The story of a cook

Chapter 40 Family Meeting
Just before dawn, the workers on duty at the Beishan Coal Mine began to set off firecrackers. The sound of firecrackers was very loud in the winter morning, waking up the entire mountain village and telling people that it was New Year's Eve.

I got up from the hot bed and took a look. My mother was making dumplings on the top of the kang. It was almost finished, and the curtain was full.

"Mom, why didn't you call me? It would be nice for the two of us to pack together." I said while getting dressed.

"Introspection tells you to sleep a little longer," said my mother.

"It's so hot, I really don't want to get up."

"Sleep if you don't want to get up, it's okay anyway, the dumplings are wrapped and put there, and you can eat when you're hungry."

Mother finished making the last dumpling, picked up the curtain and walked to the outer room.

Wash your face and brush your teeth, then go out of the house with the washbasin in hand, and pour the water on the ashes.The big goose raised by my mother looked at me and croaked twice, then turned its head and swaggered towards the door with a figure-of-sight stride, and croaked twice when it reached the door.

My mother pushed the door open and poured yesterday's leftovers into the goose bowl at the door. Seeing that I was only wearing a sweater, she said, "I don't know how to wear more, because I have a cold." Then she went into the house.

When I entered the outhouse, it was full of water vapor, and it was a little hard to see people.Turn around and open the air hole on the top of the door, and the water vapor starts to run out.

My mother cooked the dumplings, and I went to put the table and pound garlic.

Such scenes are common at home, and I didn't pay much attention to them at that time. Now I do it naturally, but I feel very familiar, and there is a taste of home in the familiarity.

Mother scooped up the dumplings, and our mother and I sat at the kang table to eat the New Year's Eve dumplings.

"Mom, what do you want to eat at noon? I'll make it for you." I said.

"Anything is fine, I can eat as much as I can." My mother said, pushing the lace-filled meat dumplings towards me, and then said: "Throw away the meat and ribs after dinner, there are hairtails in Westinghouse, melt a few, and eat them at noon It’s stewed, I love the taste of hairtail.”

"Okay, leave it to me, you can eat ready-made ones at noon."

"I can't eat anymore, my teeth are not good, and there are not many teeth missing, so I can't bite." My mother opened her mouth and asked me to see.Mother's big tooth left only the right one, and the rest were all gone.

"Mom, let's install some teeth." I said.

"If you don't inlay it, you won't be able to inlay it anymore. It's good, and you don't eat any meat, so you don't have to clog your teeth."

My mother's teeth are not good, they always hurt in the past, but now they are almost gone.Last year, I discussed with my fifth sister about getting my mother's teeth inlaid, but my mother didn't want to be inlaid, saying that the inlaid teeth did not taste good.

After eating and smoking a cigarette, my mother turned on the TV and watched CCTV’s Spring Festival fast broadcast. While watching, she said to herself: “How good is the society? Just eat whatever you want, and people don’t like what they eat.”

"In the early years, I only ate dumplings at thirty, but now I eat them when I am greedy. Reflect on being able to get through this day.”

My mother's generation was born in Manchukuo, grew up in the old society, experienced the new China, suffered all kinds of hardships, suffered all kinds of crimes, and is satisfied with the current life.

Only when people experience it can they know how to cherish and know how to be good.

At noon, I made four dishes, stewed saury, stewed pork ribs with sauerkraut, stewed small stupid chicken, and stewed tofu.My mother's teeth are bad, and the pork ribs and small stupid chicken have been stewed for a long time, and the bones have been debonded, and the meat will fall off with a light touch.

Stewed tofu is learned from my mother.It's very simple, big chopped green onion, sauteed with soy sauce, add pepper noodles, add water, add tofu, simmer on low heat for half an hour, stew the tofu out of the honeycomb, the salty and light are all inside, it tastes very fragrant.Especially mixed with rice, it is more fragrant.The tofu must be marinated tofu made with water at home, which cannot be made with water from other places.

When stewing hairtail, I remembered eating hairtail during the Chinese New Year when I was a child.At the age of six, my mother stewed hairtail at noon in the [-]s. There were many children in the family, and a few narrow hairtails were not enough to eat. My mother added two pieces of tofu to it, and the head of the hairtail was also in it.

When I was eating, my mother gave me the hairtail section prepared by my mother, and told me to eat carefully, so as not to let the fishbone stick my throat.The sisters also picked up a piece each, and there were not many pieces of fish in the bowl.My family is poor, and I can’t eat hairtail fish for a year, and I’m young and ignorant, so after eating one piece, I eat the second piece, and I eat myself well.The sisters are sensible and no longer eat fish, but the tofu inside.

Mother didn't eat the fish block, but took a fish head and ate it slowly.It's not eating, it's just the smell of fish on the top.There wasn't much or even no meat on the fish head.Mother removed the bones of the fish head piece by piece, and it looked delicious.When eating the fish scorpion, my mother was cut by the teeth of the fish, and blood flowed from the corner of her mouth.

"Mom, your mouth is bleeding." I said to my mother.

Mother wiped the corners of her mouth and whispered, "The fish teeth are quite hard."

"Mom, why don't you eat fish?" I asked.

"Fish meat doesn't have as much flavor as fish head, but mother loves the smell of the top."

In order to verify what my mother said, after eating, I quietly went to the outhouse, took out the fish head left in the bowl and slurped it with my mouth. Like my mother, blood was drawn by the fish teeth.

When I was young, I seemed to know why my mother only ate fish heads and not fish meat, and my eyes were filled with tears.

Sitting on the kang with my mother to eat New Year's dinner, and drank some wine, my mother asked if I would like to drink in the restaurant, and I said yes.

"Drink less, one of them doesn't drink, and the two of them don't play money. This is rare. To make friends outside, you can't do without drinking, but don't drink too much. Use too much alcohol to improve your health." The mother used real cases Explanation: "The former Yingzi Wang Shouyu, that is the famous wine mengzi, he drank it every day, how is he doing now? He is half paralyzed, eating and drinking, no one to serve him, only his wife is in front of him, and his son and daughter-in-law are not at the front."

My mother was talking, and I was listening, listening to my mother talking about things in the camp was a kind of long-lost and cordial enjoyment.She is at home by herself, there is no one to talk to, the loneliness of the old man can be imagined, and I have not known what happened in the camp for a long time, although these trivial things that happened in the camp have nothing to do with me, But I am still willing to listen to my mother's nagging.

"Your second elder brother doesn't drink anymore in the lower court. He is almost [-], and his daughters and boys don't let him drink. I want him to live a few more years. The wife is good, she treats her husband as her father. If I have such a Daughter-in-law will be content."

My mother glanced at me and continued: "It's over 23 years old, so don't worry about not getting angry, just say something about him, if you don't say anything else, it's hard to say."

I'm 23, and I feel emotional, it's time to talk about my daughter-in-law.

Sitting on the hot kang head at home, I don’t want to move my buttocks. The temperature from the kang makes my whole body comfortable. After sleeping, it’s night, and I wake up refreshed.

My mother added firewood to the stove, went back to the house to see that I was awake, and asked me if I was hungry. I said I was not hungry, and she said I was not hungry, so I waited to eat dumplings in the middle of the night.Then I turned on the TV, went to the kang and took a pillow and leaned back halfway, waiting for the Spring Festival Gala.

At eleven o'clock, I made dumplings with my mother. After making the dumplings, my mother cooked them in the house. I set off firecrackers outside, and then went back to the house to kowtow to my mother.

Mother fell asleep after eating dumplings.

Lying on the kang, my body was hot, and I couldn't sleep because of tossing and turning.

Mother got up in the middle of the night, put on a cotton jacket and walked to the outer room, and I hurriedly turned on the light in the outer room.

"No, look for it." Mother said.

My mother is in her forties, I am 63 this year, and I am getting older. When I wake up in the middle of the night, I have to have someone by my side. I am not afraid of ten thousand, just in case.

If you don't go out to work, you can take care of your mother by farming at home, but you won't get paid.It’s okay to do business at home, but it’s hard to make a profit without capital. How can you do business without capital?The life of my sister's family has just started to get better, it is not as tight as it was in the past few years, they are not rich, and the family does not have much money. Besides, there are old and young in every family, and everyone has to live.

In the current situation, it is difficult to talk about a daughter-in-law at home. I don't want to ask my sisters to pay for it, or even go out to borrow money.I tremble at the thought of borrowing money, it feels uncomfortable.

In the countryside, a daughter-in-law can be said to be at least 8000 yuan. Where can the money come from?In the past two years, he earned a total of 6000 yuan from part-time jobs, and paid off 1000 yuan in foreign debts. The remaining [-] yuan was given to his mother for pocket money at home.In other words, the mother's annual living expenses are only [-] yuan, which is pitifully small.

It's unrealistic to talk about a daughter-in-law at home, and a daughter-in-law can't come home without a [-] dowry gift.This is just the gift money. If you are talkative and reasonable, you don’t want a house. If you meet someone who is not talkative, you need another house for [-] yuan. After building the house, it’s over?Don’t clean it inside and out, even if it’s simpler, put lime on the inside and cement surface on the outside, isn’t it money?If I don't have money to take cement and lime, I can't run home by myself.

And what about furniture, you can’t buy appliances after buying furniture?

I dare not continue to think about it, I have a little headache, I take out the cigarette and light it up, lie on the bed and smoke, a little sad——

On the second day of the first lunar month, the day when I returned to my natal family.

Five sisters, five brothers-in-law, three nieces, three nephews, plus my mother and I, a total of [-] people, a big family, very lively.

My family is in Heichengzi Township. My eldest sister, second sister, fourth sister, and fifth sister live in Beitazi Township. The four sisters live in the same village, but not in the same camp. The eldest sister lives in Nanguangfu, and the second sister lives in Ma. The fourth sister's home is in Kangpuzi, and the fifth sister's home is in Mahugou.The eldest brother-in-law and the second brother-in-law are cousins, the second sister and the second brother-in-law are the matchmakers of the eldest brother-in-law, and they belong to the two sisters who marry the two cousins.

Then the second brother-in-law took care of the matchmaker for the fourth and fifth sisters, so the four sisters were in the same village, and their families were not far away from Erli.

The third sister's home is in Sanjiawopu Village, Taiyingzi Township, and the third aunt's home is there, a matchmaker for the insurance.The third sister is a bit lonely, but fortunately, the cousins ​​of the third aunt's house are all in the three huts. They move around quite well and take care of each other.

The five sisters' homes are fifteen miles away from their mother's home, which is not too far away.

Before eating, I chatted with my five brothers-in-law. When the five of them got together, it was inevitable that they would make some naughty jokes, say a few hip-hop words, and have fun.

After lunch, my brothers-in-law played poker on the kang, and I was called by my elder sister to have a family meeting.

"Guohua, how was it going outside last year?" The eldest sister asked seriously, this is just an introduction, I know the central point of the problem is not here.

"It's okay, it's fine." I said, and lowered my head when I finished.

"It's okay? Then why did you come back alone?" The eldest sister asked, with disappointment in her words, she looked at me with my head on my head and said, "You must know that I will not come today when you come back alone. I will come back after you leave .”

"Don't you miss your old brother?" I raised my head and asked with a smile.

"I don't want to." The eldest sister's face was sullen, but her eyes betrayed her, and there was a doting smile on the old brother.

The second sister fiddled with the scarf in her hand and said, "Don't want to? I do."

"What do you want him to do? Leave my mother at home alone, go out to work by herself, and don't even bring a daughter-in-law back." The eldest sister said to the second sister, which meant to warn the second sister not to have any sympathy for me.

The second sister understood quickly, and immediately changed her tone.

"That's right, let me tell you, Guohua, if you don't bring your wife back during the Chinese New Year, I'll be like a big sister, knowing that you won't come back."

"You don't need to scare Guohua, just wait, Guohua promises to bring his wife back during the Chinese New Year."

The third sister excused me, but she was also putting pressure on me.

"I think it's about the same." Fifth Sister said with a smile.

Hello fourth sister, don't say anything, just sit next to your mother in the kang and listen to her.

I scratched my head, with a smile all over my face, knowing that at this time, I should follow along and say: "You all say the same, so I will work hard."

The elder sister still felt sorry for me, so she eased her tone. "We're not forcing you to talk about daughter-in-law. You know what our family is like, just this mother. You also know what our countryside is like. It's hard to say if you don't talk about daughter-in-law after you're over 23. You have to know something in your own mind." , don’t worry, you can afford to wait but mom can’t.”

"Don't talk about my mother, I can't afford to wait. When people go back to their natal home, they will have brothers and daughters-in-law to cook for them. It's good for me to go back to my natal home, and I have to cook by myself." The second sister added salt to the side, but her If the salt is not added well, it is estimated that it will be opposed.

"What's the matter? None of us cook for ourselves, and you let your mother cook for you?" The third sister was the first to retort.

The eldest sister said angrily: "Don't come back if you are afraid of cooking. I will cook by myself when I come back. If it weren't for my mother cooking for a lifetime, how could you grow up so big? You would have starved to death. Mom can cook and eat by herself. If We can’t all come back to serve, and no one can escape.” Then he faced me directly: “Even you, Guohua, don’t even think about going out to work, and serve your mother at home.”

The second sister knew she was in trouble, so she kept her mouth shut. The fifth sister pointed at the second sister with a smile. The second sister pretended not to see, and moved to her mother, sitting with the fourth sister.

No one said anything, even the third sister's Jin Sheng, who was on the ground like a live donkey just now, stopped making trouble and went to the top of the kang to watch his father play poker.

When the eldest sister got angry, the whole family was quiet.

"Guohua, what your second sister said is right, we don't want a brother-in-law to cook, the main thing is to tell you that the daughter-in-law is anxious to get angry, you have to hurry up, this year you have to get someone. "The eldest sister said slowly, and the atmosphere suddenly relaxed.

I nodded quickly, and said with a smile: "Don't worry, big sister, I have to be married this year, and I have to lead the family."

"That's right, you are old and young, you have to think about it." The second sister immediately made up for it, "Don't worry about my mother, if you get married outside, get married outside, we will take care of my mother at home."

"I don't need any of you to take care of me. I can take care of myself." Mother said.

"Look at what you said, the five of us can't control you, an old lady?" The eldest sister said to her mother, "That would make people laugh out loud. We can't control you if you still have a son."

"My son is not good. He didn't talk about his wife, so he can't take care of himself." After the mother finished speaking and looked at it, she thought in her heart that when the first month came, she would find a fortune-teller to calculate for me.

The eldest sister understood her mother's mood and said to her: "Isn't this the right thing to tell him about your partner? Wait a minute, your old son won't talk about it, and I will bring you a daughter-in-law back this year no matter what I say."

Mother smiled and said happily, "That's not bad."

Discussed about my daughter-in-law for an hour. In the end, it was the same as last year. I was asked to live by myself outside and find someone at home. Once I found a suitable one, I would come back for a blind date.

I happily agreed.

The home that was busy all day was quiet in the evening, leaving me and my mother.

"Your elder sister and the others gave me 100 yuan each. Will you have enough money when you go back? Not enough to get you something." The mother said.

"Enough, don't give it to me, I have money." I said.

"Last year, the money you mailed back was paid off after the famine and there was still [-] left. Now there is no famine. It's just a triangular debt owed to the village. Don't rush to pay it back."

"You keep the flowers." I said to my mother, looking outside the house, the house is still the same as when I left. The earth wall in the front yard fell down for a while in the rain last year, and I was not at home, nor repaired. "Mom, repair the courtyard wall this year, I will come back in summer, buy some bricks, build a brick wall, and weld an iron gate."

"It doesn't matter if it's built or not. I'm an old lady at home and I have nothing. No one steals or snatches it." My mother said.

"Then build it up too, it can't always be left open like this." I looked at my mother, and she looked out like me, and I continued, "I can't always work outside, and I have to come back when the time comes. After building, build a few side rooms, and then build the main house after the side rooms are completed, so that the house can be upright and comfortable to live in.”

"You still plan to come back. No one likes to treat us in this poor place. Those who are capable have left, and you still run back." Mother looked away, looked at me and sighed, and then said: "Just clean up the yard. From the outside, it looks like a living family, so it’s easy to be a matchmaker.”

I smiled, understanding my mother's mood and what she meant.

Since I didn't go to school in the second year of high school, I have been living alone. I have always wanted to tear down the old house, build four main rooms, and tidy up the yard so that I can look dignified.I didn't have the ability before, but now I can. Make a plan for yourself. This year, the courtyard wall and gate will be repaired first. During the New Year, three wing rooms will be built on the west side. After a two-year delay, the old house will be knocked down and rebuilt, and four bungalows will be built. Clean it up. , the outside is inlaid with tiles, the inside is not plastered with white ash, it is all scraped white, and the floor is also covered with tiles, clean and upright.

After the wing room and the main house were built, my mother lived comfortably in it, and walked in the camp with a smile on her face, no longer sad.

On the third and fourth day of junior high school, I spent two days quietly with my mother at home. On the fifth day of junior high school, I got on the bus back to the provincial capital and started working hard for the new year.

(End of this chapter)