Chapter 8: Anatomy Of A Problem
Mother had been a healer's apprentice before she married Father.
I didn't learn this from the original Liang's memories, which were patchy at best.
I learned it because I asked.
"You use chrysanthemum for headaches and dried ginger for nausea," I said, sitting across from her on a morning when her coughing was light. "Did someone teach you that?"
She looked at me over her tea. "Sun Ai. The healer in Chenjia village, east of the river fork. I apprenticed under her from age eleven to fifteen, before I married your father and moved here."
"Why didn't you keep practicing?" I asked.
"Hekou village didn't have a healer's hut or any supplies, and your father needed help with the farm more than the villages needed a girl with very little medical training. " She said it without bitterness.
"What did Sun Ai teach you?"
Mother's eyebrows lifted. She was used to Hao's questions, which were starkly different than the nature of mine.