Seeing this, the village chief’s eyes darted around shrewdly. He cleared his throat and said,“Lora, we know how hard you’ve worked and everyone in the village remembers your kindness. But these mangoes were grown by all of us, working from dawn to dusk. All year round, we count on this harvest.”
He pointed to the villagers behind him. “Look at your uncle. His son is in college, waiting for tuition. Denna’s husband is still sick. We’re not like you. You can just start a live stream and make big money easily.”
Uncle Jackson chimed in from the side, “For you, 2,000 dollars is like a meal. For us, it’s half a year’s living expenses.”
The village chief held the QR code out in front of me again. “You’re such a big streamer; you wouldn’t fuss over such a small amount with the villagers, would you?”
Hearing this, the villagers all straightened up. They started chiming in together, “Exactly! Gifts in your live stream fly everywhere—what’s two thousand more or less?”
“It’s not easy for us to farm. You just talk on camera and make money. You should share some with us!”
Denna wiped her tears. “My husband’s medical bills aren’t even covered. You can’t just eat our mangoes for free.”
I could hardly believe my ears. “Denna, you say you can’t cover the medical bills? Other years, your mangoes would have rotted in the fields by now. But this year, just your batch alone sold 8,000 pounds. At the current price, that’s at least 11,000 dollars. How can you still not cover the medical bills?”
Denna was suddenly at a loss for words, her eyes avoiding mine.
My uncle quickly tried to smooth things over, “That’s a different issue! Right now, we’re talking about you eating mangoes for free!”
I looked at him, so self-righteous and couldn’t help but laugh a little. For the past two weeks, I’d been sleeping only three or four hours a night, my throat hoarse and sore, still pushing through every live stream.
The team had been gnawing on cold buns and sleeping on army cots with me. What were we after? We just wanted the villagers to have a better life.
But now? They took the money they’d just earned and turned around to argue with me over tasting mangoes.
I looked down at the corners of my mouth, worn raw and suddenly couldn’t understand what I had been busy with for the past two weeks.
Seeing me silent, my uncle pointed at my nose and scolded, “Lora, you’ve forgotten your roots! Back then, your parents were dirt poor. If the village hadn’t helped cover your tuition, would you even have made it this far? When you were in school, you ate at our house every day and now you’re quibbling with us over this petty money?”
“Exactly! We treated you better than our own daughter. You can’t be so ungrateful!”
A few elders joined in, pointing fingers, “You shouldn’t have even sent her to school—look at the ungrateful child she’s turned out to be!”
They kept piling up every small favor from my childhood, slapping them on me like whips.
I took a deep breath, forcing my voice to stay steady. “Uncle, you’re right. I did eat at your house a lot when I was younger. But do you remember? I always waited until your big dog, Bobby, finished eating before I dared to go to the stove and take the bowl that was specially left for me. Sometimes there’d still be scraps of meat in the dog’s bowl, while my bowl only had watery porridge.”
Denna hurried to interrupt, but I raised my hand to stop her. “As for the tuition, you may have forgotten. But my dad knelt in your main hall back then and signed an IOU, mortgaging our house, agreeing to three percent interest, before you finally lent three hundred dollars. The village committee’s accounts should still have a record of this.”
Yovie’s eyes turned red. She planted her hands on her hips and stood firmly in front of me, her voice fierce.
“The first thing Lora did after starting work was repay her debts. She worked all day and streamed at night, saving up enough to pay back every cent with interest. Not only did she pay the interest, she even gave each family an extra thousand dollars. And as her uncle, you even said the interest was too little back then!”
