“You’re the same age as my daughter-in-law, why are you still calling me Elder Sister? You should be calling me Auntie!” The bedside companion from the neighboring bed was grinning from ear to ear, clapping her hands excitedly. “No trouble, no trouble at all, it’s all just a matter of course!”
She spoke earnestly to Xu Huiqing, “Girl, you’re young, you don’t understand the importance of postpartum recovery. If you don’t do your recovery right, you’ll have plenty of misery to look forward to! I didn’t do my recovery well when I was young. Now, my eyes can’t even face the wind without tearing up, and my whole body aches whenever the sky turns gloomy! You listen to Auntie. For these next few days, eat well and drink well during your recovery. Don’t worry about anything. With your mother-in-law and husband here to care for you, you just focus on resting and recovering your health. Relax!”
The neighboring bedside companion was a straightforward elder sister in her forties, brisk and energetic in everything she did. She said to Zhao Zongbao, “I won’t ask you for much. Just the market price. Old hens, I’ll give you for one yuan and fifty cents a catty. My old hens weigh three to four catties each. I’ll just charge you two yuan and fifty cents for half a chicken. I won’t charge you for the stewing!”
There was a huge chicken and duck farm in the neighboring city. The surrounding towns, including Water Wharf Town where Zhao Zongbao and his family lived, all got their wholesale poultry from that neighboring city. Never mind the wholesale price from the farm; at the local vegetable market in their town, a farmed chicken cost one yuan forty to one yuan fifty per catty anyway. This bedside companion asking one yuan fifty per catty really wasn’t overcharging him. She was even cooking and stewing it for him. Even if she kept the head, neck, intestines, gizzard, and heart for herself, this price was a genuine bargain.
Mother Zhao immediately exclaimed, “Lord almighty, half a chicken costs two fifty! Two fifty could feed me at the cafeteria for days! And since when does a hen have three catties of meat? After you take out the intestines, gizzard, head, and all that, you’d be lucky to get two catties of meat. And you’re still charging me two fifty?” She waved her hand dismissively. “Forget it!”
The childbirth companion said, “This is a chicken I raised myself. Can a factory farm’s chicken compare to one I raised myself? How many days does a farm chicken even live before slaughter? I’ve been raising this hen since my daughter-in-law first got pregnant, over eight months now. It’s eaten nothing but rice grain and river clams. Every single bird weighs at least three or four catties!”
Mother Zhao shot back, “You’re charging me two fifty for half a three-catty chicken?”
The bedside companion was speechless. She had said at least three catties, not that it was really only three catties!
“Then I’ll just charge you two yuan, alright? If you want the intestines and heart, I’ll stew them all together and bring it for your daughter-in-law!”
Zhao Zongbao had been caught off guard by Xu Huiqing’s words earlier.
After several years of marriage into the Zhao family, Xu Huiqing’s pride and sharp edges had long been worn smooth. Coupled with the fact that her own family doted on her and she’d married straight out of school, she was naturally pure-hearted and virtuous. He had deliberately left the decision to her, thinking that, with her nature, she’d never be able to voice the wish to eat chicken.
He hadn’t expected her to agree so directly.
But he still asked Xu Huiqing, “Mom has a point. The hospital cafeteria has chicken too. Two yuan could get you chicken noodle soup there for two days. What do you think?”
The bedside companion grew anxious and tried to persuade Xu Huiqing, “Girl, don’t you listen to your mother-in-law! Your body is your own. I’ve never seen a family that wouldn’t even stew a chicken for a daughter-in-law who just gave birth to a son!” She cast a disdainful eye roll at Mother Zhao.
Xu Huiqing hesitated, looking from Mother Zhao to the bedside companion. Weakly, she said to the companion, “Elder Sister, could I trouble you to add some noodles in there too? I’ve been bleeding a lot these days, my head is terribly dizzy, and I can’t eat enough at the hospital. I have no breast milk. It’s so pitiful—my son hasn’t had even a drop of my milk since he was born. I want to eat more so I can start producing milk. These past two days, my son has been nursing from your daughter-in-law. Thank you so much for that!”
The childbirth companion immediately let out a hearty laugh. “No problem! No problem! What’s a little breast milk? My grandson couldn’t finish it all anyway!” She then turned on Mother Zhao. “You, I’m talking to you. Looking at your son, with the mousse hairspray in his hair, his bell-bottom pants, his leather shoes—he doesn’t look like someone without money. You even said earlier your family sells household appliances. Logically, shouldn’t you be wealthier than us hard-working folks? How is it that your daughter-in-law gives you a big, fat grandson and you’re still so stingy?”
Her words were directed at Mother Zhao, but her meaning was aimed squarely at Zhao Zongbao.
Zhao Zongbao only looked at Xu Huiqing, but she seemed utterly exhausted and weak. She lowered her eyes, looking as if she was about to fall asleep.
With the pressure squarely on him, Zhao Zongbao frowned and said, “Let’s do this. I’ll go ask the doctor if she can be discharged first. If she can leave, we’ll go home and eat there. My five sisters all have chickens ready and waiting for my wife. If she can’t leave yet, then I’ll trouble you, Elder Sister, for these next couple of days. But let me say the ugly words up front: two yuan is no small sum. It’s not that I don’t have money, but my family’s money didn’t just blow in on the wind. It’s hard-earned, blood-and-sweat money. I expect to get what I pay for. I can buy your chicken, but if it’s short in weight, don’t blame me if I smash up your house later!”
The bedside companion rolled her eyes inwardly, but outwardly smiled. “Don’t you worry. You’ll only have more than you bargained for, never less!”
Just in time for the evening rounds, the doctor soon arrived with the nurses to check on the mothers. Zhao Zongbao seized the opportunity to mention bringing Xu Huiqing home for her postpartum recovery.
The doctor frowned upon hearing this. “You can take your wife home, that’s fine. But she just had a major hemorrhage that we managed to stop. Your address says Water Wharf Town, correct? From here to Water Wharf Town is at least an hour and a half to two hours by car. We can’t guarantee she’ll be safe on the road. In cases like hers, we generally recommend a seven to ten-day stay. The risk of major hemorrhage is still present for ten days after delivery. Besides, your wife’s situation differs from average new mothers. On top of the hemorrhage, she’s also at risk for postpartum eclampsia. She might look fine now, but these things are unpredictable. In the hospital, we can resuscitate her immediately if anything happens. If she goes home and something like the other day occurs, even if you rushed her back here, we might be powerless to help.”
This wasn’t meant to scare Zhao Zongbao; they truly would be powerless.
If too much time was wasted during transport without scientific medical intervention for emergency treatment, some postpartum mothers would simply be gone by the time they reached the hospital.
The doctor held a board with forms, writing notes as she asked Zhao Zongbao, “Are you paying publicly or out-of-pocket?”
At their hospital, the daily bed fee for public insurance was seven yuan. Out-of-pocket was half that, three yuan fifty cents a day. A ten-day stay would be thirty-five yuan.
In this small prefecture-level city, where the average salary was only one hundred to one hundred fifty yuan, thirty-five yuan equaled ten days’ wages for some workers. It wasn’t an insignificant sum.
But what she didn’t know was that a single ticket to the dance hall cost seven or eight yuan. Add the cost of drinks, and Zhao Zongbao would blow fifteen yuan in one night. During the day, even the cheapest hour at the roller skating rink was five yuan. A casual two or three-hour session there meant another fifteen yuan gone. In just two days of going to discos and the roller rink, he’d spent over fifty yuan.
Zhao Zongbao might have been reluctant to spend, but he could do the math. In this era, cars were scarce, and taxis were prohibitively expensive. From Water Wharf Town to the neighboring city was forty kilometers. A single taxi ride would cost at least forty to fifty yuan. Yet Xu Huiqing’s daily hospital bed fee was only three yuan fifty. Even a ten-day stay would be under forty yuan. If he took her home now and something went wrong on the way, forget about the additional treatment and medicine costs — just the taxi fare alone would cover her hospital stay for over ten days.
During the 1960s, when they were Little Red Guards, the Zhao family had enthusiastically participated in the house raids, quietly hiding away quite a few valuable things. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have had the money in the early ’90s to buy three large storefronts in town for their household appliance business.
Televisions and electric fans were incredibly expensive back then. Without some hidden wealth, the Zhao family couldn’t have managed such a business.
After calculating the costs rapidly in his head, Zhao Zongbao turned to the doctor with a grand, magnanimous smile. “Then I’ll listen to the doctor. We’ll stay in the hospital exactly as long as the doctor says! What’s it matter if I spend an extra two yuan a day on an old hen?” He turned to Xu Huiqing. “Huiqing, you just gave birth. Isn’t eating an old hen the least you deserve? Before, it was only because we were strangers here in this neighboring city that I let you eat chicken noodle soup from the cafeteria. Since this elder sister here has offered to stew a chicken for you, then I’ll trouble her for it!”
His words sounded pleasant enough, and the childbirth companion laughed along. “Leave it to me, you can rest easy. I guarantee your wife won’t go hungry!”
This elder sister was indeed a straightforward, honest person. Seeing that Zhao Zongbao and his mother didn’t seem like good-hearted types, every day she would bring the whole chicken in her stew pot, cut in half, for Xu Huiqing to pick her half herself. She’d also throw in all the innards—the intestines, gizzard, heart, kidney, and such—and even added homemade rice noodles. When ladled into a big soup bowl, it was a mountain of food, a bowl full to the brim!
It was far more than the single bowl of chicken noodle soup Mother Zhao brought back from the hospital cafeteria each time.
And the smell of a home-raised old hen was entirely different from the hospital’s chicken soup. It was incredibly fragrant!
This wonderful chicken and soup—Mother Zhao didn’t want Xu Huiqing to eat it. She felt it was wasted on her and wanted to save it for her son.
But every time, the neighboring bed’s childbirth companion would personally serve it up, set a small table, and bring it right to Xu Huiqing.
To recover her body as quickly as possible, Xu Huiqing would eat from that huge bowl—big as a washbasin, filled to the brim with rich chicken soup, chunks of chicken, intestines, gizzards, and noodles. Even when she was stuffed, she forced herself to finish every last bit, even drinking the broth down to the last drop.
The childbirth companion made the daily chicken soup primarily for her own daughter-in-law. Both women ate from the same pot. All the innards—intestines, gizzard, heart, kidney—were cleaned meticulously, completely free of any off-odor. In fact, it was so fragrant that every time she brought it in, the entire hospital room filled with a mouthwatering aroma.
Mother Zhao would gnaw on her dry steamed bun, watching eagerly, sighing incessantly, “You’re all living the good life now. When I was young, where was there any chicken soup to drink? There wasn’t crap to eat. I ate a handful of beans and my mother-in-law screamed at me from one end of the village to the other…”
She then said to Xu Huiqing, “If you can’t finish it, eat less. How could a woman like you eat so much? Save some for Zongbao. He’s out running around all day, who knows how much hardship he endures? Just drink some broth for the milk. Leave the chicken meat for Zongbao. All the nutrition is in the broth anyway!”
Xu Huiqing ignored her words completely. Every day, half a chicken disappeared without a trace. She even crunched up the stewed-tender chicken bones, sucking the marrow out until they were spotlessly clean.