If there is an afterlife (novella) Zhang Baotong

Unconsciously, the child was three or four years old, like a small tail, following Li Xiuying all day long. The child is very well-behaved and does not like to talk, but the child seems to be very sensible, can understand the mother's hard work and fatigue, and can understand the mother's suffering and sadness. Therefore, he always looked at his mother with his eyes, no matter what his mother was doing, he was silently watching and thinking. Li Xiuying loves children very much, she knows that she can't give her children good food and fun, and she can't even let him play with other children, which will make children lose a lot of childhood happiness. So, she can only give him more love emotionally. But Li Xiuying herself doesn't like to talk, she is busy with laundry, cooking, herding sheep, feeding pigs, and beating pigweed, doing farm work, and picking up rags all day long. There is little time to talk to the child. Therefore, she often feels that she owes too much to her children.

Every time she went to the market town, she had to buy a few pieces of toffee, which she had never eaten herself, but she was reluctant to eat it, and took it out every night for the child to eat. That night, she took out another piece of toffee for the child to eat, but the child bit the candy in half and insisted on giving her half of it. She said to the child, "Good child, mother doesn't like to eat, you can eat it yourself." But the child insisted on giving it to her, saying, "No, mother will eat it too." Seeing that the child insisted on letting her eat, she had to eat the half of the toffee. This makes her feel very sweet, and what really makes her sweet is not eating sugar, but the filial piety and sensibility of children.

I don't know when I had to tell my child a story before she went to bed. Although Lee so-young has only been in elementary school for three years, she still tells some stories. However, after telling it a few times, she told all the stories she knew, so she bought a fairy tale and continued to tell the story to the child. When the fairy tale was finished, she wiped some old or broken books from the garbage heap and continued to tell the children all kinds of stories. The child's eyes sparkled with excitement as he listened to the story. She also feels like a teacher to her children. And her life is full of weakness and inferiority, and she never dares to show it in front of others, but the needs of her children make her feel some self-confidence. After telling the story, she said to the child, "All right, baby, let's sleep." The child nodded, and then lay down beside her and fell asleep quickly. She turned off the light and began to fall asleep, and although she felt a sore pain in her shoulders and back, she always had a good dream.

On this day, Li Xiuying took her children to the field to harvest wheat. Wheat harvesting is the busiest time of the year for farmers. At this time, the ripe wheat takes on an overwhelming golden yellow color and spreads all the way to the edge of the village. The wheat harvest season is generally only about 10 days, and it is best to harvest wheat in the morning before the sun rises and in the evening, because this time the wheat harvest will not cause the lodging of the wheat stalks. But people are most worried about the weather, afraid of rain, when it rains, the wheat will not be easy to harvest, and the rain will also cause the lodging of wheat, causing a reduction in yield, so that the wheat will produce mildew. Therefore, after the wheat is ripe, it is generally harvested in two or three days.

Li Xiuying only has more than one acre of wheat land by the ditch, and the wheat is already golden and completely ripe. And the sun was bright and the weather was good for the past two days. She wanted to cut the wheat for two days, and then borrow a rack cart to pull the wheat to the open space in front of her house, where it was rolled and sifted.

Before dawn, she took the child to the ground, let the child sit on the grass, washed a pair of blocks from the garbage heap, and let the child sit on the edge of the ground and play by himself. She wielded her own sickle and kept cutting the wheat. By the time a large field of wheat had been harvested, the sun had risen overhead. She and the child did not go back to the house, so they sat on the edge of the ground, took out the steamed buns they brought from the small basket, and ate them with pickles. I don't know if the child doesn't like to eat steamed buns and pickles, and after eating only a small piece of steamed bread, he doesn't want to eat them.

Because she was busy, she didn't take care of the children, and after eating the steamed buns, she began to continue cutting wheat. She cut until evening, when she saw the child lying on the ground and asleep. Then he picked up the child and went back to the house. Back in the house, she put the child on the bed, and then went to the village to borrow a cart from Yuling's family, and began to pull the harvested wheat in front of her house. Because the harvested wheat cannot be left in the ground, for fear that others will steal it.

It took several trips for her to bring all the wheat back to her house. By this time, it was already dark. She then returned the car to the family and went back to the house to start cooking. Because she was tired from the day, she was really tired, so she just distilled the bun casually, made some noodle soup, and fried a potato. After the meal was finished and put on the small table, she shouted, "Lele, it's time to eat." ”

However, there was no echo in the back room. So, she went into the back room and saw that the child was still sleeping. She woke the child up and said, "Obediently, it's time to eat." But the boy turned over in annoyance, did not open his eyes, and lay still again. She wondered if the child hadn't slept well, so she didn't care about the child, so that the child could sleep for a while, and then get up to eat when the child had slept well.

After eating, Li Xiuying didn't wash the bowl, so she came to the child. Seeing that the child was still asleep and sleeping soundly, she did not wake the child up, but lay down next to the child so that she could give him a hot meal when he woke up. However, as soon as she lay down, she fell asleep. I don't know when she fell asleep, but she noticed that the light was still on, so she opened her eyes. Only then did she remember that the child had not eaten yet. So he told the child to get up and eat. However, the child is still asleep, and no matter how you move him, there is no reaction at all.

When she saw it, she suddenly began to think that the child seemed to be sick, and it was not lightly ill. She touched the child's forehead with her hand. His forehead was hot, and his breath was wheezing. She put her ear to the child's chest and listened for a while, and found the sound very chaotic. She hurriedly placed the thermometer under the child's liquid. After a while, I took it out and saw that it was 38 degrees 7. She was startled, got up from the bed in a hurry, picked up the child and went out.

By this time, it was already late at night, and it was pitch black all around, and I couldn't see anything clearly, except the path under the faint light of the moon and stars. She had been tired for a day, and she had lost the strength to walk, but she had come from nowhere, and stumbled towards the village with the child in her arms.

Arriving in the village, she knocked on the door of Wan Daxian's house. Wan Daxian is actually not a doctor, but he knows a little medical skills, and he can usually give others a pulse and see some minor diseases such as diarrhea or colds, so most people come to him for convenience and have a little illness, or they have to go to the township health center twenty miles away.