Chapter 3

“Woman, I thought you’d died out there! Look at the state of this house!”

There you have it.

That is a man for you.

He could lie at home earning nothing and still believe housework was a woman’s responsibility.

In middle school, I made a new friend named Hu Mei.

She was an excellent student with a cheerful nature.

For a while, though, she suddenly seemed depressed.

When I pressed her, she said, “My parents divorced. I talked my mother into it.”

“Whenever my father gets drunk, he beats her. Then he sobers up, cries, and apologizes. Over and over. There isn’t a patch of unbruised skin left on her.”

I was shocked.

In the countryside then, every family had troubles too painful to tell, and every couple muddled through a lifetime of quarrels and blows.

Divorce was rare.

The setting sun cast Hu Mei’s face in shadow.

“My mother has already left.”

“Then what will you do?”

She smiled. “What do you mean? Am I going to starve?”

“I made her go.” She lowered her head, her voice trembling. “I prayed she would. If she stayed and he kept beating her, she wouldn’t survive.”

After working for over a year and guarding every penny, Mother saved some money.

Four thousand yuan.

One night while Father was out drinking, Mother sat beneath our five-watt bulb and counted it three times.

“With this money, I can finally go see your grandma.”

She had married far away, and we were poor.

Mother had not visited her own family in almost ten years.

The dim yellow light illuminated the hope in her eyes.

“I’ll go next month, when I can get leave from the factory. The lychees, mangoes, and jackfruit will all be ripe…”

“You ate jackfruit when you were little, though you probably don’t remember. The flesh is delicious. Boil the seeds and they taste a bit like sweet potatoes. Those are good too…”

“Your grandma keeps saying that if I don’t visit soon, she won’t live long enough to see me again.”

As she spoke, Mother’s eyes reddened.

All month she was buoyant, moving as though the wind carried her.

I had never seen her smile so much.

She bought many kinds of seeds, dried several bags of local food, treated herself to new clothes for once, and even paid for a haircut.

Grandmother resented it. Every day she cursed and made pointed remarks.

“Jianjia, you still have bowls and chopsticks at home, or has your wife cleaned the place out?”

Mother pretended not to hear.

Soon it was the night before her departure.

Her luggage was packed.

She reached beneath the bed boards for her hidden money.

As she felt around, her expression changed.

The money was gone.

I helped her turn over the bedding, straw, and boards, searching everything again and again.

Mother cried. “I put it right here. How can it be gone?”

“Did a thief get in?”

I remembered Father’s bulging trouser pocket when he had left.

I grabbed Mother and pulled her outside.

As we passed my aunt’s house, we heard Grandmother hiss, “Your wife actually hid this much money.”

“Was she planning to take all of it back to her mother’s family?”

“That heartless woman! An ungrateful wolf after all the years we fed her!”

We rushed inside. The old woman held a stack of bills.

I had counted that four thousand yuan with Mother countless times. I knew the look of every bill.

Grandmother stuffed the money into her trouser pocket and demanded, “What do you want?”

“This is Tian family money, and you want to take it back to the Yu family? Dream on!”

“You won’t get a single cent!”