After the household registration was sorted out, Father Xu didn’t go to the Zhao family home. He got back on his ride and left.
If Mother Zhao, Father Zhao, and Zhao Zongbao hadn’t been sent to the police station by his own daughter, he might have gone to the Zhao home to vent his frustration. But now, with only his daughter and grandchildren left there, what was the point?
He could only return, dejected.
Xu Huiqing saw Father Xu onto the tricycle. He was almost fifty, his hair half-white, but his body was still strong. In her past life, her father had outlived her, so she wasn’t worried about him.
Father Xu, however, was quite worried about Xu Huiqing. Hesitating for a long time, his lips quivering, he finally managed, “If anything happens, send word home. You have three older brothers!”
Yet, he couldn’t bring himself to tell his divorcing daughter to come back to her maiden home.
In this era, a married-off daughter was like water thrown out. The one who decided whether she could return to live at her maiden home was no longer him, but her brothers and sisters-in-law.
He had already divided the family property among his three sons long ago, and they no longer lived together. A short stay might be fine, but if she stayed long-term, none of his daughters-in-law would accept it.
After bidding her father farewell, Xu Huiqing hugged Xiaoxi and walked slowly along the streets of Water Wharf Town. People on the street who recognized her would curiously approach and ask, “Teacher Xu, were your in-laws really traffickers who sold women and children?”
In the past, to the neighbors on this street, Xu Huiqing was the beautiful, warm, and enthusiastic Teacher Xu. But now, in their eyes, she was clothed in a cold, distant, and shattered aura, as if she might collapse at any moment.
Xu Huiqing looked up, and her eyes instantly reddened. She only managed to say, “Elder Sister…” before hugging Xiaoxi tightly, choking back sobs, unable to speak.
The Elder Sister immediately came over to console her: “Good girl, don’t cry. The most important thing is you found the child. That Zhao family is no good at all. You young folk don’t know about what happened back in the day, and your parents didn’t investigate clearly before marrying you over. People of our generation all know the Zhao family is bad news. Who knows how many people they harmed back then…”
The matter of Father Zhao being a Little Red Guard in his youth had not been mentioned for many years, fading away with the Revolutionary Committee’s collapse. But many still remembered it!
However, they weren’t the ones who had been publicly denounced; most were just bystanders. The families that were truly destroyed and broken back then rarely had descendants left. Even if some remained, their families had long since fallen into ruin, their numbers dwindling. How could they possibly contend with the Zhaos, who were now in the electronics business? The Zhaos could easily spend a little money on street hooligans to ruin a family and destroy a household once again.
Seeing the Zhao family’s power, the townspeople preferred to avoid trouble, so they never mentioned it.
Xu Huiqing only nodded, weeping, “Thank you, Elder Sister. I understand.”
The Elder Sister sighed, walking back to her small stall and speaking to the nearby vendors: “What a sin. Giving birth to a son should be a tremendous joy, but who knew the Zhao family was a den of traffickers? Selling even their own granddaughter! They have no conscience!”
The fruit vendor next to her said, “Luckily, they don’t steal kids from around here to sell. Otherwise, wouldn’t all these children running around the streets be in danger?”
“Who knows? They don’t steal local kids now, but can you guarantee they won’t later? They sold their own granddaughter. Can you expect a trafficker to have a conscience?”
By now, most people in Water Wharf Town believed that Mother and Father Zhao were traffickers.
As for why the traffickers didn’t steal kids from their own town… wasn’t that just common sense? A rabbit doesn’t eat the grass by its own burrow! If Father and Mother Zhao had really been stealing children nearby, they would have been discovered and reported long ago!
Everyone pointed and whispered about her as she walked. When she reached the Zhao home, Third Sister Zhao assumed she had gone to the police station for their parents, and hurriedly asked, “How’d it go? What did the police say? When can Mom, Dad, and Zongbao come home?”
Xu Huiqing only shook her head. “I don’t know!”
Third Sister Zhao was naturally gentler. Because of her parents and second sister selling the child, she felt guilty and ashamed towards Xu Huiqing. On top of suspecting her parents were traffickers, she absolutely couldn’t be assertive in front of Xu Huiqing. She didn’t dare ask anything else, just honestly stayed at the Zhao home caring for the newborn and doing chores like cooking and cleaning.
The news that Father and Mother Zhao were traffickers somehow spread throughout all of Water Wharf Town, including the subordinate teams and villages. Everyone knew the boss who sold televisions in town was a trafficker of women and children. For a time, the market streets saw far fewer young wives and children. Some people even came directly to the Zhao Family Store to smash the storefront, and others just walked into the Zhao home, grabbed a TV, and ran.
Naturally, Xu Huiqing didn’t hesitate and immediately went to the police station to report it.
The police station was actually not far from the Zhao home, since the town was only so big. Xu Huiqing was afraid that with only her and Third Sister Zhao—two young women—and two children living there, there might be danger if someone sneaked in at night.
She was still a key witness under the County Public Security Bureau’s attention, so nothing could be allowed to happen to her. On the very day she reported the theft, the televisions the street hooligans had taken were sent back.
Third Sister Zhao was terrified by this incident.
Two days later, Third Brother-in-law Zhao came to town to call Third Sister Zhao home, forbidding her from interfering with her maiden family’s affairs anymore. Third Sister Zhao dared not interfere further, afraid that her own family would fall apart.
Including Eldest Sister Zhao, Fourth Sister Zhao—all were locked at home by their in-laws and not allowed to go out.
Eldest Sister Zhao’s father-in-law was the Commune Director, and she had always loved running back to her maiden home most.
Her father-in-law, worried she would affect his position, said to her directly: “You’d best stay at home, quiet and honest, and not go anywhere. If I find out you’ve been involved in your family’s mess, I won’t wait for the police to come—I’ll personally send you in!”
Eldest Sister Zhao had always been smug in both families because her maiden home was prosperous and her father-in-law held some power. Now, after what her father-in-law said, she was as quiet as a quail at her in-laws’, not daring to go anywhere. Even household chores she’d always avoided, she started doing diligently.
Fourth Sister Zhao and her husband had contracted a bamboo forest and built a brick house beside it, making a living from bamboo weaving. They spent all year at home splitting bamboo, shaving strips, and weaving bamboo sieves, baskets, and other products. They were so busy they barely had time to leave.
Only Fifth Sister Zhao, unafraid of the gossip, came to town once. She wanted to ask Xu Huiqing if she had really heard her parents were traffickers, but didn’t dare ask, because in her heart, she had already branded them with the label.
Everywhere she went, everyone pointed and whispered about her. Right in front of her, people would pull their children behind them and say, “See that woman? Her parents are kidnappers who sell kids to be beggars. If you see her, stay far away, you hear?”
The children would stare at her with terrified eyes, either running far away or hiding behind their parents’ stalls, peeking at her with eyes full of fear and dread.
Some people even threw wilted vegetable leaves at her feet. The bolder kids, following the adults’ example, picked up stones and clods of earth and chased Fifth Sister Zhao, pelting her with them.
When one child leads, countless others imitate.
Fifth Sister Zhao had a fierce temper. When children threw things at her, she angrily threw back, chasing them until they scattered, wailing and screaming for their parents. This instantly roused public fury. People who had only avoided her from a distance before would rush out and curse at her, cursing her parents!
No matter how fiery her temper, Fifth Sister Zhao didn’t dare face the entire street alone. After visiting town once, she dared not come again.
Once Third Sister Zhao and Fifth Sister Zhao left, the Zhao home held only Xu Huiqing and the two children.
With the Zhao family members gone, Xu Huiqing closed the storefront, barred the main gate, found a shovel, and began digging beneath the cypress tree in the courtyard.
The Zhao family courtyard’s cypress tree was planted close to the wall near the toilet, standing less than two meters tall. It had been planted before she married in. According to the Zhao sisters, the tree was planted when their grandfather was still alive. Because it was a local custom for the elderly to be buried with cypress branches placed around the coffin, the cypress was considered among the older locals to be an unlucky tree with heavy Yin energy. Children and women were generally forbidden from approaching or touching it.
In over four years of marriage into the Zhao family, Xu Huiqing had never touched that cypress.
It wasn’t until over a decade later, when the Zhao family had prospered, that Xu Huiqing heard Father Zhao bragging at the dinner table and learned: the gold, silver, and valuables Father Zhao had secretly stashed away during his youth as a Little Red Guard, after destroying families during raids—all of it was buried right under the cypress tree in the family courtyard.
The money Zhao Zongbao used to buy his storefront and start an electronics business in the late 1980s came from selling antiques.
Xu Huiqing had originally thought that with Third Sister Zhao and Fifth Sister Zhao staying there, she wouldn’t be able to get her hands on these things. She didn’t expect that within just a few days, all the Zhao sisters would go back home, leaving her alone in the Zhao house. She didn’t hold back. Grabbing the shovel, she dug down along the cypress roots. In between, every two hours, she had to feed the newborn and change a diaper. Perhaps because this was her first time doing something like this, every time the baby cried, she was terrified someone would hear and come in to see what she was doing.
In truth, to prevent theft, the old man Zhao had built the courtyard walls tall and deep, planting thorny plants like grapes and roses around the perimeter. He also had poor relations with the neighbors. Basically, except for his daughters, even his own sister’s family didn’t associate with him. No one would ever come to the Zhao home.
The cypress had been planted for years, its roots running deep. Xu Huiqing had to dig nearly two meters deep before she found, from beneath the cypress roots, a large-bellied, small-mouthed wine jar.
The jar’s mouth was sealed tightly with cement. Xu Huiqing directly smashed it open with the shovel. Inside was a bundle wrapped in layer upon layer of oilcloth.
She didn’t rush to examine it. First, she took the items out and stuffed them under the bed in the room. She’d planned to just fill the dirt back in, but after a thought, she collected all the broken pottery shards and threw them into the manure pit in the outhouse. From the kitchen, she brought a similarly sized pickled vegetable jar and placed it into the hole, wrapping a few small porcelain bowls and cups—used for Kitchen God offerings—in kraft paper and putting them inside. Then she refilled the dirt, replanted the uprooted cypress, and even went out the back gate to gather weeds and moss from the overgrown land behind, planting them around the cypress and wall roots. She scattered loose soil and brick dust with the shovel over the newly planted weeds.