chin in her hands, completely transfixed by her mother’s harrowing tale.
“Let me finish the story, Rachel, and then you will understand. So here I was, eighteen years old, married to this violent drunkard, and pregnant with another man’s child. I was so frightened that Fang Min would somehow realize the baby wasn’t his, and he would kill Kao Wei and me, so I tried to hide my pregnancy for as long as possible. But my old-fashioned mother-in-law recognized all the telltale signs, and it was she who declared to me a few weeks later that she thought I looked pregnant. At first, I was terrified, but you know what? The most unexpected thing happened. My in-laws were overjoyed that at last they were having their first grandchild. My evil mother-in-law suddenly transformed into the most caring person you could possibly imagine. She insisted that I move back into the big house so that the servants could look after me properly. I felt so relieved, like I had been rescued from hell. Even though I didn’t really need to, she forced me to stay in bed most of the time and made me drink these traditional brews all day long to boost the health of the baby. I had to take three types of ginseng every day, and eat young chicken in broth. I’m convinced this is why you were such a healthy baby, Rachel—you never got sick like other babies. No ear infections, no high fevers, nothing. At that time, there wasn’t a sonogram machine in Xiamen yet, so my mother-in-law invited a famous fortune-teller over, who divined that I was going to have a boy, and that the boy was going to grow up to become a great politician. This made my in-laws even more excited. They hired a special nursemaid to take care of me, a girl who had natural double eyelids and big eyes, because my mother-in-law believed that if I stared at this girl all day, my child would come out with double eyelids and big eyes. That’s what all the mothers in China wanted then—children with big, Western-style eyes. They painted a room bright blue and filled it up with baby furniture and all these boy clothes and toys. There were airplanes and train sets and toy soldiers—I had never seen so many toys in all my life.
“One night, my water broke and I went into labor. They rushed me to the hospital, and you were born a few hours later. It was an easy labor—I’ve always told you that—and at first I was worried they would see that you looked nothing like their son, but that turned out to be the least of my worries. You were a girl, and my in-laws were extremely shocked. They were outraged at the fortune-teller, but they were more outraged at me. I had failed them. I had failed to do my duty. Fang Min was also terribly upset, and if I hadn’t been living with my in-laws, I’m sure he would have beaten me half to death. Now, because of China’s one-child policy, all couples were banned from having a second child. By law, I could not have another, but my in-laws were desperate for a boy, a male heir who could carry on the family name. If we had lived in the countryside, they might have just abandoned or drowned the baby girl—don’t look so shocked, Rachel, it happened all the time—but we were living in Xiamen and the Zhous were an important local family. People already knew that a baby girl had been born, and it would have been disgraceful for them to reject you. However, there was one loophole to the one-child rule: if your baby had a handicap, you were allowed to have another.
“I didn’t know this, but even before I had come home from the hospital, my evil in-laws were already hatching a plan. My mother-in-law decided that the best thing to do was to pour acid in your eye—”
“WHAAAT?” Rachel shrieked.
Kerry swallowed hard, before continuing. “Yes, they wanted to blind you in one eye, and if they did this while you were a newborn, the cause of the blinding could look like it was just a birth defect.”
“My God!” Rachel clasped her hand to her mouth in horror.
“So she began to devise a scheme with some of the older servants, who were very loyal to her, but the special maid they had hired to take care of me while I was