I Found a Box of Birth Control Pills in My Widowed Mother-in-Law’s Room. I replaced the birth control pills with ordinary stomach medicine. The reason was simple: since my mother-in-law always wanted to hold a grandchild, why not have one herself? Later, Mrs. Thompson from next door confronted my mother-in-law, throwing a bank card at her: “This is the payment for giving birth to a child for our family.” I installed a tiny camera in the bedroom. After coming home from work, I often found that the neatly made bed was wrinkled, and the alarm clock or glass on the bedside table had subtly moved. But there were only my husband Ryan and I at home, along with my mother-in-law who had just moved in recently. Two years ago, after my father-in-law passed away, my mother-in-law had been living alone. Ryan and I had agreed to live by ourselves before marriage, but two months into our newlywed life, he used a sob story to bring his mother to live with us. He swore solemnly, “My mom is just a little woman. She won’t affect our life together at all.” Unexpectedly, on the second day after my mother-in-law moved in, she came knocking on our door at six in the morning. “Olivia, why haven’t you made breakfast for mom yet?” When there was no response to her knocking, she changed to loud banging, calling for us. I propped up my heavy body and opened the door. “Mom, don’t we have a housekeeper to make breakfast?” “That’s very expensive!” she exclaimed. “Making breakfast isn’t much trouble, why waste that money?” Her head only reached my nose, but her demeanor was imposing as she stared at me intently. Ryan was still sleeping like a dead pig. Considering he had worked overtime last night, I didn’t wake him up. Instead, I resigned myself to going to the kitchen to heat up some bread and then fry eggs and ham to make sandwiches. My mother-in-law pushed the sandwich aside. “Is this breakfast? You little girl, are you trying to fool me?” “This is what Ryan and I usually eat for breakfast. What would you like to eat?” “I’m not asking for much. There must be oatmeal in the morning, preferably not repeating within a week. The side dishes can be anything, but there must be bacon and sausages, right? The protein is nutritious, but it shouldn’t be too greasy. Just like the breakfast at Rosewood Cafe would be fine.” Her spit flew onto my face as she rattled on. I wiped my face and took the keys to go downstairs to buy breakfast for her. She was still talking, “I’m not asking you to buy it, I want you to make it. The bought ones are unhealthy. Who knows what ingredients they use? Hey, you little girl, how dare you walk away while I’m talking…” In the days that followed, she became increasingly overbearing. After driving away the hourly housekeeper, all the housework fell on me. She insisted that clothes couldn’t be thrown in the washing machine, saying they had to be hand-washed to be clean. She unplugged the dishwasher, saying it wasted electricity and water. She would barge into our room in the middle of the night to turn off the air conditioner, reasoning that she was afraid we’d catch a cold… I had bottled up a belly full of resentment. When I saw the surveillance video, I finally exploded. It had been two days since I installed the camera. That day, I had just finished a project proposal and sat at my desk to play back the surveillance footage at triple speed. Unexpectedly, I saw Mr. Thompson embracing and kissing my mother-in-law as they entered my bedroom, then the two of them rolling around on my bed. Mr. Thompson lived next door to us and had a seemingly perfect family. Who could have imagined he would be having an affair with my mother-in-law? Watching the entangled figures in the video, I felt a wave of nausea and ran to the bathroom, throwing up my lunch completely. The two of them moved with practiced ease, clearly habitual offenders. I steadied my slightly trembling hand and prepared to tell Ryan everything tonight, then confront his mother about this together.
After dinner, I fiddled with the USB drive in my hand, which contained a copy of that video. I was trying to figure out how to bring it up. Ryan came out of the bathroom, having just showered. With only a towel wrapped around him and steam rising from his body, he hugged me, rubbing his stubble against my face. He picked up the USB drive. “What’s on this?” I took a deep breath. “Why don’t you take a look?” He curiously plugged the USB drive into the computer, but just as he was about to click on it, I stopped him. Because I felt a sharp pain in my abdomen, more intense than anything I had ever experienced before. My calves began to tremble slightly. I fell to my knees, curling up and clutching my stomach. He panicked and came to support me, massaging my abdomen. “No… hospital…” I managed to say. He quickly threw on some clothes, picked me up, and rushed to the hospital. At the hospital, they drew blood and ran tests. I had already used up all my strength, and my forehead was covered in cold sweat. Before long, I even developed a high fever. The test results showed acute liver damage, cause unknown. I vomited and had diarrhea all night, with a persistent high fever. I even started talking nonsense, calling out for my mom and dad. Ryan took care of me all night, and I felt a bit better the next day. The doctor told us it could be due to improper, unregulated use of medication. Ryan and I looked at each other in confusion. I hadn’t taken any medication recently, and my diet had been quite normal. The only difference was a soup that my mother-in-law had voluntarily offered to cook that night, saying it was to nourish my body, made especially for me. Under Ryan’s questioning, my mother-in-law finally admitted that the soup was actually a medicinal concoction she had obtained from a so-called master. “What kind of medicine?” Ryan demanded. “A fertility soup,” she replied. I was exhausted, both physically and mentally. I had always been frail since childhood, and doctors had advised against pregnancy. Moreover, I personally had decided not to have children, and had thoroughly discussed this with Ryan before marriage. He had firmly told me he supported my decision. To compensate for this in a way, my family had bought our marital home outright for us to live in as a couple. I hadn’t said anything when his mother moved in, and she had tried to make me take various strange medicines several times, which I had always refused for various reasons. I had complained to Ryan about this, but he said older people were all like that and told me not to mind it. Now she had done something like this. If the situation had been more serious, I could have accused her of attempted murder!
I stayed in the hospital to recover for quite some time, and this incident was hastily concluded. Ryan sternly warned his mother not to give me any more unknown substances, to which she reluctantly agreed. On the day I was discharged, Ryan came to pick me up. He went to handle the paperwork. At the corner of the hospital corridor, I unexpectedly overheard his mother’s voice. “Ryan, I’ve asked the doctors. They say Olivia’s body probably can’t bear children.” Ryan already knew this, so he brushed her off with a few words. Then I heard his mother lower her voice: “I’ve found a nice girl for you outside.” “Mom, what are you talking about?” Ryan asked. “I promise I won’t give Olivia any more medicine, but you have to let me hold a grandchild. That girl has wide hips and a strong body, she’s sure to give birth to a big, healthy boy. She really likes you. If you have a child with her and Olivia accepts it, that would be best. If she doesn’t, you can divorce her!” I felt like I was going to be sick again, my head spinning with anger and shock. Not only was my mother-in-law having an affair with Mr. Thompson, but she was also encouraging another girl to be her son’s mistress. She was truly rotten to the core. I barely managed to stand there, leaning against the wall, just to hear Ryan’s response. “I can’t divorce Olivia,” he said. Hearing this, I felt slightly relieved, but his next words shocked me: “I need to squeeze more money out of her family first. When she’s of no more use, I’ll divorce her. Mom, let me see that girl’s photo.” I don’t know how I made it back to the hospital room, then left the hospital and returned home as if nothing had happened. My heart had turned cold, and the flames of revenge were consuming me. I destroyed the files on the USB drive, then went straight to my mother-in-law’s room and replaced the birth control pills I had found earlier with ordinary stomach medicine. The Parker family wouldn’t get away with this easily. Back in college, Ryan had pursued me relentlessly, saying, “With you by my side, I’ll never look at another woman.” I thought I had married for love. But now I realized, if a woman truly believes a man’s sweet talk, she’s nothing but a fool. Just like I used to be. Don’t expect too much from marriage; it’s just two people living together. If you treat him as your true love, you’re bound to be disappointed. It’s better to treat him as an ordinary roommate; only then can you find a small wildflower in the midst of ugly reality. However, I wouldn’t divorce Ryan easily. Because the real show was about to begin.
My mother-in-law’s appetite grew larger and larger. When she filled her rice bowl for the third time at the dinner table, Ryan put down his chopsticks. “Mom, why are you eating so much lately?” His mother also put down her bowl and chopsticks. “What’s wrong? You think your mother eats too much? You think I’m wasting your money?” Ryan shook his head helplessly. His mother looked at me. “I’m old, and I eat more than Olivia. It shows that my body is stronger than hers. Her? Hmph, she can’t even have half a child.” I’m not a pig, why should I have to give birth? Whenever his mother targeted me like this, Ryan would pretend to be busy, not getting involved in the conflict. If it were the old me, I would have put down my chopsticks and argued with her. But now, I just smiled sheepishly and apologized to my mother-in-law. “You’re right, your body is much better. You look like you could still have children.” I acted humbly. “Eh? What are you talking about, child?” she said. “Olivia, how can you talk to Mom like that?” Ryan chimed in. They spoke simultaneously, their angry expressions identical. I was laughing inside, but on the outside, I maintained a look of terror. Suddenly, my mother-in-law pushed her chair back and rushed to the bathroom. Then came the sound of violent vomiting, so terrible it seemed as if she might throw up her internal organs. I drew in a sharp breath and suggested to Ryan that we should take his mother to the hospital for a check-up. He nodded in agreement. There was silence in the car on the way to the hospital. I abruptly spoke up, “Mom, your symptoms are like those of pregnancy.” My mother-in-law, looking pale, just coldly snorted. “Mom, there’s a legend in our hometown,” I continued. “They say that long ago, a woodcutter ate the egg of a snake god. The snake god, filled with resentment, cursed the woodcutter’s mother to become pregnant continuously, giving birth one after another until she died from exhaustion.” Ryan was driving and coldly looked at me through the rearview mirror. “Olivia, you have a master’s degree. How can you talk about such things?” he said. I smoothed my skirt and smiled slightly, saying I was just making casual conversation. My mother-in-law leaned back in her seat, resting with her eyes closed. I stirred up more trouble, “They say that since then, in our hometown, any woman who has an affair meets the same fate. My grandmother told me that people from our hometown carry this curse wherever they go!” Ryan got angry and honked the horn repeatedly, signaling me to shut up. I looked at his mother. Her closed eyelids were trembling slightly, and the back of her interlocked hands had turned blue – a sign of nervousness. My goal achieved, I stopped talking. The rest of the journey to the hospital was silent. While waiting for the results, my mother-in-law’s anxiety was visibly increasing. When her number was called, she wanted to go in alone, but Ryan, looking incredulous, led the way in. We two followed behind. The doctor pushed up his glasses and said, “Advanced maternal age, pregnancy not recommended.” Ryan leaned back and laughed loudly. “Don’t joke with us, doctor. My mom is over fifty, and my dad passed away two years ago. How could she be pregnant?” “We never joke about such matters,” the doctor replied sternly. “Then you must have mixed up the reports,” Ryan insisted. Seeing the doctor’s serious expression, Ryan’s laughter faded away. “Whose is it? Whose?!!!” Ryan shouted at his mother in the hospital corridor. His mother sat on a rest chair, her eyes red-rimmed, wiping tears with a handkerchief. She stammered, “The… the snake god’s.” “Snake god my ass!!!” Ryan exploded in rage. I held back the furious Ryan, kindly trying to persuade him:
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