The Garlic Ballads

apologetically, “and I’d surely stop wheezing if I could.
    The girl with long, pretty brows who slept on the bunk above Fourth Aunt grumbled, “It’s criminal the way they make an old woman like her serve time.”
    Wounded by the reminder of injustice, Fourth Aunt felt tears well up in her eyes and spill out. And the more she thought about it, the worse she felt, until an agonizing groan swelled in her throat.
    Her cellmates—about a dozen in all—sat up. The tender-hearted ones threw their coats over their shoulders and came up to see what was wrong, while those not so easily moved just grumbled and cursed. “Knock that off!” Wild Mule demanded. “I knew this would happen. I thought you were supposed to be hard as nails. You got off easy—five years for burning down a government building!”
    Between sobs and wheezes Fourth Aunt moaned, “Girl, I know I’ll die in this camp….”
    A sleepy-eyed guard appeared at the window and rapped on the bars. “What’s going on? Who’s making all that noise in the middle of the night?”
    “Reporting, Officer,” the long-browed girl said. “Number Thirty-eight is sick.”
    “What’s she got?”
    “She cant stop coughing and wheezing.”
    “That’s nothing new. Now knock it off and get some sleep. Calisthenics first thing in the morning, don’t forget.”
    After the guard left, the long-browed girl poured some water into a mug and held it up to Fourth Aunt’s lips, then reached under her pillow for some tablets. “Here, Auntie,” she said, “these are for pain and inflammation. Take a couple, they might just help.”
    “I can’t use up your medicine, dear,” Fourth Aunt demurred.
    “We’re all in the same boat,” the girl replied, “so why worry about niceties like that now?”
    The girl helped Fourth Aunt take the tablets. “Young lady,” a tearful Fourth Aunt said, “how can I repay you for this?”
    “Try her out as a daughter-in-law,” Wild Mule volunteered.
    “With those sons of mine?” Fourth Aunt remarked. “They’re not worthy of somebody like this.”
    “And you, while you’re selling a mule up front, the head of a turtle sneaks up from behind,” the girl snapped.
    Wild Mule sat up angrily and glared at her. “Who are you talking to?”
    “You,” the girl replied defiandy. “I’m calling you a stinking whore who sells her pussy!”
    Mortified, then enraged, Wild Mule picked up a scuffed leather shoe and flung it at her antagonist. “I sell pussy?” she snarled. “And you don’t? Stop acting so high and mighty around me. Nice little virgins don’t wind up in a place like this!”
    The long-browed girl ducked just in time for the shoe to sail by and hit the shrewish woman in bed three, who was serving time for drowning her own child; she picked it up off the floor and hit the long-browed girl on the head.
    All hell broke loose then, with the long-browed girl and Wild Mule clawing and scratching each other, the shrew cursing up a storm, and Fourth Aunt shrieking tearfully. The other prisoners joined in by banging on the bars, howling, or getting in a few cheap shots of their own.
    Two jailers armed with nightsticks burst into the cell and quickly subdued the combatants without worrying about sorting things out first.
    “The next person who makes a sound,” one of them threatened, “goes hungry for three days!”
    The other said, “Numbers Twenty-nine and Forty, outside! You’re coming with us.”
    “I didn’t do anything,” the long-browed girl whined.
    “Shut up,” said the jailer, underscoring her command with a well-placed thump with her nightstick.
    Wild Mule smiled shyly. “Officers, I admit I was wrong, but I promise I won’t do it again. I just want to get some sleep.”
    “Don’t give me that! Now get dressed and come with me.”
    Fourth Aunt, bent at the waist, pleaded for her cellmates. “Don’t blame them, Officers, it’s all my fault. I’m just an old woman who can’t stop wheezing and coughing. The other girls couldn’t take it.”
    “That’s enough,” the jailer said. “Don’t pull that saintly mother act on us!”
    As the jailers led the long-browed girl and Wild Mule out of the cell, Fourth Aunt had to cover her mouth to keep from crying out loud.
    That night she had a succession of nightmares. First she dreamt that Jinju came to see her, but when Fourth Aunt stepped forward, her pregnant daughter’s tongue shot out and her eyes bulged. Fourth Aunt woke with a scream, her