That damn bastard wants to divorce me. In this era, divorced women could not even take their own kids home. They would be considered as the stop for gossip and with low morality. This matter might even affect her kids at the time of marriage. After divorce these women have no position in their maternal house and sometimes even won’t let them enter the house. No way am I going to agree for divorce, “NO, I DON’T AGREE”.

The mother Ye snorted and said “Who asked you for your permission, You are taken off from our family”. I don’t think this is going to go easy, these devils would not stop until they see my very end. Ye Zian (fifth child) who had never said a word from start to end was particularly excited seeing this, “Father you wait, I will call the village head, let's make a decision today”, and was going to rush out. Ye Xue (4th son) was also going to accompany Ye Zian but he was stopped by his beautiful wife. Ye Zian’s wife Ye Fang knew that if Juan got divorced most of her chores would fall upon her head. So she wished Juan to stay.

If they are not dealt with the right medicine, they would not give up the idea and would want to separate me forever. “Ok if you want to go to the village head, I want to go to Yamen (court of county magistrate). It is illegal to divorce a wife from the family, without her husband’s consent. The husband’s family only has the right to separate the daughter-in-law when the husband dies. Do you all think I am some cat or dag to feed it when you like and throw it away when you don’t want. If you divorce me, I would complain to Yamen no matter what.” The family was clearly a bit scared this time, you know that for villagers like them Yamen is a mighty existence. They have heard that when villagers want to sue at Yamen, all the members involved in the incident would be given 5 whips, Madam Ye doubts whether she could withstand it. Also this matter would get implicated with her younger son, his reputation might get affected.

During this time as everyone wondered about the consequences, I walked towards the table and took our usual amount of food, and walked back to my courtyard with my daughter. I could hear Madam Ye’s curse as I walked back, “You slut, who allowed you to take the food”. After closing my door along with my daughter I ate the porridge and pickles. Roulan was not so hungry now as we ate today morning and she was sleeping all the time till now. But I was hungry, today morning I walked for more than 2 hours in the mountain terrain and was exhausted. In villages people usually ate only two times a day, morning and evening (near 6-7 pm). I should save energy because I can argue with them now, but still I can’t afford to be lazy. My speech now itself has angered them and if I continued to push them to their extremes, they might start beating me. I alone could not take down the family even if I am holding a machete. Rest of the portion of rice soup was kept in the cupboard, the only furniture in that courtyard for Roulan to eat for lunch.

The breakfast mood was totally ruined in the family and on the women's table the portion food was a little low as they have not made enough for Hui Juan and Ye Roulan. In the Hui family there are 2 tables in the dining room, men’s table and women’s and kid’s table. Men’s table have thick porridge since men should work in the fields and women’s and children have thin porridge. Kids of age 5 to 13 would consume more food as they are in their growing time, but because of the decrease of food, some children in the family started complaining. Madam Ye anger further increased because of this and stared angrily at the daughter-in-laws. The daughter-in-laws threatened the kids to shut up and eat. Madam Ye was relieved since her youngest son went to the town yesterday evening itself, or the result might have been disastrous. That stupid girl’s head might have hited yesterday somewhere and got a screw loose, or else why would she suddenly burst out today. This was the same thought going through most of the family members.

I didn’t enter the dining room to wash the dishes to avoid making a scene. I collected all the clothes to be washed for today from the front of all the courtyards and walked to the riverside. Yejia village is actually 4 hours away from town in case of walking, and still the reason why the village was moderate (in case of prosperity) was because of the fertile soil of the land. There is a river flowing through the west of the village and many channels had been drawn from the river increasing the fertility of the soil as well having ease of access for water. There were a group of 4 aunties and ladies on the side of the river channel, as I approached I heard them laughing and one of them saying my name. Seeing that I had come earlier than expected the group was a bit flustered and red, thinking that I had heard them gossiping about me. I stood before the one that laughed hard and asked with a drop dead look, “what joke are you saying, care me to join?”The woman became fully flustered now as she has thin skin, “Oh sorry, I think there is an urgency at home” saying that she ran back home with her clothes. I seriously felt funny seeing her run back. The aunties who had seen the scene also smiled. Auntie Ye Heng asked “ are you alright after yesterday’s inciden?”. I looked down looking sad and sighed saying there is a feeling of sickness in the body and slowly started washing the clothes creating a pathetic look. The rest of the ladies also felt I was miserable and felt sorry for me thus successfully creating a bad mark for Madam Ye.

After washing the clothes, the next is cleaning the pig pen. There were two pigs, one male other female, which was pregnant. This is the innovative idea of the fifth child to breed the pig and sell the piglings. Pigs here are in pink colour and all skin and skeleton since there is not much feed given. The main food of the pig here are pigweed and wild vegetables in the mountains. All the ladies of the family who raise pigs are in a race everyday to the mountains to collect more food. And in the Ye family there are 2 pigs one could imagine how hard the original owner tried everyday. Sometimes the corn cob was also used to feed the pig but they are not so good and there were cases of pigs dying after feeding corn cob. Vegetables in the garden are also used to feed the pig by the original owner without anyone in the family’s knowledge. Because if the pigs in the family died, only one they blame would be herselves. Since these pigs are not mainly for sales it is ok even if it is thin. Feeding the pigs is different from cleaning the pigpen. I entered the pigpen to clean and I didn’t last 5 minutes before running out and retching. I gave up this task and cleaned the chicken coop. My daughter Roulan has taken the chicken and ducks out to feed worms and bask in the sun. After finishing this task, I watered and checked the vegetable garden. Vegetable garden is west of the house near the well. I was dead tired by the time I finished with the garden. You should guess that I have to draw water from the well and pour it on the half acre garden. It was about 3 pm, when I finished these tasks. And I am dead, I don’t think I could even lift a finger anymore. There is also the task of cleaning the courtyard, that I am going to politely decline myself from.

After resting for about an hour, I started thinking how to make money. Well I have heard about making homemade wine and jam, but I don’t have any experience. And I didn’t see any wild berries in the mountain. Even if there are, those brats from the village should have wiped them clean. Even if I made jam somehow, I could not enter the town to sell it. Well, I don’t know how to hunt thus the mountains are cancelled. Well I do know how to sew and stitch and my skills are good but not extraordinary. Also knew to paint basic designs like scenery, but ink and paper is very costly. The common ink currently available is very dark blue or black. I know the text here is different from what I used to learn in school, so I can not take out the poetries I learned. At last I chose to go with painting.

Sister-in-laws are in their own courtyard busy sewing hand-kerchiefs to sell in town and some are sleeping. Kids have run out to play somewhere, the old lady went somewhere outside to gossip. I slowly sneaked into the sixth child’s courtyard and took a small piece of ink stone, one brush and the smallest roll of paper (it could be about the size of five A4 size paper combined) and hid it in my dress and slowly went out. Now my question is what should I paint. There are no other colours other than back ink, yellow taken from turmeric (from vegetable garden) and red from beetroot (beets, other vegetable from garden). I first drew a sample night scenery of bright moon in the dark night and a girl in a red dress staring at it from far. Well there is not much meaning to the picture, it is just I only have red, yellow and black.

I cut the paper into three pieces of almost portrait size, and drew the outline with a sharp pointed piece of wood, to make the image look more colorful, I decided to colour the border with red colour. Roulan was lying in bed and was playing with a few flowers, she had been looking at me puzzled for a while now. “Ma, what are you doing?” The more she looks the more she feels wrong, does paper belong to uncle, why is mother tearing it. Since grandma didn’t catch them when they stole yesterday, mother is getting more and more bold in stealing things. “Nothing that children should know, and don’t tell anyone that I have taken these things from uncle's room”.She shakes her head as a doll, showing she understood. Even if mother doesn’t warn her she won’t say because last time when cousin took the paper and ink to play, grandma beat him hard on his ass. From then on, no one has taken those things. If grandma knew she would beat both her and mother, hard on ass. She ran towards the closed door and stayed on guard checking for any spies out there.

It took about an hour to finish the painting, it looks good. Even though there is no professional look, it looks ok and similar to a school student’s work (so let’s just believe I am still 14). I kept the image to be dried in the cupboard, also the rest of the things and locked the cupboard. It had been the time to eat dinner. I took Roulan and entered the main yard.

Sister Fang (3rd childs wife) today noticed that I have not cleaned both the house and pigpen. As she saw me coming to the main courtyard, she came out of the kitchen and asked “Sister Juan, why have you not cleaned the yard and the pigpen today.”