Chapter 1
The trouble came at my sister’s coming-of-age feast that year.
Father dug up a jar of Daughter’s Red wine that had been buried beneath a tree for four thousand years.
All four of them drank in a state of absolute bliss and got absolutely plastered.
The people who were supposed to separate forgot to separate. The people who were supposed to pull them apart forgot to pull.
The next morning, Father opened his eyes and rolled over. There beside him was the wife he saw every day, yet felt he had lost for thousands of years.
Just then, Mother’s lashes fluttered, and her lovely eyes opened, tender as water.
Their eyes met. Two terrified screams erupted.
My brother and sister came rushing in, one with his hair loose, the other without her shoes.
They pushed open the door, took one look at the room, and immediately joined the chorus.
A family should always scream together, taking turns.
The noise threatened to lift the roof clean off and shoot straight into the heavens.
At last, all four stared at one another with voices like cracked gongs.
Father moved first. He took out paper, brush, and ink, and wrote with a trembling hand:
“Let’s not panic yet.”
“Perhaps nothing will happen?”
The other three turned to him in unison, nodding with agreement and hope in their eyes.
Until Mother’s belly began to grow, day after day…
My brother said:
“Perhaps… we’ve been eating too well lately, and Mother’s put on weight?”
The other three turned to him in unison, nodding with agreement and hope in their eyes.
Even after all four had spent some time eating vegetarian meals, Mother’s belly kept swelling like an inflated balloon.
Father, Mother, and my brother looked eagerly at my sister, hoping she might come up with another excuse.
She looked from one to the next, then finally flung herself on Mother and burst into tears:
“Mother!!!”
At that, my brother couldn’t hold it in either. He threw himself on Mother too:
“Oh, Mother!!!”
Father wiped his tears as he watched the three of them:
“My darling wife!!!”
Seeing her husband and children weeping so bitterly, Mother held back her own tears and comforted them:
“It’s all right. I’ve lived for well over a hundred thousand years, and I’ve had you, my husband, and little Yi and Er. It’s been a good life. If I must die, so be it.”
“It’s just that… from now on, you’ll have to learn to look after yourselves.”
Father shook his head like a rattle drum:
“If you die, how am I supposed to live? I’ll go with you! I won’t live either!”
My brother nodded too:
“That’s right. If Mother dies, I won’t live either.”
My sister was about to agree when something suddenly occurred to her.
She got up from Mother’s lap and looked around, her gaze finally settling on the crabapple tree in the courtyard.
She gathered all her strength, ready to charge headfirst into it.
The other three stopped her together, demanding to know what she was doing.
Her eyes shone:
“If I die, Mother will be the second most beautiful person in the Four Seas and Eight Realms again! Then she won’t have to fear the new baby’s birth!”
Our parents immediately scolded her for being ridiculous.
But now my brother’s eyes were shining too.
His sister had a point!
So he, too, started trying to smash his head into the crabapple tree.
Our parents had to grab one child apiece and forcibly drag them back inside.
For the next three months, they spent every day either preventing their children from charging into trees or on their way to prevent it.
Finally, Father, exhausted in body and spirit, solemnly plunked a bowl of abortifacient medicine down on the table.
With tears gleaming in his eyes, he looked at Mother:
“Heng, I know you can’t bear it. But for the sake of the three of us, please drink it.”
Then he looked down at her belly and laid a hand over it:
“Child, don’t blame your parents for being cruel. Better that you go alone than all five of us go together.”
Under the guilty, pleading gazes of her husband and children, Mother drank the bowl with tears in her eyes.
…
Nothing happened.