"This marriage is not working out! So, what's wrong with me demanding an annulment?" Tang Yu screamed, hot exhales coming out of her nostrils. "There is a deadly stigma around divorce you say? Why didn't you sleep on this aspect before, father? You forced this marriage onto me! What were you looking forward to, anyway?" Waves of rage washed over her; she breathed heavy.
"You won't commit any such foolish act! You were born under a lucky star to have Mu Yunsheng as your husband! Such a brutally honest and a genius scholar is hard to come by; it's your luck you got him as your better half."
Tang Yangran, the county magistrate, clenched his lips, suppressing the surge of fresh and hot anger burning within his veins from rising to the head. "Many fair maidens around the city view you with feminine envy now. Their hearts broke finding out such an outstanding youth like Mu Yunsheng has been off the market."
"Oh yeah?" Tang Yu was brisk to follow with a snide comment. Her father's opinion clashed with hers. "How come such a precious, sought after gem dwells under the thatched roof?!" She bit out. Her slender hand swept over the tea table, grabbed a double-eared porcelain flower vase, before hurling it downward at full force.
The blue porcelain, which burned a hole in the magistrate's pocket, was smashed to smithereens, just as it came into contact with the stone floor.
A muscle in Tang Yangran's jaw jumped; he employed every whit of his thin patience not to explode at the girl. All of a sudden, his anger was replaced by pain. Tang Yu bore a striking resemblance to her mother, his late wife, whose only last wish for him was to never make their daughter cry.
Tang Yu's anger halved after the little vent.
"Father, Mu Yunsheng hails from a pure farmer family! His father and brothers sweat blood in the farmlands from dawn to dusk even under the sweltering weather. His eldest sister-in-law came from a family of seamstresses and the second one from fishermen's! They cohabitate with horses and cows, can't even afford a mere servant, and want me to take bath in the turbid water of the river! And, you want me to live with them?!"
She twitched her lips, as if the bitter words left their pungent taste on her tongue.
"They are wild peasants! The thick woman, who claimed to be my mother-in-law, made a deep slit into a bouncing fish's belly, and in no time, wrenched out the rotten guts, smiling at others!"
Recalling the blackish green veins snaking on her in-laws' kitchen floor, Tang Yu dry heaved. Bile rose in her throat, and she almost threw up the chicken soup she had just five minutes ago.
Tang Yangran sighed, his monolid eyes sealing close. How would rotten guts come out from a fresh fish? That was the natural odor, more or less, every fish's guts carried.
"The chicken guts and innards which his sister hauled out, emitted a vomit inducing stench as well!" Tang Yu dry-heaved, tears sparkling in her eyes. "They made food for everyone in the family with those same pairs of hands! I couldn't bring myself to force a single morsel down my throat, father! I had to starve myself for nearly two days!"
'That's the usual kitchen scenario everywhere. You never stepped a foot in there, that's why, you don't know.' Tang Yangran sent back the words from the tip of his tongue, afraid, Tang Yu might stop eating in his house as well.
"His eldest sister-in-law cleaned up the horse manure, and wanted to teach me how to milk cows! She informed me that the stable needs to be mucked out every other day; and they take turns in doing it, which goes to explain that I won't be spared from it either!"
At this, the magistrate broke his silence. "Okay, I will let Mu Yunsheng know that you won't be doing any manual work. But, you must take part in household chores. According to your claims, they are up to their eyes in work. It will look bad if you don't contribute anything."
Tang Yu felt a churning feeling in her stomach, and tightness in the chest. Her anger commenced rising again.
"I'm not going back, father! Do you even know where they take baths? In the brownish murky water of the river where their cattles are washed off! His sisters took me to the miry river bank to show how they slipped and slid in the slushy muck of the slope that led down into the river. They took many dips in the feculent water, happily, to clean themselves off; more like dirtying their skin."
She let out the barrage of complaints swirling in her heart in a rather aggressive way. "Bunch of fools! Country bumpkins! Wild mountain pigs! Please, I beg you, help purge me of these typical uncultured peasants, before they turn me into one of them!"
"Yu'er, where did you drop your manners? At least, show some respect for your in-laws!" The magistrate pinched the space between his bushy eyebrows, helpless before his daughter.
"Bear with them for a year; Mu Yunsheng will sit for the imperial examination next year. I can bet my life on it that not only will he clear it, but also will emerge as the highest scorer. He has the full competence to become, at least, a fourth rank government official. You can have many servants at your beck and call, and a wooden bath in the house, once he brings you to the city. Till then, you must manage."
Saying this, Tang Yangran made a bolt for the door.
"What did you say? Father! I am not yet done! A year you say, do you know how many hours there are in a year!" Tang Yu yelled from behind, bursts of fury shooting up from her heart. "You don't love me a bit! You did it on purpose to torture me for the rest of my life!"
She ran after the magistrate till the doorway, however, he didn't look back. "I told you many times that I took a fancy to the eldest son of merchant Xiao! But, you never put a word for me there! Y-you ruined my life." Hot tears sprang up in her eyes. "You must have been swayed by your wife's p-ersuasion!"
A prickling sensation clutched Tang Yu's throat, it only tightened its grip when she tried to squeeze out one more sentence. The words lodged themselves inside.
"Society views divorce as a matter of stigma. I won't allow you to besmirch the good name of my family!" Tang Yangran threw the sentence, and receded from the view with his fleet-footed strides.
Left alone, Tang Yu's breath suddenly changed to short rasping bursts. Volcanic rage shook her body, dulling her sanity. She ran out of her room, and without a second thought, jumped straight onto the decorative pond.
The pond was shallow with the transparent green waterline resting a meter below from the shore. But, she didn't know how to swim. Half way through, she desperately started trashing her limbs around, trying to scramble towards the pond edge.
However, it was too late; her aquaphobia acted up, setting forth all the symptoms. Her body broke into a cold sweat, head spun, heart rate accelerated, tremor and fear seized her, vision blackened, and she fainted.
….
Los Angeles, California.
"I'll call shotgun." Tang Yu said sarcastically, approaching her black maybach sedan, rapping her seven-inch high heels against the tiles.
Her driver was on leave. She swung open and slammed close the cushioned door. Despite the disturbing news early in the morning, serenity didn't desert her. She fastened the seatbelts, with the same air of poise and confidence which accompanied her through a plenitude of hardships and business quagmires.
"Whoever you are, son of a bitch, or the bitch itself, just wait for me to crawl out of the canyon you pushed me in. I'm gonna pull you out of darkness and shred the goodness of your life!" She inserted the key, and turned on the ignition. The engine cranked, but the wheels didn't get on rolling.
"Oh boy, something got you upset as well?" She rotated the key thrice which was turned in the ignition. "Why does the world have it out for me today?"
The continuous, high-pitched whining of the sedan went on for a few more seconds, before the car jerked up and rebounded twice.
"Holy moly, is it even my maybach? Why is it behaving like those melodramatic Volkswagen from the seventies? Don't tell me, the culprit had someone punctured the tyres." Tang Yu had half a mind to get down from her car and check the tires, when the sedan started to slide on its wheels.
She turned the steering wheel to the left, drove out of the garage, before picking up the speed. "Seriously, what did the perpetrator think, I grew up without eating any milk and nuts? Duh, I'm of Chinese descent."
The third generation Chinese-American, self made billionaire, grumbled under her breath, sporting a deep furrow between her eyebrows.