Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Of everyone in the village, I envied Liu Xiaohua most.

Her mother was gentle and would sit in the doorway braiding her hair. Her father earned good money and bought her sweet candy.

Whenever she went out, I hovered nearby, hoping she might play with me.

If we became good friends, she would take me home more often. Uncle Liu would surely keep me for dinner, and I would get to see what having parents looked like.

Unfortunately, Liu Xiaohua did not like me.

She pointed at my trousers in disgust. “There’s even a hole over your bottom! Shame, shame! I’m not playing with someone as filthy as you.”

I was not filthy. My clothes were washed clean. But I could not help the holes. I had only a little money, and it had to buy millet. Cloth was too expensive. I needed to save longer.

Still, my parents did not have to be as wonderful as Uncle Liu and Aunt Tian. Any parents would do.

So I tried the other children.

Dahu sucked on one grimy finger. “It’s not that I don’t want to take you home. My mother said we’re poor. If I bring anyone back for dinner, she’ll take away my cloud cake. I only get it three times a year. I can’t afford to lose any.”

Erya shook her head too. “All the food in my house goes into my brother’s mouth. I don’t even get enough.”

So that was it. Liu Xiaohua could invite people home because her father made money.

Heaven was still good to me.

Liu Xiaohua’s family had no shortage of children, but the widow at the head of the village did.

The summer had been scorching. Her son jumped into the river to cool off, and by the time they fished him out, he was cold for good.

Widow Yu fainted from crying several times. Even her complexion turned gray.

The loose-tongued women whispered among themselves.

“Of course she’s crying herself to death. Her man has barely been gone two years, and now her son is gone too. Without a son, she can’t keep the house or the land. That’s why women should bear more children. If she’d had two, at least one would still be alive.”

I understood. She needed a child.

I needed a mother.

Was that not perfect?

Covering the hole in my trousers with one hand, I copied Liu Xiaohua’s two little braids and stood before Widow Yu.

“Auntie, since your son is gone, can I be your daughter?”

The pale woman looked up at me, her face twisting with fury.

“My son is gone? Even if he is, I don’t need a fatherless, motherless wretch mocking me! My Sheng’er would have supported me one day. What use is a worthless girl like you?”

I did not know why she was angry. People in the village often cursed me for having no parents and no one to teach me manners. I was used to it.

After they finished scolding, though, someone from one house or another would still feed me a bite when I was starving. Widow Yu had fed me before too. Her food was delicious.

The village chief took my hand and led me outside, sighing as he looked down at me.

“You, child. That reckless temper and that mouth without a gate—I wonder who you take after.”

I wondered too.

The villagers said an old man had brought me here. He had already been very old then. He raised me until I was three, when sickness took him.

He had bought the little house where I lived, so the village could not drive me away. I was a girl, and no household wanted to adopt me. That was how I grew up eating from a hundred families’ pots.

I remembered the old man a little. His grave was on the back hill. Every festival, I stole a bit of incense and a candle, then went to kowtow before him.

If only he were still alive.

Then at least I would have had a grandfather.

But it did not matter. Now I had a chance to find myself a mother.

Widow Yu said Sheng’er would have supported her. I could do that too.

I was big now—seven years old. Fewer villagers were willing to keep feeding me. Sometimes, when a landlord from the next village hired laborers, the village chief slipped me into the group.

This time, I transplanted rice seedlings for five days. With twenty copper coins in my hand, I went to find Widow Yu, only to discover that someone else had taken her home.

Liu Erniu opened the door while gnawing a chicken leg.

“Looking for my second aunt? She’s been moved to the shack at the end of the village. My mother says her house and fields belong to us now. She even stewed a chicken to celebrate. Are you hungry, Little Liuer? I’ll sneak you a piece.”

I swallowed. Chicken!

But I was in a hurry to see my future mother. I shook my head and ran for the end of the village.

I knew the shack. It was tiny and broken, and no one had lived there before.

Aunt Tian saw where I was headed and beckoned me over. She handed me a bamboo basket.

“Little Liuer, are you going to see Auntie Yu? Be good and carry this meal to her for me, will you? Ah, what a sin. She was their own brother’s wife. They took her house and fields, yet won’t even send her a few meals.”

From Aunt Tian’s muttering, I learned that when a woman lost both her husband and her son, her property no longer belonged to her. It belonged to the clan and had to pass to her husband’s living relatives.

Widow Yu’s husband had been a Liu, the largest clan in the village—the same Liu as Liu Xiaohua.

All her property had gone to Liu Erniu’s family, so she could only live in the broken shack. From then on, his family merely had to give her a few dozen catties of grain each year and make sure she did not starve.

But Aunt Tian said Widow Yu was lost in grief. Even with grain in the house, she would not cook. If no one brought her food, she might starve herself to death.

Aunt Tian was kind. She had not taken so much as a thread from Widow Yu, yet she still shared a portion of her family’s meal and sent it to the shack.

I carried the basket into the thatched hut, which was even more dilapidated than my own house. Widow Yu lay on a filthy bed without so much as glancing at me.

I took out the soup Aunt Tian had simmered for her. It was made from bones, with beads of oil floating on top. It smelled wonderful.

Widow Yu did not lift her eyes.

She seemed to have gone foolish. When I called, she did not answer. But if I pressed the spoon to her lips enough times, she opened her mouth and swallowed.

A fool was good. A fool was easy to trick.

I darted close to her ear. “Auntie Yu, will you be my mother?”

This time she did not curse me. She simply said nothing.

I asked a second time. Still nothing.

The third time, I grew clever and changed the question.

“Auntie Yu, will you be my mother? If you don’t say anything, I’ll take that as a yes.”