Chapter 2

The joy lasted barely two seconds before Maisie sank her teeth into his wrist.

Joe yelped and let go, and Maisie snatched the thing free to look at it. A pig's trotter, gnawed to pieces by the dog.

Furious, she flung the bone to the ground, cursing under her breath.

Grandma leaned against the doorframe, picking at her feet, her eyes sliding sideways to watch the yard.

Then she suddenly lifted her head and beckoned to the reeking Joe. "Joe... come here, Joe..."

Joe's ears were sharp. He dropped Maisie and rushed over.

He knelt at the old woman's feet and put on a fawning smile. "Ma, you remember now, don't you? It's me, Joe, your youngest, the one you love most. Where are the deeds, really?"

Grandma squinted and patted Joe's face, mumbling.

"Joe, my good boy, the year I had you, there was a flood... Ma hid you in the drainage ditch out back."

"My gold bracelets and the household papers, I threw them all into the deepest part of the mud pond out back. Go on, go fish them out..."

That ditch out back was a dead pool that fed into the village's sewage channel.

It had sat abandoned for nearly ten years. In summer the stink of it made you want to gag just walking by.

Joe frowned and hesitated. "Ma, they're really in the mud pond?"

Grandma's face changed in an instant, and she brought her hand across Joe's face. "Ungrateful son! You won't listen to your mother! Then nothing for you! Not one cent for you!"

"No, no, no! Ma, I'll listen! I'm going right now! I'm going this second!"

Terrified she'd change her mind, Joe scrambled off toward the back lot on all fours.

Maisie, watching from the side, panicked and hurried forward too. "Ma, what about me? I'm Maisie, your eldest girl! You loved me best when I was little, so where are the old deeds?"

Grandma stared at Maisie with hollow eyes, fixed on her for a long moment, and then her whole body began to shake.

She grabbed the broom beside her and swung it at Maisie. "You wicked witch! You've come to beat me again! You're not eating my family's rice!"

"Ma! It's me, Maisie! I'm not your mother-in-law! Your mother-in-law's been dead thirty years!"

"It's you! You stole my grain, and you made me kneel and wash your feet!" Grandma shrieked at the top of her lungs.

"Unless you kneel and kowtow three times, and bring me the wash water and scrub my feet, I'll burn every last bit of the Fox family inheritance! Burn it all!"

Maisie froze where she stood, her face going from green to white.

Every day in the state capital she lived in comfort, and on her visits back to the village she thought even a glance at the roadside mud was filthy. And now she was supposed to kneel and wash the feet of this senile old woman?

"Maisie, hurry up and kneel!" my mother urged from the side, fanning the flames.

"Five houses on the line, and three kowtows is nothing. If you won't do it, then don't expect a share of those deeds!"

Maisie gritted her teeth, steeled herself, and knelt.

"Ma! I was wrong! I'll wait on you and wash your feet!"

With that she went to the kitchen and carried out a basin of hot water, reaching to pull off Grandma's mud-caked shoes.

Grandma's feet were all calluses and dead skin. Choking back the urge to retch, Maisie sank her hands into the water and scrubbed the old woman's feet, stroke after stroke.

"Harder! Has the wicked witch not eaten?"

Cursing, Grandma stamped her foot down into the water, splashing it right into Maisie's face.

Maisie squeezed her eyes shut and forced a smile through her teeth. "Ma, does that feel good? Now the deeds—"

"Good... it feels good..."

Grandma squinted and grinned like a fool.

Just then a scream tore out of the back lot.

Joe came into view caked in mud from head to toe, even his lips gone black.

He ran into the yard clutching a filthy, torn plastic bag. "Ma! I felt along the whole bottom of that pond! I dredged this up! And I've got seven or eight leeches biting my legs!"

Joe tore the bag open with shaking hands.

But there were no gold bracelets inside, and no household papers.

Only a rotted-out canvas shoe with no sole left.

Joe's vision went black, and he nearly toppled to the ground.

Every face in the family darkened at once, and inside, only Grandma sat clapping her hands and cackling.

But for those millions, they clenched their jaws and swallowed the rage.

Only the matter gave them no room to breathe.

Early the next morning, the township supervisor walked straight through the yard gate with the redevelopment office director.

The director slapped a notice against the door plank and called out.

"Here's your final ultimatum! If you still can't produce the old deeds and the original household papers for verification and signing by noon tomorrow, this compound gets treated as an ownerless illegal structure!"

"And you can forget about the six million and the five houses, any of it!"