Chapter 101: Crossing the Threshold
Wu's mother told me that it was none other than the young grandmother who was crying like a ghost intermittently at night.
At first, it was Jin Feng who took the child to breastfeed, and then took the child out of the left corner of the courtyard, saying that the old lady wanted to see it. The child didn't come back for a long time, Jin Feng didn't show up, and the young grandmother seemed to be hurt by the thunder, and she suddenly understood that something was wrong. After giving birth, the young grandmother has not recovered, and her body is very weak.
Wu's mother couldn't persuade her, so she had to accompany the young grandmother to struggle out of the upper room, but she never expected that the old lady was already sitting in the corridor pavilion, as if she had been waiting for them. There was a hood lamp on the stone table, and the old lady's face was green and red, and she had just drunk a lot of wine, and Mother Wu could smell it when she stood behind the young grandmother.
The grandmother said, "Dad, where is my child?"
The old lady said, "Shuping, if you want to be smart, you can go back to the house now." You can't ask me, I haven't asked you yet, the Mei family is worthy of you, who are you worthy of, you know in your heart. We don't want to do anything to you. You don't have to worry about the children. His surname is Mei, and he has nothing to do with you in the future. Don't get along with yourself, it's not good for anyone to make a mess in Meifu. You do your confinement well, out of the full moon, we will send you back to your parents' house, didn't your mother's family want to take you back a long time ago?! We have done it to you. ”
The grandmother said, "What about my child?" What about my children?"
The old lady said, "I repeat, we don't want to do anything to you. Our family can't afford to mess with yours. Our Mei family's face has been lost, now that I am in charge, I don't care about you, you have to give me face. I want to live a few more days, you rotten woman."
He was drinking with a small gourd, a little drunk. After he scolded, the young grandmother trembled and stopped talking. Wu's mother helped the young grandmother back to the house, and as soon as she stepped through the threshold, she saw tears falling from the young grandmother's pale face. At first, I just cried, and then I couldn't stop whimpering.
Jin Feng also slipped back and cried together, asking the old lady about the whereabouts of the child, but she didn't answer when she died, crying sadder than the young grandmother. Anyway, the fate of the mother and son in this life is broken at this moment. Both of them are fierce and unlucky, and no one can take care of anyone, so they can only resign themselves to their fate. The taste of the young grandmother's heart, no one can imagine that she was drowned in a deep well, and she has been drowned for so long, what she endured alone, I am afraid that she is the only one in this world who knows.
Wu's mother told the fool, "Grandma is as soft as mud, it's not good."
The fool said, "Grit your teeth and get through this, and you will be saved."
Wu's mother said: "She is broken. I can't get through it!"
A year ago, such a lively person, let the trembling sedan chair be carried, in the street of the house, such a bright laughter, one fell on his head, and he couldn't stand it.
Fools don't dare to think about it, and their hearts break when they think about it. When he felt that nothing was interesting, he thought about Wu's mother, and thought about Wu's mother's two soft white legs. I couldn't find a chance to play with her, so I took advantage of the dusk or night to squeeze her tightly against the wall of the mezzanine and touch her, and I lifted her skirt regardless of it, grabbed her hair with both hands and wanted to tear her!
The fool said: "If you can't get through it, you have to get through, beware of her seeking death!"
Wu's mother said: "It's okay to die, I will die with my young grandmother." If you talk nonsense again, I'll poke you to death! ”
Wu's mother said: "Brother fool, don't let me get pregnant!"
"Conceive it, I'll poke you to death", the fool went crazy.
There are insects crying in the mezzanine, people are crying in the distance, people are crying everywhere, I don't know what everyone is crying about. The fool is afraid that he will die tomorrow, and before he dies, he wants to do evil! Wu's mother cried. He also cried, wanted to die, wanted to find the one who died first.
The old lady thought that the fool had disposed of the little bastard, and the matter came to an end, and the old lady ordered a thin coffin to be made.
It was a light rainy morning, the sky was bright, and when the people in the town looked at the corpse box that had been entangled in the sassarel, they knew that it was the Mei family's roots and seedlings that had been broken.
Soon, everyone inside and outside the house knew that the little thing who came to the world early was suffering from yellow water disease. The yellow water disease is a vicious disease, everything that the child has touched must be burned, and the black smoke rising from the root of the courtyard wall in the left corner envelops the whole town, and floats up to the Qinglong Ridge, and the white clouds on the tip of the ridge are mixed together.
Wu's mother told the fool that the young grandmother had been sitting in the pavilion, watching Jin Feng lead people to burn the child's clothes. The young grandmother was not enough, and asked the furniture in the house to be taken out and burned, but the people naturally refused to move, so the young grandmother threw out the hardwood chair where the young master and Mr. Martin had sat out of the door, and threw the dresser and photo frame on the steps of the upper room.
After only a few movements, the young grandmother gasped and could no longer support it.
The frame of the photo is made of mahogany, and it is not broken, and the photo is not broken, but the glass has broken into a dozen petals, and it is not neat. Wu's mother put away the photo and secretly showed it to the fool afterwards.
The fool had seen this picture frame from a distance, and he had never seen what was on it. It turned out to be a group photo of the young grandmother studying in the school.
Several female students lined up in two rows, standing in the back row and kneeling or sitting in the front row, looking very casual and smiling. The grandmother sat in the front row, her skirt buttoned on the grass like a big trumpet, and her legs could not be seen. She smiled so well, and pinned her hair with a headdress with peach blossom branches, like a little girl who didn't worry about anything.
This photo is uncomfortable to look at, and the back of the ribs is weak, as if someone has dug up the contents and pulled them away, and it is so uncomfortable that people can't breathe.
Mother Wu wants to return the photo to the young grandmother, but the fool won't let it, he wants it.
The fool snatched the photo, put it in the underwear pocket in his arms, and the things that had been dug up and snatched back again. The fool's body was pressed against the young grandmother's face, and he felt warm and swore to protect her!
She has no hope, she has collapsed like mud, and the fool has a backbone day by day.
The old lady has cultivated to a new realm, not only does she not eat, but she also does not speak, she does not even have an expression, and she looks like she is neither dead nor alive. The old nun who led her to become an immortal held two white and pure tender slaps, covering the top of her head like a worm, and was angry for her.
I didn't eat for many days, except for staying some, my wife's complexion was still good. However, the maid in the Zen room muttered in private.
The old lady said to Shuping: "If the child dies, he will die, and it is good that three of the children in Qinglong Town will survive if they give birth to ten." Whoever dies deserves to die. Damn immortality is really bad luck, and when you come back from your mother's house, Renhou should also come back. I said that this prodigal son is not worthy of you, and you are willing to allow him to be a blessing for the Mei family. You have suffered a lot of sins, take care of yourself in your mother's house, and a good life will be yours, not my share. I'm still talking today, who knows if I won't be able to catch my breath tomorrow when it's dawn? Yu Nan, can you show me the butterflies on that wall, take a good look, do they fly?"
After listening to the old lady's verbosity for a while, the young grandmother took Wu's mother and the fool to the dock together.
The passenger ship was unmooring, and the five pedals that were together had taken out the blue strips, and one of them was also slightly warped. The fool pulled Wu's mother and rushed up, and there were female passengers on the boat who were so frightened that they screamed, and Wu's mother was so frightened that she didn't cry like crying.
Dying in front of the young grandmother is something that a fool wants to do in his dreams. The young grandmother looked at him, and God looked at him too. The fool and Wu's mother stepped on a one-foot-wide pedal and got on the boat, as if they had walked across a single-plank bridge. Mother Wu had just thrown herself into the arms of the young grandmother, and the boat suddenly left the shore and flowed along the water.
The trumpets on the mast of the ship beeped, and a large puff of smoke rose from the chimney, and the belly of the ship seemed to be on fire. The coal-burning iron-hulled boat is really stable, not like a ship walking, but like the riverbank moving back, and even the Qinglongling in the distance has floated away.
The young grandmother hugged Wu's mother's head and shed tears. The fool hurriedly twisted his face to the side to look at the muddy water in the Canghe River.
As soon as there was a guy on the bow of the boat fucking you fucking you, the fool didn't know who he was scolding at first, but after a while he realized that he was scolding himself. He seems to be the head of a boatman, and he may want to squeeze over and beat people. There were too many people on deck, not only people, but also luggage and pigs, all tied with ropes. The man couldn't squeeze in and waved his fist at the fool.
He said, "Fuck you, you're going to kill a little slut!" This time it's cheap, and next time I'll squeeze you into meatloaf, so that you can't tell the male and female together! Fuck you, you're here! Bah! ”
He couldn't squeeze in and retreated, stomping on a pig. The pig howled like a knife. The people on board laughed. Except for the young grandmother and Wu's mother, some of the people on the boat looked at the pigs, and some looked at the fools, and they all smiled happily.
The fool screamed, louder than the howl of a pig, and he himself heard the echo of the humming of the river in Blackwater, and no one laughed anymore. The echo echoed over the hills behind the riverbank.
The fool was a little fascinated and screamed like crazy again, and the Blackwater River struck out one water whirl after another, pig!!
The ship's horn followed suit. It is getting farther and farther away from Qinglong Town, and it is getting farther and farther away. Turning a corner, the water was wider, and the houses on the shore were like matchboxes.
They sat down in the cabin, three legs to legs, face to face, never so close.
The young grandmother's face was very calm, and she told some things about her time in the girls' school, which she had never heard to talk about. She spoke of these things very carefully, and she spoke of them very cheerfully. She touched Wu's mother's face for a while, and touched the fool's eyelid for a while, her eyes were soft and deep, as if she was the mother of two.
The eldest grandmother said: "There is a stone threshold at the entrance of the school, and it is dead. Every time I pass by there, I trip over it and it scares me. What to do? My classmates asked me to go out and walk in the door. How can I be willing to come up with this foreign appearance? I used the stupid method of writing the word "door" on the cover of each textbook. After a long time, the threshold stopped me, but the threshold became my nickname, and my classmates called me that until graduation. What a terrible threshold!"
The young grandmother giggled, she became the girl with the garland in the photo, she became the bride in June of that year!
The fool couldn't help but shout: "Threshold!"
The young grandmother laughed when she heard it!
The passenger boat traveled up the Heishui River overnight, stopping at one or two small wharves, but not at the big wharf in the county seat. Patches of lanterns and torches burned on the hill behind the county seat, and the sound of gunfire rang out everywhere. The bullets of the fast guns flew around the city walls of the county town with strips of light, and a few of them flew into the river, leaving the echo of Bu Gou'er on the bow and stern of the boat. Those who make trouble are still making trouble, and those who defend the city are still defending the city, and the deep enmity between the two cannot be solved if they are entangled.
The passenger ship did not dare to dock, so it went down the river center, and the moonlight shone through the ganghole into the bilge, shining on the piles of luggage and the rows of awake and asleep people.
The fool and Mother Wu stood outside, leaving the young grandmother next to the wall of the boat. They slept first, and the fool kept his eyes open to guard them. Wu's mother curled up on the deck, like a silkworm nesting in a cocoon.
The young grandmother sat and hugged her shoulders. His face was tilted to the side and his knees were rested, and there was no sound, not even the sound of exhaling. Let the young grandmother suffer such a big sin. The fool is very disturbed. But without this experience, I would never have been able to get along with her so closely.
The bilge stinked, but the scent of the young grandmother did not stop, and the fool put his nose half a foot away from her hair and smelled it for a long, long time.
The fool's hands were not honest, and he crawled towards her like a mouse, but at the last moment he was so frightened that he did not touch her legs, nor her shoulders, but only the skirt that she had spread out on the deck and the lace embroidered on the skirt sheets.
His hand slipped away from her feet, climbed in under Wu's mother's coat, and caught her little pomegranate-like pigeon. Mother Wu slept very deadly, her head between him and the young grandmother, squirting in a puff.
The fool looked at the young grandmother's nose illuminated by the moonlight, and let her hand stick to Wu's slippery body. He opened his eyes and dreamed, dreaming and dreaming, and he actually fell asleep with his head hooked.
It was about the second half of the night, and the young grandmother threw herself into the Canghe River in the light of the bright moon. He and Wu's mother didn't see it, and there was no evidence, but he knew it clearly in his heart, the eldest young grandmother cut down the green-clothed and green-dressed self like a tree, and threw the tree into the Heishui River!
She said on the steps of the corner courtyard of the plum house: "Such a big fish! She herself finally became a fish, drowning under the waves of the Canghe River, not knowing where to swim. ”
Wu's mother has always believed that the young grandmother is alive. The fool didn't believe it, and he didn't believe it since he woke up that morning. There was fog outside the cabin, and the boat drove slowly. When I opened my eyes, I found that one hand was still in Wu's mother's arms, and the place where my grandmother had sat was empty. The bilge is gray!