Chapter 3
I took Mama by the hand and led her home.
The blood moon hung overhead. Father had just returned from gambling. One look at her, and he collapsed, wetting his trousers.
He scrabbled backward, snatched up stones, and hurled them at her.
“A-are you human or a ghost? No. No, that’s impossible…”
Mama strode over, seized his collar, and lifted him clean off the ground.
That was strange. Mama had never had enough to eat. She could not possibly have been so strong.
Red moonlight gleamed in her eyes. “Husband, aren’t you pleased to see me alive?”
The commotion woke my younger brother. He stumbled out, rubbing his sleepy eyes.
He was not that little anymore. Two years younger than me, he was seven—old enough to know better.
Yet when he saw Mama, he asked her nothing. He only said, “Mama, I’m hungry.”
Mama dropped Father and walked over to him.
She raised her hand and slapped him across the face. My brother stood frozen for a moment, then burst into tears and flung himself into Father’s arms.
“Father! Father, Mama hit me! Make her stop!”
Mama smoothed her skirt. “So you do remember that you have a father, brat. Why is it always Mama you call when you’re hungry or thirsty?”
She glanced at Father. “Anyone who didn’t know better might think a mother bore and raised her children entirely by herself.”
Father did not dare defend him. He was terrified, shrinking farther and farther away.
Mama smiled coldly and reached for my hand.
An unearthly wind stirred around us as she told Father, “We have one son and one daughter. You take care of one, and I’ll take care of the other. Whether they live or die will depend on how capable each of us is.”
She kept her word.
From that day on, Mama cooked only enough for the two of us. She mended only the holes in my clothes.
We reclaimed a patch of barren ground behind the house and planned to grow autumn vegetables. If we pickled them before winter, we would not have to survive the cold months on thin sweet-potato gruel alone.
Mama knew I worried about Da Ju, so she let me leave food by the dog hole in the back wall.
Ever since she returned, Da Ju had refused to enter our yard. Whenever it finished eating, it would look at me from a distance, fur bristling, then flee.
As for Father, although our family was desperately poor, he did not even know how to chop vegetables or cook a meal.
His own mother had waited on him as a boy. A new wife took over when he grew up.
He was raising my brother to become the same kind of man.
No matter how poor the place, men like them stretched their necks and imagined themselves the glory of the family. Hunger could turn their bodies to limp noodles, but never soften their stiff-necked pride.
Father could not cook, and my brother was a growing child. In less than two days, hunger left them too weak to rise.
Father leaned against the front gate with a dry grass stem between his teeth. He shouted loudly enough for every neighbor to hear.
“Well, here’s something new! A mother stuffing her own face while she starves her husband and son to death!”
Mama steamed a basket of cornmeal buns and handed one to me.
It was so hot that I had only just turned it over in my hands when a starving wretch lunged from the corner and snatched it away.
Mama showed no mercy. She seized my brother by the nape, tore the bun from his hands, and gave it back to me. Then she hooked the crumbs out of his throat as well.
He screamed and scrambled back to Father. When he lifted his head, thin bloody scratches marked the corners of his mouth.
They did not look as if human nails had made them. They looked like the marks of a cat or dog.
Father saw the blood and stormed off to find the sickle.
When he came charging back with it clenched in his fist, I threw myself in front of Mama.
I raised the bun. “You can have it. Just don’t hurt Mama…”
Whenever Father had work to do, he became sickly and weak. Whenever he bullied Mama, he somehow found the strength of an ox.
Mama and I had no power to fight back. We had been beaten too many times. By then, all I knew was how to surrender before the first blow fell.
Villagers crowded outside our open gate to watch the spectacle.
Third Aunt could not stand it. “Put that blade down! Your wife and daughter have worked themselves to the bone for this family. If you hadn’t tried to sell the girl, your wife would never have grown so angry!”
Third Uncle dragged her home and tossed out the same old words everyone always used. “A man is disciplining his own wife and child. What business is it of yours?”
The remark only puffed Father up further. He raised the sickle to strike.
Mama remained perfectly calm.
“Are you going to do what you did that night?” she asked. “Bring it down hard against my neck?”
Father froze. His face and neck flushed crimson as he ordered her to shut up.
The villagers began whispering and pointing. Furious, Father spun around, kicked the gate closed, and dropped the bar into place.
When he turned back, his eyes were venomous.
“You were lucky. Took a blow like that and still came back alive.”
His lips twisted. “If you dare starve my son and me, I’ll cut you down a second time!”