In the communal kitchen, each household has two stoves, one big and one small, fueled by coal briquettes. When cooking, you turn on the stove and start cooking; when done, replace the briquette, close the cover below the stove, and keep a pot of water on top.
However, to save briquettes, everyone uses only one stove, and it’s only when relatives visit or during New Year’s and other holidays, when there’s more cooking, that both stoves are used.
After cooking the meal and steaming the egg custard, Yuan Chun brought the whole pot along with the food into the room.
Turning around, she grabbed a few potatoes and went to the kitchen, using a small iron pot to fry some shredded potatoes.
Yuan Chun laid the food on the table, and only then did Zhao Dongxiu yawn and come out of the room, "Yuan Fang, I have to work during the day and take care of the child at night; it’s really exhausting. Let Yuan Chun watch the child tonight. If the child gets hungry, bring them to our room so I can feed them, otherwise, I really can’t take it."
Wei Yuanfang felt sorry for his wife and was about to agree when Yuan Chun spoke, "Sister-in-law, you call yourself tired after just going to work? I cook, wash clothes, clean, I’m the one busy both inside and out; I’m more tired than you. And while you get paid for your work, I do free labor for you without earning a single cent. Even so, you won’t spare me; you even want to throw the child at me to watch at night. Are you trying to work me to death?"
"Sister-in-law, if you think work is tiring, then give up the job and let my brother take care of you. My brother earns a good salary each month, it’s not like he can’t afford to support you. There’s no need for you to work so hard, and I could go home more to accompany Mom and Dad. It’s a win-win situation, sister-in-law, what do you think?"
Mr. and Mrs. Wei had only one son and one daughter. The son worked in a steel factory in the provincial city, and throughout the year, he’d come back just for a few days over the New Year.
After Yuan Chun came to the provincial city to help her brother and sister-in-law with childcare, only the old couple was left at home, relying on field work to earn work points to get their grain rations.
Every year, the little refined grain they received, along with the sweet potatoes, radishes, potatoes from the private plot, and the dried vegetables from the garden, would be entrusted to someone to bring to the steel factory for the son and daughter-in-law to eat.
Even so, Zhao Dongxiu wasn’t satisfied, often uttering a few words that belittled rural folks, subtly disregarding the original owner at every turn.
The anger for Yuan Chun came from Zhao Dongxiu devaluing the Wei Family as rural people, while Wei Yuanfang remained silent, allowing his wife to slight his younger sister.
Yuan Chun looked disdainfully at Wei Yuanfang, "Brother, Mom and Dad really raised you in vain. Look at your wife, this is about exhausting your biological sister to death, and yet you not only don’t sympathize with me, you even want to help your wife tyrannize me. Oh brother, people say a man forgets his mother when he has a wife, but you’ve forgotten the whole family; ever since you got married, I and Mom and Dad have become strangers."
"No, we’ve become the servants of you two."
"Look, since I came to your house, your wife has treated me like a maid, even asking me to wash her undergarments, how shameless is that?"
Yuan Chun then turned to the enraged Zhao Dongxiu, saying, "Sister-in-law, I now see clearly, no matter how well I do, how wholeheartedly I help you with the child and manage this household, in your mind, I’m just a maid to be ordered around at will."
"Sister-in-law, since you don’t regard me as a sister, then in the future, I won’t see you as a sister either. From now on, you’ll wash your own clothes; I’m only here to help with the childcare, still doing free labor, but not here to become a servant doing everything for you."