Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [244]
“So we’re still your mum and dad, are we? We spent months posting missing persons notices on the radio and in the newspapers for you. So now you’ve spent all the cash you took from the house, you’re back, eh?”
Kam Shan pulled Cat Eyes back. “Keep your trap shut, woman. Go and heat some water so she can wash.”
Yin Ling took a bath and put on some clean clothes borrowed from Cat Eyes. Glowing from the hot water, she finally looked human. Dinner was on the table. She wasn’t surprised to see what she assumed was yesterday’s leftovers from the Lychee Garden Restaurant. She sat down, then looked around and asked: “Where’s the baby?” Her mother’s belly was flat now so she was clearly not pregnant any more.
There was silence at the table.
After a moment, Ah-Fat asked: “Where did you go, Yin Ling? Your mum and dad have been tearing their hair out with worry.” “Lots of places,” said Yin Ling, and looked down at her bowl. She scooped the rice into her mouth but was careful not to take any of the meat and vegetables until her elders had served themselves. She’s finally learned some manners, thought her grandfather.
Cat Eyes looked coldly at her daughter and noticed how thin her face was, her cheekbones sticking out knifelike above her freckly cheeks. Yin Ling got up to serve herself more rice. There was something odd in the way she walked. Cat Eyes could not ignore her growing suspicions. Without bothering to finish her food, she jumped up and dragged Yin Ling up to her room.
She shut the door behind her and gripped Yin Ling by the scruff of the neck. “When did you last come on?” she demanded. Yin Ling looked down at her shoes and said nothing. Cat Eyes asked again, this time gripping her more tightly until Yin Ling could hardly breathe. Her mouth opened and shut like a fish gasping for air, and she finally stammered: “Oct … October.”
Cat Eyes let go and stood looking at her without speaking. Her eyes sunk into their sockets as if they were two dried-up pits. “I knew it … knew it!” she repeated. Yin Ling was terrified. She grabbed her mother’s sleeve and cried piteously: “Mum! Mum!” Cat Eyes shook her off and flew down the stairs.
The two men had just finished eating and were lighting their first afterdinner cigarette. The price of tobacco had gone sky-high but men needed to smoke so the quality of cigarettes got worse and worse. Cat Eyes cut through the cloud of smoke, grabbed the cigarette out of Kam Shan’s mouth and threw it in the sink. “Have you gone completely crazy, you stupid woman?” Kam Shan fished it out but it was sodden. He tore open the paper and spread the tobacco out to dry, cursing as he did so.
Cat Eyes spat a gob of green phlegm. “That little slut you’ve been spoiling all her life has just gone and got herself pregnant! Three or four months now and who knows who the father is!”
Kam Shan was so taken aback, his hands convulsed and the tobacco scattered over the floor.
Cat Eyes pointed a finger in Kam Shan’s face. “Did she ever listen to me? Not with a father like you, and what did you ever manage to teach her? She can go to hell, I’m having nothing to do with her.”
Kam Shan grasped the finger Cat Eyes was waving at him and bent it brutally. Cat Eyes squealed like a stuck pig.
“Like daughter, like mother. It’s no wonder she’s a slut with a slut like you for a mother.”
This was a knife in Cat Eyes’ chest. She pressed her hands against it as if she wanted to pull the knife out, but her heart sucked the blade in and would not let it go. “When I was in the brothel, the whole town knew I was a slut,” she said between clenched teeth. “But I didn’t go running around town looking for a man, you came to me. If I’m a slut, what does that make you?”
Ah-Fat could not take any more. He thumped his fist on the table so hard the skin between thumb and finger split and bled.
“If you two want to fight, then go outside and fight, and tell the whole town about it, why don’t you? Then every man in town will want Yin Ling as a wife, that’s for sure.”
Kam