Chapter 3
Mom glanced over. “What’s strange about him?”
“He’s wearing such beautiful clothes, but he doesn’t have any shoes.”
His bare feet had been scraped bloody against the ground.
Mom frowned and kept her eyes on the group.
The middle-aged couple grew nervous. They dragged the boy toward a three-wheeled cart.
Mom seized our hands and charged after them. She had always been the sort who could not ignore someone in trouble.
The couple spoke with foreign accents and claimed the boy was their son. They told Mom to mind her own business.
But when Mom asked him, he cried and shook his head frantically.
A crowd quickly gathered. Mom demanded to see the couple’s identification and said they could settle the matter at the police station.
The couple panicked.
In the confusion, they abandoned the child, climbed onto the cart, and fled.
Mom led our little procession of children toward the police station. We had barely reached the entrance when a plump auntie from our village came hurrying toward us.
“You still have time to meddle in other people’s business? Your husband fell off a roof!”
“Hurry and go see him!”
Mom went white with fear.
She was a substitute teacher who earned almost nothing. Dad provided most of the family’s income. If anything happened to him, none of us knew how we would survive.
My three brothers and I were terrified too.
Mom soon forced herself to calm down. She reported the case to the police, then told my eleven-year-old eldest brother to take the rest of us home while she went to find Dad.
Before leaving, she placed a hand on his shoulder.
“You’re the eldest. Your brothers and sister are counting on you now. I know you can take care of them.”
Snow fell heavily that day.
Eldest Brother led all four of us home, stumbling through drifts with every step. No one could smile.
Snowflakes coated my candied hawthorn. I licked it once.
It tasted bitter.
Eldest Brother cooked congee, but none of us had an appetite.
Only the little mute was ravenous. He drank an enormous bowl.
After dinner, the elderly neighbor came to stay the night with us. She stroked our heads and sighed without end.
The wind moaned outside. I barely slept.
Mom returned at first light, eyes red and face exhausted.
She packed up our egg-laying hen and every strip of cured fish and meat hanging on the wall. Then she put on her rubber boots and went from house to house borrowing money.
Dad was badly hurt. The doctor said we needed ten thousand yuan up front.
At the time, that was an unimaginable fortune.
Dad earned only fifteen yuan for a full day on a construction site.
The contractor claimed Dad had missed a step on the ladder and offered only two hundred yuan toward his treatment.
With Dad unconscious and unable to argue, the man even denied owing him wages. He insisted Dad had already been paid in full.
Mom borrowed from the entire village and gathered only a little over one thousand yuan.
She loaded up everything valuable in the house and rushed toward the county town again.
I wrapped the dozen eggs left in our kitchen and chased her.
“Mom, you can sell these too.”
It was the first time I had called her Mom.
Children notice everything. Heaven alone knew how frightened I was.
Her eyes filled as she stroked my head.
“Keep them for yourselves. Minmin, you will always be our daughter.”
She told Eldest Brother to take good care of me and the little mute. We were not to worry. She would handle Dad’s treatment.
The snow and wind swallowed her figure until I could barely see her.
Our water jar was empty, so Eldest Brother went to fetch water from the pond. I followed him.
We ran into several village women. My birth mother was among them.
One woman sighed when she saw me. If something happened to the Wang family, she said, they might not be able to keep me. Perhaps they would have to send me back.
My birth mother spat.
“She’s bad luck. Big-Head Wang was perfectly fine until she arrived, and then he fell off a roof. If that curse comes back to my house, we won’t take her.”
“She’d only hurt my precious Jinbao.”
“Better if she dies out there.”