Daxiu Took Her Pot Away

On the seventeenth day of the second month, Liu Lan was up before the rooster. She ground the beans she had soaked the night before, strained out the white milk, and wiped a thin coat of oil over the bottom of the pot. The sky was still gray, but the timber in the outer shed was already plain to see, every length of it lying across a place where she wanted to put a bench. She turned sideways and dragged one bench out. A leg caught on the old mat covered in shavings, and the thin curls of wood went skittering across the ground.

She did not call Xu Shen. He had come yesterday and said there were still several mortises to chisel, which he needed to finish while the weather was dry. She asked how many days it would take. He looked at the sky and said another four or five. The door was still unfinished, yet whenever he spoke of it, he sounded as though only one last touch remained. Liu Lan remembered patching her roof last October: a little short of tiles, a little short of straw, a little short of wages. Only when she truly found herself living in the rain did she learn that every little shortage took time.

Daxiu came in with a basket of vegetables on her carrying pole and knocked her straw shoes twice against the threshold. She wore an azurite-blue jacket with freshly turned cuffs, though her trousers were still the old ones. They had agreed she would try selling breakfast at the shelter today, one pot of mixed-flour noodle soup, then go back to tend her own stall in the south of town once it sold out. She had also made twenty vegetable cakes, wrapped them in oiled paper, and tucked them snugly under a cover in the basket.

“Still only room for half the pot?” she asked. Liu Lan brought out a small pot and said to cook less for now. Daxiu lifted her big iron pot and tried to find the corner of the stove that stuck out. She turned it twice, and the bottom still hung in the air. She'd seen small stoves before, but this was the first pot she'd bought for herself, big enough to make soup for six at once. When she borrowed other people's pots, someone always came to lift the lid and see how much they were getting.

A-Sui had caught a ride on the early cart. She’d rested her legs for a few days in town, and today she’d made a point of putting on clean shoes and bringing a little packet of pickled radish to congratulate Liu Lan on opening. Xu Shen had asked her to wait another two days, but at the words “opening day” she couldn’t sit still, as though those early years wouldn’t really have come back unless she stood in the shed herself.

When she saw Daxiu fussing around the pot, she said it would taste better simmered slowly over a low fire. Daxiu lifted the pot to show her the gap in the stove. “The fire's fine. The rim of the pot has nothing to rest on.” A-Sui felt the stovetop and got a layer of soot on her hand. As if to cover her embarrassment, she laughed that her son worked in wood and knew little about such things. They should have called a mason long ago. Daxiu asked, “Didn't you say before that he'd sort it out when he came?”

A shoulder load of pine needles arrived outside. The carrier was an old acquaintance of A-Sui's. He saw her and called out, Sister Lin, is there hot soup today? She answered yes at once, called him in to sit, and told Daxiu to put in a few more noodles. Liu Lan was making change. Daxiu gave no answer and stood still with the water dipper in her hand. Only then did A-Sui hear the tone she had used. She had spoken as though she were still sitting in front of her own stove.

The load of pine needles came down by the roadside, and two women selling eggs arrived right behind it. One saw the timber and asked whether the shed still needed work. The other lifted the cloth on her basket to show A-Sui her first double-yolk egg. A-Sui called them both in. Liu Lan moved the only small table they could still get to over by the door. Two people sat down, and the third had to squeeze in along the edge of the woodpile.

Xu Shen came in with his tools on his back just as the hot soup was served. Two days earlier he had spent half a day fixing a cabinet lock for a household, but he had only got his twenty cash that morning. He had not dared go see Auntie Liu empty-handed the night before. Seeing four people crowded at the entrance to the stall, he went straight to shift the long stock. The outermost piece had already been grooved, and when he pulled, the half-finished door hanging on the rack tilted with it. He caught it quickly, but half the soup spilled from the bowl all the same.

The egg seller stood up and struck her knee on the planing bench, baring her teeth at the pain. Daxiu wiped the table with a damp cloth, but the vegetable flatbreads picked up sawdust as soon as she unwrapped them. Xu Shen said it would only take a moment, his voice rising above the water boiling under the lid. Liu Lan put a hand on his shoulder and told him to hold still and let the customers go outside to eat. All four bowls ended up on the stones by the road, and the soup cooled quickly in the wind.

The man with the pine needles finished eating, brushed off the front of his jacket, and made to leave. He had taken today for a gathering of old friends to warm up the shed. Asui hadn't mentioned money, and he hadn't asked. Daxiu stopped him and said the soup was four cash and the cake another two. The man stared for a moment, then turned to look at Asui. Her face grew hot. She said of course there was a charge, but her hand was already reaching for her purse to pay for him.

Daxiu did not take her money. She kept her eyes on the man. The pine-needle gatherer finally fished out six wen, muttering that there had never been all this fuss when Sister Lin gave him a mouthful of porridge in the old days. Asui wanted to smile and say something agreeable, but Liu Lan brought him the carrying rope he had left by the table and said the porridge he had then was one thing. Daxiu had to make a living from this now. The words had scarcely left her mouth when Liu Lan felt her throat go dry.

The woman who sold eggs had kept the double-yolk egg back for Liu Lan to crack open then and there. She was waiting for everyone to marvel, but when the shell cracked, only one big yolk came out. Another woman laughed until she could hardly straighten up and said she had bragged about her hen so much it had learned to do tricks. Asui laughed too. When she was done, she scraped out the last of the white with the tips of her chopsticks and said the hen had not heard them today, but it might oblige them with two tomorrow. Daxiu borrowed the little pan to fry the egg for her, and for a while the smell of egg overpowered the smell of wood. The woman broke it into pieces for everyone and kept the most burnt piece for herself.

Before noon, Liu Ting brought half a basket of inexpensive greens. He had come out only after covering someone's shift at the oil shop. Seeing the timber still lying there, the timber for which borrowing a cart had cost him a day's work earlier, he said nothing and set down the basket to leave. Liu Lan called him over to eat a piece of egg. He squatted outside the shelter, chewing very quickly, the scent of oil still on his hands despite washing. His mother asked whether his wife was better. He said she coughed at night, and when he combed their daughter's hair, he had made one braid thick and the other thin. Liu Lan showed him with her hands how to divide the hair. He followed along with half a piece of dry grass, then found it ridiculous, and mother and son both laughed.

No more customers came that afternoon. The timber blocked the entrance, making the shelter look like a carpenter's workshop. Passersby saw it from a distance and chose to buy wheat flatbreads from Zhou Qiao instead. Daxiu wrapped up the eleven remaining vegetable flatbreads. The soup in the little pot had boiled down so thick she could ladle it but couldn't pour it. She tasted a spoonful and couldn't bear to throw it away, so she divided it between two earthenware jars to carry back to the south of town and sell.

Xu Shen crouched by the stove to measure the opening, thinking he could raise the pot for now on a wooden stand. Daxiu pulled the measuring stick away and laid it on his tool bag. “Don't try it with my pot. If the stand catches fire, you can buy me another pot and I'll still lose several more days.” His face went pale at her words. Remembering that he, too, had once called his wooden wedges temporary, he did not lay another hand on it.

Asui could not stay seated. She braced herself on her knees and made to get up to pour away the slops. Daxiu carried them out herself, then came back and scrubbed the pot until it shone. She took the hairpin out of her hair and picked the old ash out of the little holes in the handles. The moment Liu Lan saw that, she knew Daxiu would not leave the pot there that day. For women who made their living cooking, the first thing they packed when they left a stove was always their own pot.

“My stall in the south of town lost half a day today,” Daxiu said. She neither asked Liu Lan to make up the loss nor said she would come back another day. When she took up her load, the pot hung at one end of the shoulder pole and the vegetable basket at the other. She adjusted it twice, but one end was still heavier. Liu Lan helped by carrying a jar of thick soup and walked with her to the junction, listening as Daxiu told her about the new cake seller beside her stall. Some of her old customers had already started sitting over there.

When Liu Lan returned to the shed, Asui was telling Xu Shen that Daxiu was short-tempered. Liu Lan heard and stopped in her tracks. She set the one empty teapot left by the door on the table and spoke very softly. “Daxiu had every reason to be upset. I asked her to come work and hadn't even found a place for her to put her pot.” Asui said she'd only meant to help. How was she to know Xu Shen's timber would hold things up? Xu Shen immediately said he'd work faster and skip lunch today.

“You miss one meal and three more benches will appear?” Liu Lan asked.

A-Sui had never heard her speak to Xu Shen that way, and felt as though she herself had been rebuked to her face. She tightened the cloth around the pickled radishes and said she ought not to have come if she was so much in the way. Liu Lan stopped her from taking the radishes and turned to take a pair of straw shoes down from a beam. They were the very pair Xu Shen had asked Liu Ting to bring that winter. The uppers had gathered a thin coat of dust, but the knots were still neatly tied.

Asui saw the repaired straw knot on the side of the shoe. She had taught Xu Shen to tie it long ago. She used to complain that the boy’s hands were clumsy, that his knots bulged more than anyone else’s and rubbed the foot. Now that the shoes were here, she found herself hoping Liu Lan would complain about the knot, so she could pick the shoe up, undo it, and weave it again. Liu Lan looked straight at her, her tired eyes creased with fine lines, without so much as glancing at the knot.

“This pair hasn't been used yet. Take it home,” Liu Lan said. “Someone wore the other pair away, so I can't return those.” Asui would not take them, and Xu Shen did not dare. The straw shoes sat in the middle of the table beside the empty jug. Neither was worth much, but no one could pretend not to see them.

Xu Shen worked until the sun went down that day. The chips he'd chiseled off filled half a sack, and the door still couldn't be stood upright. To work around the crack in the long piece of wood that had split at one corner in the bamboo grove, he would have to change the original dimensions. He didn't say four or five days again, and Liu Lan didn't ask. When she closed the inner kitchen door, she held the key in her palm for a while, then took it home with her.

Back in town, Asui hid the pair of straw sandals under the bed. Huangdou caught the scent of straw and nudged them with his nose. The heels stuck out as if someone were standing under the bed. She woke thirsty in the middle of the night and felt for the kettle herself. Xu Shen heard her stirring and started to get up, but she told him there was no need. He sat on the other side of the curtain for a while. As his mother drank, he heard the faintest catch in her throat.

The firewood left in the shelter that day was later split by Liu Lan alone. She cleared out the place where Daxiu had not left her pot, and it was emptier than she had imagined. The next day, a passerby asked whether there was hot soup. She said there was only tea. The person bought a bowl for two copper coins, drank it, and left. She no longer had to explain to anyone why she still had not managed to make a meal that day.