Lindo Jong
I once sacrificed my life to keep my parents promise. This means nothing to you, because to you promises mean nothing. A daughter promise to e to dinner, but if she has a headache, if she has a traffic jam, if she wants to watch a favorite movie on TV, she no longer has a promise.
I watched this same movie when you did not e. The Ameri soldier promises to e bad marry the girl. She is g with a genuine feeling and he says, "Promise! Promise! Honey-sweetheart, my promise is as good as gold." Then he pushes her onto the bed. But he doesnt e back. His gold is like yours, it is only fourteen carats.
To ese people, fourteen carats isnt real gold. Feel my bracelets. They must be twenty-four carats, pure inside and out.
Its too late to ge you, but Im telling you this because I worry about your baby. I worry that someday she will say, "Thank you, Grandmother, for the gold bracelet. Ill never fet you." But later, she will fet her promise. She will fet she had a grandmother.
In this same war movie, the Ameri soldier goes home and he falls to his knees asking anirl to marry him. And the girls eyes run bad forth, so shy, as if she had never sidered this before. And suddenly!—her eyes look straight down and she knows now she loves him, so much she wants to cry. "Yes," she says at last, and they marry forever.
This was not my case. Instead, the village matchmaker came to my family when I was just two years old. No, nobody told me this, I remember it all. It was summertime, very hot and dusty outside, and I could hear cicadas g in the yard. We were under some trees in our orchard. The servants and my brothers were pig pears high above me. And I was sitting in my mothers hot sticky arms. I was waving my hand this way and that, because in front of me floated a small bird with horns and colorful paper-thin wings. And then the paper bird flew away and in front of me were two ladies. I remember them because one lady made watery "shrrhh, shrrhh" sounds. When I was older, I came this as a Peking at, which sounds quite strao Taiyuan peoples ears.
The two ladies were looking at my face without talking. The lady with the watery voice had a painted face that was melting. The other lady had the dry face of an old tree trunk. She looked first at me, then at the painted lady.
Of course, now I know the tree-trunk lady was the old village matchmaker, and the other was Huang Taitai, the mother of the boy I would be forced to marry. No, its not true what some ese say about girl babies being worthless. It depends on what kind of girl baby you are. In my case, people could see my value. I looked and smelled like a precious buncake, sweet with a good color.
The matchmaker bragged about me: "Ah horse for ah sheep. This is the best marriage bination." She patted my arm and I pushed her hand away. Huang Taitai whispered in her shrrhh-shrrhh voice that perhaps I had an unusually bad pichi, a bad temper. But the matchmaker laughed and said, "Not so, not so. She is a strong horse. She will grow up to be a hard worker who serves you well in your old age."
And this is when Huang Taitai looked down at me with a cloudy face as though she could pee my thoughts and see my future iions. I will never fet her look. Her eyes opened wide, she searched my face carefully and then she smiled. I could see a large gold tooth staring at me like the blinding sun and then the rest of her teeth opened wide as if she were go