The kitchen smelled of damp earth and slow-cooked starch, a scent so ingrained in Qiuye's memory that decades later, the mere sight of a sweet potato would trigger a visceral flood of nostalgia—tinged with a faint ache. The iron pot on the stove was a constant presence, its blackened exterior scarred by years of roaring flames, its interior holding court over mountains of orange tubers that bubbled and sighed in their watery grave.
Qiuye would sit cross-legged on a wooden stool, knees drawn to her chest, watching her mother stir the pot with a long-handled ladle. Steam curled around Lijuan's weathered face, softening the sharp lines between her eyebrows, but doing nothing to hide the calculating glint in her eyes as she judged when the sweet potatoes were tender enough. When pierced with a chopstick, their flesh would yield like overripe fruit, collapsing into mushy threads that clung to the utensil—a texture Qiuye had learned to tolerate, even crave, out of necessity.
Potatoes, when available, were a welcome variation: boiled whole until their skins slipped off easily, then mashed with a pinch of salt that made the tongue tingle. Sometimes Lijuan would fry them in a thin film of oil salvaged from last year's peanut harvest, but those were rare, celebratory occasions—usually when Brother Ming had scored well on his school exams. For Qiuye, every meal was a ritual of survival: shovel the sweet potato mush into her mouth, ignore the sticky residue on her teeth, drink a ladle of the starchy broth to fill the hollow beneath her ribs.
It was a rainy afternoon when Qiuye first witnessed the gauze bag. She had wandered into the kitchen to fetch water, her sneakers squelching on the mud floor, when she saw her mother standing on a rickety stool, reaching for the ceramic jar atop the cupboard. Lijuan froze, jar mid-air, her eyes locking with Qiuye's in a moment of guilty panic.
"Go play outside," she snapped, but Qiuye had already seen the glimmer of white grains—rice—pouring from the jar into a waiting cloth. Qiuye did not give it any more thought and went away.Her mother tied the gauze into a neat bundle, pressing it into the bottom of the sweet potato pot, burying it beneath the bobbing tubers like a buried treasure. The steam grew thicker, carrying the faint, intoxicating aroma of cooked rice—a scent so foreign, so luxurious, that Qiuye's mouth would have watered involuntarily if she had seen that.
Later, when the pot was drained, Lijuan fished out the gauze bag with nimble fingers, her movements quick and practiced, as if she'd done this a hundred times before. Lijuan came to Ming's room, where Qiuye's brother Ming sat at a desk cluttered with textbooks, his back straight as a young sapling. Lijuan unfolded the gauze, revealing a compact mound of white rice, still steaming, and placed it before him without a word. Ming didn't look up; he siYingmply picked up his chopsticks and began to eat, each bite deliberate, almost reverent.
It was not until Qiuye grew into an adult when one day her sister Ying told her about how their mother secretly cooked rice for their brother that Qiuye began to question that scene at her heart. Why did brother get rice while she ate sweet potatoes? Why did her mother act like a thief in her own home? She didn't understand the concept of "favoritism" then, only that there was a silent hierarchy in their home, one where Ming's needs came first, always.
Weddings and funerals were the only times Qiuye saw meat up close. At Uncle Wang's funeral, the communal dining hall was filled with the rich, heady scent of red-braised pork, the kind that made even the hungriest stomachs flutter with anticipation. Lijuan had dressed her in her best clothes—a patched shirt that once belonged to her sister—and warned her to "eat like a lady, not a starving wolf."
Qiuye stared at the bowl before her: chunks of pork glistening in a dark, syrupy sauce, fat wobbling enticingly as the server set it down. Next to it was a mound of white rice, fluffy and fragrant, the kind Brother ate every day. She picked up her chopsticks, hands trembling with a mix of excitement and anxiety, and took a small bite of the pork.
The fat hit her tongue like a bolt of lightning—greasy, overwhelming, cloying. She gagged, forcing the bite down, but her stomach rebelled. Two more bites, and she had to set her chopsticks down, her mouth watering for the salty crunch of soybeans instead. Across the table, Brother Ming was already on his second bowl of rice, pork grease shining on his lips, while Lijuan smiled at him, a smile Qiuye had never seen directed at her.
"Aren't you hungry, Qiuye?" Auntie Chen asked, raising an eyebrow. Qiuye nodded, cheeks burning. "Just… too full," she mumbled, pushing her bowl away. She learned then that some luxuries were better left unimagined—that her body, trained on meager fare, rejected richness as violently as her heart rejected the silent truth of her family's priorities.
Huahua was the only friend who didn't care that Qiuye had no dress, no nice shoes, no stories of meat feasts. They played in the yard like two wild birds, chasing each other around the persimmon tree, their laughter echoing off the stone walls. One afternoon, they discovered a nest of baby sparrows in the eaves, and their delight was so intense, so unbridled, that Qiuye threw her head back and laughed, loud and unrestrained, her mouth wide open, teeth flashing in the sun.That was the moment Brother chose to appear.
His shadow fell over them like a storm cloud, his voice sharp as a whip: "What do you think you're doing, laughing like a commoner? Have you no shame?" Qiuye froze, her laughter cut short, her face burning under his gaze. Huahua cowered behind her, silent, her fingers twisting the hem of her own floral dress.
"A lady laughs with her mouth closed," Brother continued, his tone icy, "shoulders still, hands folded. Not like a fish gasping for air." He stepped closer, and Qiuye could see the disdain in his eyes, the same disdain their mother sometimes wore when looking at her patched clothes. "Do you want to disgrace our family? To show the village we can't even raise a proper daughter?"
He turned on his heel and left, leaving behind a silence so heavy it seemed to suck the air from the yard. Qiuye stared at the ground, her hands clenched at her sides. Huahua whispered, "Does he always…?" but didn't finish. Qiuye didn't answer. She didn't need to. The lesson was clear: her joy was a thing to be controlled, her body a vessel to be molded into something acceptable, something that didn't draw attention—didn't remind the world of her existence as a "money-losing good."
But in the cracks of their neglect, Qiuye found freedom. The adults were too busy—her mother with the fields, her brother Ming with his studies, her sister long gone to her own marriage—to notice the girl who disappeared into the tool shed after school, dragging a tattered quilt behind her. There, beneath a leaky roof that let in slivers of starlight, she built her sanctuary: a "tent" of blankets and hope, where she could be anyone she wanted to be.
Her brother's books were her gateway. She stole them at night, when Ming's snores filled the room, tiptoeing to his shelf like a thief in her own home. Most were picture books—tales of Snow White and Mulan, of princesses and warriors—but there was one novel, tattered and yellowed, about a girl who danced on a stage of gold.
In those pages, Qiuye became Snow White, her voice gentle as she sang to the forest creatures; she was Mulan, her sword raised high as she charged into battle, her father's honor on her shoulders; but most of all, she was the dancer, her red dress spinning like a flame, the audience's applause drowning out the world's noise. In her tent, there were no scolding voices, no empty bowls, no silent judgments—only the limitless expanse of her imagination.
She would trace the illustrations with her fingers, marveling at the way the dancer's shoes seemed to float above the ground, her smile bright as the sun. That could be me, she thought, if only I had a dress.
The year she turned eight, the village girls began to wear floral dresses—bright, colorful things that made Qiuye's heart ache with a longing she couldn't name. Lingling had a dress of daisies on green fabric; Meimei's was blue with white butterflies, the kind that fluttered when she ran. Qiuye would watch them from a distance, her own clothes—borrowed pants that ended at her shins, a shirt with mismatched buttons—feeling heavier, uglier, with each passing day.
One evening, as the sun dipped below the rice paddies, she gathered her courage and approached her mother. "Mama," she said, voice trembling, "can I have a dress? Just a small one, with… with flowers?" Lijuan didn't look up from her mending, her needle flashing in the fading light. "Dresses are for girls who need to impress," she said, "my good girl,you don't have to wear that dress."
Qiuye turned away, blinking back tears. She didn't argue. She knew the words "money-losing good" were never far from her mother's lips, even if they went unsaid. Instead, she went to her tent and opened her brother's book, finding the page with the dancing girl. She traced the red dress again, pretending the fabric was real, that the laughter in the illustration was hers.
When her sister Ying needed help with the new baby, Lijuan saw a solution to two problems: Ying got a helper, and Qiuye got out of the house. "You'll stay three days," Lijuan said, packing a bundle of ragged clothes, "and don't be a bother." But when she realized Qiuye had no decent clothes to wear, she hesitated, then marched to the neighbor's house, returning with a bundle wrapped in newspaper.
"Meimei outgrew this," she said, thrusting it into Qiuye's hands. "Wear it outside the village, and bring it back clean. Don't let anyone see you borrow it—we don't need their pity."
Qiuye unwrapped the paper and gasped. It was a floral dress, pale pink with delicate roses, the skirt full and flouncy, the kind she'd only seen in her brother's books. She held it to her chest, afraid to breathe, afraid it would disappear.
At the village edge, behind a screen of tall reeds, she changed. The dress slipped over her head, cool and soft, the fabric whispering against her skin like a secret. She looked down, and there she was: a girl in a pink dress, her legs tanned from the sun, her hair tied with a scrap of ribbon. For the first time, she felt pretty—not in a way that mattered to her family, but in a way that mattered to her.
As they walked into the fields, the dress fluttered in the breeze, the roses dancing as if alive. Qiuyespun around, laughing, the skirt twirling out in a perfect circle. Lijuan called her a fool, but Qiuyedidn't care. The sun warmed her shoulders, the earth smelled of wet grass, and for a few hours, she wasn't the girl with no dress, no rice, no voice—she was a princess, wandering through her own kingdom, where even borrowed things could feel like magic.
Years later, as Qiuye sat in her own house the words "original family" jumping off the page, she would understand the weight of those childhood memories. She would recognize the gauze bag as a symbol of inequality, Ming's scolding as a lesson in invisibility, the borrowed dress as a fleeting taste of what could have been.
But she would also remember the tent in the tool shed, the way the starlight had filtered through the cracks, the stories that had made her feel limitless. Those moments had taught her to find joy in the margins, to build worlds where she was seen, valued, heard.
The sweet potato stew had filled her stomach, but the books had filled her soul. The borrowed dress had been temporary, but the memory of spinning in the field—free, unburdened, herself—would stay with her forever, a reminder that even in the darkest corners of neglect, a child could cultivate light.
Qiuye would never forget her childhood, but she would learn to transcend it. The hunger for acceptance would fade, replaced by the hunger to create her own story—one where dresses were not borrowed, but earned, and where laughter was not just allowed, but celebrated, loud and unapologetic, like the roar of a river breaking free from its banks.