Chapter 1

When he finished, the house grew so quiet you could have heard a pin drop.

The madam hurried over and tugged anxiously at my sleeve. “Xiaoqiao, he—he’s talking nonsense. Don’t take him seriously.”

But Lü Buyu held his head high, his expression resolute.

“Xiaoqiao, I love you. I respect you. I cherish you.”

“That’s why I don’t want to see another girl throw her life away here as you have. Qingyue is still young. She’s only sixteen.”

“Can’t we use this money to save her first? Afterward, I’ll save up with you.”

“I am yours. My heart is yours.”

“If you don’t believe me, kill me. I’d willingly give you my life.”

He thought he was proving his devotion.

But I was a coward. I never contradicted anyone.

Mother had never taught me how to resist.

Ever since I was born, the words I had heard most often were, “Don’t talk back. Just listen and do as you’re told.”

We were poor. While I was still in swaddling clothes, Mother carried me on her back to work in the fields. The blazing sun scorched her, but she dared not stop for a sip of water. Scaly patches spread across her sunburnt arms, but she dared not rest.

She was afraid of displeasing her employer and never being hired again.

We had no land. We could only make a living farming for other people.

“The sun sets late today. Work a little longer,” the employer would say. Without a word, Mother would plunge back into the wheat.

He would point at the shallow irrigation ditch. “You expect to water a field with that? Hah.”

Mother would shoulder her carrying pole and fetch water.

I grew up on her back like that. All I ever saw was her bowed head, all I ever heard her cautious “Yes,” offered again and again with an anxious smile.

Mother said poverty put us in our place. We had no right to argue.

Whatever people said, we had to obey.

I asked her about Father.

“He’s dead,” she said quietly, looking into the distance.

Only when I was older did I learn that Father had taken the jobs no one else wanted, hoping to earn enough to buy a small piece of poor farmland.

There had been heavy rain that year, and the medicinal herbs in the mountains had grown especially well.

Hoping to get there before anyone else, Father went up the mountain as soon as the rain stopped.

Before leaving, he told Mother, “We’ve almost saved enough. Once I dig up some herbs and sell them, we’ll have our own land. We won’t have to worry about food anymore. When the baby’s born, it’ll have a good life too.”

Mother sat on the heated brick bed, stitching cloth shoes. She smiled and told him to be careful.

He never came back.

The mountain paths were slippery. He fell off a cliff, and no one could find his body.

It wasn’t until I was five that someone found a skeleton at the foot of the cliff. A rusted thimble hung around its neck. That was how they knew it was Father.

Mother used the thimble whenever she sewed clothes or stitched shoe soles.

Father always wore it when he went away.

Mother took my brother and me to collect his remains.

After we came home, she rubbed the thimble over and over, but she couldn’t rub away the rust.

Then, for the first time in my life, I saw Mother cry.

She sat outside our door, arms wrapped around herself, her face buried deep between her knees, her whole body shaking with sobs.

She had never cried before. However hard things were, however tired she became, she would only repeat, “That’s how life is. Where would any sweetness come from?”

Later, my brother grew up and was old enough to marry.

Mother scrimped and saved, but all she could buy was two fen of poor farmland. Fortunately, the bride’s family didn’t mind. My brother was a hard worker, and my sister-in-law married him all the same.

When my sister-in-law became pregnant, Mother wouldn’t let her work anymore.

Mother, my brother, and I spent whole days in the fields. Even under the blazing sun, we didn’t feel tired. Sweat seeped into the corners of our mouths, yet somehow we tasted sweetness.

My brother sat on the ridge between the fields, drinking water and talking to me. “Once I’ve saved a bit more, I’ll buy another two fen. That’ll be your dowry when you marry. A dowry gives a girl something to stand on.”

Mother listened with a smile.

Something had begun to change in her usually quiet eyes.

I smiled too. A new life coming into the world made everything seem full of hope.

When autumn came, my brother said he was going to sea with some men from the village. A single trip could earn him a great deal.

Mother objected, but he insisted.

“We’ll never save any money farming like this.”

He left on a misty morning. Before he went, he told me, “Your sister-in-law’s still sleeping. She sleeps a lot now she’s carrying a child. Don’t wake her.”

“She’s timid. She never says what she wants. Look after her while I’m gone. Do whatever she says, and don’t be stubborn with her.”

“When I come back, I’ll bring you a big pearl.”

I nodded. I wouldn’t be stubborn with my sister-in-law.

I had always been the most obedient child.

I listened to my brother and waited for him to bring home a big pearl.

But he never came home.

Ten men from the village had gone. Only one returned. The others had all died in a storm.

Mother fell ill and never got out of bed again.

Before she died, she took out the thimble and clutched it in her palm. “How could life ever turn sweet?” she murmured.

That was the second time I saw Mother cry.

Clouded tears slipped over her dry, bloodless face, like a drop of blood falling onto barren earth, unable to stir a thing.

That was how Mother died.

I didn’t even have time to grieve. I remembered my brother’s words too well: look after your sister-in-law.

At first, she was good to me. She said we were all each other had now. We had to depend on one another, bring the baby safely into the world, and take good care of our two fen of land.

Winter came, and there was no farming to be done. I went to work for a wealthy household in town, chopping wood and washing clothes. My hands cracked open in the cold, but I hardly felt the pain.

All I could think was that if I saved a little more, life would be easier once the baby came.

The baby was born.

But it died.

After that, my sister-in-law changed.

She cried and screamed. When she was tired of screaming, she laughed. When she’d laughed enough, she cried again.

“What a miserable fate,” she said. “I married into this family just to suffer.”

“They’re dead. Every last one of them. What am I supposed to do?”

Then she looked at me. After staring a while, she suddenly laughed again.

“Xiaoqiao, I never noticed how pretty you were.”

The next day, she said she would take me into the county town to buy new clothes.

After buying them, she took me to a brothel.

I heard her bargaining with the madam. She said her husband’s little sister was pretty but spineless, just right for a place like this. I would never turn anyone away.

The madam gave her a bag of money and took me in.

My sister-in-law wiped at her tears again. She held my hand, reluctant to let go. “Xiaoqiao, I can’t bear to leave you. I don’t want us to be apart.”

I remembered what my brother had said. I was to listen to her.

She didn’t want us to be apart. I had heard her.

So I knelt before the madam and begged, “Please take my sister-in-law too. She’s a widow now. She has no one else at home. She’s the person closest to me.”

“If she doesn’t stay, neither will I.”

My sister-in-law panicked and tried to run.

But this was a place you could enter easily and leave only with difficulty. How could she get away?

Especially with no one to stand up for her.

While the madam hesitated, a handsome scholar came in. He glanced at me and took out a string of coins. “Have her attend me while I listen to some music.”

The madam hesitated no longer. At a glance from her, a burly man struck my sister-in-law on the neck with the edge of his hand. She collapsed.

I knew my sister-in-law was pitiful. She’d had the misfortune to marry into our family. That was why I always remembered my brother’s words: listen to her.

She had said she didn’t want to leave me.

So we stayed at Yifang House together.