Chapter 3
Chen Qiuhua decided to lose weight.
At first, she simply stopped eating rice with her meals.
Then she stopped eating anything after noon.
She did visibly slim down, but her once healthy, rosy complexion turned sallow.
I did not think that was enough.
So I deliberately goaded her, constantly bringing home posters of popular film stars.
In front of her, I would say, “Look, Auntie! Why are all the actresses so slim these days? Do they spend all day without eating or drinking?”
Chen Qiuhua heard me—and really did stop eating and drinking.
Six months later, she was transformed. Her waist was slender as a willow.
Facing her gaunt, yellow face, I exclaimed with exaggerated wonder, “Auntie, have you secretly been taking an elixir? You’re prettier than a film star!”
She grew so pleased with herself that her dieting became still more extreme, almost a hunger strike.
One evening, she chewed a few leaves of greens and announced she was full.
Fu Rong asked, “Haven’t you been feeling well lately?”
“I’m perfectly well.”
“You’ve lost so much weight, and you hardly eat. Are you ill?”
“You’re the one who’s ill!” Her face darkened. She threw down her chopsticks.
The old Chen Qiuhua would never even have dared raise her voice to Fu Rong.
Father stared at her in disbelief. “What’s got into you?”
“I told you I was full! Why do you keep saying I’m ill?”
Unable to contain herself, Chen Qiuhua began to shout.
Fu Rong was a young master, after all. No woman had ever shouted at him. He raised his hand and slapped her.
She was stunned.
I would have liked to keep watching, but I heard Fu Zhenguo’s car enter the courtyard. I had to hurry onto the stage myself.
“Father, Auntie won’t eat because she’s afraid of putting on weight. Everyone wants to look pretty, don’t they?”
Smiling, I smoothed things over and added a large bowlful of rice to hers, packing it down firmly.
“Auntie, you’re too thin. One proper meal won’t hurt.”
Fu Zhenguo entered the dining room just in time to see how thoughtful and considerate I was.
“Grandpa, you’re home early! I thought you wouldn’t be having dinner with us tonight.”
I welcomed him eagerly to the table.
“My good little Xin. I missed you, so I canceled my engagement and came home to eat with you.”
The family resumed dinner.
Chen Qiuhua hesitated over the rice, then began shoveling it down like a starving dog.
I kept Grandfather roaring with laughter throughout the meal.
Chen Qiuhua seemed rather less comfortable. I could hear her hiding in the lavatory, making herself vomit.
“Father, could Auntie have morning sickness?” I winked mischievously.
“Could she?” Fu Rong rose and went to the bathroom.
He opened the door to find Chen Qiuhua kneeling by the toilet, poking chopsticks down her throat.
Vomit covered the floor.
“Oh!” I clapped a hand dramatically over my mouth.
“You madwoman!”
Fu Rong spat the words in disgust, slammed the door, and left.
Madwoman.
Six years earlier, they had called my mother that.
Now it was Chen Qiuhua’s turn.
I looked at her, bewildered and wretched, and fanned a hand before my nose.
“Disgusting.”
When I was sixteen, new ideas were sweeping the country.
Women could go to university too.
I took Fu Zhenguo’s hand and wheedled:
“Grandpa, the Lin and Tan girls have gone off to school. I want to go too!”
He gazed at me indulgently. The feeling in his eyes was plainly more than a grandfather’s affection for a granddaughter.
“Xin, how can those girls compare with you?”
“Whatever you want to learn, I’ll bring a teacher here to teach you. Won’t that do?”
He meant to keep me penned up, just as he had Mother.
“What can I learn at home? Your teachers only teach all that archaic stuff. Universities teach Western learning now, and the new culture. You couldn’t hire those professors no matter how much you paid!”
Pretending to sulk, I shook his hand off.
“You don’t love me at all.”
“Oh, my darling little tyrant!” His aged hand came around my shoulders. “All right. Anything you want. Anything.”
At that same lovely age of sixteen,
Mother had chosen marriage. I chose education.
I studied medicine.
The knowledge I had gathered from medical books since childhood, combined with the latest Western theories, opened my mind to an entirely new understanding.
Through a professor, I also found an internship at a private clinic.
When I had no classes, I helped out there.
One day, I saw a familiar figure slipping furtively into a consulting room.
I put on a mask and followed. Peering through the crack in the door, I saw that it really was Chen Qiuhua.
“Doctor,” she said, “I haven’t had my monthly courses for a long time.”
He adjusted his glasses. “How long?”
“Six months.”
“Are you pregnant?”
“That’s the trouble…” Embarrassed, she went on, “I don’t seem to be pregnant, but…”
How could she expect her periods to continue when she starved herself to lose weight?
“Lie down and let me examine you.” As he worked, he asked, “You’re married?”
“Yes.”
“Have you ever had a child?”
“No.”
I started.
She had never had a child? Then how had she nursed me?
After Chen Qiuhua left, I asked the doctor to make sure.
“Was that patient pregnant?”
“Pregnant? In her condition, she’ll never conceive.”
What an elaborate fraud.
All this time, I had held back from dealing harshly with her because I felt I owed her for nursing me.
Now it seemed my wet nurse had been some unknown cow or goat.
Chen Qiuhua was nothing at all.