The relatives who had been watching this family chimed in as well: “Exactly! Isn’t there still you? A grown man like you, can’t you look after one child?”
“What’s there to take care of, anyway? Look at my bunch here—they’ve been in the hospital this whole time and they’re just fine.”
By then, the wave of layoffs had already started. But the neighboring city was an industrial town, and plenty of people still had to work. Even those who didn’t would set up little stalls outside to earn money. There just wasn’t that much time to watch children. Families just brought their kids along to the hospital ward and let them run around on their own. At mealtimes, they’d grab an extra bowl of rice from the cafeteria, and in the evening, they’d take them back home to sleep.
If they didn’t bring them to the hospital, it wouldn’t work—too young, not in kindergarten yet, and everyone at home was working. With no one to look after the kids, they had to be brought to the hospital, kept right under their eyes.
“Your wife misses the child. Just bring the baby here for her to see! What’s the big deal?”
Mother Zhao said pitifully, “Dear sister, we’re not like you city folks, where it’s easy to come to the hospital. We’re from the countryside—Water Wharf Town, no less. We had to take a cab just to bring my daughter-in-law in. Spent who knows how much money. To go all the way back just to pick up a child—never mind the cost, the trip itself isn’t easy. I’m in poor health and I get carsick. Looking after her alone is pushing me to my limit. Now add taking care of a little one? I truly can’t manage it!”
With that, she clutched her forehead and moaned “Ow, ow!” in a frail, breathless voice. “If I collapse, Zongbao will have to look after me too. Then he’d be caring for the three of us by himself—the old, the young. How would he manage that?” She begged Xu Huiqing, “My little ancestor, I’m begging you, can you please not make trouble? I admit I’m in the wrong. Just let me off, let Zongbao off, and do your postpartum confinement in peace, all right?”
Her cheeks were sunken, her hair sparse, her body thin and bony. She looked frail and unhealthy.
After she said all this, the crowd’s sympathy swung back to her, and they started urging Xu Huiqing again: “Girl, why don’t you just listen to your mother-in-law? Take care of your health first, and get the little one sorted out. The baby at home isn’t going anywhere, no one’s going to lose her. What are you so hung up about?”
“I’m telling you, I can see your mother-in-law has it tough too. She’s nothing but skin and bones, yet she’s still here helping you with your confinement. Sometimes people have to have a conscience. Sure, it wasn’t right for her to spit in your porridge, but from yesterday until now, she’s been keeping a tight eye on your son, feeding him one mouthful of milk after another without the slightest neglect. If you can’t pity your mother-in-law, at least pity your own son, won’t you?”
Mother Zhao wiped away tears. “The poor little thing. Since the moment he was born, he hasn’t had a single drop of milk from his own mother.”
Hearing this, the relatives in the ward seemed to forget that Xu Huiqing had just been pushed out of the resuscitation room and had only just had her first meal. Once again, they all pitied Mother Zhao and the child she had borne.
“He really is pitiful. This child has met with one disaster after another from birth. Almost lost his mother.”
“If all else fails, he can nurse at my wife’s side for a couple of days. My wife’s milk is plentiful!” The speaker said proudly, “I raised chickens early on. These past few days, my daughter-in-law gets half a chicken a day, plus a big bowl of crucian carp tofu soup. Her milk’s leaking out!”
This was truly something for her to be proud of and talk about.
Compared to Mother Zhao, what a generous mother-in-law she was!
Seeing that his mother had talked their way into a good spot, Zhao Zongbao immediately made a promise. “All right, how about this: once you get home, I’ll have Second Sister bring Xiaoxi back right away. Then I’ll call Eldest Sister, Second Sister, and Third Sister all back to look after you. With so many people taking care of you, all you have to do is rest well and recover. Deal?”
Xu Huiqing knew by then that hoping for Zhao Zongbao to bring Xiaoxi back was impossible.
She knew it would still be a few months before the woman in that family became pregnant. And until the child was born, that household would still take decent care of Xiaoxi. Even though anxiety gnawed at her heart and her insides twisted like knives, she also understood—just as the head nurse had advised—that she needed to build up her strength first. Without a healthy body, how could she search for her daughter? How could she care for her?
The only consolation was that, unlike her previous life, she no longer had to scour the world for her daughter. She already knew exactly where her daughter was.
She pushed down the urgency and pain that felt like being sliced bit by bit, forced herself to calm down, closed her eyes, and rested properly.
Zhao Zongbao couldn’t even last an hour in the hospital. He made up an excuse: “Huiqing, I’ll go check the outskirts for old hens. I’ll buy you a couple of them and some fish to eat!”
And with that, he dashed off and vanished.
Seeing her son leave, Mother Zhao breathed a sigh of relief. Her expression was no longer as pitiful or tense as when he was around, and she devoted herself single-mindedly to doting on her precious grandson. When she saw Xu Huiqing awake, she moved once again to try to get milk from her.
Xu Huiqing dodged her outstretched hand and said to her, “Mom, the doctor just gave me medicine. Milk after taking medicine can’t be fed to the baby; it’ll pass on the illness. The hospital has formula. These next few days, please trouble yourself to feed him the formula.”
Mother Zhao’s reaching hand paused and withdrew. But she still said, “You, I don’t know what to say about you. Getting yourself worked up over such a small thing. Back when I was pregnant with Pandi, I was still hauling water right up until the birth. A water vat that big, I filled it by myself every single day. Three days after giving birth, I was already wading through water to herd cattle and working the fields. If everyone were as delicate as you, nobody would get by and people just shouldn’t live!”
Her words instantly struck a chord with many of the relatives of the same age in the ward. “Oh, you had it rough. Back then, I went back to the factory seven days after giving birth too. Not even a pause on New Year’s Eve, straight back to work on the first day of the new year. Light injuries never took us off the frontline!”
“That’s how it was back then! Those were bitter days. Forget chicken soup—whatever you could get your hands on, you shoved it in your mouth. You had to. You were starving!”
Mother Zhao wiped her tears. “Dear sisters, you’re city folk, on government rations. At least your days were a bit easier. When I was pregnant, I never had a full meal. I was so hungry I ate grass! Dug up grass roots to eat! Once I ate an extra handful of beans, and my mother-in-law cursed me from one end of the village to the other. And even so, during those last years when she was bedridden and couldn’t move, I was the one taking care of her. In the end, she held my hand and said she was sorry, that I was the good one!”
With that one sentence, she felt all the suffering she’d endured before was worth it!
Mother Zhao was a peculiar person herself.
When she was young, her in-laws treated her like dirt. Her father-in-law, a grown man, even struck his daughter-in-law. In her telling, there was no mother-in-law as vile as hers. Yet during those final years when her mother-in-law lay in bed unable to move, it was she who did everything—cleaned up her filth, washed the sheets, fed her meals—cared for her with meticulous attention.
Father Zhao would hit and curse her at the slightest provocation, yet she served him just as carefully.
She had five daughters who, having watched from childhood how their grandparents bullied her, constantly stood up for her, helped with chores, and even fought her battles. Yet she often cursed her daughters, using the vilest terms behind their backs, calling them worthless.
But toward Zhao Zongbao, who would point at her nose and scold her at will, she doted on him like a little emperor.
When Xu Huiqing was young, she didn’t understand. Back when she visited her own family, she privately told her mother about her confusion. Mother Xu said to her, “Isn’t it good that your husband protects you? So many women wish they could marry a man like that! He has five older sisters looking out for the family, everything in the household is his, and there’re no uncles or brothers to compete with him. Do you know how wonderful that is?”
In that era, there was no such saying as, “Don’t marry a man with many sisters,” nor “One sister-in-law means two mothers-in-law, five sisters-in-law means six mothers-in-law breathing down your neck.” Everyone around her envied her good fortune—in-laws with only one son, a husband with so many sisters to help the family. They considered the Zhao family a rare gem, hard to find even with a lantern!
Since everyone around her said so, she came to believe it herself. But year after year, only she, living in the midst of it, understood how suffocating it was in this household.
Now, hearing Mother Zhao and the other accompanying relatives talking, Xu Huiqing felt like an outsider looking in, her heart completely unmoved.
No one would ever persuade her again with, “Your mother-in-law suffered so much when she was young; you must be filial to her later on!”
Some people’s suffering was what they deserved—like her mother-in-law, and like herself.
Zhao Zongbao had said he was going to buy her old hens and crucian carp. But he left and didn’t return—no sign of him for three whole days.
During these days, Mother Zhao didn’t dare stir up any more trouble. After all, so many people were watching in the ward. When mealtime came every day, the accompanying relatives in the ward would call her to go down to the cafeteria together. They’d pick up the same kind of food they were having—either chicken soup or fish soup, all suitable for a postpartum woman.
She had no chance to spit into the food or anything else.
While she bought chicken noodle soup and fish noodle soup for Xu Huiqing, she herself would eat just a steamed bun and a bowl of plain rice porridge per meal. When the people in the ward saw this, they’d start advising Xu Huiqing again: “Your mother-in-law has it rough. She gives you chicken noodle soup, but she just gnaws on a dry bun.”
Others, seeing how thin and frail Mother Zhao looked, urged her: “The cafeteria food isn’t expensive. Treat yourself to something good. See how wasted away you are!”
Gnawing on her dry bun, Mother Zhao put on a pitiful face. “Dear sister, I’m just an old woman from the countryside, not like you, city folk with a salary. Where would I get money? I only have what my son gives me. It’s barely enough to buy food for my daughter-in-law. Where would I find extra money to buy more?”
As soon as she said this, the mothers-in-law in the ward sighed in sympathy.
One blunt person said, “Sister, really, you should just go down and get your food first. When your daughter-in-law is discharged, you can settle the bill all at once. Would your son really refuse to pay just because you ate a couple extra pieces of fish?”
This region was bordered by rivers on two sides and a river on another, so fish was the one thing never in short supply all year round!
Mother Zhao couldn’t bear anyone saying the slightest bad thing about her son. She immediately defended him, loudly declaring, “That’s impossible! My son is so filial, and no one knows better how much he dotes on his wife. Just the other day, he said he’d go buy old hens for my daughter-in-law. He’s new here in this city, doesn’t even know his way around, and still, he wanted to get old hens for his wife!”
The relatives in the ward echoed their agreement, but inwardly they sneered.
That evening, after two days of disappearing, Zhao Zongbao finally showed up at the door of the obstetrics ward.
Seeing him arrive empty-handed, one of the relatives who didn’t think much of him asked pointedly, “Hey! Weren’t you going to buy your wife an old hen? Where’s the hen?”
Zhao Zongbao was someone who could talk a sweet game but never spoke a word of truth.
Saying he was buying an old hen to nourish Xu Huiqing was just an excuse. The moment he stepped out of the ward, he put his own words clean out of his mind.
Was the disco in the city no fun to dance? Were the city’s roller skating rinks no fun to skate?
He was at that age that craved fun. In Water Wharf Town, there was nothing. Arriving in the neighboring city and seeing the bright, colorful world, he had long since gotten lost in pleasure and given no thought to things like buying an old hen for his wife.
The only reason he thought to stop by the hospital was that, after three days, Xu Huiqing should be about ready to be discharged, so he came to check.
Now, when someone brought up the old hen, he suddenly remembered that when he left a couple of days ago, he had said he’d buy an old hen for his wife.
He had spent the whole night at the dance hall doing disco, and the entire next day at the roller skating rink. Exhausted and sleepy, he yawned and said, “I spent the last two days going out to the countryside looking for old hens, but no one would sell me one. Said they’re raising them for their own families to eat.”
The person who had asked immediately said, “Why on earth go to the countryside? My family has chickens! I raised over twenty for my daughter-in-law’s delivery. She eats half a chicken a day, and even over the whole confinement month, she won’t finish them all. How many do you want? I’ll spare a few for you!”
Zhao Zongbao was suddenly put on the spot, but Mother Zhao took it as him genuinely planning to buy old hens for his wife and hastily said, “The hospital has chicken soup. Why buy an old hen? We’re strangers here with no place to cook it even if we had one!”
The warm-hearted relative replied, “Ah, the hospital cafeteria chickens are all farm-raised, can’t compare to my home-raised old hens! Besides, how many pieces of meat are in that cafeteria chicken soup anyway? What does that even do? When I’m at home, half a chicken goes into the pot, a whole chicken gets braised—it’s all the same. If you want, I can just stew some for your daughter-in-law alongside mine. Saves you the trouble of cooking at home, and I promise not a shred of chicken meat will be missing!”
At first she’d meant to mock the mother-son pair, but now she was genuinely promoting her own chickens. She’d raised thirty-some chickens herself, and her daughter’s in-laws had sent over another seven or eight. Their city house was small to begin with, and they’d planted vegetables in the yard. Over forty chickens, as soon as dawn broke, began crowing and nearly raised the roof!
At that moment, Zhao Zongbao stepped closer to Xu Huiqing and asked with a smile, “Huiqing, I’ll listen to whatever you want. If you want chicken, we’ll take this chicken. If you don’t, I’ll go back home and buy some for you!”
Xu Huiqing, who had spent the last two days in the hospital bed, eating and resting well, looked at Zhao Zongbao with eyes full of moved gratitude. She turned to the relative in the next bed and said, “Sister, then I’ll have to trouble you these next few days.”