Chapter 5

Grandma grew harder and harder to please. Her demands were no longer about material things, but about total possession of Ida's time and emotions.

That day was a Friday, and Ida's factory had a batch of rush orders to fill, so she was forced to work overtime until nine at night.

She was supposed to be home by seven to make Grandma dinner, but in the end all she could do was have Elisa's father throw together some noodles.

On top of that, every night at eight, Grandma made Ida sit with her to watch one particular dating show, and while they watched she had to listen to Grandma go on and on about the village gossip.

At nine-thirty, Ida dragged her legs, heavy as lead, and pushed open the front door. Without even stopping to change out of her shoes, she hurried into the living room, her face full of apology. "Mom, the factory was so busy today, I really couldn't get away. Did you get enough to eat for dinner?"

Grandma sat on the sofa with the TV blaring. She didn't so much as glance at Ida, her eyes locked on the screen, and coldly spat out two words: "Not dead."

Ida stiffened for a moment, then poured a cup of hot water and held it out, trying to placate her. "Mom, don't be upset. I'm off tomorrow, it's the weekend, I'll stew you some pork rib soup—"

"I don't deserve your pork rib soup." Grandma slammed her cane down on the coffee table, her voice as sharp as fingernails scraping glass. "What am I? I'm nothing but a beggar! You come home whenever you please, and I have to eat whatever pig slop you decide to feed me! You're so busy with work, aren't you so noble! So much more important than your own mother, who's got one foot in the coffin!"

Ida's eyes reddened instantly, exhaustion and hurt tangling together until she couldn't help defending herself. "Mom, I really do have to work overtime to earn money. Don't you need money for your medicine, your doctor's visits?"

Those words seemed to touch Grandma's rawest nerve.

Grandma's expression turned suddenly vicious. She let out a cold laugh and said, in a tone that was slow and yet cut to the bone with every word, "Earn money? You scrape together those miserable few pennies and you feel hard done by? You want to keep a tally with me? Fine! If I'd known you'd resent me this much, I should have gone to live with your second brother and his family back then!"

"Your second brother may not come to see me often, but his wife—your Aunt Vivian—now she used to be so devoted to me! She'd wash my feet, even trim my toenails neat and clean! She was a real lady, soft-spoken and gentle, not like you, snapping at me like a debt collector! It's only because your second brother's family is going through hard times right now that he can't look after me. If he were here, would it ever be your turn to give me attitude?!"

Those words landed on Ida's heart like a rusty hammer.

Elisa had just stepped out of the bedroom, and she caught every word. She was beyond stunned.

Aunt Vivian, devoted? Uncle Nathan's family, going through hard times?

That was a lie to fool the dead! Back when Grandma broke her leg and had surgery in the hospital, Aunt Vivian hadn't shown her face once. She'd even called Ida a "fusspot" over the phone, saying old people live or die by fate and they shouldn't keep guilt-tripping the family with all this talk of duty. And Uncle Nathan lived in a big mansion and drove an Audi—where were the hard times?!

Yet Grandma, just to wound the very daughter who was working herself to death waiting on her, who had even drained the family savings for her, didn't hesitate to invent Aunt Vivian's "filial devotion" to belittle everything Ida had done down to nothing!

Ida broke down right then. She covered her face, didn't argue, just backed away step by step, then bolted into the bathroom and locked the door behind her. From outside, Elisa heard her mother's sobs, choked down as far as they would go, like the whimpering of a wounded animal.

From that day on, Ida fell completely apart.

She developed severe insomnia, her hair coming out in fistfuls, her whole being in a daze. She'd cut her hand chopping vegetables in the kitchen, forget to switch on the rice cooker. Worse still, her eyes had gone utterly hollow; the look she gave Grandma held no more filial care, no more tenderness—only a deep fear and despair.

The twenty-sixth day arrived.

That afternoon, Elisa was in an important post-project review meeting at work. Her phone suddenly began buzzing wildly in her pocket.

The caller ID showed her mother, Ida.

Elisa felt a terrible premonition. She immediately excused herself from her boss and rushed to the stairwell in the corridor to answer.

On the other end there was no crying, none of the usual complaints.

Only Ida's voice, terribly hoarse, heavy as if every trace of life had been wrung out of it.

"Ellie, ask for leave and come home right now." Her mother's tone was so calm it was suffocating. "Your dad just had a sudden heart attack, they've already taken him away in the ambulance. I... I can't hold on much longer either."

Everything went black before Elisa's eyes; she nearly toppled over on the stairs. "Mom! How could Dad have a heart attack?! What on earth happened?!"

There was a long silence on the other end.

Then Ida spoke in a voice Elisa had never heard in her life, trembling with utter terror and despair, and said one thing.

Her first words left Elisa rooted where she stood, as if in that instant all the blood in her body had frozen solid.

Elisa suddenly realized how pitifully little she knew about those four uncles, far away on the other side of the country, the ones she'd written off as ungrateful wretches.

Until now, Elisa had always assumed her uncles ignored Grandma because they were cold, because they were selfish, because once they had money they turned their backs on their own flesh and blood.

But now, what her mother said blew her mind wide open, and she began to reconsider something truly horrifying:

What if it wasn't that they'd abandoned her, but that they'd been driven away?

What if those four sons, four men who had once been full of vigor, who had once meant to do right by their mother, had each, one by one, gone through the very hell that Elisa's family was living through in these twenty-six days?

Those patterns of behavior that never cry poverty yet leave you forever feeling you owe a debt, forever denied any peace; those psychological demands handed to you one after another, never-ending, and the moment you fail to meet one, they grind you into the mud; those soft blades slipped into your ear through other people's mouths, through false comparisons, enough to drive a normal person mad—

So it turned out evil didn't spring up all at once. So it turned out heartlessness, too, was forced out of a person bit by bit!

Her mother was still gasping on the other end of the line, and Elisa's heart was pounding so hard it felt like it would leap out of her throat.

She took a deep breath and gripped the stair railing so tightly her knuckles went white, and asked the question she least wanted to ask, yet most had to ask—the question that could tear the last covering off the whole family's shame.

"Mom, tell me—just now, at home, what exactly did Grandma do to my dad?!"

On the other end of the line, Ida's voice was like a rag torn completely to shreds, carrying a despair and numbness that chilled the blood.