1.
I had a little sister who'd been sickly since the day she was born.
The year I got into the top public high school in the county, my father crouched on the front step puffing away at his pipe, and my mother held my hand and kept wiping at her eyes, her face full of pity.
"It's your father's and my fault. We just aren't good enough to give you what you deserve."
"You've seen how things are at home. Your sister goes back into the hospital tomorrow. We really don't have the money to keep you in school."
My mouth opened. I wanted to say I could borrow the money, I could apply for financial aid.
But then I looked at our leaking, run-down roof and my sister coughing without stop in the next room, and I shut my mouth.
At sixteen, I shouldered my bag and boarded the train south with people from our town, off to work in the city.
The first year my wage was fifteen hundred. I sent thirteen hundred home and kept two hundred for food.
The second year my wage was twenty-three hundred. My parents said my sister's illness had gotten worse again, so I sent home two thousand.
The third year, the fourth year. Later, when I married, the bride price was eighty-eight thousand, and my parents kept eighty thousand of it.
Every month I still had to give them three thousand out of my paycheck.
After the wedding my husband fought with me over it plenty, saying he regretted marrying a bottomless money pit like me.
Even my child wasn't close to me, saying I didn't have this family in my heart, asking how a mother like me could exist.
It went on that way until the time my sister was hospitalized again and I went to visit.
My parents and my sister were laughing together, the sound drifting out through a door that hadn't been shut all the way.
"Mom, Dad, how much do you think that idiot sister of mine will hand over this time, now that she thinks I'm in the hospital?"
"I've been dying to go abroad and travel. You have no idea how exhausting it is, lying in bed playing sick every single day."
"All right, all right, you've kept it up all these years already. When she gets here, just lie in bed and don't say a word. She made a good bit last month, so we'll get all of it out of her for you."
My head went blank with a roar. I gripped the fruit basket in my hands, turned in a daze, and walked out of the ward. I never saw the truck barreling straight at me.
When I opened my eyes again, I was back in my second year working in the city.
Through the old-fashioned handset against my ear came my parents, sobbing out one complaint after another.
Staring at everything in front of me, I suddenly smiled. Then I slammed the phone down.
This time I will never again be your fool, bled dry while you lie to my face.
...
I leaned against the wall, eyes shut, gulping down air in ragged breaths. The things my parents and sister had said were still ringing in my ears.
One word kept echoing in my head. Faking.
I couldn't help a cold little laugh. I couldn't have said what I felt. Faking, sure, that was fine. She'd been faking it for close to twenty years.
From sixteen to forty-six, all those years I sent them more money than I could count, and I couldn't even bring myself to spend a bowl of braised pork on my own plate.
At my worst I made a two-yuan portion of plain rice last three meals, with a fifty-cent dinner roll and pickles.
What was I to them? An idiot. An endless, bottomless supply of blood.
My fist slowly clenched.
The phone in front of me started buzzing again. I stared at it without moving.
Over and over. On the third ring I took a deep breath and picked it up.
The moment I did, his displeasure came pouring through. "I wasn't done talking, and you just hang up? Went off to work and earn a little money and now you think you're too good for us?"
"Your sister is lying in a hospital bed right now, and you, her own sister, can just stand by and watch? Don't you have a heart?"
Then came a shuffling, shoving noise over the line.
My mother's voice came through the handset. "Gilly, don't listen to your father. He's just worried sick about your sister."
She went on and on about how terrible my sister's illness was this time.
Lying in that hospital bed, resuscitated more than once, nearly not pulling through.
This time I didn't take up my mother's thread. I just listened, quietly.
It had been the same in my past life. My parents calling to pour out their troubles, one playing the kind one, one playing the harsh one.
And in the end they'd tell me my sister's medical bills had gone up again, that thirteen hundred wasn't enough, they needed two thousand.
I worked in a factory. I was young, and my wage was already docked hard as it was.
Two shifts a day on the production line, the work dull and endless, the kind where you can see the rest of your life the moment you open your eyes.
I was still young. I didn't want to live that way. That first year I scraped and saved every bit of my wage, wanting to change how I lived.
The boss saw how honestly I worked, and the second year he raised my pay.
I counted the days, working out how long I'd have to save before I could quit and go make something of myself.
But the way it turned out, after that one phone call from my parents, I ground it out in that factory year after year.
My mother was still going on and on into the phone, and only then did she notice I'd been quiet for a long time.
That was when she stopped and asked, "Gilly, didn't your wage go up to twenty-three hundred? If you can manage it, send a little more home."
"It's not much, two thousand or so. We'll keep a record of it. Once your sister's better, we'll have her work and pay you back herself."
How familiar. She'd said the exact same thing in my last life.
That wait stretched to thirty years.
Right up until I died, and it never came.
I almost wanted to laugh. I asked the question I'd wanted to ask my whole last life. "You know I make twenty-three hundred a month. How am I supposed to live on three hundred?"
On the other end my mother mumbled something and said nothing more.
I straightened up and said it word by word. "I'm not giving you this money. And I never will again. Not one cent, ever."
