Chapter 2

Chapter 2

But it did not matter.

Now I had a chance to find myself a mother.

Widow Yu said her Sheng’er would have supported her. I could support her 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.”