Old things in the south

Chapter 4 Hui'an Pavilion (3)
Every time Niu'er looked out the window when she had played enough, she suddenly shouted: "I have to go back!" After she finished speaking, she ran away, so anxious that she didn't even have time to say "goodbye".

Suddenly, for several days in a row, there was no girl in the alley. How disappointed I was, I stood there and waited and waited.I walked slowly towards the well, hoping to meet her, but it was no use.In the afternoon, the wells are not so lively, because the water delivery cars come in the morning, and only the nearby people push their own carts with lead buckets to buy well water.

I saw Lao Wang, the leader of the class, also pushing the small cart. He came several times. Seeing me standing there, he asked me strangely:

"Little Yingzi, why are you being so stupid here?"

I didn't say anything, I knew what was in my heart.I said:
"Where's Xiuzhen?" I thought that if I couldn't wait for Niu'er, I would go to find Xiuzhen, and the yard has been tidied up.But Lao Wang ignored me. He filled two buckets of water and pushed them away.

When I was hesitating what to do, a familiar figure suddenly turned from the entrance of Xicaochang, that was Niuer, how happy I was!I ran to meet her and called her: "Niuer! Niuer!" She ignored me, as if she didn't know me, and she didn't seem to hear anyone calling her.I was very strange and followed her, but she gently drove me away with her hand, frowned and blinked, meaning to tell me to go away.I didn't know what was going on, but I saw a tall man a few steps behind her, wearing a blue cloth coat, holding a dirty long cloth bag, and I saw a huqin protruding from the mouth of the bag.

I think this must be Niuer's father.Niu'er often said things like "I'm afraid my dad will beat me" and "I'm afraid my dad will scold me". Now that I saw that, I knew that I didn't talk to Niuer any more, so I turned around and walked home, feeling very uncomfortable.I have a talc in my pocket, which can write white characters on bricks. When I took it out, I couldn't help but draw along the wall of other people's house, and it reached the wall of my house.I thought to myself how meaningless it would be to play without Niuer!

Just as I was about to call the door, I suddenly heard the sound of someone running in the alley. It turned out that it was Niuer who came running out of breath. She hurriedly said, "I'll come to you tomorrow." Before I could answer, She ran back to the alley again.

The next morning, Niu'er came to see me, and we squatted down in the west wing to watch the little chicken.Lifting the lid of the rattan box, both of us put our hands in to touch the feathers of the little oily chicken, and neither of us said a word after touching it like this.I was going to talk, but I didn't make a sound. I just asked her in my heart: "Niuer, why haven't you come to me for so many days?" "Niuer, is your father so powerful that you don't want you to come?" Why didn’t you allow me to talk to you yesterday?” “Girl, you must have something uncomfortable?” It’s so strange, these words were all in my heart, and I didn’t say them out, but how did she know, she said it with tears? answer me?She didn't speak, and she didn't even use her sleeve to wipe her eyes, she just let her tears drip down in the rattan box, all of which were eaten by the little chicken and millet!

I didn't know what to do, but I saw her ear from the side. There was a hole in the earlobe and a red thread was passed through it. Niu'er's ear was not cleaned, and there was a line of black mud on the edge.I looked down along her shoulder again, there was a blue scar on her wrist, I stretched out my hand to lift up her cuff to see, she just woke up, dodged in fright, then turned her head to look at me sadly smile.The morning sun was shining into the west wing, onto her unclean face, her wet and long eyelashes flickered, and tears flowed down the tear pit to her mouth.

Suddenly, she stood up, opened her cuffs, lifted the corners of her trousers, and said softly:

"Look at my dad playing!"

I was squatting, and I reached out and just touched the swollen scars on her legs.I touched it lightly, which made her cry out loud.Because she didn't dare to let out her voice, she wept softly, which was really pitiful.I said:
"Why did your father hit you?"

She was speechless at the time, and cried for a while before saying:

"He doesn't allow me to come out to play."

"Is it because you stayed in my house for too long?"

Niuer nodded.

Because I played at my house for a long time, she was beaten. I was sad and scared. Thinking of that tall man, I couldn't help but say:
"Then you go back quickly!" She stood still and said:

"He went out early in the morning and hasn't come back yet."

"And what about your mother?"

"My mother pinched me too, but she didn't care about my coming out. Dad beat her too. If he beat her, she pinched me, saying it was me."

Niu'er cried for a while and got better, and then told me this and that. I said that I had never seen her mother. Niu'er said that her mother was a little lame, and she sat on the kang all day long to mend clothes. make money.

I told Niu'er that we didn't live in Beijing before, but came from a faraway island, and she also said:

"We didn't live here before, we lived at Qihua Gate."

"Qihua Gate?" I nodded and said, "I know that place."

"How come you also know about Qihuamen?" Niu'er asked me strangely.

I can't figure out how I know, but I do know, as if someone took me there early in the morning, and I kind of saw it, no, no, no, what I saw was very Fuzzy, maybe it was a dream?So I answered Niuer and said:
"I dreamed about that place. Is there a city wall? One day, there was a woman carrying a bundle and sneaking towards the city wall early in the morning..."

"Are you telling a story?"

"Maybe it's a story." I tilted my head and thought deeply again, "Anyway, I know Qihuamen."

Niu'er smiled, stretched her arms around my neck, and I also stretched out my arms to wrap hers around hers.But when I pinched her shoulder, she yelled softly: "It hurts! It hurts!"

I quickly let go of my hand, and she frowned again and said, "Even this place is swollen!"

"What did you smoke?"

"Duster." She added after a pause, "My father, and my mother, they—" But she stopped talking.

"How are they?"

"Stop talking, I'll tell you next time."

"I know, your father taught you how to sing and wants you to spend money for them." This is what I heard from Song's mother and mother, so I said it all at once. "I want you to make money and beat you, why!" I became angry after I said it.

"Hey, drink, you see you know everything, I don't want to tell you about opera, how do you know what I want to tell you!"

"What are you going to say? Say it!"

"If you are so impatient, I won't say anything. If you are nice to me, I have a lot to tell you, but you are not allowed to tell others, and don't tell your mother either."

"I won't, we whisper."

Niu'er hesitated for a while, then whispered and hastily whispered next to my ear.

"I was not born to my mother, and neither was my father."

She spoke so quickly, as quickly as a flash of lightning passed, and then it hit my heart like a thunderbolt, which made my heart skip a beat.After she finished speaking, she removed the hand that was attached to my ear, and looked at me with wide eyes, as if waiting to see what I would do after listening to her words.As for me, I just stared at her and couldn't say a word.

Although I promised Niu'er not to tell her secret, but after Niu'er left, I kept thinking about this matter, and the more I thought about it, the more worried I became, so I suddenly ran to my mother and asked in a daze:
"Mom, am I born to you?"

"What?" Mom gave me a strange look, "Why do you think of asking this?"

"It's all right if you say it."

"Yeah, why not?" Mom said after a pause, "If it wasn't my own, would I love you so much? If you make trouble like this, I'll beat you up a long time ago."

I nodded, what my mother said was indeed right, think about Niuer! "Then how did you give birth to me?" I've wanted to ask this for a long time.

"How did it happen, um—" Mom thought about it for a while and smiled, raised her arm, pointed to the armpit and said:

"It fell out of here."

After she finished speaking, she laughed with Mama Song.

Holding an empty bottle and a bamboo chopstick in my hand, I walked gently into the Hui'an Hall, and pushed open the door across the courtyard. As expected, there were many green insects hanging from the locust tree in the courtyard. Xiuzhen said it was a hanged ghost, like Like the silkworms of Xiuzhen, hanging from the tree with a thread spitting out of its mouth.I put the hangman strips into my empty bottle, and I go home and feed the chickens, and I can get a bottle every day.Those hanged ghosts are packed in small bottles, gurgling and moving, it’s really nasty. When I hold the bottle filled with hanged ghosts, my arms often feel itchy and numb, as if the hanged ghosts have crawled from the bottle to my hands, but it’s not. .

When I was putting a hanged ghost into the bottle, I suddenly thought of Niu'er, and I felt very uneasy.She was beaten again yesterday, and she came to me secretly with two clothes, and when she entered the door, she said:

"I'm going to find my parents!" One side of her face was red and swollen from the beating.

"Where are they?"

"I don't know, go to Qihua Gate and look for it slowly."

"Where is the Qihua Gate?"

"Didn't you say you knew that place too?"

"I mean I seem to have dreamed about that place."

Niu'er stuffed the two pieces of clothes into an empty box in the west wing, wiped away her tears very consciously, and said bitterly:
"I must find my own father."

"Do you know what he looks like?" I really admired her, but thought it was too big a thing.

"I search day by day, and I will find my own father and my own mother. I know what they look like in my heart."

"So—" I don't know what to say, because I don't have any ideas.

Before leaving, Niu'er said that she might leave secretly one day, but she would definitely come here to tell me first, and take away the two pieces of clothing that are here.

I was thinking about my girl yesterday, and I felt very uncomfortable. I couldn’t eat at night. My mother patted my head and said:

"It seems a little hot, it's good not to eat, go to bed early."

When I went to bed, I still felt uncomfortable, and I couldn’t say anything, so I started to cry. My mother was very strange, she said:

"Why are you crying? Where is it uncomfortable?" I didn't know why I cried and said:
"Niuer, her father..."

"Niuer's father? What's the matter? What's wrong with her father?" Song's mother also came over, she said:

"That's not a thing, must have scolded us Yingzi, or hit you?"

"No!" I suddenly realized that I had said something stupid, so I cried desperately: "I want to find my father!"

"I'm looking for your father! Alas! It's scary!" Both Song Mama and Mama laughed.Mom said:

"Your father is going to visit your uncle today. He will come back later, so you can go to bed first!" She said to Song's mother again: "When Yingzi was born, her father was used to it. Whenever she felt uncomfortable, her father would hug her to sleep."

"Are you ashamed?" Mama Song scratched my face with a finger, I ignored her, turned my face to the wall and closed my eyes.

I woke up this morning much better, not as restless as yesterday.But now thinking of Niu'er again, I couldn't help but stop the work of catching bugs, thinking blankly, I don't know when Niu'er will leave me.

I threw the bottle under the tree, got up and went to the window to look in.Xiuzhen was sitting on a stool in front of the bed in the back room, facing the bed, all I could see was her flat back, her braided hair was not done yet.She gesticulates, and then raised her hand to slam the flies. Actually, where are the flies?I walked into the room quietly, leaned against the table in the outer room, and looked at what she was doing, only to hear her say:

"I must know you went to bed without eating last night, didn't I? How can it be!"

Huh!How strange, how did Xiuzhen know that I went to bed without eating last night?I leaned against the door frame of the back room and said:

"Who told you that?"

"Ah?" She turned her head and saw my frowning expression, and said to me seriously:

"Do you still need someone to tell me? This bowl of porridge hasn't been touched at all!" After speaking, he pointed to a bowl and a pair of chopsticks on the tea table beside the bed.

That's when I realized that Xiuzhen wasn't talking about me.Ever since the weather got warmer and the closed courtyard door was opened, Xiuzhen has been going in and out of these two rooms all day long, saying things that I both understand and don't understand.At first I thought it was Xiuzhen playing "play house" with me, but later I realized it was not a fake thing, it was too real!
Xiuzhen stared blankly at the empty bed for a while, then turned her head, gently pulled me out of the room, and said in a low voice:
"Asleep, let him go to sleep! This illness is really due to him, there is no reason for no relatives!"

On the desk in the outer room was the tank of goldfish bought in spring, several of them had already died, but Xiuzhen still changed the water frequently every day, and added a few aquatic plants to the glass tank, and the red fish burrowed around among the green aquatic plants. Go, it's great fun.How do I know that the fish is red and the grass is green?My mother taught me, she said that the primary school entrance examination is coming soon, and the teacher will ask about the color, where I live, and how many people are there in the family.Xiuzhen also raised a box of silkworms. She said to me:

"You want to go to school, so it's time for us Xiaoguizi to go to school. I raised some silkworms and spun silk, so that Xiaoguizi can use it to put ink cartridges."

Some silkworms were already spinning silk, so Xiuzhen put them on a teacup covered with paper and let them spin silk on the paper.It's funny, those silkworms are very good, so they won't crawl under the teacup.Many other silkworms are still eating mulberry leaves.

Xiuzhen was cleaning the silkworm excrement. She put the silkworm excrement into a tin can. She had saved a lot and prepared to pack it into a small pillow for Uncle Sikang.Because he needs to maintain his eyes while reading every day, and silkworm excrement can improve eyesight.

I watched the fish tank quietly from the side, watching the spinning.The tree in the yard was leaning against the window, and the room was very shady, neither of us dared to speak loudly, as if there was a sick person lying in the real room who was about to rest.

Xiuzhen suddenly asked me:
"Yingzi, do you remember what I told you?"

I couldn't remember what it was for a while, because there were too many things she said to me that were true and false.She said that in the future, Xiao Guizi and I would go to school together, and Xiao Guizi would also be admitted to Changdian Primary School.She also told me to go home from Changdian Elementary School, walk along Liulichang to the west gate of the factory, see the pair of big deer horns in the glass window of Lei Wanchun in Lujiao Alley, turn into Chunshu Alley and arrive home.But she also said that she was going to take Xiao Guizi to Uncle Sikang, made a lot of clothes and shoes, and packed all her luggage.

(End of this chapter)