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we’ll have Xin marry the Chairman. You might live physically in the modern world, Great-Aunt said impatiently, but your mind is stuck in pre-Liberation days. I’m different than you, Grandmother said. In all my life I’ve never left Heping. But you’ve been to the liberated areas and spent time in Pingdu city. Don’t talk to me about Pingdu city, Great-Aunt said. Just hearing the name makes my scalp itch. I was kidnapped by those Jap devils, taken there to suffer, not to enjoy myself.
    The longer the two sisters-in-law talked, the more their conversation sounded like an argument. The way Great-Aunt stormed off angrily, you’d have thought she never wanted to see my grandmother again. But she was back the next day. Whenever my mother witnessed the two of them talking about Gugu’s marital prospects, she had to stifle a laugh.
    I recall one evening when our water buffalo calved. I don’t know if the mother modelled herself after my mother or the calf modelled itself after me, but it started coming out leg first, and got stuck. The mother’s bellows gave testimony to her agony. My father and grandfather were so distressed they could only wring their hands, stomp their feet, and pace the area in tight little circles. A farmer’s life revolves around a buffalo, and this particular one had been sent to us by the production team to tend. There’d be hell to pay if it died. My mother whispered to my elder sister: Man, I heard your aunt coming in. My sister took off. My father glared at his wife and said: Don’t talk like an idiot. She works with women. The principle’s the same, Mother replied.
    Gugu walked in the door and raged: You people are going to kill me from exhaustion. Delivering human babies has me running all day, and now you want me to deliver a cow!
    With a smile, Mother said: Like it or not, Sister, you’re a member of this family. Who else should we ask for help? Everybody says you’re a reincarnated bodhisattva, and bodhisattvas are supposed to deliver all living creatures from torment, to save the lives of all sentient beings. A water buffalo may not be human, but it’s a life, and I can’t imagine you letting it die without lifting a finger.
    It’s a good thing you can’t read, Auntie, Gugu said. If you knew how to read a couple of handfuls of characters, our village would be too small to hold you.
    If it had been eight handfuls, not two, I’d still be no match for even your little toe.
    Annoyance still showed on Gugu’s face, but the feeling behind it was fading. Night had fallen, so Mother lit all the lanterns in the house, turned up the wicks, and carried them out to the barn.
    When the birthing mother saw Gugu come in, she bent her front legs and knelt on the ground. The sight nearly caused tears to spurt from Gugu’s eyes.
    Ours were not long in following.
    Gugu made a quick examination of the mother’s body. Another leg-first, she said in a sympathetic, but slightly mocking tone.
    Gugu sent us out into the yard so we wouldn’t be upset by what we might see. By the sound of her commands, we could picture what she was telling Father and Mother to do. It was the fifteenth day of the lunar month; as the moon hung in the southeast corner of the sky, illuminating the earth below, we heard Gugu shout: Good, it’s out!
    With whoops of delight we ran inside, where we saw a little sticky-coated creature on the ground behind its mother. Wonderful, Father announced excitedly, it’s another female!
    Isn’t it strange, Gugu seethed, how men pull a long face when a woman gives birth to a girl baby, but grin happily if a cow does the same thing.
    When this calf matures, she’ll have calves just like her, Father said.
    What about humans? Gugu countered. When a girl matures, she’ll give birth to girls, also just like her.
    That’s different, Father said.
    Different how?
    Seeing that Gugu was about to lose her temper, Father stopped talking.
    The mother turned her head to lick the sticky substance