Bena

Bena was born in a Longshan farming village on the flat ground near the Yellow River, where families held fields and storage pits in common and the village headman settled disputes. His family spoke an early Sinitic tongue and kept household rites: a small clay cup for millet beer, a dish for cooked grain, and a place near the packed-earth wall where names of forebears were spoken.

His father, Maruk, worked the millet plots and kept watch on pigs rooting near the yard. His mother, Ena, carried Bena against her hip while she ground grain on a stone slab, then washed it down with river water hauled in a jar. At night she slept close to him on a mat, and when he stirred she fed him without getting fully upright. Maruk rose before light to check the seed stores and to patch a reed fence where dogs pushed through.

Late in the warm season, after a spell of heavy rain, sickness spread among the smallest children. Ena boiled water longer and thinned porridge for herself, then for Bena when he would take it. Bena’s body loosened with diarrhea and he vomited what he swallowed. Maruk brought extra firewood so the hearth stayed hot, and he asked Henga, Ena’s mother, to burn mugwort and speak the household ancestors’ names over the child.

Bena died before the next dawn. Maruk wrapped him in a strip of cloth and carried him beyond the house yard to a small pit at the edge of the settlement. Ena set a pinch of millet and a few drops of beer into the fill, and they pressed the earth flat.