — we are surrounded by the trees Ba claims to speak for. We pass the vegetable beds, which Ma tends day after day, coaxing food for us out of the ground. Long, narrow elevated wooden beds that are drip-fed water from perforated lines of rubber that snake out of the ground and are covered with white tarp so the moisture doesn’t immediately evaporate in the summer.

We head along a beaten dirt forest trail, the redwoods swallowing us into somewhat cooler darkness. Bird calls. Loam and damp moss underfoot. My or Ma’s footprints from other days still visible, indents in the earth. Early-morning pale light filtering through the thick treetops.

We can hear it before we see it. The crashing, the roaring. The waves are white and foaming like always. I can predict how they’ll look over the lip of the cliffside. When I’m not this sick, I always ask Ma to guess how far down she thinks the drop is, imagine taking our wooden ruler out with me one day and measuring it all the way down.

She always says, Far enough. To her, the waves are as good as dancing white teeth ready to gnash the unlucky and the unfortunate who fall in. She keeps me at her side whenever we are near the water.

Ma has been speaking, is telling me a story. She tells me stories every single day. They’re little pieces that I get from her, that I’ve stitched together over the years. All part of a larger whole. She says she wants me to make sense of the world out there, even though we must stay in the cabin between forest and sea — for Ba’s work, for her duties. These duties.

This is how we must honor your relatives, she tells me, every Sunday when we bring out a full meal and tip it over into the waiting waves below, scraping the plates clean, the food disappearing into the coil and gyre of endless blue, stretching out into the horizon.

Ma has me stay right beside her whenever we even start getting close to the water’s edge. She will never let me swim. She will never let me touch those grasping waters. Her face turns white before she even allows me to think about it. She says I can’t leave the house at night either — at night, the cliffs look like they stretch on and on forever right up until they don’t, and there’s that drop, sooner than you think.

This is what we do, she says, to stay alive. We pay our respects to our ancestors. We respect the sea. We never go inside.

I ask her sometimes if there are other people who do this, too. She thinks for a very long time before giving me an answer. There may be, she says. There may be.

In a village that no one has heard of, she tells me, the sun one year grew furious. It dried out all the fields. There was a famine. Hundreds of families, starving. Parents grew desperate. They had mouths to feed, younger, growing ones, and nothing to feed them with. In desperation, knowing they needed their children to grow up and work the plows, tend the land — they chose their sons. Their sons could eat, their daughters could go hungry.

I shiver, sweat for no reason as we do our weekly ritual. Why is it so important for me to be here, right now, sick as a dog? That was a phrase that I learned from one of the chapter books I had read recently — sick as a dog. I had only faint memories of seeing a dog when I was very little, when we used to live in an actual town, which is around two and a half hours by car from here. We moved when I was seven, we have been here ever since — nearly seven years’ worth of Sundays, of bringing our best food to the waiting sea.

My teeth chatter as a breeze blows past. It should be warm. It should be summer.

Ma is quiet on our way back and she does not let go of my hand.

—

We’re expecting Ba tonight. I don’t know what Ma is going to feed him with. I flop back down onto the mattress, roll so that my blankets cover me again. I close my eyes.

Ba comes back every couple of days covered in sweat from the hike from his nest among the redwoods. When he comes back after Sunday and half of our fridge is missing, he takes it in stride. My hungry girls, he always says, with arms outstretched to us, even though he knows I won’t fold into him just then because he’s gross, but will later, once he has showered. Got any leftovers? he’d always ask.

Ma would say, No, but I’ll whip something up quick. And she would, and it would be delicious, but our groceries would be stretched thin for the next couple of days, until the small grocery truck finds its way to us through the trees from the main road with our rations. The government sends us basic groceries to make Ba’s services easier — we get salt, oil, frozen chicken, potatoes, wilted broccoli, several red apples.

My temperature is climbing. My mother puts a hand to my forehead, rubs my back. Sets down something steaming on the coffee table near me for me to drink. I do not want its heat.

I don’t know how you could have gotten so sick, Ma says. It’s just us out here.

I cough. I sneeze in a way that makes me start shivering all over again. I’m under several layers of blankets, on the futon, and I close my eyes.

She settles down to tell me a story and I drift asleep. I dream, fitfully, about the one she always tells, which she may well be telling my unconscious body now.

In a village that no one has ever heard of, the daughters watched as their sons ate their fill. The sons grew stronger, larger, and the daughters ever weaker. The daughters could only lick spoons after meals were done, clean with their lips the bottom dregs of soup bowls, the after-stains on pots and cauldrons. To tide them over, to quell their bellies’ emptiness, the daughters were fed handfuls of pure salt. And the daughters did not die. Each day they ate their share of salt and raised their palms to ask for more. They ate spoonful after spoonful. The last that the mothers and fathers of the village saw of their daughters was watching them march toward the sea, taking big, bold steps into the surf. They did not turn back once to say goodbye.

—

This is how we have spent our days up until now: Ba leaves us alone for a while, and I do my reading and my math, and Ma works around the house tending to our indifferent garden, which she uses to supplement our provisions. It always withholds the best and biggest, she says. This garden is keeping its own secrets from me, she says.

I dream about the ballooning cabbages, the greenest of the bunch, which burrow deep beneath the earth, ducking just under her questing gloved fingers, just beneath the reach of her trowel, giggling all the while to themselves.

Ba has offered to fish for us a couple times, but Ma has always refused, has said that fish make her sick to eat. Sometimes, he fishes before he comes back to the house from the watchtower, guts, cleans, and cooks it for himself on the stove. I have gotten old enough to recognize a long-running argument when I see one. One time, he offered me pieces when he thought Ma wasn’t looking. They tasted acrid, and I spat them across the room. Ba listens to Ma about most things, even the ocean, though I can tell that this is toleration, this is acceptance without true understanding. I have asked him if he has been inside the sea before, and he has shrugged, has called it a colder experience than one would ever need. He does not share Ma’s alarm.

I am relieved that Ma is letting me rest instead of doing any learning work. I would not be able to hold my head up for long enough to do exercises on Ba’s old laptop.

We have slow satellite internet, and I spend the daytime doing exercises from decade-old CD-ROMs. I beat all the educational games. I can add things in my head quickly, multiply, divide, do fractions and decimals. The interior angles of a triangle sum up to 180, the angles of a quadrilateral to 360, and so on. I prefer reading what little material we have, over and over again, to getting my hands grimy and soily, which I have to do when I am not doing schoolwork. I hate the way the dry dirt sticks as if suddenly slick, to Ma’s face and arms in streaks. Sometimes she makes me carry baskets of what we have for eating and store them properly, either in the cabinets, our old refrigerator, or our root cellar. I don’t mind that.

I know someone is supposed to test me on what I’m learning, but I haven’t taken a test in almost three years. The woman with summer grass-colored hair who visited said she’d found nothing objectionable — those words I remember distinctly, nothing objectionable  — and that she’d be back next year, though she never did return.

A few times, when Ma hasn’t been around, I’ve looked up videos of people swimming, tutorials of how to swim, my pulse quickening. I watch as these pixelated people slice through standing bodies of water, so still and unmoving compared to the rush and churn near us.

I think about swimming as liquid pools at my armpits, as I sweat and moan in the mess of my blankets. Ba will return tonight — I know this. Maybe he will know that there is something deeply wrong within me.

In a village that no one has ever heard of, the sons came of age and the daughters were nowhere to be found. The mothers led the charge, begging and pleading. Tearing their hair, pounding their chests. The elders of the village would have no one to care for them if their sons did not produce children, if their sons had to leave the village in order to find wives. At the highest tide of the full moon, the eldest mother, the mother of all mothers, made a pact with the ocean. Their daughters, their saltwater daughters, would be returned, let loose and set free on the shore before them. In exchange, the ocean would take the next crop of daughters, the newly-born infants themselves, and only relinquish them when the time came. And so on, and so forth. The cycle would never be broken, sure as the tides.

—

Ba has told me, I count the leaves on the trees outside when the days get long. I count every single leaf and I count them again, and again. Imagining them burning, imagining them being sent up to the wind in clouds of black smoke — that’s enough. That keeps me focused. That keeps me awake, and sane.

Hours have slid by and I am staring at the ceiling. Shapes like dancing leaves swim before my eyes, fold themselves into the shadows among the wooden beams. The living room-cum-kitchen is normally cramped at best, and now it is positively suffocating, the walls pressing in on me. The corner where Ma knits us sweaters for the windy coastal chill in the winters appears like it’s right in front of me, and then in a flash, dances backwards. I can tell that Ma is spending more and more time hovering around my bed.

A few weeks ago, I completed a world religions class on a website. I asked Ma afterward about Sundays, our Sundays. How is it that people do other things on Sundays? She looked at me for a long time and said, People just shouldn’t talk about these things. When I get into a mood, she says I am as persistent as water, as recurrent as sweat forming on her brow outside: I have interrupted her stories to ask — if this is a village no one has heard of, how have you heard of it? And she has pretended not to hear me.

Neither she nor Ba is good at answering questions. I imagine that Ba is near me and I ask him, how do you go without sleeping for three days straight? I can barely keep my eyes open right now.

Silly girl, Ba says. I am always asleep and always awake.

Or, at least I think he says. But in another minute, or maybe an hour, he’s gone. I hear rising voices near me.

There’s another question I always want to know from Ma and her stories: What was it like for the girls who grew up in the ocean?

There is no like, she says. There is no living. There was nothing, for a long time, before washing back up.

In a village that no one has ever heard of, she says, daughters of the ocean still wash up onto barren, new land to take a lover. This is their choice to make. Most do. Even if from long, long ago, the daughters will remember, dimly, what it is like to have a flesh body, how to be warm. But in exchange, they must not return to the water, must not retrace their steps — they can leave for dry land and return only once. And the daughters of the ocean go near and far, they find their loves on the dry earth but never forget the sureness of salt. In the night, when a full moon is highest, they find that they ache for the willing permanence. To dissolve in an instant.

—

It is now, wracked with shivers, that I remember an argument I heard them have in the past. Ba had come back from the watchtower. They whispered to each other when they thought I was unhearing, reading.

What are we raising her for, Ba said. What are we doing here? We need to make sure she can survive.

She will regardless, Ma said.

I think I can hear their voices now. I inhale and the pressure in my lungs feels sharp, painful. A specific aroma makes it past my inflamed sinuses. Something salty. Is Ma cooking dinner already?

I feel with my fingers where my sweat has soaked through the layers of blankets around me. I feel the corner of my mouth curve upward into a smile — there is a fire in me. Ba needs to save me, to radio it in, to tell the government, the world.

—

I need to leave the house. The heat has turned to throbbing, an itch unreachable beneath my skin. I sit up and my vision swims. I peel the blankets away from myself, wet layers of outer skin before my own skin, and slowly get to my feet.

I come up to Ma’s side. She has her head bowed over a tall steel soup pot, with a jolly red liquid coming to a bubble.

Hello, sweetness, she says. Are you feeling better?

Not really, I say. I need to take a walk.

That’s not a good idea, she says. The sun has set. It’s too dark outside.

Please, Ma, I say. It’ll be good for me.

I doubt that, she says. Stay inside.

There is no way she will not notice me going outside — the kitchen is just a few strides from our front door.

Please, I say.

I said no, she says. Lie down again and wait for dinner. Ba is showering.

As if on cue, I hear the faint sprinkle of water from behind a closed door subside.

I am seized with the prickle of need, now. All my thoughts are framed by it, like it’s one of Ma’s metal sieves cross-sectioning my thoughts, only letting me dwell on what lies beyond our cabin door, through the walk in the woods, on the other side of the cliff.

I walk toward the door, away from Ma’s turned back. I need to move quickly before Ba emerges and is enlisted to stop me, too.

Fingers encircle my shoulders and roughly draw me back. I said no, Ma says again.

I surge forward, but her hands are on my arms. Stop, Ma says.

I breathe, in, out, and purposefully relax my body.

There you go, she says. It will be ok. We are going to have dinner together.

The soup is bubbling, and on the other side of the stove, she brings her wok back down on open flame, dousing the sides with oil. Again, the sizzle, some chopped garlic and ginger landing on the wok. The heat beneath my skin pulses in time with each of her movements. More oil lands on the wok, sliding down the metal walls in thick globs.

Ba is almost done in the bathroom. My hand darts out before I can even realize what I am doing, wrenches the knob of the stove controlling flame height to the highest it can go. I dash.

I don’t expect her to come after me instead of attending to the stove. That is my mistake. My bare feet patter out onto the wooden steps, land on damp grass. I am hit with an intense cold that makes my teeth chatter again. I pause one second too long. In a flash she is on me, her hands gripping one wrist, then the other. I am telling you, she screams. I am telling you that you are staying here.

From the open cabin door, intense heat in a wave. We jerk our heads back and see that the insides of the wok are on fire, that the fire is climbing higher, beginning to suckle at the walls.

She won’t let go of me. She tries to bring us back inside, but I am digging my heels into the grass. I am trying to sink my teeth into her grip. She is trying to yank my arms behind my own back. 

What is happening? Ba shouts at us. He has put on sweatpants and is standing in the doorway, his hair wild with water. What is going on? he repeats.

Get back inside, my mother screams. It is unnatural in the quiet of our surroundings, the total isolation of the trees as the only other audience to our struggle, which has leapt into existence as fast as a spark can turn dry and deadly in the right conditions.

Ba is no longer facing us. Ba has rushed back into the kitchen, is throwing things around with muffled clatters. I can only see bright, bright light now. Ma is still wrestling with me, and I feel a nausea cresting behind my eyes. I am fighting her so hard I might throw up.

In another second, Ba returns from inside. We have to go, he says. Get in the car.

Ma turns and faces the consequences of my actions. My inability to predict her moves. Fire is roaring up the sides of the cabin walls, smoke billowing out now and making me gag, making Ma cough.

Ba is running and I can no longer see what he is doing. He is trying different things. Eventually I hear the sound of our car starting, hear his running back to us.

Here, he says. Take the keys.

Can’t you see I’m trying to stop her? Ma says. She is struggling with her grasp around my wrist, dragging me away from the flames even as I vainly struggle to get free, to get going, to get walking.

Ba pauses for another second. I see it in him, even amid the strain of my and Ma’s melee. The tearing and rendering of Ba. He is caught between pulls, on one side, the danger he has prepared most of all to fight, face to face with the blight of every single one of his rooted, defenseless redwood children. On the other side, his beloved wife’s great, strange, ineffable fear, which has dogged our movements from town to forest, all the way to the edge of the sea — and he has abided by it, up until now, this shattering.

He shakes his head. Listen, my father says, I have to warn them. I must.

What? My mother cries.

Get her into the car, he says. I’m going to the tower to phone it in.

Before we can react, Ba is already running into the tree-line, sprinting away from us.

Now it’s me and her. My skin is slick from fever sweat and fighting strain — she has not accounted for this. I slip free.

She knows what I want to do. Terror claims her face — she looks once in the direction that Ba went. I can tell that she fears my surrender to the water even more than both of us being charred to death by her keeping us here. She isn’t ready to go back. I bolt, I scramble, she follows. She reaches out to grasp me, to hold me fast, to keep me from the path that I’m on. She chases me, but my legs pump faster.

—

It meets me like my blankets. I dive into that water and hold my eyes open. Light fades, but I no longer feel cold, only the absence of warmth, and the absence of feeling, the all-around presence of the salt and brine like an envelopment, a press evenly distributed against my skin. Slowly, I acclimate. I cannot swim, but I cannot panic, either. It is too calm within. The surface is shallow, the deep is forever. Slowly, I find myself surrounded, find myself part of what is doing the surrounding. My arms, which no longer exist, stretch out toward my cold kin.

Another splash — I can just barely hear Ma returning, too.

—

In a village that no one has ever heard of, the sea curls in rivulets, moves back-and-forth in come-hithers, organizes itself in tides, ever in league with the moon’s own conspiracy. It draws back like curtains, reveals its rocks and other underthings, just for a tantalizing second before it and all the surge and roil return. It being all of them, held fast in shapeless suspension. Its children and its mothers alike might be out there, and it can be patient to have them back — it can wait to reclaim — for them to fall back in — as they do. As they do.

Chi S. is a Lambda Literary fellow and the co-founder of sinθ magazine. Her work can be found in Best Small Fictions 2024, New Ohio Review, AAWW’s the Margins, and more. She was named as a Semifinalist for American Short Fiction’s Halifax Ranch Prize and was shortlisted for CRAFT Literary’s 2023 contest. She is on Instagram at @chi.s.writes.