- By Liu Liying

The bright moon appeared in the sky, covering Lotus's courtyard with a layer of frost. It was at this time that Lotus, entering her courtyard, heard a loud cough from Dad. 

"Fooling around. You just keep fooling around!" Dad spat heavily on the ground.

"I've been sitting and chatting with Xiu'er at her home. That's all."

"Sitting and chatting." He spat on the ground again. "I've brought you up to such a big girl, and now you just sit and chat!"

"I've carried the water and filled the jar, and I've carried the firewood for the stove, too," said Lotus.

Dad then busied himself smoking his pipe. Having smoked tobacco this way for more than half of his life, he would huff and puff non-stop throughout the winter. It rent one's heart to see his bony chest working like a bellows. Once her mother bought him a carton of cigarettes instead, asking him to stop smoking his pipe. "It's harmful for you," she said. Her father snatched it from her, smashing and trampling the cigarettes until the floor was covered with broken tobacco fragments.

"Bad woman. Bad woman! You could use up a mountain of gold and siver if we had one, you prodigal woman! What a great wife you are! You are buying cigarettes for your man. You  want me to smoke this family to bankruptcy, huh?"

Lotus's mom remained as quiet as a mouse.

"Mom," said Lotus, "sooner or later, you will be beaten to death by Dad."

"But you must know the husband is as important as Heaven. With your sick father around, we are a complete family, with everybody alive."

Tears filled Lotus's eyes. "When I have the money, I'll buy a whole truckload of cigarettes for Dad to tread on. He's got to stop when he's tired out."

"Don't think money is easy to make! It's not free for you to pick up. It's called fate."

In the bright moon, Dad's pipe bowl glowed up and down with sparkles, looking like a small fireball. "Your marriage with the man in Nanling is a done deal."

"Done?" asked Lotus.

"Done," Dad repeated.

Lotus's mother stood in the central room of the house, her hands resting on the door frame with one leg inside the threshold and the other outside. Mom was only forty-something years old, but she had so much grey hair.

"No father-in-law and no mother-in-law; no brother-in-law and no sister-in-law. The day you are married, you'll be the hostess of the family," Dad said. "They have sent over the money this afternoon."

"Really?" said Lotus.

"Really," Dad said.

"I've just talked to Xiu'er," Lotus said. "She said the good thing about this marriage is he is a lazy good-for-nothing, fond of food but not work."

Dad's face suddenly seemed to be covered with frost. "You know it all?"

Lotus glanced at Dad, then Mom.

Then she caught sight of her elder, crippled brother limping in the yard. Whether the moon lit the yard in part or in full did not matter to him. Pushing away his rice bowl, he would drag along his lame leg, limping back and forth in the courtyard. Her brother's footsteps were rhythmically uneven, with one heavier than the other. They seemed to cut the hearts of the whole family like a huge, dull saw, causing permanent anxiety. At this time Lotus would hear Dad's deep cough. "I know a three-legged toad is nowhere to be found, but I don't believe we can't find him a two-legged woman."

Lotus knew what was in Dad's mind - he was waiting for her nod so that he could pick a date for her wedding and start to buy material to make her new clothes, but Lotus just would not open her mouth. She said to herself, "I don't have to read the looks on your face like Mom. You won't  knead me as you like."

At this moment, her mother tumbled out of the door throwing herself on her knees in front of Lotus. "My good child," she said, "here I am, kneeling before you. Mom will tell you the truth. They have sent over a big stack of bils, enough for your brother to find a wife and build a new house. But I know you'll suffer from this marriage, my poor child. Mom has let you down."

No sooner had Lotus's father's flying foot landed on her mother's face than blood started oozing from her mouth. "A high mountain cannot cover the sun. She fed on your milk. How could you kneel before her!" said Dad.

"If you ever dare to touch my mom again, I'll go straight to Nanling to tell tem I have broken off the engagement!" The blood from Mom's mouth dyed red a large spot on her bluish-white flat-collared blouse. The blouse had been given to Lotus's family when the county government had been helping the needy last spring. In the spring, her mom did not really want to wear it, lest people feel jealous of her. Only later on when she found everybody in the neighborhood wearing clothes given by the government - some even made of better material than hers - did she dare to wear it out.

"Mom, I'll take it," said Lotus. "I'll take it. That's all." With this, Lotus kicked the folding stool her father had just sat on in the courtyard, and it flew out of the front entrance.

One day, when Lotus was a small child, she went to cut the grass on the slopes with her brother, but on their way home, they encountered two dogs engaged in a fierce fight. The sickle she was holding provoked them. The dogs thought she was going to harm them, so they turned about to attack Lotus. 

Her desperate brother stopped them by throwing his basket at them. The dogs then started to come back at him. His sickle was in the basket, so he shouted, "Lotus, cut the dogs. Quick! Cut the dogs. Quick!" Lotus quickly went to his rescue,  but she missed the dogs. Instead, she cut her brother on the leg. Blood was gushing out of his leg. She tried to stop it with several handfuls of soil, but it kept gushing out. Later on, her brother's leg became lame.

In the summer of the following year, Lotus was married to the man in Nanling. After marriage Lotus seldom visited her parents.

Once when Xiu'er was visiting her parents in Nanling, she saw a noticeable scar the size of a red date right on the cheekbone of Lotus's face. When Xiu'er enquired about it, Lotus said her husband had hit her with a brick. One year later, when Xiu'er went to visit her again at home, she was told that Lotus had become the head of a fruit-processing factory in the town and that she was now busy from morning til night.

"Is her husband still hitting her?" Xiu'er asked.

"He's now one of her employeses," the villagers told her. "Everybody knows he's a violent man, but in the end, he has to listen to Lotus. It's called brine touching bean curd: everything has its vanquisher."

Xiu'er breathed a deep sigh.

"Croak, croak, croak." Xiu'er heard the clear croaking of frogs, as she saw the lovely lotus flowers in full bloom on the lake in front of the village.