“Sister-in-law, what are you saying?”
Meng Wenzhou scoffed, casting a sideways glance at Auntie Li.
“Our family split up long ago. What is so strange about us moving out to live on our own? ‘Kicked out’? What a joke.”
Hearing this, Auntie Li wore an expression of “you can’t fool me.” She waved her hand at Meng Wenzhou, her eyes still shining slyly.
“Eh, I’m just telling you what I heard!”
She leaned in even closer, the hot air from her mouth practically blowing onto their faces.
“That third sister-in-law of yours, she loves to take advantage of others. Why would she be willing to move out for no good reason?”
Xia Xianxian rolled her eyes at this old woman who loved watching drama.
“She just figured it out, didn’t she? So many people living together, you have to queue just to use the toilet. Large families have their liveliness, but small families have their own benefits.”
After saying this, she pulled Meng Wenzhou to walk faster. “Auntie Li, we have no one to help us save a seat, so we’re leaving first.”
Auntie Li had finally run into someone who knew the inside story; naturally, she wasn’t willing to let go of this opportunity for gossip. She chased after them, “Wait! Is it that the eldest son’s wife didn’t want to? I heard people saying it already—she was throwing things at home a couple of days ago.”
Xia Xianxian and Meng Wenzhou simply acted as if they didn’t hear her and kept jogging forward.
Auntie Li followed for a while, felt it was boring, and couldn’t be bothered to pursue them any further.
“Tsk, these young people really don’t understand how things work.”
She shook her head and began looking on the road for the next person she could talk to.
“What was Auntie Li talking about? How come I didn’t know anything about it?”
Xia Xianxian looked at Meng Wenzhou with a resentful expression. With no cell phones, no TV, and no internet, he didn’t even tell her the gossip he knew from outside—this was a terrible performance, really.
Ever since the old couple of the Meng family announced the separation, Wang Hehua had been full of energy every day.
Even on the day of the separation, when Yang Zhaodi stole some of her lard, Wang Hehua was too lazy to get angry about it. She just mentioned it on the surface, and let the matter go easily.
However, who knew that Yang Zhaodi was someone who could never get enough of taking advantage. Discovering that Wang Hehua didn’t scold her much, her boldness grew greater and greater.
Before the sky was even fully bright, Wang Hehua woke up. She dressed in the dark in her faded cloth jacket, glanced at Meng Wenguo and the children who were still sleeping, and tiptoed out of the room.
The fire in the stove cast a red glow on people’s faces. Wang Hehua squatted down, pushed aside the dried grass outside, and from a hidden crevice, she pulled out this jar of lard brought from her parents’ home. This lard was brought before the family split. Wang Hehua had secretly kept half for herself before taking the rest out to show off to her mother-in-law.
As soon as she held the jar, she felt something was wrong. She pried off the lid, and sure enough, the jar that had been more than half full was now left with only a thin layer at the bottom.
Wang Hehua was trembling with rage. She hugged the jar tightly to her chest, gnashing her teeth as she cursed Yang Zhaodi, that shameless oil-thief.
“What a shameless, low-down bitch!”
‘Clang!’
Wang Hehua viciously put the jar back in its original place, and the iron pot on the stove rang loudly from her impact.
Yang Zhaodi was still sleeping in a daze, not fully awake yet. She was dragging her shoes and shuffling on the floor with half-squinted eyes, and she was startled by Wang Hehua’s actions.
She subconsciously asked, “What’s going on, it’s early in the morning.”
Wang Hehua was almost laughed to anger by this shameless person. She looked at Yang Zhaodi with a cold face.
“I was wondering who came out in the middle of the night to be an oil thief? So it was the third sister-in-law who got up early.”
Yang Zhaodi was shocked by these words, her neck shrinking inward, her eyes darting around. But soon, she straightened her back and asked loudly, “What is the eldest sister-in-law saying? I don’t understand. Isn’t the lard stored in Mother’s cabinet? Where would there be lard here?”
“Did I say it was lard?”
Wang Hehua looked at Yang Zhaodi, who had confessed without being asked, and asked sharply.
“This, if it wasn’t lard, would you be this heartbroken? One can guess.”
Yang Zhaodi’s eyes rolled left and right, and after squeezing out this sentence, she stopped looking at her.
‘Tap… tap.’
The second sister-in-law, who had been watching for who knows how long, walked in. Her hair was neat, and a pair of smiling eyes watched them, as if the two in the kitchen were talking about something amusing.
“Yo, what are you talking about that’s so lively?”
Wang Hehua glanced at Liu Chunfen and then retracted her gaze. This Liu Chunfen was the most insidious and slippery; on the surface, she smiled at everyone and offended no one, but behind the scenes, she was no good.
Seeing someone arrive, Yang Zhaodi’s momentum grew again.
“Second sister-in-law, you judge this. I just woke up and was pointed at by the eldest sister-in-law and scolded for stealing oil. It’s really funny—where would there be oil in the house!”
Liu Chunfen glanced at Yang Zhaodi and then at Wang Hehua’s ugly expression before speaking slowly.
“That’s right, eldest sister-in-law. Although the family has split, we are still eating from the same pot. Isn’t the oil all locked in Mother’s cabinet?”
Wang Hehua was speechless for a moment. This lard had been hidden before the separation, mainly because she had gained favor with her mother-in-law by using it. The jar in her hand now really couldn’t be brought out into the open to talk about.
Before she could speak, Wang Cuihua’s voice came from outside.
“Early in the morning, what are you arguing about? You’re going to scare away a whole day’s worth of good fortune.”
Wang Cuihua gave these daughters-in-law a cross look; making such a racket first thing in the morning was unseemly.
The three of them stopped talking immediately and started doing their own work in the kitchen.
On the surface, the matter was settled, but the more Wang Hehua thought about it, the angrier she got.
She felt like she was going to vomit from frustration.
She didn’t go out in the morning, staying home to wash clothes and sew. Wang Hehua thought about the morning’s incident while she worked.
She reckoned that the second sister-in-law probably had a hand in her jar of oil too, but she was clever.
The second sister-in-law had long wanted to be the head of the household and had been buying bricks recently; it wouldn’t be long before they moved out.
Yang Zhaodi, the third sister-in-law, was someone who could never get enough of taking advantage; she probably wouldn’t be leaving anytime soon. If Yang Zhaodi wasn’t there, Liu Chunfen would have no gun to use.
As for the things in the house, the parents had long ago made them sign the separation documents. The second sister-in-law alone wouldn’t be able to stir up much trouble.
Thinking it over, Wang Hehua still felt she had to find a way to chase Yang Zhaodi out. However, as the eldest daughter-in-law, she couldn’t make things look too ugly on the surface; she had to let the third sister-in-law make a huge scene herself.
Having made up her mind, Wang Hehua’s mood became much more peaceful.
When Yang Zhaodi scraped the remaining lard from her jar, Wang Hehua said nothing.
When she wasn’t there, if Yang Zhaodi ran into her room to steal the eggs she had hidden away, Wang Hehua just acted as if she were blind and didn’t see.
Hmph, her things weren’t so easy to take.
After one or two times, Yang Zhaodi became even bolder.
Finally, that morning, she caught her red-handed!
Before the chickens had even crowed, Wang Hehua opened her eyes. At this time, it was still quite dark. Relying on her familiarity with the room, she felt her way through the dark and pushed the door open.
‘Tap, tap.’
Wang Hehua was instantly alert. A thief?
She carefully paced backward, intending to find a handy tool before calling everyone else, so as not to let the thief jump over the wall in a hurry and hurt someone.
She slowly bent down and picked up the broom leaning against the wall, only to find the figure of this thief surprisingly familiar.
Squinting her eyes to recognize them, this was… this was Yang Zhaodi, that oil-thief!
Wait, what was that in her hand!