The village chief held the QR code out in front of me again. “You’re such a big streamer; you wouldn’t fuss over such a small amount with the villagers, would you?”
Hearing this, the villagers all straightened up. They started chiming in together, “Exactly! Gifts in your live stream fly everywhere—what’s two thousand more or less?”
“It’s not easy for us to farm. You just talk on camera and make money. You should share some with us!”
Denna wiped her tears. “My husband’s medical bills aren’t even covered. You can’t just eat our mangoes for free.”
I could hardly believe my ears. “Denna, you say you can’t cover the medical bills? Other years, your mangoes would have rotted in the fields by now. But this year, just your batch alone sold 8,000 pounds. At the current price, that’s at least 11,000 dollars. How can you still not cover the medical bills?”
Denna was suddenly at a loss for words, her eyes avoiding mine.
My uncle quickly tried to smooth things over, “That’s a different issue! Right now, we’re talking about you eating mangoes for free!”
I looked at him, so self-righteous and couldn’t help but laugh a little. For the past two weeks, I’d been sleeping only three or four hours a night, my throat hoarse and sore, still pushing through every live stream.
The team had been gnawing on cold buns and sleeping on army cots with me. What were we after? We just wanted the villagers to have a better life.
But now? They took the money they’d just earned and turned around to argue with me over tasting mangoes.
I looked down at the corners of my mouth, worn raw and suddenly couldn’t understand what I had been busy with for the past two weeks.
Seeing me silent, my uncle pointed at my nose and scolded, “Lora, you’ve forgotten your roots! Back then, your parents were dirt poor. If the village hadn’t helped cover your tuition, would you even have made it this far? When you were in school, you ate at our house every day and now you’re quibbling with us over this petty money?”
“Exactly! We treated you better than our own daughter. You can’t be so ungrateful!”
A few elders joined in, pointing fingers, “You shouldn’t have even sent her to school—look at the ungrateful child she’s turned out to be!”
They kept piling up every small favor from my childhood, slapping them on me like whips.