Life and Death are Wearing Me Out

smoldered.
    “Call my dad an asshole if you want,” your son said, “but he’s no phony and he doesn’t put on an act. He wouldn’t be in so much trouble if he had.”
    “Still protecting him, are you?” Fenghuang said. “He abandoned you and your mother and ran off to play around with another woman — oh, right, I forgot, that aunt of mine is an asshole too!”
    “I admire my second uncle,” Ximen Huan said. “It took guts to give up his job as deputy county chief, leave his wife and son, and go off with his lover on a romantic adventure. How cool!”
    “In the words of our county’s crafty writer Mo Yan, your dad is the world’s bravest guy, biggest asshole, hardest drinker, and best lover! Plug up your ears, both of you. I don’t want you to hear what I say next.” They did as she said. “Dog Four, have you heard that Lan Jiefang and my aunt make love ten times a day for an hour each time?”
    Ximen Huan snorted and giggled. Fenghuang kicked him in the leg.
    “You were listening, you punk,” she complained.
    Your son didn’t say a word, but his face had darkened.
    “The next time you two go back to Ximen Village, take me along. I hear your father has turned the place into a capitalist paradise.”
    “Nonsense,” Ximen Huan replied. “You can’t have a capitalist paradise in a socialist country. My dad’s a reformer, a hero of his time.”
    “Bullshit!” Fenghuang said. “He’s a bastard. The real heroes of their time are your uncle and my aunt.”
    “Don’t talk about my dad,” your son said.
    “When he stole off with my aunt, he nearly killed my grandma and made my grandpa sick, so why can’t I talk about him? One day I’ll get really mad and drag them back from Xi’an so they can be paraded in the street.”
    “Hey, why don’t we go pay them a visit?” Ximen Huan suggested.
    “Good idea,” Fenghuang said. “I’ll take another bucket of paint with me, and when I see my aunt, I’ll say, ‘Here, Aunty, I’ve come to paint you.’”
    That made Ximen Huan laugh. Your son lowered his head and said nothing.
    Fenghuang kicked him in the leg.
    “Lighten up, Old Lan. We’ll go together, what do you say?”
    “Not me.”
    “You’re no fun,” she said. “I’ve had enough of you two. I’m getting out of here.”
    “Don’t go yet,” Ximen Huan said. “The program hasn’t started.”
    “What program?”
    “Miraculous hair, my mother’s miraculous hair.”
    “Hell, I forgot all about that,” Fenghuang said. “What was it you said? You could cut off a dog’s head and sew it back on with a strand of your mom’s hair, and that dog could still eat and drink, is that it?”
    “We don’t need that complicated an experiment,” Ximen Huan said. “You can cut yourself, and then burn a strand of her hair and sprinkle the ashes on the cut. You’ll be good as new in ten minutes and no scar.”
    “They say you can’t cut her hair or it’ll bleed.”
    “That’s right.”
    “Everybody says she has such a kind heart that if one of the villagers is injured, she’ll pull out a strand of her hair for them.”
    “That’s right.”
    “Then how come she’s not bald?”
    “It keeps growing back.”
    “Then you’ll never go hungry,” Fenghuang said admiringly. “If your father loses his job one day and turns into a useless pauper, your mother can keep the family fed and housed just by selling her hair.”
    “I’d go out begging before I’d let her do that,” Ximen Huan said emphatically. “Although she’s not my real mother.”
    “What do you mean?” Fenghuang asked. “If she’s not your real mother, who is?”
    “They tell me it was a high school student.”
    “The bastard son of a high school student,” Pang said. “How cool is that!”
    “Then why don’t you go have a baby?” Ximen Huan said.
    “Because I’m a good girl.”
    “Does having a baby make you a bad kid?”
    “Good kid, bad kid. We’re all good kids!” she said. “Let’s perform the experiment. Shall we cut off Dog Four’s head?”
    I barked angrily. My meaning? Try it, you little bastard, and I’ll bite your head off!
    “Nobody touches my dog,” your son said.
    “So then what?” Fenghuang said. “You’re wasting my time with your phony tricks. I’m leaving.”
    “Wait,” your son said. “Don’t go.”
    He stood up and went into the kitchen.
    “What are you doing, Old Lan?” Fenghuang shouted after him.
    He walked out of the kitchen holding the middle