Qingben beauty

Chapter 2 Is it because I'm a girl?

Yuelin County is located in the hinterland of the Dabie Mountains, and it is now a popular tourist destination. However, when I was born, the per capita food production was less than 600 catties, not even enough for rations.

I was born in Tiantou Village, Mahuang Township, the poorest and most remote place in Yuelin County, surrounded by mountains and without any roads.

It snowed heavily the day I was born.

It was snowing all over the sky, covering the mountains and forests. At night, my mother, who was driven by my grandmother to work in the fields in the afternoon, was about to give birth, but I was not born in the middle of the night. My father wanted to send my mother to the hospital, but my grandmother stopped me , Grandma took a pair of scissors and cut open the bottom of my mother, and dragged me out.

I was born, but my mother died on the simple plank bed due to heavy bleeding.

My mother bought me with her life, but my grandma just glanced at me, and threw me aside, muttering about bad luck.

Because, I am a girl, a girl without a handle, commonly known as a money-losing girl in our hometown.

Moreover, he is also a broom star who killed his mother when he was born.

When I was three years old, my father married my stepmother, and when I was four years old, my stepmother gave birth to a younger brother.

The day my brother was born is the first day I can remember.

I can't remember the past, but that day is engraved in my mind like a knife.

It was a certain day in spring, the mountain was full of wild flowers, and after a night of spring rain, a lot of mushrooms came out.

I carried a small basket on my back to pick mushrooms in the small forest behind the house. After picking enough of the small basket, I walked back. As soon as I got outside the fence gate, I heard the cry of the baby inside.

And grandma shouted happily: "My good grandson!"

That night, grandma killed a hen, and went to Uncle Zhang, who sells meat at the entrance of the village, cut two catties of meat, and cooked a table of delicious dishes.

Then, they took my little thin and torn quilt and drove me into the woodshed.

Because my stepmother said that I must never be allowed to live in the house, and her precious son cannot be restrained by me, a broom star.

Tiantou Village is very poor, but our family is considered well-off in the village. The mud walls of the four old houses are very thick, and they are also pasted with newspapers and the red paper my mother brought when she married in. They are clean and warm.

The firewood room is built with rough wood and is specially used for firewood next to the kitchen. Not to mention the ventilation, it is also full of firewood.

The free space was just enough for me to sleep with my body hunched over.

It rained again that night, and the cold spring came, and the temperature dropped suddenly. I curled up in the firewood pile, wrapped the thin quilt tightly around my body, and was shivering from the cold.

Hearing the laughter in the room and smelling the wafting smell of meat, I bit my lip, feeling so uncomfortable, but I didn't even dare to cry.

People say that it is impossible to have memories in childhood, and some people can't even remember what happened when they were seven or eight years old.

In fact, it’s not that there is no memory, but that the days are too good and too fast, and the brain cells have to accept too many things, so those processes are ignored and forgotten.

I will always remember that night, the feeling that my body was frozen into an ice cube, it seemed that I would stop breathing in the next moment, and the illusion that there was a table full of big fish and meat in front of me.

Later, I read a fairy tale book, there is a story in it, called the little girl selling matches.

The little girl froze to death on the street, and followed her loving grandmother in the hallucination of the match flame.

I don't have a grandma I can fantasize about, not even my own mother.

I had no one to pick me up in hallucinations, so, I didn't freeze to death.

Although he was freezing to death, he did not die.

I climbed up when I couldn't stand the cold, I went to the kitchen secretly, took a match from the stove, and imitated the grandma I had seen before, I successfully lit the match, and also successfully ignited the firewood , the flame ignited, the cold subsided, and I kept adding firewood to it excitedly.

As a result, too much was added, and the fire burned out from the stove.

If my grandpa didn't drink too much wine and just came out to relieve himself, I might have been burned to death in the kitchen, and then the whole old house would have been burned.

Although I was not burned to death, I was beaten half to death by my grandpa and grandma.

When my head was slammed on the stone steps in front of the house by my grandfather, my father who had been silent all this time spoke.

Dad said, no matter what, I am his daughter, and he will earn the money to rebuild the kitchen, but he must give it to his daughter, give me a meal and a place to live.

My grandfather has two sons. My father can't read. He dropped out of elementary school after only two years. The younger uncle is a well-known academic bully in this town. At that time, he was studying in middle school in the county.

But relying on farming alone cannot meet my uncle's tuition and living expenses.

What's more, my stepmother gave birth to a younger brother Jingui.

It's time for the family to ask for money.

My father said that he would leave home, leave Yuelin County, go south, and follow others to work in a place called Pengcheng.

At that time, everyone was still guarding the three-acre field at home, and few people went out to work. My grandparents had never heard of Pengcheng at all!
But as soon as my father said that he could earn hundreds of dollars a month, the two of them didn't ask any questions, and they didn't care about the fact that the younger brother was just born. They prepared a few clothes for my father overnight, and let him go out quickly.

On the day my father left, my father took me to the entrance of the village, knelt down, took some ointment from nowhere and rubbed it on my wound.

While wiping, she sighed and said, "Girl, be good in the future, listen to grandma, don't cause trouble, and when dad comes back after earning money, I'll make new clothes for you."

I looked at him and didn't speak, but the tears flowed down uncontrollably.

My father couldn't help but his eyes turned red, he patted my head and said, "Girl, don't blame dad, and don't blame your grandma, if you want to blame, you can only blame your hard life, if you kill your mother, you can't blame me." Blame, blame you for being a girl."

Dad sighed and stood up, put the remaining ointment in my hand and said: "Be careful yourself in the future, others will not protect you, you must learn to protect yourself."

If others don't protect you, you have to learn to protect yourself.

This is the last sentence my father left me, and it is also the only thing I remember deeply, what he said.

In the future, when I don't even remember what my father looks like, I will firmly remember this sentence.

It's been three years since my father left, and he didn't even come back for the Chinese New Year. It's just that after half a year, he would send a sum of money and come back with a few simple sentences.

On the third day after my father left, because of what my stepmother said, I moved into the firewood house again, only with an extra straw mat and a thicker quilt.

I followed my grandfather's example and made some mud in the fields and pasted it outside the gaps, which can be regarded as a shelter from wind and rain.

I learned how to make a fire when I was four years old, and how to shoot hogweed when I was four and a half years old. When I was five years old, I did all the cleaning and laundry at home. Cooking pig food and cooking breakfast at home are all mine.

I couldn't go to the dinner table, I slept in the firewood room, I was scolded all day long, I was beaten and punished from time to time, and I was bullied by my stepmother and that Jingui brother.

However, even though she often scolded me for not dying, my grandma still agreed to give me a bite of food and a place to live because of my father's remittances once every six months.

In this way, when I was seven years old, other children of this age in the village began to prepare to go to school.

I also have expectations in my heart. I think that my father should come back. I don’t want new clothes by then. I want to tell my father that I want to go to school.

When the summer was approaching, a person came to our house, that was a fellow villager who went out with my father, and he brought back news of my father.

He said, Dad is dead!

(End of this chapter)