“Keep your voice down, careful not to wake the baby.”
Li Shuiqin gently patted the baby’s back, looking at her husband, who sat by the table drinking water with an unhappy face. “Have you thought of a name for the baby?”
“I have, but none of them seem quite right.” Yu Heng didn’t know many characters, and there were no books lying around at home. He’d thought about it all morning and still hadn’t come up with anything usable.
“Why don’t… we let Fuling name her?”
“What did you say?” Yu Heng thought he’d misheard. “If we’re going to find someone to name her, it should be Father and Mother, what good would it do to ask her?”
“Fuling spent seventeen years at the Marquis’ estate, she must know more than we do. If it weren’t for her quick decision yesterday, you and I…”
“Saving a life earns merit greater than building seven pagodas [1]Saving a life earns merit greater than building seven pagodas (jiu ren yi ming sheng zao qi ji futu, 救人一命勝造七級浮屠) Idiom, saving a life is a great act of merit/virtue jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_3372153_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_3372153_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });. If I were out and saw a pregnant woman about to give birth, I’d save her too, besides, you’re her eldest sister-in-law, it’s only natural she’d save you.” Yu Heng’s seemingly reasonable excuse was really just that he didn’t want Yu Fuling naming his daughter, it rubbed him the wrong way.
“I might have been in the room, but I wasn’t deaf to what you all said at the breakfast table this morning.” Seeing her husband unwilling to listen, Li Shuiqin’s face turned cold too. “You’re the eldest son of the family, you should be shouldering more responsibility, how can you keep going on about Second Brother…”
“Li Shuiqin, whose side are you even on?” Yu Heng raised his voice, not caring if the family heard. “I put up with your parents’ anger at your family’s home, and now that I’m back, I still have to put up with anger from my own family, everything I’ve done, wasn’t it all for you?”
“For me?” Li Shuiqin looked as if she’d heard the biggest joke in the world, snorting as she looked at her husband. “Then what about the pearl? Are you going to say I told you to steal it?”
“The matter of stealing the pearl was my own poor judgment, it has nothing to do with you.” His wife had only just started her month of confinement, and Yu Heng still had enough sense to know that if he made her angry, it would be the baby who suffered.
“Whenever we run into unreasonable in-laws, even if I talked myself hoarse, I couldn’t explain myself out of it.” Li Shuiqin was still very weak right now, and didn’t have the strength to crane her neck and argue with her husband. “Fuling coming back to this family is already a settled fact. As long as the three of us don’t move out, we’ll be running into her every single day. Can’t you just take a step back, for my sake and the baby’s?”
“Father thinks I’m useless, do you think I’m useless too now?” Yu Heng was actually quite fragile inside. Other people’s eldest sons managed their households in perfect order, buying oxen, buying land, renovating the house, the whole family thriving, while he was like that pile of firewood in the kitchen that had already gone damp, no matter how you tried to light it, it just wouldn’t catch.
“I only said to name the baby, how did that turn into me saying you’re useless?” Li Shuiqin’s feelings for her husband were complicated, on one hand, he really was good to her, but on the other, every time she tried to talk to him about the ways of the world, he was always so resistant.
“They say cheap lives are easy to raise [2]cheap lives are easy to raise (jian ming hao yanghuo, 賤命好養活) Metaphor, folk belief that a humble, unassuming name helps a child survive/thrive jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_3372153_1_2').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_3372153_1_2', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });, so let’s just call her Xiaohua then.”
“What did you say?”
If she hadn’t been holding the baby, Li Shuiqin would have gotten out of bed to slap her husband. “She’s our eldest daughter, our very first child, and that’s the name you’re giving her?”
“It’s just a childhood nickname. Once she’s older and sturdier, there’s no rush to think of a proper name…”
“Yu Heng, you bastard…”
“What’s all this arguing about?”
Zhang Qiaofeng pushed the door open, her face displeased as she cut off their argument. “I could hear you two all the way in the kitchen.”
“Mother, why don’t you name the baby?”
Her mother’s arrival was like a lifeline. Yu Heng hurried toward her, and seeing she was carrying fish soup, his eyes went wide with surprise. “Where’d this fish come from? Did Father buy it at the market?”
“Yu Zhuo and Fuling caught it in a pond. The moment they got back, they said to stew it up for Shuiqin.” Zhang Qiaofeng shot her son a look and walked toward the bed. “I’m just an old woman, what would I know about naming a baby? You can’t even come up with a name yourself, aren’t you embarrassed?”
“I never went to school, I don’t know characters. Of course I can’t name a baby.” Yu Heng was always making excuses, never once thinking he was in the wrong.
“Shuiqin, hand me the baby. I made this crucian carp and tofu soup especially for you, once you finish it, you’ll surely have milk.” Zhang Qiaofeng didn’t even bother with her eldest son, bending down to take her granddaughter into her arms, gently lifting the swaddling cloth. “Oh my, sleeping so soundly.”
“Mother, where’s Fuling?”
Li Shuiqin had been so insistent about the midwife and her confinement earlier because she’d seen how her parents-in-law had poured all their attention into their sick daughter before. Now that the truth was out and everything she’d wanted had come true, even better than she’d imagined, an uneasy feeling welled up inside her. “It was such a good thing Fuling was here yesterday. I’m not good with words, so I was thinking of asking Fuling to name the baby.”
“Fuling’s eating right now, I’ll tell her later.”
Zhang Qiaofeng knew that if a woman didn’t manage her confinement month properly, it would leave her with lasting health problems. “This whole month, you just rest well. If you truly have no milk, we’ll figure out something else. Everything needed for the third-day bathing ceremony is ready too, but you’ll need to discuss with Yu Heng how to handle the baby’s full-month celebration.”
“The full-month celebration will obviously be held, what’s there to discuss?” Yu Heng turned and walked over. “And it needs to be a proper, grand affair, my daughter is the first grandchild in the Yu family.”
“That’s right, if our family holds a full-month celebration, we’ll surely need to invite relatives and friends. Your father doesn’t have relatives on his side, and my side doesn’t have many either. What about Shuiqin’s side?” The moment Zhang Qiaofeng said this, Yu Heng, who had been quite worked up, went quiet.
“Mother-in-law, hasn’t anyone from my family come to check on me?”
When Li Shuiqin left her own family’s home yesterday, she’d already been bleeding, by rights, whatever the circumstances, her own family should have at least come to ask after her.
“Once Qingshan gets back, I’ll have him send word to your family’s home, so they can rest easy too.” Zhang Qiaofeng smiled at her eldest daughter-in-law. “Focus on eating, I’ll carry the baby out. Yu Heng, why are you just standing there, Shuiqin’s not in a state to move around easily, hurry up and feed her.”
“Coming.”
The moment Zhang Qiaofeng carried her granddaughter out, she let out a soft sigh. She knew very well that the calm between her eldest son and daughter-in-law was only temporary, now that the baby had been born crying into the world, there’d probably be plenty of arguing to come.
“Mother?”
Yu Fuling walked out of her room and saw her mother carrying her little niece, sighing to herself, and hurried over. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, I just carried the baby out so your eldest sister-in-law can rest better.” Zhang Qiaofeng smiled. “Oh, right, did you have Yu Zhuo wipe the washed cucumbers and radishes dry?”
“All wiped dry.”
Yu Fuling nodded, reaching out her hands. “Mother, let me hold my little niece.”
“All right, be careful with her.”
The moment Yu Fuling took her little niece into her arms, the baby, who had been sleeping, suddenly opened her eyes.
The two of them locked eyes for a moment, and the little niece suddenly broke into a grin.
“Mother… my little niece is smiling at me.” Yu Fuling had never seen a baby just two days old actually smile before, and her eyes were especially bright, as if they could speak.
“Fuling…”
Zhang Qiaofeng thought of what her eldest daughter-in-law had said. “Why don’t you name the baby?”
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