Chapter 2
Mom paid fifty yuan. With the village Party secretary and several elders as witnesses, I became her daughter.
As I left, my birth mother sneered, “She’s sickly and brings nothing but bad luck. She’s yours now. Don’t bring her back after you get tired of her.”
“We won’t take her, and we won’t refund the money.”
Mom dressed me in Third Brother’s old clothes and bought me thick socks and shoes.
Every day, I had a steamed egg. At night, she held me as I slept.
She was soft and warm.
When I tried to smother my cough in the middle of the night, she gently patted my back until I could breathe again.
My three brothers were good to me too.
Whatever treats or toys they had, they always let me have some.
Life was so wonderful that I often thought I must be dreaming.
The weather grew colder. On Little New Year, Dad came home.
He worked construction and returned only for holidays and the busiest farm seasons.
He was tall, broad, and stern.
When Mom nudged me toward him, his brows drew tight.
He did not like me.
That night, I shut my eyes and pretended to be asleep.
“We barely get by as it is,” I heard Dad say. “How can we afford another child? You had no business doing this.”
“She hardly eats anything,” Mom said.
“It isn’t about how much she eats. Once we raise her, we’re responsible for the rest of her life. You…”
Mom lowered her voice. “I’m out of money. Do you have any? I need to take her to the hospital tomorrow before that cough ruins her lungs.”
Dad sighed. Then came the rustle of him undressing.
Before dawn the next morning, Mom woke me to go to the hospital.
Back then, rural families had no health insurance. Most people endured illnesses at home, and very few went to hospitals.
I clung desperately to the doorframe.
I did not want them spending money on me. I was terrified they would decide I was a burden and send me back to my birth parents.
After a long standoff, Dad got up, hoisted me onto his back, put on his shoes, and walked out.
Perhaps Heaven took pity on me.
Halfway there, we met an elderly traditional doctor visiting his hometown. After taking my pulse, he said there was no serious disease. Years of deprivation had simply left me weak. With food and care, I would gradually recover.
He wrote a prescription and charged us nothing.
Mom bought the herbs. After three days of medicine, I was much better.
By then, it was the twenty-eighth day of the twelfth lunar month. Every household was preparing for New Year, and the town was holding its final market day.
When Mom learned I had never been to a market, she took me and my three brothers to see the festivities.
Dad did not come. His contractor had called him over to repair a roof.
Dad did not want to work for free, but the contractor still owed him wages. He hoped that after fixing the roof, he could collect the money.
Wage theft against migrant construction workers was common then. A person could labor for an entire year and never receive what he had earned. That was why so few villagers were willing to leave home for construction jobs.
The New Year market was packed shoulder to shoulder.
Mom bought me a skewer of candied hawthorn. My brothers did not get one.
I had never seen anything so lively. Two eyes were not enough to take it all in.
Then I noticed a little boy.
Everyone else on the street looked happy. He alone was pinned between a middle-aged man and woman, eyes brimming with tears as he fought to break free.
His mouth opened wide, but like a fish stranded without water, he made no sound.
I tugged Mom’s sleeve.
“Auntie Liu, look. That boy is acting so strangely.”