least not now. The mouth is first to fall prey to pampering, which is inevitably accompanied by trouble. Throughout history, many heroic individuals have lost sight of their ambition and come to grief by surrendering to their mouths. So don't cry, son. I promise you, the day will come when you'll eat your fill of meat. Once we've got a nice house and a truck, once we've got you married, to show that bastard of a father what I can do, I'll cook you a whole cow, then let you climb inside it and eat your way out!’ ‘Niang,’ I said, ‘I don't want a nice house or a truck, and I don't want to get married. All I want is a big plate of meat.’ ‘Son,’ she said solemnly, ‘do you think I have no cravings? I'm human too, I'd love to eat a whole pig too! But life demands that you keep your dignity, and I want your father to see that we're better off without him.’ ‘Better off?’ I said. ‘Like hell we are! I'd rather be a starving beggar with Dieh than live like this with you.’ ‘That hurts, boy,’ she said. ‘I skimp and I save, storing up my anger to pay him back. And for what? For you, you little bastard!’ Then she turned her anger on my father: ‘Luo Tong, I say, Luo Tong, you son of a black-dick donkey, you've ruined my life…If I feasted on fine, spicy food, if I ate and drank what I wanted, my eyes would shine and I'd be as enticing as that whore!’ Mother's mournful outburst moved me to the depths of my soul. ‘You're right, Mother,’ I said. ‘If you ate big meaty meals, I guarantee that within a month you'd turn into a goddess, more beautiful than Aunty Wild Mule. Then Dieh would abandon her and fly back to you.’ ‘Tell me the truth, Xiaotong,’ she asked, her tears flowing, ‘am I really more beautiful than her?’ ‘Sure you are, Niang,’ I said confidently. ‘Then why did he go after a slut who'd been screwed by every man in town? Not just go after her but run off with her?’ I rushed to Father's defence: ‘I heard him say he didn't go looking for Aunty Wild Mule, that she went looking for him.’ ‘What's the difference?’ Mother growled. ‘If the bitch doesn't wiggle her arse, the mutt's wasting his time. If the mutt isn't interested, the bitch wiggles her arse for nothing.’ ‘Mother,’ I said, ‘you wiggle so much you've got me all confused.’ ‘You little snot,’ she snapped, ‘don't pretend you're confused. You knew what was going on between your father and Wild Mule but you helped him keep it a secret. If you'd told me, I'd have stopped him from running off.’ ‘How?’ I asked timidly. ‘I'd have chopped off his legs’, she snapped, glaring at me. Wow! Lucky Dieh, I thought. ‘You haven't answered my question,’ she said. ‘If I'm more beautiful than Wild Mule, why did he run off for her?’ ‘Because her family eats meat at every meal,’ I said. ‘It was the smell of meat that drew him to her.’ ‘Then if I cook meat every day from now on,’ Mother sneered, ‘will your father's sense of smell bring him home?’ ‘You bet it will!’ I said gleefully. ‘If you cook meat every day, he'll be home in no time. He can smell something eight hundred li away upwind and three thousand downwind.’ I used fine-sounding words to encourage Mother, hoping that her anger would wilt in the face of my reason and that she'd lead me over to the meat street, take out some of the money she'd hidden in her clothes and then buy a pile of fragrant, tender meat for me to eat my fill. Even if I ate myself into the grave, I'd at least be a ghost with a full belly. She wasn't convinced. Brimming over with resentment, she walked up to the wall, hunkered down and ate her cold corncake. But my words had not been entirely in vain. Soon, with great reluctance, she went over to a little cafe near the meat street and chatted with the owners for the longest time, trotting out a litany of lies: my father was dead and wouldn't they take pity on his widow and orphaned child…They finally knocked ten fen off the price of a skinny-as-a-string-bean pig's tail; she held it tight it in