(xix)

After entering junior high school, Zhong Shan became inseparable friends with Jeonko and Zhuzi. The three of them spent all day together, shouting at each other to go to school, and playing boys' games such as hitting crutches, playing foreign iron boxes, and pushing iron hoops in the alley after school.

In the fall of the year when he was 13 years old, his mother died of lung cancer, which was already at an advanced stage when he was discovered, and he died after living for less than three months.

At this time, Quan Zi's father had resumed his work as a surgeon under the supervision of the revolutionary masses, and he had to work night shifts three days a week, and there were only 16-year-old brother Wu Shangman, 13-year-old Wu Shangquan and 12-year-old brother Wu Yanhong at home. Quanzi's parents wanted a girl very much, and they gave birth to three of them, so they simply gave the third child a girl's name, and raised them as a girl, and when she was five or six years old, she still wore pigtails and wore floral clothes, and only cut her hair short after going to school, but the nickname of "fake girl" couldn't be cut. When his mother was alive, the whole son and brother lived a carefree life, and in this residential area, except for Zhongshan, no one could compare with the food and clothing of the brothers. After the death of their mother, the three brothers fell from the peak of happiness to the bottom of misery like three bitter melons with broken vines.

Quanzi's father, Wu Youwen, is a well-known surgical "knife" in the municipal hospital, and Quanzi's mother's surgery was done by him. After Quanzi's mother died, Zhong Shan and Quanzi overheard Zhuzi's mother and several other female neighbors discussing in private: "Don't find a doctor to be a man in your next life, that heart is vicious, and you don't see blood when you kill people." Let's just say that the surname Wu, 'a knife' is a wasted name? Why can't you even save your own woman? I heard that he had a good relationship in the hospital, and the two of them had slept together for several years, and the woman was a nurse, with a fierce face, a needle thief who hurt, and a tall horse, like a big Yanma, but she was still surnamed Ma. He also said, "Dr. Wu's father was an ancestral old Chinese medicine doctor back then, and as soon as he took the medicine, he took the life of his original wife, and married a kiln sister in a brothel. ”

Zhong Shan listened to the cold swishing of his back, he had just watched the movie "Shining Red Star" during that time, no matter how he looked at the fat Dr. Wu, he was like Hu Hanshan in the movie, the more he thought about it, the more scared he became, and when he saw Dr. Wu at the entrance of the alley, he was far away, and he didn't dare to come forward to speak, thinking that his scalpel would kill him at any time.

Later, Zhong Shan didn't have to be afraid, and in less than half a year, Dr. Wu remarried, marrying a nurse Ma in the hospital. Nurse Ma is a 32-year-old girl, white and chubby. She said that she didn't mind that Dr. Wu was old and didn't want to live with his three sons, and she said that they should have their own children and live a small life that only belonged to them.

After getting married, Dr. Wu moved out to live with Nurse Ma. Here, the whole son and brother took the 30 yuan paid by their father every month for living expenses, and lived a life without a father and mother, buying grain, buying coal, laundry, cooking, all of which had to be done by themselves, and the 30 yuan was calculated and spent, and sometimes they had to starve at the end of the month.

Every time she saw Quanzi coming, Zhong Shan's mother never forgot to ask "Are you hungry", if she couldn't hear an answer, she stepped on the stool and took off the wicker basket hanging high on the ceiling, and took a big white steamed bun wrapped in brown sugar and stuffed it into Quanzi's hands.

Winter is coming, Zhong Shan's mother asked Zhong Shan to ask if the cotton clothes of the whole son and brother can be made. Three motherless children, where can they make cotton clothes? So she ran upside down to take the cotton clothes and trousers that were dressed like the blacksmith's work clothes back to her house, dismantled and washed them, and the sleeves and plackets were short, and the sleeves and plackets were short, and they were done stitch by stitch, and they were beaten vigorously, and then they were wrapped in a furoshiki and sent back. Until all three children are adults, they no longer have to wear this bloated cotton clothes.