Chapter 1

Chapter 1

The day after I gave birth, my mother-in-law made me get out of bed and work.

She said women of her generation had all done the same, and told me not to be so delicate.

I wanted to nurse the baby, but my mother-in-law said a wretched little girl only needed feeding once in the morning and once at night. She wouldn’t starve to death.

Later, when the baby developed a high fever, I cried and begged my mother-in-law to send for a doctor.

Not only did she refuse, she scolded me for being unreasonable. She said my daughter and I were both debt collectors reincarnated, and if I wanted money, she had none; if I wanted her life, she had one.

All I could do was soak a cloth in well water and lay it on the baby’s forehead to cool her down. But it was no use.

The baby cried all night, night after night.

My father-in-law and husband had to work during the day and couldn’t bear the disturbance.

The work in the fields couldn’t be neglected for even a single day.

So I could only carry the baby on my back and go outside.

I searched the edges of the fields for herbs and boiled them into water for my daughter to drink.

But my daughter still died. Her breathing stopped, and her tiny body slowly went cold in my arms.

I carried my daughter’s corpse to my mother-in-law. For some reason, I actually saw a faintly relieved expression on her face.

“This was the child’s fate. Stop crying. You and Tiezhu are still young. You’ll be pregnant again soon enough.”

“I’ll boil you a pair of eggs to nourish your body. Tonight, you and Tiezhu work hard and give me and your father a big, fat grandson.”

Eggs…?

But on the day I gave birth to my daughter, I hadn’t gotten even one egg to eat.

Now that my daughter was dead, I finally got to eat eggs.

But the eggs smelled so good, and I was truly hungry.

As I ate the boiled eggs, I thought, If only my daughter could have grown up. Then she would have been able to eat delicious boiled eggs too.

My husband and father-in-law put my daughter’s body into a winnowing basket, found a dirt slope, and buried her there.

My mother-in-law said children who died young couldn’t enter the ancestral graveyard.

I asked, “Then shouldn’t she at least have a name?”

The child had only been born a month ago. She hadn’t even been given a name yet.

My mother-in-law glared at me. “What name does a dead little girl need? The sooner she dies, the sooner she’s reborn!”

My husband glanced at me too, as if I were being troublesome.

So I could only give my daughter a name silently in my heart.

Yue’er. I would call her Yue’er.

That way, whenever I lifted my head, I would be able to see my daughter.

Chapter 2

That night, my husband wanted to make another child with me.

But my daughter had only just died. I had no heart for making children at all.

In fact, I didn’t want any other children for the rest of my life.

When my husband saw that I wasn’t cooperating, he thought I was throwing a tantrum. Furious, he slammed the door and left to find Widow Wang at the entrance of the village.

Widow Wang had two sons to raise. Farming alone couldn’t keep them fed, so the men in the village often went to her house to help.

I heard that before my husband and I were married, he often went to Widow Wang’s house to help too.

I stayed home alone, clutching my daughter’s little blanket, when suddenly I felt a dampness spread across my chest. I was so swollen it hurt unbearably.

The pain made me cry.

When my daughter had been alive, I had never had much milk, and she had cried from hunger.

Now that my daughter was dead, my milk had come in instead.

It came in fierce and plentiful, and my chest hurt as if it were about to burst open.

My mother died early. At fifteen, my father married me into the Zhang family. At sixteen, I gave birth to my daughter. Now, I had only just turned seventeen.

There were many things I didn’t understand, and I didn’t know what to do.

But I didn’t dare go to my mother-in-law. I was afraid she would find me troublesome.

If she found out my husband had gone to Widow Wang again, she would definitely scold me for being useless.

I couldn’t bear the pain, so I could only wrap my clothes tightly around myself and go out, wandering to the field ridge where my daughter was buried.

My daughter had been buried on a little dirt mound beside our family’s farmland.

The sky was filled with stars and the moon.

I loosened my clothes in front of my daughter’s grave, and the milky-white liquid soaked into the soil of her burial mound.

“Be good, Yue’er. Mother is feeding you. Drink, and you won’t be hungry anymore…”

Doing that truly eased the pain.

From then on, I often went to my daughter’s grave at night.

My husband had to do farmwork during the day and help Widow Wang at night. He had no mind to care about me at all.

He even cursed at me. “You look like a corpse all day, always wearing that mourning face. Who are you putting on a show for?”

“If you have time, learn from Widow Wang. She isn’t anything like you!”

Widow Wang was indeed a warm and hospitable person. Whenever any man passed by her door, she would wave her handkerchief.

“Brother, come in and sit for a while!”

I looked at my husband awkwardly.

If I acted like her and invited everyone I saw to come in and sit, he probably wouldn’t be pleased about that either.