When the rooster crowed for the third time, Chen Chunhua felt pencil dust under the edge of the kang. It was the dust she had scraped away with her fingernails for three nights, mixed with scraps of wall paint and rolled into a thin rope in her palm.
The smell of burnt rapeseed oil wafted in from outside the window. Wang's Grain and Oil Store was opening today, and the man, who was twenty years older than her, said he would take her to learn how to use scales.
Chen's mother brought the brown sugar water before dawn, and there was suspicious white foam on the crack of the porcelain bowl.
Chen Chunhua stared at the yellow milk stains on the edge of the bowl, and suddenly remembered the bird's nest cup that Hua Jinyue had knocked over at the house at night - the six-year-old girl cried and pieced the broken porcelain pieces into the shape of a star, saying that this way Aunt Chen would not have to pay compensation.
"Hah!" Chen's father poked her waist with his crutch, and the Guanyin statue on the shrine suddenly fell over, and the incense ash scattered on Chen Yaozu's newly bought mobile phone.
Her brother rushed in cursing, with red marks from the green Submariner watch strap on his wrist - he had bought it in installments using her ID card.
As the rumble of the tractor approached, she began to count the mold spots on the ceiling. It was the sixth day since she returned to her hometown, and she had rushed back thousands of miles because of a letter from home saying that her father was seriously ill.
When the forty-second black spot took the shape of a bow, Wang Daniu's hoarse voice came from downstairs: "This is freshly made rapeseed oil, try it, in-laws!"
Amid the clatter of the oil drum, she heard Chen's mother quietly ask, "When will the sewing machine be delivered?"
"Submit your fingerprints." Father Chen tossed over a crumpled agreement. The second party's signature was stamped with her eldest sister's bloody fingerprints. Chen Chunhua glimpsed the clause that read, "You may not return to your parents' home until you have given birth to three children." Suddenly, she grabbed her inkstone and smashed it against a hornet's nest in the corner of the yard.
The moment the swarm of wasps exploded, Chen Chunhua rushed to the well platform. This was the place where she had fallen when she was seven years old. The moss on the well wall was still the dark green color she remembered.
Amidst Wang Daniu's roar, she placed her right hand, which was covered in pencil dust, on the windlass - this was the hand that tied the bow for Hua Jinyue, and the hand that Ye Qingliu held when he was uneasy.
"You're a money-loser!" Chen Chunhua's father slapped her across the face. She knocked over the altar, and the faded glass of the family portrait cracked into a spiderweb. In the photo, her smile, in her junior high school uniform, was cracking, while her brother, in his Balenciaga sweatshirt, remained intact.
As night fell, Chen Chunhua was in the woodshed counting the termites in the rice vat. This was the third time she had been imprisoned, the last time being when she turned down a blind date at the age of fourteen.
There was a half-broken crayon stuck in the mouse hole in the corner of the wall. She used her fingernails to pick out the sun drawn by Ye Qingliu - she once told him that this was a magic sun that could shine into nightmares.
When the rats in the woodshed had gnawed their way to the third beam, Chen Chunhua felt a gap in the wall. It was a gap she had enlarged after five days of scratching with her fingernails, the sweat from her fingertips turning dark red amber in the moonlight.
Chen Chunhua passed the hemp rope she had secretly hidden three days ago through the beam of the house. The hemp rope was made by dismantling and re-weaving discarded fishing nets from the drying yard, and the barbs had hooked her palms and made them bloody.
Chen Chunhua had soaked the ankle chain in rapeseed oil for three days. She fished out half a tile from the straw pile. Its jagged edge was stained with dried chicken blood—she had hidden it while pretending to feed the chickens.
Sparks flew from the friction between tiles and chains, and rust mixed with flesh and flesh fragments fell down. When the lock fell to the ground with a clang, a second dog bark was heard from the village entrance.
When Chen Chunhua used a hairpin to pry open the third wooden window frame, she smelled the scent of tung oil in the musty smell - her younger brother had just come to fix the window gap yesterday.
Chen Chunhua broke the candlestick on the altar, and just as the copper base slammed against the window frame, a bell suddenly rang from the neighboring cattle shed. Her mother had hung a copper bell around the ox's neck, and each crisp ring was like a death warrant.
When Chen Chunhua stepped onto the windowsill barefoot, splinters of wood pierced her soles. She touched the coarse cloth wrapped around her waist—it was the floral dress she had half-sewn for Hua Jinyue.
As the lard-soaked foot wraps slid against the tiles, an owl's cry echoed from the hills behind. Moonlight illuminated a gap in the fence ten paces ahead: a wild boar's escape route.
Chen Chunhua shook out half a handful of corn kernels from her lapel—the rations she'd saved from her three-day hunger strike. As she scattered them toward the chicken coop in the southeast corner, the chickens fluttered and startled the village dogs.
As the footsteps of the pursuers approached, she threw her mother's gold earrings into the pond at the west end - she had taken them off when she was trying on her wedding dress in the afternoon.
Just as her fingertips touched the bamboo forest, Chen Chunhua stepped into a trap filled with thorns.
When the sharp acacia tree pierced her feet, she saw clearly the red cloth tied to the vine - it was the "exorcism talisman" that her father had tied by tearing up the admission notice when she was admitted to the county middle school.
Chen Yaozu emerged from the bamboo forest, torch in hand, sparks splashing on her bleeding instep. "Sister, every tree in this valley has a copper coin mirror hanging on it."
He waved the magic mirror he had obtained from the witch, and the mirror reflected her face, which was scratched by thorns. "Dad said you were the reincarnation of a fox spirit, and you really do know witchcraft."
Chen's mother swung the wooden pestle for pounding rice and hit her knees. When Chen Chunhua fell into the pile of rotten leaves, she touched half of a white animal bone - it was the forest where her eldest sister hanged herself when she was forced to marry.
Wang Daniu's pipe dug into her collarbone, and the low-quality tobacco mixed with his bad breath sprayed on her face. "I've buried thirty-six grass cutters on the road, just in case you follow the example of the Liu family girl and jump into the river."
When she was dragged back to the woodshed, Chen's father was sharpening his butcher knife on the threshold. The sound of the blade scraping across the bluestone was exactly the same as when he tore up her college entrance examination application seven years ago.
Chen Chunhua looked at the dying torch outside the window and suddenly realized that her brother's wedding couplets were written in the notebook she used to copy poems for Hua Jinyue - the words "Spring Breeze Turns into Rain" on the rice paper were blurred by the night dew and turned into blood and tears.
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When the crowing of the rooster pierced the morning mist, Chen Chunhua was pressed in front of the paint-chipped dressing mirror.
The wedding dress my mother unfolded was an unsold item rented from a bridal shop in town, and the cuffs still had threads that had broken apart when previous brides struggled.
The low-quality chiffon glowed a strange orange-red under the tungsten light, and the phoenix embroidered with gold thread had lost half of its tail feathers, revealing the moldy lining underneath.
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