“How dare you talk back!” Old Lady Wang flew into a rage and sprang to her feet, reaching out to scratch her face.
“You little hussy! If it wasn’t you, then who else? There were only the two of us in the house. Are you trying to say the chickens somehow poisoned themselves?”
Shen Youyou was utterly wronged.
“I didn’t do it! I only fed the chickens corn like you told me to! But that corn looked reddish—maybe yours went bad, and that’s what killed the chickens!”
At the mention of reddish corn, everyone’s expression changed.
Neighbor Aunt Li next door stared wide-eyed in shock.
“Reddish corn… Old Lady Wang, could some of your corn have been mixed with pesticide?”
Just then, Old Man Wang and his wife, who had been sent for, arrived home. Taken aback by the crowd inside, they asked hurriedly, “What’s going on? What happened?”
Before the words had even left his mouth, he saw his wife let out a miserable shriek and dash toward the grain storeroom. When he saw how much of the pesticide-treated corn was missing, his eyes rolled back, and he nearly fainted from fury.
Wang Jiangang and his elder brother Wang Jianjun rushed in right behind him. Seeing the half-sack of corn left, their faces darkened at once. They quickly helped their mother sit down.
Shen Youyou followed them over, pointed at the sack, and protested, “Look, it’s this corn—it’s turned red. It must have gone bad. The chickens ate it and got sick, so that’s why…”
Slap!
Before she could finish, a solid slap landed hard on her cheek. She covered her face, staring at Wang Jiangang in utter disbelief.
Wang Jiangang was seething.
“Shut your mouth! This corn was treated with pesticide—it’s seed corn coated in poison! That’s why all the chickens died!”
“What?” Shen Youyou was stunned. She had never done farm work a day in her life, and her family had never let her. She was the only high schooler in her family. While everyone else went out to work, she stayed home studying or went into town with friends. All the household chores and farm work had fallen to Shen Niannian. Though Uncle Shen had scraped together money for Shen Niannian’s schooling, she could only make it through junior high—there simply hadn’t been enough money to keep her in school. Shen Niannian had then had to work in the fields and take odd jobs whenever she could.
Shen Youyou had truly never set foot in the fields and knew absolutely nothing about farming. Later, she went on to study chemical engineering, graduated, and took a technical post at a state-owned factory—a steady, decent job—so she had never done manual labor. She had no idea whatsoever what pesticide-treated seed corn looked like. Now panic began to creep in.
“I… I didn’t know! I’ve never worked around the house! I’ve never seen this before! How was I supposed to know?”
Wang Jiangang did know that she had been the treasured, pampered daughter in her family—a high school graduate, an educated woman. It made sense she wouldn’t know farm things. His anger softened somewhat.
“Alright, alright, Mother, please don’t be so angry. I’m sure Youyou never meant it. What would she gain from poisoning the chickens? She’d want to eat them come New Year’s just like the rest of us. Here—this month I’ll take my salary and buy twenty chicks. Youyou can raise them, and by the end of the year, they’ll be fully grown.”
Hearing this helped soothe Old Lady Wang’s temper. Still, her gaze toward Shen Youyou remained filled with resentment. Spending my son’s hard-earned wages! What kind of a wife did he bring home? She’s nothing but trouble!
Even Wang’s elder brother’s wife had soured on her. She couldn’t cook, and somehow even feeding chickens ended in disaster. The seed corn was a strange red—anyone else would have noticed something was wrong! Yet she had actually fed it to the birds without a second thought. She grumbled nonstop to Wang Jianjun.
Wang Jianjun was equally displeased with his new sister-in-law. To have lost all those plump chickens—no one could be happy about that. Worse still, the chickens were too toxic to eat. Burrying them alongside Wang Jiangang, he couldn’t help but speak his mind.
“Jiangang, you really must stop shielding her. She knows nothing about the world, causes nothing but trouble, and has no proper work. She’ll only drag you and this whole family down!”
His own wife at least brought in an income—temporary work though it was, it still earned twenty yuan a month. The third brother’s wife didn’t work, true, but she was expecting, and had always helped with household chores big and small. To think the second brother had brought home someone so utterly useless—how could anyone be pleased? It was like the old saying: One monk carries water alone, two monks share the load, three monks go thirsty entirely. One lazy family member meant discontent for everyone else.
Shen Youyou knew full well she had caused disaster. She felt terrible, and grieved for the chickens too. Yet her mind raced—this was the era of Reform and Opening-Up. In her memory, hadn’t Shen Niannian coaxed Wang Jiangang into quitting his job at the waste recycling station not long after they married? Hadn’t they built their fortune collecting scrap materials on their own?
She resolved to make amends. That evening over dinner, she spoke up brightly.
“Mother, Jiangang—now that the state encourages economic development, so many people are going into private business and making real money! Jiangang, you work at the recycling station—why not resign? With all the connections you’ve built there, we could collect scrap on our own and earn the difference in price!”
Old Lady Wang bristled instantly.
“You good-for-nothing! What mischief are you plotting now? My son has a perfectly good job, and you’d talk him into throwing it away? What on earth are you thinking?”
Wang Jiangang’s sister-in-law chimed in sharply. “Yes, sister-in-law—you have no idea how many educated youth have returned to the cities with no work at all. A secure state job like Jiangang’s is something people can only dream of! Why on earth would you ask him to quit?”
Wang Jiangang himself shook his head in disapproval. “That’s enough, Youyou. My job is perfectly fine. I earn thirty or forty yuan a month, and it’s secure—what could be better? Collecting scrap? How much could one possibly make?”
His elder brother Wang Jianjun scoffed. “The state may talk of economic development, but the rules haven’t been laid out clearly yet. Private trade? That sounds like speculation and profiteering. Be careful, or the Revolutionary Committee will have you locked up!”
At the words speculation and profiteering, Old Lady Wang’s expression turned grave. She rapped her chopsticks sharply against her bowl.
“Second son, we want no part of this! Profiteering is no small matter! Don’t even think about it—I absolutely forbid it!”
Seeing every last one of them oppose her filled Shen Youyou with anxiety. How on earth had Shen Niannian managed to win over this stubborn, obstinate old woman? She decided she would reason with Wang Jiangang again that night before bed. How were they ever to make their fortune and build their own business collecting scrap? How else would she ever live the life of wealth and ease she dreamed of?