chapter 3

Sibao never got her serving of “bamboo-cane stir-fry.”

Once she learned I could speak, our friends laughed at her until she threatened to tell Mother. After running off to complain, however, she vanished somewhere on the mountain like a bandit.

I waited a long time. In the end, I had to carry both tea baskets home by myself. I tripped over my own feet, tumbled down the path, and scraped one side of my face.

Mother was so furious that she stood on the threshing platform and bellowed Sibao’s name toward the rear mountain. Only her own echo answered.

It was nearly dark when Sibao finally came home with her pockets stuffed full of April berries.

Father took one look at the steam practically pouring from Mother’s head. He promptly handed her the bamboo switch and brought over a stool.

Sibao looked at how perfectly they worked together, then at my aggrieved face, and sighed in resignation.

“Now that’s strange. Which one of us is your real daughter?”

But after emptying every berry from her pockets into my hands, she obediently lay facedown across the stool.

As the switch came down, I deliberately rolled up my sleeve and threw my arm in the way.

Fine red welts instantly appeared over bruises that had only just healed.

“Are you stupid? How could you block it with your arm?” Sibao complained as she pounded bleeding-stop herb into a paste beside me. “Don’t do that next time. It doesn’t even hurt when Mother hits my bottom.”

“And you still dare talk?” Mother snapped. “You’re the elder sister now. Start acting like one!”

She took the pulpy green medicine and slapped it over my arm. Coolness and pain tangled together, and I bared my teeth with a hiss. Father hurriedly stuffed a peeled egg into my mouth.

Father and Mother were not surprised that I could speak. When they discovered I could write, they showed no suspicion or fear either.

I answered every question Father asked from the classics, histories, masters, and collected works. They praised me as a child prodigy.

Father paraded me through the village, boasting that I was cleverer than a scholar like him. I showed everyone that I could reckon faster than an abacus. I scratched characters into the dirt with a twig and taught the village children to read. Beneath the old locust tree at the village entrance, I told stories for free to people escaping the summer heat, from Romance of the Three Kingdoms to The Seven Heroes and Five Gallants.

From then on, the village’s favorite children were Qiantao and me.

Qiantao had been especially close to me ever since I praised her. When she saw how poorly Sibao’s clothes fit, she altered her own old garments for me.

More than once, Zhao Xiaoyu sidled up to Sibao and whispered, “Sibao, your sister is some kind of demon.”

“So what?” Sibao would say around a bite of dried sweet potato. “She’s still my sister.”

Only then would I look away and breathe easier.

Autumn passed. Winter came, and heavy snow sealed the mountain.

It was my third winter in this family.

But this winter was different.

Snow fell first, followed by a sudden freezing rain. Ice sheathed the mountain forest, beautiful as a dream and cruel as death.

Sibao and I followed Father up the mountain to inspect the tea fields. A skin of ice covered the ground. When he found flowers blooming beneath the dry grass that protected the tea shrubs, he plucked one and finally relaxed.

Back home, he laid the blossom in Mother’s palm. “Good thing we covered the plants with straw this year. We truly owe Guanqi for this one.”

Since autumn, I had spent whole nights sitting on the threshing platform and watching the stars. On the first morning frost silvered the vegetable leaves, I told Father that freezing rain would come that winter.

Farmers knew a little about reading clouds and predicting weather. The county yamen had once employed men to watch for rain and fair skies.

But Father had never met anyone who could make a firm prediction months in advance.

Still, he believed me.

He took us from house to house to persuade the villagers. Racing winter itself, we covered every tea shrub with dry grass and spread plant ash and withered weeds over the fields.

The tea levy climbed every year. The authorities did not care whether the tea plants froze to death.

The surrounding tea villages suffered badly, just as I had predicted. Father had sent them warnings, but no one took him seriously. We later heard that all the tips of their shrubs had frozen black. Even if the plants survived, there would probably be no harvest the following year.

Our villagers were frightened in hindsight and grateful they had listened to Father.

As New Year approached, they brought many gifts to our house: peanuts, soybeans, dried persimmons, flaky sweets…

Qiantao’s family had the largest tea fields. They sent us two taels of meat.

Father and Mother worked in a cloud of heat in the kitchen while Sibao and I pasted up Spring Festival couplets. The ears on my tiger-head hat bobbed whenever I moved.

Sibao laughed at me. She said I had put on weight and finally looked like a little tiger.

Xiaopang’s mother had given him a baby sister named Little Xiaopang. Mother sewed the baby a tiger-head hat, and I loved it so much that I tried to force it onto my own head. Mother had no choice but to make larger ones for Sibao and me, even stuffing them with duck down she had saved.

Sibao said such hats were for babies and refused to wear hers. It remained beside her bed.

I wore mine everywhere in the village, with Xiaofu trotting behind me. I must have looked magnificent, because everyone praised me when they saw me.

Our family spared no expense that New Year. Preparations began on the twenty-seventh day of the twelfth month. Sweet-potato balls, radish balls, and sticky-rice balls stood ready in ranks.

The New Year’s Eve feast began with a block of tofu.

Mother fried it until both sides gleamed gold. She cut pork into slices as thick as chopsticks and rendered the fat over a low flame. When the edges browned, she added minced garlic, chilies, and a spoonful of soybean paste. Once the pork had taken on the color of the sauce, she tossed in the tofu, stir-fried it all together, added half a bowl of hot water, and covered the wok.

The lid could not contain the fragrance. My mouth watered.

Mother was the finest cook I had ever known. Weeds from the roadside, flowers from the fence, even mulberry leaves became delicacies in her hands.

Whenever her spatula flew, Sibao and I watched in wonder, convinced she must be the Kitchen God’s wife reborn. Sibao even made me help write down all Mother’s recipes. She said that when we had money, we would open a grand restaurant.

Sibao and I took turns running into the kitchen four or five times in a quarter of an hour. One moment we carried water, the next we swept the floor, each of us vying to curry favor with Mother.

Xiaofu had guarded our chickens all year. Before the holiday, two were taken to market and sold, and two were kept for eggs. Father carried the last one to the threshing platform to slaughter for the feast.

Sibao poured hot water over it. Father attacked the feathers with his iron hands, and soon the bird was bare, exposing yellow-white skin.

He hung the naked chicken upside down from the rail by the door and sent Sibao for another basin of water.

The moment she entered the kitchen, she spotted the tofu I had not yet swallowed.

“I want some too!” She threw the basin at me and lunged toward the stove.

I swallowed my tofu in satisfaction and carried hot water out to Father.

The proud red rooster that had strutted around only that morning now hung featherless from the rail. The hard winter wind made its dead body sway.

Its sharp beak split something open in my mind.

I dropped the basin and collapsed onto the ground.

“I won’t go! I won’t go!” I clutched my head and screamed as hot water spread around me.

The cry tore through the bleak winter air and startled the meat straight out of Sibao’s mouth.

The water melted a wide patch of snow, revealing dark brown earth beneath the white.

Sibao rushed over and wrapped me in her arms. “Don’t be afraid. You don’t have to go anywhere. Big Sister is here. I’m right here.”

“Don’t leave me. I won’t go.”

“I won’t leave you. You don’t have to go. You have me, Mother, Father, and Xiaofu.”

The water on the ground froze again as the sky darkened. Firecrackers began exploding around the village. It was time for the New Year’s Eve meal.

I slept until the early hours of New Year’s Day.

Father and Mother hurried to clear the table and set out four red-clay braziers. Charcoal glowed inside them, keeping Mother’s feast warm: a reunion of assorted dumplings, tofu braised with pork, and crisp-fried river fish.

Mother had drenched the chicken that frightened me in soy sauce, removed its head, chopped it into small pieces, and braised it with dried bamboo shoots. It no longer resembled the bird it had been.

I ate with great appetite, as if I had not been the one screaming that afternoon.

Father, Mother, and Sibao finally relaxed. Our family welcomed the new year in perfect harmony.

After I swallowed the last dumpling, Father told us to rest while we kept vigil. He brewed a pot of broad-leaf tea we had made ourselves that spring to settle our heavy meal.

Sibao rubbed her belly. “Mother, if we eat this well for New Year, does that mean there won’t be another one next year?”

I rubbed my own stomach and echoed her. “No New Year next year?”

“Ow!”

Mother rapped each of us on the head.

“Spit that out at once! You’re only allowed to say auspicious things at New Year!”

“The careless words of children don’t count. The careless words of children don’t count,” she chanted.

New Year truly was a time to guard against ill omens.

Had I known, I would have followed Sibao’s question with something lucky.