The next day, Auntie Zhou woke with a clear mind. She remembered everything from the night before.
Full of guilt, she told me not to be afraid, that she would never hurt me.
The way she said it reminded me so much of how careful and timid An Qi used to be.
My nose stung, but in my heart, An Qi had never been an idiot, and Auntie Zhou wasn’t a madwoman either—they were simply living through a pain that others couldn’t understand.
I said, “Auntie, that dance you did was really beautiful. Could you teach me?”
Her eyes reddened instantly. She wiped the corners of her eyes and nodded, saying yes.
And so, beneath that osmanthus tree, the figure that had once been alone became two—one tall, one small.
It was just that God had opened neither a window of artistic talent for me, nor a door of dancing talent.
No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t learn it, but Auntie patiently guided me through it, step by step, again and again, until I could finally dance passably well.
She told me that she and Zhou Haiyan’s father had met through this very dance, all those years ago. He had loved watching her dance more than anything.
Because she loved osmanthus flowers, he had come to love the osmanthus tree most in his life.
Now that he was gone, apparently he no longer had to love it if he didn’t want to.
Her tone stayed calm the whole time.
There was an optimism perfectly balanced against her despair—one released in daylight, the other locked away in the dark of night.
…
Whatever happened in this small town was almost impossible to keep quiet.
Rumors, gossip—the fear of public opinion was a real and heavy thing.
So when Auntie went to the market to buy groceries, I insisted on tagging along.
The town had two markets. My house was at the west end, so we always went to the West Market, while the Zhou household was at the east end, so they went to the East Market.
The town wasn’t especially big, nor especially small, but I had almost never been to the East Market.
The East Market was bigger than the West, and noisier too.
At the entrance stood a middle-aged man, a single-bar bicycle parked in front of him, large cloth sacks hanging from either side, a paint-chipped loudspeaker tied to the handlebars, blaring:
“Buying hair, buying long hair, cutting long braids, top prices paid, sell your hair here.”
The moment he spotted me, his eyes lit up. He grabbed my arm and asked, “Little girl, want to sell your hair?”
My mother used to say long hair drained your nutrients, so ever since I was little she’d cut my hair short, bowl-style, like a tomboy.
But I actually loved long hair, so after she passed, I stopped cutting it.
Four years on, I hadn’t grown much taller, but my hair had grown long, down to my waist.
The sudden tug caught me off guard and startled me badly.
Auntie instinctively stepped in front of me, blocking him.
She waved her hand at him. “My daughter’s hair isn’t for sale.”
Then she pulled me along to leave.
The middle-aged man scrambled to stop us. “Hey, hey, hey, top price, I mean it! Two hundred, how about it?
“Three hundred! Three hundred should do it, right?”
Without even pausing to think, Auntie frowned. “No amount will make us sell. Don’t go getting ideas about a perfectly good little girl.”
“That’s already more than fair! You won’t get that price anywhere else!”
Before long, a crowd had gathered around, watching the spectacle.
“Oh, isn’t this the crazy widow from the alley? Since when did she get a daughter?”
“Her husband died so early—guess she couldn’t stand being lonely, hahaha.”
“I heard her husband stopped wanting her ages ago, probably had some mistress on the side.”
“That girl next to her looks kind of familiar—isn’t she that old scoundrel Tang’s daughter, the one whose mother killed herself?”
“Hey, you’re not wrong, that’s exactly who it is.”
“Well, look at that—the two saddest cases from opposite ends of town finding each other.”
“Three hundred and she’s still not satisfied? Know when to quit, greed’s no virtue!”
“The other night, I swear I heard that crazy woman going off again, anyone else hear it?”
“Shh, quiet, watch out for that punk of hers.”
At first it was one dog barking, then two, then a whole pack—yet none of them had any idea what they were even barking at.
The crowd of onlookers formed an airtight wall, baring teeth and claws, complete strangers to us and yet slander and filth spilled from their mouths without hesitation, defining a person’s entire worth in a few careless sentences.
Auntie Zhou pressed her lips tight, her hand gripping mine, trembling.
In that instant, something seemed to seize my heart, and fury surged from my chest straight up into my throat.
Fine, say whatever they wanted about me—but why drag Auntie into it too.
She had already suffered so much—why did she have to endure this senseless cruelty on top of it all.
I clenched my fists, sweeping my gaze across each of their ugly faces, wrenched my hand free from Auntie’s, and charged forward, shoving them apart with everything I had.
“Get lost! Get lost, all of you! Bunch of bastards! Animals! Trash!”
“May your mouths rot off, may your asses rot off! You’re the crazy ones! You’re worse than dogs!”
I’d never cursed anyone before in my life, had no idea how to even do it properly—every word I could scrape together was lifted straight from what my father used to scream at me.
But even so, what came out of their mouths was filthier than anything I could manage.
The thought of Auntie having faced all this alone, with no one to help her, before now—
only stoked the fire building in my chest even hotter.
People are all the same—the weak fear the strong, the strong fear the reckless, but even the reckless fear someone who no longer cares whether they live or die.
I charged in every direction, grabbing and tearing at whoever I could reach, screaming and cursing all at once, throwing back at them, word for word, exactly what they threw at me.
In the chaos, someone yanked out a chunk of my hair; my face burned from being clawed at.
Trying to shield me, Auntie had her jacket torn, her arm pinched several times over.
They called me a little lunatic.
So I gave them a lunatic to deal with.
Whoever I caught, I spat at—spittle flying everywhere—until the crowd, still cursing, no longer dared come closer.
A memory flashed through my mind: the scene of Zhou Haiyan beating my father that night.
My body moved faster than my thoughts.
So fast that I didn’t even register I was imitating him.
I spat viciously at them, my expression fierce. “Say one more filthy word about my mother, and you won’t need your tongues anymore—I’ll bite them clean off!”
People are drawn to strength, and worship of the strong always begins with imitation.
I marched off, blazing with fury the whole way.
It wasn’t until I reached the mouth of the alley that my legs finally gave out beneath me.
That was the first time in my life I’d ever fought anyone—and the first time I’d ever been so reckless.
Auntie caught me just in time.
Her lips were pale as willow leaves, trembling faintly.
“Does it hurt, Qingqing? It’s my fault, I was useless back there.”
“This is nothing, I don’t even feel it. My skin’s thick, I can take a beating.” I steadied myself, patted my chest. “Auntie, from now on I’ll protect you!”
She hugged me, crying and laughing at once.
When we got back that day, Zhou Haiyan saw the state we were in and his face darkened instantly.
He asked Auntie what happened, but she wouldn’t say.
Too furious to hold back, I laid out everything, exactly how they’d bullied Auntie, from start to finish.
He listened without a word, grabbed a wooden stick, and headed straight for the door.
“Zhou Haiyan, get back here! You are not to lay a hand on anyone!” Auntie Zhou snapped sharply.
A vein bulged on his forehead. He spun around, furious.
“It’s always like this! Every single time!
“So what, am I just supposed to stand by and watch you all get bullied?”
She slowly closed her eyes, tears streaming down as she spoke.
“Can Mother just beg you this once? Please, stay calm.”
In that silent standoff, the man finally backed down.
Almost no child can refuse a mother’s tearful plea.
I couldn’t. Neither could Zhou Haiyan.
After Auntie went back to her room, Zhou Haiyan sat by the door, staring fixedly at the osmanthus tree, his face utterly blank.
I sat down beside him.
Leaning close to his ear, I whispered:
“Zhou Haiyan, it’s never too late for a gentleman to take his revenge, even after ten years. I’ve already memorized every single person who bullied Auntie!”
Afraid he wouldn’t believe me, I counted them off on my fingers one by one for him: “There’s a woman around forty, short hair, buck teeth, looks kind of like a head of garlic—she’s the one who started cursing first. There’s one in a pink shirt, long hair, single-fold eyelids, holding onto a little boy shorter than a scallion, who pinched Auntie a bunch of times when she got the chance! And there’s one about fifty, bald in the middle, voice loud as a cannon—she cursed the filthiest of all!”
“And also…”
“And also…”
“And last, there’s one with long hair, a flat nose, makeup like an opera singer—she’s the one who grabbed me, pulled my hair too!”
Something about it seemed to hit exactly the right nerve, because he turned his face aside, unable to hold back his laughter.
“Didn’t know you were the type to hold a grudge.”
He reached out, lightly touched my forehead, where three distinct scratch marks stood out clearly.
“Does it hurt?”
I’d meant to say no, but the truth slipped out instead. “It hurts. It hurts so much. And they yanked out a whole chunk of my hair too!”
Zhou Haiyan reached over, pulled me onto his lap, then placed my hand on top of his head. “Then go ahead, pull mine back.”
The hair beneath my palm felt soft. I ran my fingers through it, shaking my head.
“Debts have their debtors—I want to pull the opera singer’s hair, specifically.”
He said, “Fine.”
…
I never found out exactly what Zhou Haiyan did behind the scenes, but the next time Auntie and I went to the market, everyone we ran into was suddenly all politeness, no longer daring to gossip to our faces—whether they still did it behind our backs was another matter entirely.
Later, I found out he’d gone around the town a couple of times, and whoever in those families had any dirty secrets, he’d dug them all out and exposed them.
The one accusing others of being unfaithful had cheated herself, caught red-handed by her own husband. The one calling others unwanted had a husband who never came home, keeping mistresses on the side, one after another. The one accusing others’ husbands of cheating had contracted AIDS herself, because her own husband went looking for prostitutes.
He’d recorded it all onto a big loudspeaker and walked the streets, playing it on a loop.
He said if there was even one person left in this town who didn’t know these dirty secrets, that would be a failure on his part.
In the end, karma came around and landed squarely on every one of them—now each had far too much of her own trouble to worry about anyone else’s.
If I had to describe it, I always felt Auntie was like a tree, neither especially tall nor especially sturdy, one that had weathered the passage of years, tasted both joy and sorrow, carrying a composure vast enough to hold everything within it—looking fragile on the surface, but with roots buried deep, coiling and interlocking underground, unmovable by any wind.
While Zhou Haiyan was like a wild wolf bound by a sturdy vine—he’d tucked away his claws and fangs for now, the fierce blood in him gradually covered over by the tree’s gentle, steady warmth. But covered was all it was; that restless, boundless strength was still faintly visible beneath the surface.