Chapter 2

While the family carried on discussing my punishment, I grew bored.

I picked up my phone and blocked Mum’s credit card and linked payment account.

I had wanted to do it for a long time.

Before, I’d still had a few illusions about her.

She hadn’t always treated me badly. Not before Xu Tianci was born.

I had clung to that last scrap of warmth, worked hard and tried to make something of myself.

I grew up in the countryside. Some of its ideas had rubbed off on me.

I used to think Mum could give my money to my brother.

As long as she saved her love for me, that would be enough.

But she seemed to think every yuan I scraped together came as naturally as having a child.

Dad died young.

Mum had always played the kindhearted woman, determined to help this person and that.

Once I earned good money, she boasted more and took on the relatives’ expenses too.

Her monthly demands kept growing.

First a thousand.

Then two.

Then five.

At New Year, there was another twenty thousand for each household.

If I missed a month, she came to my company. Without a word, she knelt in front of me, eyes full of tears, begging me to “give your mother a way to live.”

She had sent me to an electronics factory at fifteen.

In winter, my hands cracked and bled, red and itching.

She only called me weak.

Useless.

Too slow to earn.

For Tianci’s twentieth birthday, she booked twenty tables at a five-star hotel. Every relative received two packs of Chunghwa cigarettes.

My twentieth birthday?

I huddled in my dormitory, drinking water and chewing dry snack noodles.

They cost half a yuan a packet.

Cup noodles cost at least two.

But as long as I hadn’t starved to death, Mum thought I was fine.

Perhaps Heaven saw the injustice and gave me an opportunity.

One day, I met a visiting executive at the factory gate.

He let me try working as a sales assistant.

Then I landed a major client.

I became sales manager.

Then sales director.

If Mum had treated me a little better, I would willingly have worked myself into the ground for her.

Instead, she destroyed the last warmth I remembered from childhood.

When the punishment session ended, she removed me from the family group.

Even better.

I blocked everyone.

When force failed, she tried another approach.

Early the next morning, my eldest sister created a group with me and our second sister.

[Eldest Sister: The bride-price puts Mum in a difficult position. She promised Uncle. It would be awkward not to pay now. I spoke to my mother-in-law yesterday. I’ll cover my twenty thousand. She’s agreed to lend it to me.]

She was the most compliant person in the family.

At home, she obeyed Mum.

After marriage, she obeyed her husband.

Whoever spoke, she listened. Never an opinion of her own.

I almost laughed.

[Me: Repay it? With what? You don’t even have a job.]

[Eldest Sister: Old Li at the village entrance needs greenhouse workers. Once Miao’s asleep, I could work nights. Midnight till four. Six hundred yuan a month.]

I was furious and sorry for her at the same time.

Her in-laws bullied her. She didn’t dare tell us.

Mum kept asking her for money, so they watched her like a thief.

Her husband never handed over his wages.

She would rather work herself to death than resist.

Only thirty, and she looked fifty.

Even her daughter was embarrassed to have her collect her from kindergarten.

My fingers rattled over the keyboard.

[Me: Don’t contribute. What has our cousin’s wedding got to do with us? Never mind him—even if Tianci gets married, there’s no reason we should pay his bride-price.]

[Me: This time, we stand together. We stand up to Mum.]

She was silent for a long time.

Then came a timid reply.

[Eldest Sister: I don’t think Mum’s asking too much. It’s always been this way. Stop being angry with her. She’s had a hard life.]

A hard life?

I sat upright.

[Me: When you married, she took your three-hundred-thousand-yuan bride-price and gave it to Tianci. He blew it on games and gifts for female streamers. You lost all standing with your in-laws, and you still think she’s the one who has it hard?]

Silence.

Then my second sister spoke.

[Second Sister: Xu Jingjing, stand up to her yourself. Why drag us into it? Don’t blame us when it goes wrong. I’ll pay every yuan of my share.]

She was clever.

Always had a plan.

Never willing to go first.

Her words slipped smoothly past you, giving away nothing.

But I knew she’d resented Mum for years.

Nearly thirty, and the impossible bride-price Mum demanded had kept her unmarried.

Once, she followed some villagers to the city for work, planning to save money, leave for somewhere else and marry a man with better prospects.

The factory went bankrupt after a month.

Alone and with nowhere to go, she came back with the others.

Empty-handed.

Neither sister would object to the bride-price, so I made myself clear.

[Me: Fine. If you’re both happy with it, let me be plain. I’m not paying a cent. Mum gets five hundred a month from me. If it isn’t enough, she can ask you.]

Then I dissolved the group.

I knew why my second sister could stay quiet.

I had always carried most of the expenses.

Once I stopped, she would soon feel the difference.

With the necessary numbers blocked, life finally became peaceful for a while.

Without Mum swallowing my money, and with Tianci’s car order canceled, my account suddenly looked much healthier.

Thinking of all those years of being drained, I lost the desire to work.

I took leave to relax.

Shopping first.

Then a beauty treatment.

I was lying back when the phone rang.

My eldest aunt.

“Jingjing, you haven’t been in touch with the family. What have you been busy with?”

“Enjoying myself. Honestly, since cutting contact, I’ve got more money than I know what to do with. I even took today off just to relax.”

The spa attendant worked more firmly on the pressure points.

I sighed in comfort.

My aunt gave two strained little laughs.

“Nothing important. I only wanted to ask… how’s Xiaowen’s school transfer coming along?”

Xiaowen was her eldest grandson.

The family hadn’t bought a home in town. Their household registration was still in the village, so he attended the village school.

She had asked me to use my contacts to get him transferred.

I laughed.

“Oh, that. But Mum removed me from the group. I’m not family anymore. Why come to me with such a little thing?”

“Still angry with your mother? She’s had it hard…”

I cut her off.

“Mum has it hard. Who doesn’t? Actually, your family seems to be doing rather well. I hear Uncle’s about to become head of security at my company. Things are looking up.”

Her voice shook.

“What are you planning? Don’t do anything foolish.”

“Nothing.”

I hung up and called HR.

“Wang Fugui in security. Let him go.”

They understood immediately.

“The security team doesn’t like him. He’s arrogant and overbearing. We were only promoting him out of consideration for you. Shall we dismiss him now?”

My company was among the province’s leading groups.

Sales were the highest.

So were pay and bonuses within the industry.

Even an ordinary guard’s basic salary was six thousand.

The head of security earned over ten thousand a month.

“Dismiss him.”

HR moved quickly.

Soon, my aunt called back, swearing furiously.

At Mum.

“Your mother’s impossible! We all know how good you’ve been to the family. She’s the unreasonable one, turning everything upside down. Don’t worry. I’ll give her a piece of my mind for you!”

I smiled.

“Record it. If you don’t do it well, Uncle can forget his severance pay.”

5

The next day, my uncle’s wife called.

“Jingjing, I have to say something. Be angry with your mother if you want, but why send your aunt to abuse her? Don’t take it so far. Your mother isn’t bad. She brought Xiao Hui’s bride-price over the day before yesterday.”

Oh?

She had actually found the two hundred and eighty-eight thousand?

After the sixty-odd thousand from my sisters, she must still have had considerable savings.

So Uncle’s wife had received the money and could afford to play peacemaker.

I idly touched my ear.

“Who’s fighting?”

“I spend hundreds of thousands on this family every year. Nearly a hundred thousand goes to Mum alone. She still calls me ungrateful.

“My brother only has to say, ‘You’re the best, Mum,’ and she’s happy for half a day.

“Tell me, who’s being unreasonable?”

She faltered, then tried again.

“That’s how it is in the countryside. Your mother has it hard. It’s all for Xiao Hui and Tianci. She isn’t spending it on herself.”

“And life’s easy for me? She forced me into that factory at fifteen. I worked myself half to death for six thousand in the first month. She demanded eight.

“I barely had enough to eat, and she said I wasn’t daring enough. If I were more like JiaJia, she said, I’d already be living in a villa.”

JiaJia was her daughter.

Her darling.

Years earlier, she had followed someone she met online to Shenzhen for work.

Within two months, she was pregnant.

After the birth, the man kept putting off marriage.

Then she learned he already had a wife.

Materially, she lacked nothing.

A villa. A luxury car.

But he wouldn’t let her control any money, afraid she might leave.

Her mother’s voice dropped.

“What do you mean, daring? Your mother’s talking nonsense! JiaJia was deceived. She didn’t choose it!”

I gave a cold laugh.

“I think she’s talking nonsense too. So save your breath. Goodbye.”