I awoke abruptly with a pain in my stomach. While stubbornly pulling the covers off of me, I turned to the side of my bed, stood slowly, and looked out the window. It appeared that the Old Man in the Sky did not feel too happy today either, for the sky was bleak and gray. Ever since Spring Grass came back and took her son to return to the city with her, I have not had much to look forward to seeing in the morning, let alone a purpose for these miserable days, besides seeing what my husband was up to.
In the kitchen, porridge boiled. Before having a bowl, I took the scraps from last night out to feed the hogs in the yard. Do the pigs ever feel lonely? Perhaps I could hobble around town and search for a merchant selling chickens to accompany them. We haven’t had chickens since the start of the Lunar New Year, when we slaughtered our last couple for dinner on New Year’s Eve. I looked towards the fields for a couple of minutes, decided that I’d harvest some vegetables for lunch later today, and headed back inside.
My husband was sitting on our table by the kitchen. Today was an off-day for him, so he could stay home and did not have commute to work. He was able to return to his job after I recovered from the fall from the many years ago, and now he was just checking through his accounting books. On sight of my return, he told me that we received a notice that Spring Grass had sent five thousand yuan for the cancer surgery. My husband and I looked at each other in confusion—how could Spring Grass afford this? Did she not say that she was tight on money, especially after the whole ordeal of having to set up a new business in Haizhou? This was incredibly irresponsible of Spring Grass with her money, especially when thinking about the house they lost and the desperate situation of Rivers Ho’s relatives. If I become diseased as I age, let it be so. I do not have much to contribute to this family anymore anyways, and it will just cost everyone a lot of money to keep me around.
My husband seemed to have a differing attitude about this. He claimed that we should just be grateful that Spring Grass is helping us pay for the surgery, especially since she is not fully obligated to help after having married off. She was supposed to be busy serving Rivers Ho’s family, but she was still supporting us. After all, the house would be even more empty without me around, even with our son and his wife staying here for a while. However, this was silly. How could Spring Grass all of a sudden want to support us after she ran off to the city and even left her own son behind with us? Looking back, all of this is even odder since she could not have been more eager to leave. She was always complaining about not being able to go to school when we could not afford to send her there after my injury, and she seemed to spend more time hanging around town than tending to the fields. Also, considering what Rivers Ho had gotten into, it was always a bad choice for her to get married into that unlucky family, and she should have listened to us and chosen one of the suitors that came to our doorstep. This all is very frustrating, as we might not even be in this predicament over paying for my surgery if Spring Grass had listened to us in the first place.
She was incredibly rebellious. I bet none of the other mothers in the village ever had their daughters talk back to them like Spring Grass did to me. I didn’t think that I was ever being too hard on her because she would need to get used to doing housework if she wanted to be a good wife. I never understood why she could not realize that, unless she married to a city boy, she would end up just like me, stuck in the countryside. She dreamed far too much about leaving our village, and now where did it get her? I only meant well for her, but Spring Grass seemed to be too stupid to see. I do not know where she got the idea that she could plan her own future out the way that she wanted it to be. She is very capable and sometimes hardworking, but a future with education was not realistic for her. I recall her flashing an award she received from her teacher, but clearly it was not representative of her foresight for the future. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a girl this confident about her future in my life.
Looking at my husband, I sighed. He did not seem to be moved by much of my complaining, and he actually seemed rather contented about us being able to afford my surgery. Maybe he is who Spring Grass got her ridiculous confidence from. I asked how he could not be as concerned as I am about Spring Grass’s family’s future. He said that we should just trust that Spring Grass and Rivers Ho will be able to make it big again with their business and that this will just be a setback for them. To add, he felt that we should not worry about it anymore in case my stomach pains get worse, since being stressed about the family all these years was probably what caused the cancer. Perhaps this was a reasonable claim, since I’d heard long ago from an old wives’ tale that keeping worries in causes stomach problems. That’s why I yelled whenever I was angry. However, I can’t yell much anymore due to old age making me more tired and frail, so I might as well try and let the issue go.
Maybe it is a good thing that Spring Grass is helping pay for the surgery, if it means that she will be more respectful to her elders’ opinions. It was about time that Spring Grass returned her focus here and started helping out the family some more anyways, given her brother’s injury from work. Then again, isn’t she rebelling by not listening to my preference for not having the surgery? Maybe she hasn’t really changed since she left to be with Rivers Ho. She seems to have become just like the city folk, with their mannerisms and their accent. I salted my porridge, topped it with some pickled vegetables, and began blowing at the porridge to cool it as I contemplated what the five thousand yuan could mean.
My husband said that we should head to the doctor and confirm that we will be having the surgery. He claimed that there is truly no point to thinking about the situation anymore and that we can only progress our understanding of the situation through another talk with Spring Grass. I submitted and turned to the calendar. It’d be a while until we could see Spring Grass again and I could hound her for being crazy and pulling five thousand yuan out of thin air… My stomach panged a bit in pain at the thought of that. Meanwhile, perhaps we could go and see the doctor in a couple of days. My husband flipped through his notebook for his schedule, and we planned for a day trip together from there.