Chapter 4

We argued for a long time that day.

Li Dazhuang said his father’s death, his family’s debts, the house and car that had used up all his savings—

Every last bit of it was because of me.

If it hadn’t been for me, his family would never have had to work so hard.

I thought it over and over. It didn’t sound right, but I was no good with words and didn’t know what to say.

The next day, I made a decision. I was going back to work.

The baby was a month old now anyway, and they’d upset me so much my milk had dried up.

My mother-in-law called me a cow that gave no milk. But when the baby was first born, I’d had more milk than he could drink.

I went to see the garment factory boss and told her I wanted to come back.

The boss was a woman. First she asked, “Why are you back so soon?” Then she saw my eyes, red from crying, and seemed to understand everything.

She said everything would be as before, and she’d give me two hours of nursing breaks every day too.

I told her I didn’t have any milk. She said nursing breaks were a legal entitlement. It had nothing to do with whether I had milk.

An hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon. Even if I wasn’t nursing, I could go home and see the baby.

My boss was a good person. I was very grateful to her.

But I’d always been an extremely hard worker.

In two hours, I could sew on over a thousand buttons and make a few dozen yuan. I couldn’t bear to give that up.

When I got home after a day’s work, my mother-in-law was already worn out, clutching her lower back and groaning.

I had to start rushing around again: cooking, cleaning the house, washing clothes and bottles, and dealing with cloth diapers.

Yes, my mother-in-law wouldn’t let us use disposable diapers. She said they were a waste of money.

But she wouldn’t wash the cloth ones either.

After a few days of washing them, I couldn’t take it anymore. I tried talking to her nicely.

“Couldn’t we use disposable diapers? I’ll pay for them. Washing cloth diapers every day is exhausting.”

She got angry as soon as she heard that. She scolded me for talking about “your money” and “my money.” Any money earned in this family belonged to her son.

Besides, how tiring could going to work be? I sat there all day. It couldn’t compare to the exhaustion of looking after a baby.

Compared with looking after a baby, going to work was a nice break.

Li Dazhuang, who flopped onto the bed to play games as soon as he’d eaten, agreed with his mother.

I couldn’t win an argument with them. All I could do was hold my baby and seethe.

He was just over a month old and didn’t understand a thing. But when he saw it was me holding him, he’d smile.

That smile melted my heart. It made all the hardship feel like nothing.

Two or three months passed like that. I worked all day, then looked after the baby and did the housework all night. It was getting too much for me.

That day, I asked my boss,

“I really can’t keep going like this. Could I put my morning and afternoon nursing breaks together? I’d like to go home at noon and get a little sleep.”

She agreed at once. She said I should have done it long ago.

It was lunchtime. I thought my mother-in-law and the baby would probably both be asleep.

So I moved quietly too. I didn’t want to disturb them.

Out in the stairwell, before I even opened the door, I heard the baby crying, along with the sound of my mother-in-law slapping him and swearing.

“You little ingrate, what are you crying for? Isn’t it enough that I look after you every day?

“All right, all right, you’re hungry? I’ll make your milk. Happy now?

“You eat so much! Who knows what it all costs? You think it’s easy for my son, working from morning till night?

“All right, all right, stop crying!”

By then I’d opened the door and was standing in the shadows of the entryway. She couldn’t see me.

But I could see her.

I watched her fish a dirty bottle out of the sink where it was soaking, shake it twice, fill it halfway with tap water, add one scoop of formula, give it a shake, and feed it to the baby.

“What are you doing?”

She wasn’t the least bit scared to see me home. She acted as though she was perfectly in the right.

“Feeding the baby! This kid of yours must’ve been a starving ghost in his last life. Eats eight times a day!

“Oh, you mean the bottle? A bit of dirt never hurt anyone. Children can grow up on rice water. A little formula’s plenty!”

I might be from a remote village. I might never have gone to school.

But I knew about hygiene. I knew you had to wash a bottle after using it.

I didn’t go back to work that afternoon. I called my boss and told her to dock my pay.

She told me not to worry and sort out my family problems first.

But these family problems couldn’t be sorted out. They had to be fought out.

Before Li Dazhuang came home, I fought his mother. After he came home, I fought him.

In the end, I held up a kitchen knife and said I’d kill them both. Only then were they frightened.

Push me far enough and I really would kill. It wasn’t as though I’d never done it before.

I’d never been able to get over that pot of meat. When I woke from dreams in the middle of the night, their faces often appeared before my eyes.

My father, my brother, Grandma, and the trafficker.

Li Dazhuang and his mother were scared.

The arrangement we fought our way to was that I’d stay home with the baby, and my mother-in-law would go out to earn money.

After all, she shouted loudly enough and hit hard enough. Anyone could see she had plenty of strength.