The Incarnations by Susan Barker Page A

herbal soups for her. The Sorceress Wu narrows her eyes at you, her hook-ended nose flaring in suspicion when you are near.
    ‘Bitter Root! Bitter Root!’
    The sorceress is calling, so you fling your fishing pole down by the edge of the river Mudwash and hurry past the Runts (who are squealing, ‘Worms! Worms! Worms!’ and chasing each other with dangling earthworms). You run up the hill to the mud-walled dwelling, eager to please the sorceress, who lately snarls at the mere sight of you.
    ‘Here I am,’ you announce.
    The sorceress is pacing the trampled-earth floor. She looks up and trepidation flashes in her eyes, before the return of her habitual cast-iron will.
    ‘Ma?’ you ask. ‘What do you want?’
    ‘Take off your clothes,’ the sorceress commands.
    You obey. You stand there naked. A fire blazes in the hearth and the brass pot bubbles and boils. She tells you to kneel. She binds your wrists and ankles with rope. She plunges the blade of the snake-eviscerating knife into the boiling pot. Suddenly, you understand what she intends to do. Weeping, you beg for mercy.
    ‘I’ll never touch Brother Coming again! I swear on the graves of our ancestors!’
    Tied up like a pig for a spit-roast, you wriggle to the door. The sorceress grabs your hair and presses the knife-edge to your throat. ‘Don’t you dare! Or I’ll slit you from ear to ear.’
    You kneel by a chopping board. She grabs your penis and testicles and roughly pulls, threatening to kill you if you don’t hold still. Her other hand holds the knife, raising it high. She is shaking with nerves, but her teeth are gritted with intent as the blade swoops down. You see the blood splatter her pale cheeks before you feel the pain. When the pain comes you scream. You scream with such violence it curdles the air. The sorceress is trembling and bathed in perspiration. The castration is harder than expected. Like beheading a chicken whose stubborn head won’t detach. She hacks and hacks, and at last she pulls her hand away in exultation and relief. The knife clatters to the floor and she opens her blood-soaked fist. And what you glimpse before you lose consciousness will haunt you until the day you die. Your blood-glistening organs in the palm of your mother’s hand. Her smile of triumph at having severed you, at the age of thirteen, from the ranks of men.
    Months later a man with a donkey comes from the Kill the Barbarians Village to collect you. You are wearing a hemp tunic and carrying a bundle of clothes. Hanging from the belt of your tunic, in a leather pouch, is a silver trinket box with your embalmed genitals inside. The sorceress hands the donkey man a string of copper cash and issues her instructions.
    ‘All the way to the city of Chang’an?’ asks the donkey man.
    ‘All the way to the gates of the Imperial Palace,’ says the Sorceress Wu.
    ‘And then what?’
    ‘And then you say, “This is Eunuch Wu. A gift to the Emperor.”’
    Foot in stirrup, you clamber up on the donkey, grimacing as you straddle the saddle (though the stump has healed, when pressured it hurts). The sorceress turns her back on you and returns to the mud-walled dwelling. The donkey man grasps the reins of the donkey bridle and leads you away.
II
    The very day you leave for Chang’an, water gushes out from between Brother Coming’s legs. Her mouth rounds into a cavern of pain as she keels over, wracked by the spasms within. ‘It’s time,’ observes the sorceress, and sends the Runts to fetch pails of water from the Kill the Barbarians Village well. A short while later, I am born. A baby girl with a vigorous cry in her lungs and no deformities visible to the eye.
    As a child, I have no name. The sorceress calls me ‘Girl’ or ‘She-brat’. And later, when I am of crawling age, the Runts call me ‘Doggy’. They pat my head and throw sticks for me to fetch and carry back to them in my mouth. When I am of walking and talking age, the Runts have grown up and gone