chapter 1

My name is Dongyu, and I was born in Pingshan Village on the northeastern frontier.

The day I was born should have brought heavy snow. Instead, as if Heaven itself had gone awry, it rained.

Grandmother said a wretched little girl like me could be no good if even Heaven disliked me. Better to throw me onto the back mountain and offer me to the mountain spirits or wild beasts before it was too late. If the creatures went hungry, they might come down and ravage the livestock.

My father crouched by the wall and took two hard pulls on his pipe. Then he picked me up and blew a mouthful of smoke into my face. I coughed and burst into tears. That quiet, honest man defied his parents for the first time in his life and insisted on keeping me.

My aunt told me all this years later. I could not remember it myself, because when I was three, the silent father who had protected and treasured me died.

A year after that, the man my mother had loved before her marriage passed the provincial examination and returned for her. Mother looked at me playing in the mud outside the door, gathered me into her arms, kissed me fiercely, and left me a pair of silver earrings.

I never saw that silent, melancholy woman, so much like my father, again.

Grandmother snatched away the earrings. For several days she sat on the stone block outside our door and cursed both my mother and me. But the chores inside and outside the house still had to be done, so soon she was cursing me and the little yellow dog in the courtyard while spinning from task to task like a top.

My aunt could not bear watching it. She took me along when she followed Grandfather into the fields, and the little yellow dog followed me. I went from toddling unsteadily to cutting grass and chopping firewood, and now and then I even caught two fish from the river to bring home.

Grandmother still swore at me. “You cursed girl! Mind the river ghost doesn’t drag you away!”

Then at supper she would fill my bowl with fish soup and put the best piece of belly meat in it.

My gift for farming began to awaken. It felt as though I were a child of the soil.

And I was.

Grandfather taught me to transplant rice seedlings, sow seed, build trellises, and pinch the tips from young plants. I learned everything after seeing it once. He marveled at me, then sighed because I was a girl.

“Why do you sigh because I’m a girl?” I asked. “Is it because I’ll marry out and you’ll have raised me for nothing?”

He handed me a fistful of wild blueberries from the slope. “Marry this, marry that. What shameless nonsense has your aunt been teaching you?”

I stuffed the berries into my mouth, wiped the sweat from my brow, and went on digging holes for the corn. “I won’t marry out. When I grow up, I’ll bring a husband into our family. We’ll look after you and Grandma and Auntie together.”

Grandfather smiled at me. “Silly girl. A capable woman only gets saddled with work that never ends. I want you to marry and live an easy life.”

A breeze wandered through that stifling summer day and carried away the words on my lips.

I am the easy life. Wherever I am, life will be good.

The little garden I tended groaned beneath melons and vegetables, and my rabbits produced litter after litter. When Auntie and Grandmother worked in the kitchen, Grandmother would curse me as a glutton reborn while teaching me how to turn the plainest, scantiest food into something special.

By the time I was nine, she barely cursed me anymore. I never knew whether she had grown too old to keep it up or had finally accepted me.

Either way, I was happy. At the next market, I planned to trade the newborn rabbits for chicks. Chickens would lay eggs; eggs would hatch chickens. We could eat them and sell them. Life at home could only get better.

I never did get those chicks.

At the end of summer, the Hailang River flooded and the whole village suffered. Grandmother finally stopped cursing me altogether. She caught a chill in the flood, and the first autumn wind left her gravely ill.

Auntie wanted to sell herself to buy medicine, but the broker said she was too old to go to a respectable household. The only place that would take her was a brothel, as a second-rate courtesan.

Grandfather coughed as he stroked the little yellow dog’s head. I knew what they were planning. Even the moldy coarse cornmeal was gone. They meant to kill the dog for food.

I squatted beside him and tugged at Grandfather’s trouser leg.

“Sell me. If you sell me, you’ll have money for Grandmother’s medicine. I eat a lot too, so there’ll be more grain after I’m gone. Just don’t eat Little Yellow, all right?”

The adults fell silent.

I picked up the shoulder pole lying by the crumbling courtyard wall and hoisted two full buckets of water. Then I tucked the dog under one arm, grabbed a large rock with the other hand, ran to the village entrance and back, and told the broker between gasps, “Look how strong I am! I’m no worse than a boy. I can do anything, and I’m clever and honest.”

The children who had already been bought all looked miserable. Seeing me so eager to be sold, they stared with equal parts resentment and disgust.

But my enthusiastic sales pitch made Uncle Ying, the buyer, laugh. “How can an honest person be clever? You look bright enough, but there’s a fool’s heart in that belly.”

For the sake of our being from the same region, he paid seven taels of silver for me—two more than Qiuhua from the west end of the village had fetched.

Auntie clung to me and sobbed. I knelt by Grandmother’s ragged sleeping mat and kowtowed. Her eyes were yellow and clouded. A lifetime of hardship had crawled across her body until she looked like the dying old elm at the village entrance.

She seemed to understand what had happened and suddenly seized me.

“You… you cursed girl. Once you go, don’t come back. The sight… the sight of you brings nothing but misfortune.”

Strangely, I did not resent her. I rubbed at eyes that might or might not have held tears and clasped her hand.

“Grandma, you stay alive. Once I earn money, I’ll send it home. One day I’ll make sure you can eat three pork knuckles at every meal.”

Grandfather asked again and again whether I was truly going to a wealthy family as a maid. At last he heaved a long sigh and pried me from Auntie’s arms. The broker tied me into the line behind Qiuhua, and I had gone a hundred paces from the yard when Grandfather hobbled after me and thrust a cloth pouch into my hand.

“Xiaoyu. Xiaoyu, don’t blame us. Once you’re out there, at least you won’t starve. They say the slop buckets in rich city homes have whole pieces of meat in them.”

Inside the little pouch were the earrings my mother had left me and the old ring from Grandmother’s withered finger, its material worn beyond recognition.

I looked at our ruined home, sighed deeply, and did not turn back again.

It was a shame about the beans still hanging unpicked in my little garden.

Throughout the journey, I was obedient and sweet-tongued and never complained. I helped the brokers whenever I could and assisted the older women with cooking. Among a crowd of silent children, I was the only lively one. Uncle Ying promised he would find me an excellent household.