Mother's Lover (short story) Zhang Baotong 2016.6.25

After dinner, I rode my motorcycle to my second aunt's house. The second aunt's house is in the mountains twenty miles away from the county seat. Because the township is connected to the cement road, it is also very convenient to ride a motorcycle, and it took less than half an hour to come to the second aunt's house. The second aunt was sitting next to a large pot of freshly harvested walnuts in front of the door, smashing the walnuts with a wooden hammer, and then pulling out the walnuts to dry so that they could be sold in the town for money.

The second aunt is two years older than her mother, and she is also an acute child like her mother. But my mother has been working outside for many years, and my second aunt has never left the county. So, the family still lives in the same three adobe houses that were built 30 years ago. But the second aunt's family had already prepared a homestead by the river down the mountain, paved the stones, and prepared to build a two-story building there.

When the second aunt saw me coming, she smashed the walnuts and asked, "Have you harvested your walnuts?"

I sat down on a small stool next to me and said, "I've been busy these two days, and I haven't taken care of it." "When my dad was here, this kind of thing never needed my cāo heart.

The second aunt said, "What about the confiscation of corn?"

I said, "Don't worry, I'll wait until my mom is well." ”

My second aunt poured me tea and asked me, "Your mother came over two days ago and cried and told me that she didn't want to live anymore." What the hell is going on? I asked her, and she just cried, she just wouldn't say. In the morning, I heard your daughter-in-law call and say that your mother is sick and hospitalized, I wonder if it made you angry?"

Listening to my second aunt's words, I was taken aback and said, "But none of us provoked her or angered her." ”

The second aunt said, "Among our four sisters, your mother is the most capable, the most hard-working, and the strongest, if it weren't for something that made her particularly sad, she wouldn't have cried." ”

It immediately reminded me of what my daughter-in-law had just said to me, probably because I had driven away the man who lived in our house, so my mother felt like she had lost her soul. I knew my dad was gone, and my mom was lonely and wanted someone to be with her. However, that man was not my father, but a man my mother knew in the city, and they had been alone for a long time, and even if they didn't have an accident, the gossip would not spare them. So, I drove the man away. However, how can I tell this thing and let outsiders hear about it? It will make my mother and my family so embarrassed. So, I said, "My mom said she felt bad in her breasts. ”

When the second aunt heard this, she said, "Is it the old problem again?"

I said, "The results won't come back until the afternoon." ”

The second aunt said, "The man who lived in your mother's house is gone?"

I said, "Let me get rid of you." ”

When the second aunt heard this, her eyes were about to pop out, and she said, "No wonder your mother said that she didn't want to live anymore, it turned out that you drove away the man she liked." ”

I said, "If I don't get rid of him, my mother will be ruined." ”

The second aunt kept shaking her head and said, "Impossible, that person was introduced to your mother by me." A few years ago, he lived in our house for a few days, and he was very nice, and I considered that your mother was working alone in Xi'an, and no one took care of her. But he is a big cadre in Xi'an, and he can help your mother no matter what. ”

I let out a long sigh and said, "Second aunt, you've done my mother a disservice." I don't know this man, my mother has nothing to do, but with this man, my mother's soul is taken away. ”

But the second aunt said, "You can't blame other men, you can only blame your father for being bad, and it broke your mother's heart." ”

I couldn't help but be stunned and said, "What's wrong with my dad, what does this have to do with him?"

The second aunt said, "Do you know that because your neighbor Mancang touched your mother's face with his hand, so that your father happened to see it, thinking that your mother was on good terms with him in private, and didn't listen to your mother's explanation, he beat your mother to death, and almost didn't break your mother's leg? ”

I immediately remembered that this happened three years ago, just in time for the Duanyang Festival, when my mother came back from Xinjiang to harvest wheat. One day, I happened to be back from a sports car, and when I saw my mother limping as she walked, I asked my mother what happened to your leg. Mom said that she accidentally fell while walking. At that time, Ben heard that his mother would have to stay at home for a while longer, but he did not expect that his mother left the house in a hurry as soon as the wheat was harvested. It seems that since then, my mother has not come home until the Spring Festival. And when I go home, I can't stay for a few days and have to go out. It feels like this is not her home, but Xi'an is her home. If it weren't for my second aunt telling me these things, I really didn't know that my mother had been wronged like this.

In my impression, my father loves my mother very much, because my mother is more capable than ordinary rural women, and her appearance and temperament are good, and I can also feel that there are several men in the village who like my mother, but how can my mother look down on them. Therefore, with his mother here, his father is like a child, always pestering his mother not to leave him, but in order to make money, his mother can't go out. In fact, it turned out that my mother also liked my father, but I don't know when my mother was reluctant to go home. As a man who has been married and married, I certainly know that men are homesick and are actually thinking about women, and women are homesick for nothing more than men and children. But Mom didn't want to go home, it must be because of Dad. Dad loves Mom, but he doesn't know how to love, and he hurts Mom heavily. So, Mom must have hated Dad in her heart.

The man showed up at our house half a month ago, almost half a year after my dad died. He came with a lot of things, some for my mom, some for our family, and a laptop and travel bag, as if he wanted to stay here for a while. The man was tall and thin, fifty years old, well-dressed, personable, and handsome, unsmiling, always looking like he was thinking intently. At first glance, he is a person who is a big cadre in a big city, and I heard that his position is similar to that of our county magistrate.

He was brought over by his second aunt on a motorcycle, and apparently, he went to his second aunt's house first. Moreover, it seems that I heard that my mother knew this person and was introduced by my second aunt. At that time, my second aunt told us that this person was a writer and wanted to find a place to experience rural life. And her family is too small and inconvenient, so I arranged to live here at my mother's house. My mother is like a girl who is in love, so happy that she even smiles with her eyebrows and hair. She had been busy all day, cleaning the idle room on the easternmost part of the first floor, and tidying it up for the man to live in.

However, I was very disgusted with the man that my second aunt had brought to my mother's house, not for him personally, but for for I seemed to have a sense of foreboding, that my mother had let a man from the city live in our house not long after my father died, and that would make the rest of the village think of my mother. My mother has always had a good reputation in the village, and she has never let others gossip about her.

That evening, I went to my mother's house and saw her in the kitchen rolling out the noodles and humming a song, and the noodles were still made of shredded meat and tomatoes. As soon as I saw this, my heart began to get irritated, because I had never seen my mother sing, and she herself could not sing, but because a man had come, she was able to sing with joy. This does not bode well. Since my father's death, my mother has been gloomy and sad all day long, and she has never had a smiling face. Therefore, I feel that my mother's relationship with this man is not ordinary. Another time, when I went into the yard and saw that my mother was not there, I shouted loudly for my mother. At this moment, I saw my mother come out of the man's room, her face flushed, as if a little girl had just been kissed by the man she loved. It made me feel very uncomfortable, and I felt that my mom was betraying my dad.

Later, for a few days, the man kept taking his mother to the county seat, to the mountains, to Linxian County, and to Huashan. Later, an acquaintance in the village told me that he was in the evening by the Danjiang River and saw my mother and the man hugging each other tightly by the river. As soon as I heard this, I was so angry that I felt that I could not bear it any longer, and immediately became angry with my mother, and then yelled at the man to leave immediately. Now listening to my second aunt say this, I know that my mother has actually known this man for a long time, and even got along for a long time. Otherwise, Xi'an is only more than 100 kilometers away from Danfeng, and it is only two or three hours by car, but my mother will not go home until the New Year. Moreover, now that my mother proposes to go out to work this time, she actually can't forget that man.