Chapter 4

Chapter 4

The matchmaker and my aunt, who had rushed over after hearing the news, kept trying to persuade Mom.

“Dazhuang is one of the best catches for miles around.”

“Just give Beibei back to the Wang Family. She’s their blood. You think they won’t raise her?”

“You’re still young. You have to think about yourself too.”

…

I hid behind the door, eavesdropping, and bumped into a chair with a loud bang.

Mom pushed the door open and looked down at tiny, helpless me.

My hands were trembling.

I hoped she could marry a good man and eat meat at every meal.

But I was also afraid she would throw me back to my mean grandmother and irresponsible father.

After a long while, I heard her say softly, “I’m going to send Beibei to college. If no one can accept that condition, then I won’t marry.”

Nothing stayed hidden in the village.

This failed marriage arrangement became the hottest topic after meals and over tea.

“Has Yufen gone crazy? Who would be willing to raise a college student for her?”

“Even if she were their own daughter, they might not let her go to high school and take the college entrance exam.”

“Exactly. And Beibei doesn’t look like she has the makings of a Wenquxing either.”

Grandma got her fill of the spectacle. “The matchmaker praised her a couple of times, and she really thinks she’s in demand. In another two years, she’ll be old and unable to have children. Let’s see who’ll want her then.”

Pathetic, isn’t it?

Back then, in the countryside, a woman’s greatest asset was her ability to bear children.

After that, there were still men who wanted to marry Mom, but the moment they heard her condition-that they had to send me to college-they all backed away.

As time passed, the village gossip changed to, “She’s got such a bad temper that she can’t marry out, so she’s using her daughter as an excuse, isn’t she?”

Grandma was smug. “She definitely still can’t forget Qingshan. Where in this world could she find a man better than our Qingshan?”

Mom turned a deaf ear to all of it. She focused on tutoring me.

As the New Year approached, the sound of firecrackers outside rose and fell without end.

I had no heart for studying and kept making mistakes.

Mom was so angry that she whipped the backs of my hands hard with a bamboo switch.

Those years, I lived under her high-pressure rule.

She was very busy.

Digging bamboo shoots, planting sweet potatoes, planting peanuts, planting corn, picking tea leaves, feeding pigs, feeding chickens, planting rice, harvesting rice, going up the mountain to dig medicinal herbs to sell for money, and on and on.

With no man in the house, she handled everything inside and out.

She rose earlier than the chickens and slept later than the dogs.

My friends all envied me for not having to do much farm work.

But I envied them because they could run around and play as soon as school let out. Unlike me, I always had endless homework.

And if I got it wrong, I would be beaten.

To my young self, college was a castle in the air, vague and unreachable-a mission Mom had forced onto me.

I had only average talent. The only reason my grades stayed in the top three of the class was because she pushed me there.

To force me to study, she did many things that made me uncomfortable.

When children with poor grades came to ask me to play, she would always wear a cold face, or say I wasn’t home.

If I went off to play with my friends before finishing my homework, she would go door to door searching for me and drag me back.

She would even scold them, “Our Beibei is going to get into college someday. Don’t you lead her astray.”

After it happened enough times, everyone began to keep their distance from me.

“Jin Beibei is a future college student. She’s not like us rotten clods of mud.”

“Come on, let’s go. We’re not worthy of playing with her.”