Old things in the south

Chapter 12 Aunt Lan (1)
一
After eating snacks in the morning, my second sister and I stood on the gate piers on the left and right sides of the gate, waiting to see the "red businessmen".So many people have been shot these days.In addition to bandits and robbers, there are also revolutionary male and female students.Before the prisoner left Shunzhi Gate, the street was already crowded with people waiting to watch.

Four people were shot today, and they were students again.The students and the bandits were also tied up in the gondola, but their expressions were different.If the bandits would be lively, wearing strips of red silk from silk shops along the road, they would have been drunk and shouted:

"After 18 years, he will be a hero again!"

"It's okay, I lost a bowl-sized scar on my head!"

"Brothers, give us a treat!"

The spectators followed suit and responded:
"it is good!"

The students are different, they always bow their heads in silence, and the masses can't get up, they just look at them silently with pitiful eyes.I saw that students were being shot again today, so I thought of my mother's worries these days. She said to my father just the day before yesterday:

"These days, the wind is not good, you still stay at home first, he always rushes in from outside in the middle of the night, it's scary."

Dad didn't care, he stretched his neck and asked Mom back in Hakka:
"Should I be surprised?"

"Don't say we have a lot of guests, even we have a lot of children and servants in our own house, isn't it good?"

Dad still looked down and said:
"What do you women know?"

Standing on the door pier, I looked at the carloads of people who were about to be shot. They were all college students with their hands behind their backs and didn't speak.

Uncle De Xian is a fellow of ours. He is studying at Peking University and lives in an apartment near the beach. He met Dad last year at a fellow village meeting.Dad likes him very much, as his own brother.He can drink, loves to talk, and gets along very well with his father. As long as the two of them have a plate of peanuts, a plate of lamb head meat, and four taels of burning knives, they can talk until midnight.My mother often scolds this guest who can't get up when she sits down in Hokkien behind her back: "Long butt!"

One night half a year ago, he ran to our house in a panic and talked with Dad in Hakka.It must be for a very terrible thing, Dad left him at home to live.Since then he has been haunting our house, but Dad said he was a great young man.

I am the eldest sister, counting down from me, there are three younger sisters, one younger brother, except for the fourth younger sister who can't speak, I dare say that none of us like Uncle Dexian because he ignores us, this is the first a reason.Also, his face is too long and he wears big black-rimmed glasses. I don't like this kind of face.What's more, when he came, Mom would be unlucky, Dad asked Mom to add more food, and said Mom couldn't cook Hakka food well, and Yong Tau Foo tasted bland!The boiled chicken is not tender enough!One day my mother happily cooked a dish of her own hometown, and my father said to Uncle Dexian after eating it was obviously delicious:
"The Hoklo people know how to cook five willow fish!"

With these, we also have to stand on the mother's side.Every time Uncle Dexian came, we treated him coldly, pretending to look down on him on purpose, but in fact he didn't pay attention.

Even so, I felt uneasy when I saw those who had been on red missions, as if these students who were going to be shot had something to do with Uncle Dexian.

"Mom! Why hasn't Uncle Dexian come these days?"

"Who knows where he died!" Ma replied easily.After a pause, she asked me again strangely: "Why are you asking him? Wouldn't it be better not to come?"

"Just ask." After I finished speaking, I ran away, and I still ran back to the street outside the door. The scene on the street just now disappeared, and the street returned to the way it looks every morning.The seller of sliced ​​cakes was briskly pushing his wheelbarrow all over his body, and on it was a piece of leftover sliced ​​cakes that had been cold, stuck alone on a bamboo stick.My two front teeth just fell out, and the cake seller asked me if I could buy the leftover cake. I shook my head, and he joked:
"By the way, miss, you don't pay for eating cakes, and your front teeth have been taken out!"

I glared at him with my mouth shut.

At dusk, Hufang Bridge Street looks different.A new foreign goods store has opened across the street, and the entrance is full of adults and children enjoying the cool after dinner, sitting around a chatterbox with a loudspeaker installed.What was playing was "EMI Company Specially Invites Boss Tan Xinpei to Sing Hongyangdong", the record made a rustling sound, indicating that the needle should be changed.The second sister said: "Sister, let's go over and wait for the foreigner to laugh." We just ran hand in hand when I saw a group of bald men coming from the other side of the street, and they Wearing a moon-white bamboo jacket and black cloth shoes, it was Fu Liancheng who was going to Guanghe Building for a night show.I said to my second sister:

"Look, what's coming? Let's come back and count the bad eyes!"

My second sister and I went back to the gate of our own house, each riding on a door pier, waiting quietly, the team came, the leader was tall and tall, and the back was lined up from small to large.On the other side of the street, "Foreign adults laugh" started, and in the accompaniment of "Hahaha", every time I saw a child with red eyes passing by in the line, I shouted:
"Bad eyes!"

The second sister said: "One!"

I said again: "Bad eyes!"

The second sister said, "Two!"

Bad eyes, three!Bad eyes, four! ...Today there are eleven.Those children in Fu Liancheng who are studying opera are not much older than us. We shouted bad eyes, but they didn't even dare to tilt their heads, and they walked forward silently. , Those who flirt and flirt are all like fools.

We were counting happily, when suddenly a person approached me and said "Hey", I was startled, it turned out to be the younger brother of the Shi family, and he was also wearing a moon white bamboo cloth coat.He asked me amazingly:
"Yingzi, are your parents at home?"

I nodded.

He walked towards the door, and we followed in, asking him what was the matter, but he ignored us, I must know that he had something important to do with his parents.As soon as they entered the bedroom door, their parents were talking about something, and when they saw the little brother coming in, they seemed to be taken aback for a moment.The little brother stepped forward and bowed, and then said like an endorsement:
"My dad asked me to tell Aunt Lin, Aunt Lin, if my Aunt Lan comes, don't keep her, because my dad kicked her out."

At this time, Mom walked to the door of the bathroom, and I heard the sound of water splashing inside.Dad nodded and said:

"Okay, okay, go back and tell your father, don't worry."

The little brother bowed deeply again and left, still so serious, he didn't even look at us.After the little brother left, Dad drank the fragrant tea and Mom was lighting mosquito coils, neither of them spoke.The bathroom door opened, ah!Amid the steaming heat, it was Aunt Lan from the Shi family who walked out!When did she come?She was wearing a trousers and jacket of foreign linen gauze, and when she came out, she flattened her skirt, pushed her hair back, and said with a smile:

"Wash away all the bad luck in their Shi family! It's so happy!"

Mom said:

"Brother is here just now, you know that?"

"Why don't you know!" Aunt Lan raised her eyebrows, and said with a sneer, "What are you talking about? His father kicked me out? It's not bad! I want to leave, but the eldest young mistress just said that she can save face! He's the one who chased me away! Tsk, tsk, tsk!" Her lips curled up, and then she said, "He can control whether others keep me or not? Can he stop?—Come on, Xiuzi, come with me to the front yard, Ask your mother Song to cook a bowl of noodles for me." As she spoke, she took the second sister's hand and walked out.Dad kept looking at Aunt Lan with a smile, stretched his neck, and beat his feet.

There was no smile on Mom's face at all. Aunt Lan went out, and she stood in front of the table and said to Dad's back:
"Brother Shi even specially sent his younger brother to talk, what should we do?"

"Should I be surprised?" Dad straightened his head.

"What are you afraid of? You always invite people who cause trouble! It's so easy for De, who has been elusive these days, to not come, and you left behind the concubine who is going down. What will Brother Shi say when he finds out?"

"You're usually good with her, do you have the nerve to refuse her? And my brother is a step late, she was the one who entered the door first!"

At this time, Aunt Hou Lan came in, and my parents stopped arguing, and my mother called me angrily:
"Yingzi, go to the pharmacy across the street and buy me a pack of cardamom. The money is in the drawer."

"Mrs. Lin, what's wrong with you? Your stomach hurts again? Mr. Lin, you must be angry again?" Aunt Lan smiled after finishing speaking.

I took three big ones from the drawer, thinking to myself: cardamom is cool to chew, which is very interesting.How nice it is for Aunt Lan to live at home!She can often take me to Chengnan Amusement Park, Xue Yanqin's "Mei Yu Pei" in the big theater, Zhang Xiaoying's "Saw Bowl Ding" in the civilized theater, and a braided woman singing the drum in the Dagu Bookstore. Eat Xiao Youtian's winter vegetable buns.As I ran out, I thought about it, and my eyes were filled with the joyful scene of the drums and drums.

Aunt Lan has lived in our house for a week, and her voice and laughter are everywhere in the house.Dad went to work, and Mom went to Guang'an Market to buy vegetables, and she and Song Mom were talking and laughing.She scolded the old uncle of the Shi family enough, first talking about Uncle Shi's old appearance, then talking about his stinginess, his meanness, and his inhumanity, and then she whispered something to Song's mother, and they laughed loudly Yes, the nurse was so happy that she burst into tears.

Aunt Lan has a round and flat face with a neat row of white teeth. I like her gold-inlaid tooth on the left the most.There is also a dimple in the left mouth, which swirls with the laughter.

Her braided bun is much more playful than Mom’s ingot bun. Watch her twist her hair into two strands, and then twist it into a bun. A row of jasmine flowers always lie quietly and half bent beside the bun.She is dressed lightly, with the linen handkerchief tucked on the right breast, like a white chrysanthemum sticking there.Sitting in a rickshaw with Aunt Lan was very comfortable. She put her arms around me and said, "Lean in, lean in." Unlike my mother, she always had a big belly in her black floral skirt.Riding in a foreign car with my mother, her big belly made me uncomfortable, and she said directly: "Don't squeeze me!" Now my mother has a big belly again.

With Aunt Lan, Mom is not lonely when doing housework. She and Mom have endless things to talk about. Nanny and Mama Zhang like to come and listen. Looking up at Aunt Lan's expressive face.She asked her mother:
"Mrs. Lin, how old was Yingzi when you gave birth?"

"Sixteen," said Ma.

Aunt Lan smiled:
"I'm only 16 when I'm happy."

"What fun?" I asked anxiously.

"Kids, don't interrupt me!" Mom scolded me, and said to Aunt Lan: "Be careful when talking in front of children, Yingzi is a ghost, she will go out and talk nonsense."

Aunt Lan sighed:
"I was brought to Beijing from Suzhou when I was 14. When I was 16, I met a lot of people in four years. When I was 20, I still followed the old ghost Shi Da..."

"Brother Shi, how old is this year?" Mom interrupted and asked.

"Don't care how old he is! Sixty, seventy, eighty, he's old anyway, very old!"

"I think he was in his sixties—something in his sixties?" Ma pressed on.

"He," Aunt Lan laughed, and looked at me: "It's about the same age as Yingzi, minus a week, and he's only eight years old!"

"You have been with him for five years, aren't you 25 years old this year?"

(End of this chapter)