izi cut a full basket of tender wormwood and hurried ho. She was learning how to manage a household now, walking with such a sense of purpose that she seed to have the wind at her back. Anything to get ho faster.
Before she even reached the courtyard gate, she called out in a bright, clear voice, "Ma—"
Granny Hua was clutching a shoe sole, taking a breather. She hadn’t sewn a single stitch. When she heard izi’s call, she shot right up—she’d been caught slacking!
Flustered, she set the shoe sole aside and ran out to et izi, terrified she would ask how much sewing she’d gotten done. izi could rember exactly how many rows she had stitched, and would cry out in alarm if she saw Granny Hua had fallen short.
Today, however, izi didn’t ask. Instead, she had her mother-in-law help mix the cornal. Following the thod Juhua had taught her, izi herself used a wooden mallet to pound the clean, tender wormwood into a pulp. She then rinsed it with fresh water to wash away the bitterness before mixing it into the cornal and kneading the dough with all her might.
The fresh fragrance made her exceptionally happy. ’Changming will definitely love this,’ she thought.
Once the dough was ready, she chopped up so pickled vegetables, chili slices, garlic shoots, and scallions for the filling. After a mont’s thought, she took out a small piece of cured at, minced it finely, mixed it into the filling, and poured the whole mixture into a wok to stir-fry.
izi put Granny Hua in charge of the fire, and she didn’t complain one bit. She loved it when izi cooked, and these wormwood pancakes were clearly different from the ones she’d made before. They just looked delicious.
When the glistening green pancakes were griddled, the fresh, savory aroma made Granny Hua’s mouth water. She reached out, grabbed one, and started eating, all while keeping a wary eye on izi, afraid she’d find so reason to stop her.
Most people leave a crescent-shaped bite mark, but with the gap in her front teeth, she could never bite cleanly through the middle. There was always a piece left jutting out.
izi saw her eating but didn’t stop her. She just continued to griddle the pancakes and said, "Ma, one each is enough. We’ll have the rest for dinner, and we can heat up the leftovers for breakfast with our cornal porridge."
Granny Hua froze. ’One each? Does that an since I’ve already had one, I don’t get another?’
And sure enough, she didn’t.
When it was ti for lunch, Li Laoda and his son each found a wormwood pancake in their bowls. It had a fresh, fragrant taste, different from the ones they’d eaten a few days before. Granny Hua’s bowl, however, was empty.
Seeing that everyone else had a pancake but her, Granny Hua felt a pang of greed—the filling was mixed with cured at, and it slled incredible! But more than that, she felt utterly humiliated. She glanced at Li Laoda and their son, Li Changming, and thought, ’I’m just going to take another one today. We’ll see what she says in front of Changming. Is she really going to stop her own mother from eating a single pancake? She couldn’t justify that to anyone.’
And so, defiant, she marched into the kitchen, grabbed another pancake, and deliberately sat back down at the table, making a show of eating it.
Just then, Li Changming asked izi why the pancakes had such a fresh aroma, almost like wormwood. Beaming, she told him that she had made them with the wormwood she’d gathered earlier.
As she was explaining, she saw Granny Hua eating another pancake and couldn’t help but cry out, "Ma, why are you eating another? Didn’t we say one each? If you eat so many, you won’t have room for your actual al!"
Granny Hua had expected her to cry out and wasn’t the least bit flustered. She replied calmly, "It’s just one pancake. It’s no big deal if I have one more."
But izi unleashed a torrent of words that nearly made Granny Hua choke on her pancake. "Oh, goodness! Ma, how can you say that? My mother, Juhua, always said, ’Eating and dressing won’t make you poor, but a lifeti of poor planning will!’ You have to be careful to make ends et. How can we just eat until our bellies are full whenever we feel like it? We’d eat ourselves into the poorhouse! Back at my family’s ho, whenever my mother made pancakes, she’d only let Gou Dan have one at a al. If he ate more, he didn’t get any for dinner. Ma, you had an extra one for lunch, so you can’t have one tonight. Our family is poor; we have to be frugal with what we have."
’Ma is just like Gou Dan,’ she thought. ’She can’t control her own appetite. Looks like I’ll have to keep a closer eye on her from now on.’
Seeing everyone staring at her, dumbfounded, she quickly added, "Dad, Changming, and Uncle Cong are out doing hard labor, and they only get one each. Ma, you haven’t been doing heavy work, so how can you eat so many? It’s not like I didn’t cook rice. If you were eating the pancakes *as* your al, then it would be fine to have more."
Suddenly, the pancake in Granny Hua’s mouth seed to lose all its flavor. She wanted to argue with her daughter-in-law, but she was afraid of provoking an even longer lecture. In the end, though, she couldn’t swallow her indignation and retorted, "Then what about all the ones you sent over to Changxing’s mother? That—"
Before she could finish, she saw izi, her mouth full of food, freeze mid-chew. Her eyes flew wide open. The look of utter astonishnt on izi’s face gave Granny Hua a sudden, terrible feeling. She wanted to take the words back, but it was too late. Words, once spoken, might not be like spilled water, but they’re like a snake that’s slipped into its hole—impossible to drag back out.
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