Trial by Fire(ONC 2024)

Epilogue

"So there I was, at thirty-five, saving my two-year-old sister," the woman standing at the lectern in the auditorium clicked her presentation remote, the slide changing on the large screen behind her.

A picture appeared on the screen: a delicately beautiful little girl wrapped in a blanket, chubby cheeks adorned with droplets, innocent and adorable as a blossom bud. A well-dressed woman held the girl in her arms, smiling as they posed for a selfie.

The background of the photo depicted a rural courtyard. The woman holding the girl in the picture was exactly the same woman now addressing the audience from the stage.

The room erupted into a buzz of discussion, almost lifting the roof off.

"Professor Du Mei, this is incredible!" an American journalist in the front row was the first to inquire. "How did this happen? Why was your two-year-old sister in the bathhouse?"

Du Mei smiled slightly, responding, "This is the power of technology."

"Then where was your grandmother?" another journalist asked.

"My grandmother died from scalding," Du Mei replied, expressionless. "She was scalded to death by the boiling water from the pot I, at the age of five, had heated with firewood."

The murmurs surged again.

"When I was twenty-five, I unexpectedly encountered my mother," she continued. "My mother said to me, 'Did you really think that what I scooped out of that pot all those years ago was your sis?'"

"No. She said, 'what I scooped out was your grandma.' "

——————

What my mama scooped out was my grandma.

That afternoon, as my mama watched me dart towards the outhouse and saw the roaring fire, a sense of foreboding gripped her. She rushed into the bathhouse.

The sight before her shattered her.

The water in the pot was boiling fiercely. A body, deformed beyond recognition by the boiling water, lay in the pot, its flesh almost scalded to a pulp and its grotesque head drooping over the rim.

That head allowed my mama to recognise the identity of the body.

"I recognised her at once, it was your grandma!" Even twenty years later, Mama still trembled with fear as she recounted this.

"Though she appeared very old, I was afraid she was boiled to age. She was wearing a pair of gold earrings shaped like two fishes set with rubies. I discovered them only when I buried her in the backhills.

"I was blank at the time, unable to think of anything. All I could think of was one thing: you burned your grandma. Your uncle would surely kill you, your pa could never stop him, and maybe your pa would even support him. Your grandma was your pa's birth mother, and you were just his daughter. There's only one mother, but a girl could be born again. I knew your pa too well. That's definitely what he would think! Your pa would beat you to death too! My only thought was: I couldn't let you die!

"I wanted to die for you, so I went to the police station. I told the cops that I argued with my mother-in-law, then I boiled her to death out of impulse and buried her in the backhills. I regretted it, so I turned myself in. I thought, it would be better to be shot dead by the police, at least it would be a quicker death than being beaten to death by them! Just let me repay your grandma's life with mine!"

In the twilight, I held my mother's hand tightly, tears falling onto her palm drop by drop.

"I buried your grandma's body in the wild grass on the hill with my own hands. So, when I saw you being held by your grandma through the iron bars, I was horrified, really horrified!"