Chapter 3
Edward Quan ·
12
I drew back and returned to the kitchen.
Deliberately, I said, “Grandma cares so much about appearances. With all these guests, dumplings alone might not be enough.”
“Should we buy a few more dishes?”
Mom hated spending money.
At the word buy, she shot me a vicious look.
“Buy what? Your father’s dead. We’ve lost the breadwinner. There are hard days ahead!”
She opened the refrigerator.
On the upper shelf were two bags of wilted vegetables Grandma had scavenged at the market and moldy noodles Mom had brought from work.
The freezer held rotten prawns, dead crabs from the seafood market, and a bag of meat frozen for three years.
The family called it “zombie meat.”
Mom thawed it, added plenty of pepper, star anise, and bay leaves, and cooked a wonderfully fragrant stew.
She battered and fried the rotten prawns, mixed them with the crabs, and made two large bowls of fiery red spicy seafood.
The strong chili and spice smelled delicious.
When the meat and seafood reached the table, the relatives competed to praise her resourcefulness.
Grandma seized the chance to boast.
“City life is wonderful. Near a big market, you don’t have to buy a thing.”
“Go when they’re closing. Pick up what they throw away.”
“Pork hocks, big crabs, lobsters. Whatever you like!”
13
Hearing that the seafood had been scavenged, several relatives pulled back their eager chopsticks.
“Won’t it poison us?”
Grandma patted her chest.
“Of course it’s edible! What do you think the restaurants use?”
“You pay there. I’m feeding you for free!”
That seemed reasonable enough.
They tried a few bites. It didn’t taste too rotten.
Soon, their chopsticks were busy again.
Mom brought out two plates of glossy fried dumplings.
Some knew Dad had died from poisoned dumplings. Golden and fragrant as these were, no one dared touch them at first.
Eyes red, she explained in a small, tearful voice.
“They must not have been cooked through yesterday. That’s why everyone got a stomachache.”
“I fried these thoroughly. Ten minutes in hot oil. What bacteria could survive that? How could they be poisonous?”
Grandma couldn’t bear the insult to her hospitality.
She tucked into several dumplings and boasted through a full mouth.
“You don’t know good food when you see it!”
“The filling is proper black-pig pork!”
“If you hadn’t come all this way, I’d have been too stingy to serve it!”
At those words, I shuddered.
The previous year, market inspectors had found pork from diseased pigs and collected it for disposal.
Grandma happened to pass.
When no one was watching, she carried off a large piece.
After that, stomachaches rotated among her, Dad, and my brother.
No mystery. They had been eating diseased pork.
Mom and I were fine.
We counted as outsiders in this family.
We weren’t entitled to meat.
15
Seeing Grandma eat with such enthusiasm, almost clearing a plate, the relatives hurried to take some.
Both plates vanished.
My eldest uncle picked his teeth and told Mom to fry two more.
Third Aunt’s little grandson clamored for more oily crab and fried prawns.
Grandma hesitated. Seafood like that wasn’t available for scavenging every day.
The relatives quickly praised her.
How fortunate she was to live in the city. How worldly and clever, knowing where to find food still fit to eat.
She swelled under the flattery and ordered Mom and me to fry more dumplings and boil several large crabs.
Looking at crabs that had sat frozen for almost a year, I smiled coldly inside.
Go on.
Eat.
If you die, so be it.
16
After stuffing themselves, the relatives spread mats all over our living room.
At dawn, they would accompany Dad’s ashes back to the village.
But some were never going home.
By midnight, a long queue had formed outside our toilet.
Everyone clutched their stomachs, doubled over with diarrhea.
They pounded on Grandma’s door, cursing and demanding she get up and take them to hospital.
Then Mom screamed from inside.
“Mom! What’s wrong? Wake up!”
They broke in.
Grandma lay rigid on the bed, her face blue, white foam at her mouth.
She had stopped breathing.
Everyone panicked.
Blaming Mom could wait. They called 120.
When the ambulance arrived, people lay scattered across the living room.
The floor reeked of vomit. Some hadn’t reached the toilet in time.
Mom and I went to the hospital. The relatives underwent emergency treatment and stomach pumping until morning.
Still, three died.
Grandma was already dead on arrival.
Fifth Aunt, who had planned to marry me off to the wife-beater, died like Dad: acute kidney failure from aflatoxin poisoning.
The third was my eldest uncle’s grandson.
The boy who had called me a jinx, unworthy of dumplings.
He had eaten five dead crabs and more than twenty poisoned dumplings.
He died in agony.
Relatives from the village hurried to the hospital and surrounded Mom in the corridor.
17
Dad was dead. Grandma, too.
Mom was the only adult left in our household.
The relatives pulled her hair and tore at her clothes, crying and screaming for her to pay for the lives lost.
Bruised and panicking, she suddenly pointed at me.
“All right! I’ll pay!”
“Tomorrow, I’ll take my daughter out of school and marry her off.”
“As soon as I get the bride price, I’ll settle everything!”
Fifth Aunt’s son spat.
“How much will that bring? Two people are dead!”
“At least five hundred thousand for each family!”
Mom covered her face.
“Where would I get a million?”
Their eyes lit up.
“Sell the apartment!”
“And it’s not only the families who lost someone. We were poisoned, too. We need compensation!”
“Exactly! Sell it! It’s in a good school catchment, isn’t it? The old woman said two million at least.”
Mom shook her head wildly.
“No! If we sell it, my son can’t attend a top school!”
Another voice rose.
“Then sell that wretched girl!”
“I hear organs fetch a fortune. Her heart, liver, lungs, kidneys… cut them out, and she could bring a million or two!”
My heart sank.
18
To save my brother’s school-catchment apartment, Mom wanted the relatives to sell my organs.
They weren’t fools.
They knew organ trafficking was illegal.
No matter what she said, they refused.
They stayed in our home, pressuring her to sell.
As her eyes grew colder whenever she looked at me, I knew I couldn’t wait any longer.
One day, I accompanied Mom and my brother to hospital for his infusion.
Standing deliberately by the door, I loudly asked the nurse what he should eat while recovering from aflatoxin poisoning.
She told us clearly: avoid greasy, hard-to-digest food for now. Plain, light rice porridge was best.
Mom brightened.
On the way home, she said, “Take out that bag of Thai rice under the bed. We’ll cook it for him every day.”
Then she warned me.
“It’s imported. They say only foreign emperors get to eat it.”
“Don’t you dare steal any!”
I lowered my head, looking hurt.
Inside, I smiled.
The year before, the flour-mill owner had bought a cheap batch of expired rice.
Mom had boasted about his cleverness, turning it into rice flour for a profit.
When no one was watching, she brought several bags home.
She called it emperor’s rice. A lowly creature like me wasn’t worthy of eating it.
She hid the last bag under the bed, saving it to nourish my brother when he was ill.
Now he had been poisoned, and the doctor said he needed porridge.
So she dragged out the moldy emperor’s rice.
The side against the floor was coated in green.
She didn’t care.
She tore the sack, scooped out a bowl, and pushed it toward me.
Pick out the bugs, she said.
The rice had clumped around insect eggs. Small black insects crawled through it.
I nearly gagged.
19
Once, I would have done everything to stop her.
Now I obediently rinsed the rice and put it in the cooker.
When the porridge was ready, Mom shoved me aside, filled a large bowl, and urged my brother to eat while it was hot.
He pointed at me.
“Worthless thing! You don’t get my emperor’s porridge!”
Mom glared.
“Stop looking. Looking won’t make it yours!”
“Your grandma’s dead. From now on, you collect vegetables from the market every day. Go!”
I murmured assent, took Grandma’s old scavenging bag, and left without regret.
When I came back, both of them were gone.
A neighbor hurried me along.
“Your brother’s been poisoned again. Badly. An ambulance just took him. Get to the hospital!”
I rushed there.
He was being wheeled out of emergency treatment.
Under that familiar white sheet.
Mom fainted.
My brother was dead.
The school-catchment apartment no longer had any value to her.
Under pressure from the relatives, she sold it quickly.
They divided every bit of the proceeds.
Only Mom and I remained.
Perhaps she realized she was no longer young enough to have another child.
She decided to treat me a little better.
She rented a small room and wanted me to move in.
But I didn’t need her love anymore.
I spoke to the principal. The school waived my tuition and boarding fees.
I would live in the dormitory.
Mom stared, then clutched my hand and begged.
“Jingjing. There’s only the two of us now. If you board, how can I bear living alone?”
I looked at her coldly.
“Become a live-in housekeeper. Save the rent.”
“You like saving money, don’t you?”
20
After that, I stopped seeing her.
When she brought money or things to school, I asked classmates to return them untouched.
When she came to collect me for summer or New Year, she found I had already gone to work for a classmate’s family.
They pitied me. Their stuffed-toy business happened to need someone to pack orders.
I earned more than three thousand yuan a month. Living carefully, it was enough.
Three years of senior high passed like that.
After the entrance exam, I was admitted to a university in another province.
Mom was delighted.
She boasted everywhere that I had a future.
Back in the village, she began planning to find a man to marry into our family.
Since my brother died, she had constantly lamented the end of the family line.
Now I had got into university, she decided I was finally qualified to continue it.
Without asking, she arranged a match in the village.
The other family had four sons and couldn’t afford to marry them all off. Their second son would join our household.
The day I returned for my household registration book, she called him over.
I looked at her coldly.
“I’m going to university. I’m not getting married now.”
She said she had checked.
Policies had changed. University students could marry and have children while studying.
She even showed me online videos of people doing both.
“Listen to me, Jingjing. Have a baby before you get busy.”
“Then the Zhang family will have an heir, and you can work without worry after graduation.”
She thought she was doing everything for me.
She wouldn’t accept an argument.
While I packed, she pushed the man into my room.
He stared at me greedily, almost drooling.
I wasn’t going to submit.
I pulled a stun gun from my bag and drove it against his stomach.
He convulsed and fell.
I put my household registration book and ID in my bag, smashed the window, climbed out, and ran.
Behind me, Mom wailed.
21
The last news I heard of her came from the police.
She had died of food poisoning. They asked me to return and handle the funeral.
She had never lost her love of a bargain.
Unwilling to buy meat, she saw a poultry farm bury chickens that had died in an outbreak.
In the middle of the night, she dug them up.
Some she salted and dried for New Year guests.
The other two she cooked with her usual generous spices into a red chicken stew, eating until grease ran from her mouth.
After three days, a lethal infection killed her at home.
They said her body stank by the time it was found.
I had her cremated and buried her ashes with Dad and my brother.
Then I sold the old village house.
I graduated from university, bought a small apartment of my own, and became a nutritionist.
Another Winter Solstice came.
I juiced fresh vegetables and made myself a bright, colorful, nourishing bowl of dumplings.
Never again would I have to eat moldy flour.
Or poisoned dumplings.
The End
**Enjoyed this story?**
Discover more completed short romance stories at **NovelPotato.asia**.