Chapter 3

The girls really did go to school.

All except Wang Er’s three daughters.

“I’ve got a son now. I don’t care if I never have another child. Why not keep the girls home to work? In a few years I’ll marry them off and get some bride-price money.”

He said this everywhere he went. He didn’t care even when I heard him.

I didn’t mind either. I simply stopped touching bellies.

The Zhang family came to me several times, bringing one gift after another. But they couldn’t persuade me to go.

“I said I wouldn’t touch any pregnant women’s bellies while there were still girls who weren’t going to school.”

As the due date drew closer, the Zhangs grew desperate.

Four or five men from their clan cornered Wang Er against a wall and forced him to take his three daughters to enroll.

Shangxi was a large village, with several hundred households. Babies were born almost every month.

From then on, everyone kept an eye on the few people who wouldn’t obey my rules, making sure they couldn’t get up to anything behind my back.

It was the same in the surrounding villages and towns.

As for me, I happily went about touching bellies.

Business grew and grew. People came to find me in a steady stream, not just from nearby villages, but from the town and even the county seat.

Granny and I lived better and better, but she grew more and more troubled.

“Child, you mustn’t take things too far.”

Her voice was soft and heavy, almost pleading.

The corner of my mouth moved so slightly she could hardly have noticed. “They took things too far first.”

When she saw she couldn’t persuade me, she said no more.

But afterward she went visiting every day, choosing households with pregnant women.

I knew what she was doing.

But I wasn’t worried in the least.

“You just can’t bear that I’m about to have a son! You were never blessed with one, and you’re jealous!”

“You old hag! You can’t stand to see anyone happy. Why should I have a girl? Everyone else gets sons, and I’m supposed to have a girl? You’re trying to spite me!”

“Let whoever wants a girl have one. I’m having a son!”

…

Day after day, Granny endured their vicious abuse. Still, she kept going.

I tried to tell her, “They won’t shed a tear until they see the coffin.”

But before anyone else shed tears, Granny did.

“This can’t go on. What will happen if all the babies are boys?”

Several years passed like this.

During those years, the vast majority of babies born in the surrounding villages and towns were boys.

Even the county as a whole began to show an extraordinary imbalance between boys and girls.

Girls became rare creatures, few and far between.

Some people began to realize something was wrong.

“They’re all strapping boys. How will they find wives? Perhaps we should stop going to the blessed girl and have a few daughters!”

“Have one yourself, then. Your wife’s pregnant, isn’t she? Easy to talk when you’re not the one taking the beating!”

That silenced the man who had spoken first.

Of course. All these people wanted sons for themselves and daughters for everyone else.

Then their own sons could keep having sons, generation after generation.

They would never willingly take the other side of that bargain.

So life went on in the same way.

A few more years passed.

Everywhere you looked, men.

Fine, mighty men, the sort who could lasso a horse.

This made life very difficult for parents trying to find wives for their sons.

Education had broadened the girls’ horizons. Most refused ever to return to that place that devoured people.

As a result, a search of an entire village might turn up only one or two girls of marriageable age.

Matchmakers wore out their doorsteps. The line of prospective suitors stretched to the next village, where it tangled with the line waiting to meet another girl.

Too many suitors, too few brides. Naturally, bride prices soared.

A girl’s family might ask for two hundred thousand yuan, and someone with deep pockets would offer three hundred thousand.

But there was always someone richer.

And so the competition in the marriage market grew fiercer.

Families with sons were miserable.

Why have sons?

In their words, to carry on the family line, of course!

But now they couldn’t even get a wife. How were they supposed to carry on the line?

Reproduce all by themselves?

Unfortunately, they weren’t equipped for that!

The area around Shangxi was poor to begin with. Now poverty piled upon poverty.

Even selling every last possession might not get them so much as a touch of a girl’s hair.

Worse still, girls these days liked educated young men.

Even if you could afford a bride price of hundreds of thousands, she might not want you.

Families with sons worried because their sons couldn’t find wives.

Families with daughters worried because they had too many choices.

Of course, none of them worried as much as Wang Er’s family.

His doorstep had long since been trampled to pieces.

All three of his daughters were old enough to marry.

Wang Er, who had planned to make a tidy profit from them, now had troubles he could scarcely put into words.

“A few days of school, a few characters learned, and every one of them forgets who she is.”

“They went away to study, and not one will come back! You could give me a mountain of gold, and I still couldn’t bring them home!”

The matchmaker grew impatient. “You’ve got their household registration book. What are you afraid of? They can’t just fly away!”

At that, Wang Er looked ready to cry.

“A couple of years ago, they said there’d be a unified redevelopment plan. I was afraid the girls would get a share of Youfu’s land, so I had them transfer their household registrations to their schools!”

“Now the redevelopment’s fallen through, the girls have all run off, and Youfu’s old enough to need a wife…”

“If you ask me, it’s all that blessed girl’s fault!”

The matchmaker spat the words out. “Without her, we’d at least have a few girls around here. We wouldn’t be able to count all the girls in several villages on one hand!”

Wang Er agreed.

Gradually, everyone began to share that opinion.

Granny was getting too old to look after her chickens, ducks, and geese.

Her seven daughters argued until they were red in the face over whose home she should go to first.

Of course, homes with sons were far from peaceful either.

How did that nursery rhyme go?

A little boy sits by the gate, crying and shouting for a wife!

There were plenty of those.

But as people cursed and complained, their curses always turned toward me.

“It’s all that blessed girl’s fault. I say she’s a demon!”

Granny was taken away.

To thank me for keeping her company all those years, and out of pity because I had no home, her seven daughters let me stay in the old house for the time being.

Before she left, Granny held my hand for a long time. In the end, she said only, “Child, show mercy where you can. Granny’s begging you.”