On the day of the fishing, Feng Qingxue was not home. She had left early in the morning to assist with a childbirth at the neighboring production brigade.
Feng Qingxue was unfamiliar with the name of the expectant mother. The neighbor who came to fetch her didn’t discuss the details, only mentioning that Gousheng’s wife had been in pain since the middle of the night. Unable to bear her cries, they sought Feng Qingxue’s help, given her reputation and the close proximity of the two production brigades.
Upon arrival, Feng Qingxue saw that the woman’s situation was far from good.
The woman had allowed her health to deteriorate over time due to malnourishment. The fetus’s heartbeat was gradually slowing down. While her birth canal was open, she lacked the strength to give birth. According to the woman, she hadn’t even been able to eat anything hot or filling since the morning.
"We must cook for the mother, so she has the strength to deliver." Feng Qingxue said.
Upon hearing this, the grandmother who usually brought hot water merely sighed deeply, never responding. Gousheng stood afar, outside the straw pavilion, like a statue, as if he were deaf. The mother and son didn’t budge at all.
Indeed, they had a straw-roofed house, yet in the dead of winter, they forced their daughter-in-law to deliver in a straw shack.
"I don’t want to give birth anymore, I don’t want to! Even if it’s born, it’s going to suffer from hunger! I have to work non-stop during the day, and there’s hardly a dried sweet potato in the soup in my bowl!" Gousheng’s wife cried, gasping for air between her howls.
Feng Qingxue responded unhappily, "After enduring the hardship of a ten-month pregnancy, do you want the child to die in the womb?"
"I don’t want it!" Gousheng’s wife broke into loud sobs, grasping the filthy straw beneath her tightly, "But what can I do? I can’t afford to support it if it’s born! I have three hundred pounds of food, but do I get around a hundred pounds in my mouth? I must look after the entire family, old and young, work during the day, wash clothes at night. The saved grains are sent to my sister-in-law in the city instead. The city folks don’t eat grain, why do they compete for food? If she doesn’t have a household registration in the town, let her family work and earn their grain. Why do they have to eat my grain? Why? Why? Why?"
After asking ’why’ three times, her mother-in-law looked awfully sour. In a huff, she kicked over the wooden tub filled with hot water and stalked off. The woman’s husband swiftly followed suit to comfort his mother, leaving behind Feng Qingxue and the resentful pregnant woman in the straw shack.
Gousheng’s wife gave a bitter smile, "You see? This is my fate! I can’t even tell the truth."
Feng Qingxue bluntly replied, "What’s the use of complaining? Ultimately, you’re just not assertive enough. Why can’t you decide your own food? If you stand up for yourself, who dares to provoke you? My fate is in my own hands, not Heaven’s. If I were in your place, I’d fight those who tried to make my life a misery. Without a fight, death is certain. With a fight, there might be a chance of survival."
As she spoke, she took out two eggs from her medicine box and pretended to peel them. She then stuffed them into Gousheng’s wife’s mouth.
Gousheng’s wife opened her mouth and bit half of the egg, swallowing it quickly with large gulps. After wiping her mouth, she somehow found the strength to push, and her undernourished baby slid out, as tiny as a mouse.
Feng Qingxue quickly fetched water from a pot on the stove to bathe the baby, then wrapped it in a few pieces of old swaddling clothes she’d brought earlier.
After weighing it, she figured the baby and the swaddling clothes together were barely nine or ten pounds.
Having assisted in many births, Feng Qingxue had become adept at estimating the weight of a newborn. After all, not every family had a scale ready to weigh the baby.