One summer many years ago, when the midday sun was bright and dazzling, illuminating the entire river beach and being lazy and drowsy, a group of women on the riverbank sat laughing and sitting on the ground scrubbing their clothes in a large basin, and a long reed bush not far from the bank looked listless in the scorching sun. There was not a hint of wind, and the whole riverbed was filled with the unbridled and uninterrupted laughter of women, a bit noisy, which drifted above the reeds and the beach to the accompaniment of the slow-flowing water. It's a space theater where a rap track that doesn't work with the band is performed.

A child reclined on the back of his mother's heaving flesh sitting on the sand, half-drooping his head at the pebbles he was holding, boredly letting the women's laughter echo over his head. To the ears of this equally sleepy child, the performance, though messy, felt more silent around him, trapped in his own world.

The child was me, and I was 5 years old.

That scene is like an animation, etched in my mind for decades, and every time I think about it, I can clearly see my childhood self reclining there.

It was the mid-seventies.

No matter how sleepy I was, I didn't dare to squeak, not because I was afraid of my mother's reprimand, but because there was an Aunt Fan in this group of women, and I was afraid of her. This chubby woman, in the eyes of five-year-old me, had a vicious look, a bulging fat face full of deep pores, and her downward slanting eyes were half covered by thick swollen eye bubbles. In fact, he is only in his thirties, but he pins his ear-length hair behind his ears with clips all day long, and the parts that are not pinned hang down above his neck with a brush, looking like he is fifty years old. The direct reason why I'm afraid of her is that every time she sees me, she doesn't forget to stare at me with a light flashing under her eyelids and say with a smile, when you grow up, you will be my aunt and uncle! When I was young, my understanding of my uncle was relatively objective, that is, when I grew up, I would be sent to live with her and her daughter. As for her daughter or anything, I didn't care, I didn't care, I only worried about the fact that I was going to live with this old woman in the future, so I was so terrified that I tried to be quiet and cowering whenever I saw her, so that she didn't think that I had grown up.

In my quiet silence, the theater kept changing the female rap repertoire, one moment the eldest girl of the Li family was 22 years old and no one came to introduce her in-laws, one moment the sister-in-law of the Chen family always eyebrowed at the old Huang, and the other time the actor's pants who stood up and went to the beach to dry their clothes did not have time to lift up and showed half of their upper buttocks, and at the end of various tracks, without exception, they carried out a passionate and generous harmonic laughter to show the actors' dignified conduct and righteousness.

As the sun continued to set in the west, the women began to rap while they collected their clothes on the beach. Seeing that I was about to go home, I finally refused to go down to the river to cool off after an afternoon, and when my Aunt Fan was busy stuffing things into the basin, I decided to go down to the river to play while she was unprepared.

So I walked barefoot silently into the river.

The gentle flow of water slowly kneaded my calves, then changed direction and continued downstream, I instantly became much more awake and happy, and continued to walk towards the middle of the river while bending down and plucking the water with my hands. At the age of five, I didn't understand anything, I just thought that the further I went, the more fun it would be, but I didn't know that just one step ahead, I sent myself into a rapid, a torrent that could be seen and felt at the same time.

Later in my life, I always felt that I was wading through rivers and rapids, but I couldn't see it.

As the water reached above my knees, I figured out in my mind the posture I usually had when I looked at my brother in the water, and I fell into the water with a hot head. But I just got in on my stomach, not knowing that my brother was paddling with his stomach holding his breath. Just when I was already in the water, I found that it was not fun, I wanted to stand up, but I didn't achieve my goal, I continued to stand hard, but I felt that there was a stream of water below the surface that I couldn't reach, they seemed to be much faster, and they were very strong, they were down like a joke and hit my legs, I wanted to put my hand on the bottom of the river to stand up, but I found that if my hand touched the bottom, my head would follow, my instinct knew that my head could not enter the water. I had to push my legs again and again to get back on my feet, but I never succeeded. As a result of this unsuccessful operation, the undercurrent at the bottom of the river violently hit the young me, and it rolled rapidly downstream and in the deepest part of the middle of the river in a whirlwind and in a whirlwind.

I didn't dare to shout because I was afraid of Aunt Fan, but I tried to get up and walk quietly back to the group of women, including my mother and my Aunt Fan, and then back to the house, even though I was about to be swallowed up by the river.

Returning to the midst of the women was my last thought, and when I finally did return to them, I was lying on the riverbank on the way home instead of home, in the shade under a willow tree.

Before I opened my eyes, I heard a loud cry, it was my mother's.

My mother was nicknamed "The Merchant". In the era of economic scarcity, the merchants and traders continued from the old days, and whenever they went, people heard their voices before they arrived, and the drums in their hands would noisily fill the entire alley with an orderly drum beat. My mother has such a voice, and her noise can be heard in the alley for many years, even if she speaks normally, it sounds like a noisy feeling. So, whether it was good or bad, in short, she got the name of the merchant. The pronunciation of these words is not the same as the literal, the goods should be said as three tones, and Lang should be said as one, so that the shouting will show the feeling of noise.

Her crying and speaking voice are full of energy and are very easy to recognize. I could feel her sitting next to me pounding and crying. For I had seen her pound the ground when she cried like that.

I wanted to make sure she had pounded the ground like she had done this time, and I opened my eyes.

I didn't expect that the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was not my mother, but my Aunt Fan. My Aunt Fan was with her hands on the side of my left arm, her legs on the ground, her neck pushing her fat face forward, just above my face. My eyes as I opened them matched the light from the swollen bubbles that were getting thicker and thicker downwards. The light in her eyes was different from usual, and I felt the solemnity and anxiety inside. I was a little scared of this fat face, I wanted to close my eyes again, but it was too late, Aunt Fan had already let out the cry like a flood of the floodgate, and sprayed all the cry on my face, I was a little overwhelmed by this sudden cry, and I rolled over and climbed up in horror, hiding out of the range of her arched body. But my Aunt Fan didn't let me go, she rushed over and hugged me horizontally in her arms, sat on the ground, beat my back, and continued to cry loudly, shouting "Mom, I'm alive!" "Mom, I'm alive! The cry is "Ahh Ahh Unable to move, I wondered if I was her child or my mother's child at that moment. Unlike Aunt Fan, my mother's reaction when she saw me open my eyes was to stop crying, kneeling next to Aunt Fan, shaking my legs vigorously and shouting "Little Er!" Little two! Son, son! "Do you know Mom? Two? I tried to reach out to her, but my arm was tightly pressed by Aunt Fan with her arm, and I couldn't pull it out.

I nodded at my mom and stared at her, hoping she would save me. But my mom didn't.

Although I didn't dare to look at the light in Aunt Fan's eyes again, I could still sweep the tears on her chubby face with my residual light, and she didn't think about wiping it, just blindly continued to shout, "Alive, alive!" …”。 In the process of scanning the afterglow to Aunt Fan, I saw a dense circle of people around us by the way, and at this time many people were already squatting down, everyone was stroking and patting me, and their mouths were babbling, "It's alive!" Lived! "Old Mrs. Fan, you have accumulated great virtue! "Merchant, your son is really fateful" and so on, I can tell that he is talking about me, my mother and my Aunt Fan.

I wasn't interested in any of that, I was in a hurry to get home, I was hungry, tired and cold. Also, I didn't know if my mom had pounded the ground just now, and I felt a little lost. Of course, if I still hope to go home, Aunt Fan had better carry me away, because I really can't afford to go by myself.

Later, the truth was as I wished, and Aunt Fan held me like this until she put me on the kang at my house. This old woman is weird, that's what I thought. From that time on, in addition to my fear of Aunt Fan, I also had some expectations, because I felt her obvious love for me.

When I arrived at my house, I lay down on the kang for a while, and when my father came back from work, I heard my mother and Aunt Fan tell him about what happened after I stayed in the consciousness of going home with the women.

Aunt Fan is the most nimble person in this group of women, and it turns out that she is also the most mature and calm person with a responsible mind. Although she looks rough on the outside, her mind is very delicate. She didn't forget to take care of me for my mother while she was packing her clothes, and she put more thought about it than my mother.

Just when she was halfway clean, she turned back to the place where I was staying and glanced for the fifth time, the first four times I didn't move, and the fifth time, she found that only shoes were left, she immediately stopped to pick up her clothes, and instinctively looked into the river first, and the place in front of her did not see me, but she did not look elsewhere, but first searched the lower reaches of the river, and did not waste a little time, thus seizing the precious opportunity for her to rescue me later. About 50 meters away on the downstream river, her often flashing eyes suddenly spotted a small head floating up and down at one time, drifting downstream. My Aunt Fan screamed and spread her legs like crazy and ran towards me, not caring about anything. She didn't know how to swim, but with her familiarity with the river and the courage to fight herself, she ran on the shore first, and when she was almost at the same time as me, she quickly threw herself into the water, chased me in front of me with both hands, intercepted me, and picked me up. The river was already above her waist, and although she understood that people need to turn their heads down for drowning, if they held me with their heads down, they might flood again, so she held me upside down on top of her head with both hands, and shouted my name as she climbed up to the opposite bank. After going ashore, she put me on the ground first, and found that I was unresponsive, so she did not hesitate to lift my feet and carry them on my right shoulder, and ran all the way along the riverbank overgrown with wild grass. In this way, she straddled her long thick legs and led her fat body, and ran quickly to the upper suspension bridge about two hundred meters away, ran onto the suspension bridge, and ran back to the center of the stage where they had just performed the inferior little chorus, and continued to run in a panic to the squeaky shouts of the women, including my mother. In the process, she spread my feet apart on her left and right shoulders, and my face was constantly flapping in her hip area as she ran. My mother and the others also ran all the way, and they ran for about three or four minutes, when the woman I called Aunt Liu shouted, "Spit up!" "When my Aunt Fan heard this, she stopped, and asked my mother to put me on the ground, and they called my name together, but I didn't react, in fact, I was out of danger, but my mind was not clear due to fright and choking. Without hesitation, my Aunt Fan picked me up again and buckled it on her back, grabbed my feet with both hands, and continued to turn her head and run back, seeing that she was already very tired, but this time the speed was faster, so that the women who ran empty-handed gave up following one by one, and only my mother was far behind and barely continued to follow. Aunt Fan ran on the way home, attracting many passers-by and people from the nearest family to the river that spread quickly. I spit out two more mouthfuls, and a man asked Aunt Fan to stop, rubbed my nose with his hand, rolled my eyes again, and said, put it down, come here.

Aunt Fan found a shade tree, put me on the ground, and let me lie flat there. Then there was the constant crying of my mom pounding the ground and the anxiety of Aunt Fan kneeling there waiting for me to meet her eyes.

In the outhouse, my father listened and scolded my mother, who held back her voice and never dared to say a word. My father scolded for a while, and got to the point, asking my mother to go out immediately and kill one of the chickens in the house, I must invite Sister Fan to stay at home for dinner, and call your eldest brother too, I have to thank Sister Fan for your great benefactor, my second son's life is given by you, and it will be your son in the future, and I will let him be filial to you in the future. My father's eldest sister Fan put her hand in her stomach to support the wet blouse and didn't let it stick to her body, and said with a smile, I still have to let Xiao Er be my aunt, how can I be a son! My dad said, okay, okay, Sister Fan, you can do whatever you say, be your aunt! Xiao Er, hurry up, kowtow to your mother-in-law first, you must be filial to your mother-in-law in the future, Jiang Jiang is your daughter-in-law, and you and your daughter-in-law will have to be filial to your mother-in-law in the future, get up quickly. My father didn't care too much about how uncomfortable I was, and as long as I was alive, I was lucky. He said as he came into the house, pushing me on the shoulder and shaking me.

I didn't fall asleep. Just two minutes of drowning and suffocation is not a long time, but after all, I am too young, so my limbs are cold and weak, and I feel something in my throat that causes me to cough all the time, but I don't want to get up anyway. My dad didn't care about that, he had to let me finish the benefactor's thank-you gift on the spot. Under his vigorous shaking, I got up with my eyes half-closed, and I didn't know which direction Aunt Fan was in, so I knelt and kowtowed to my father's voice. When I got up, my father was startled when he saw my bruised face, and finally began to feel distressed, stopped yelling, and let me lie down and put a blanket on me.

At the dinner table after Aunt Fan's Uncle Gao came, I knew that I was dead today. I didn't really understand the concept of death, I thought it was like floating away in a river, to a strange place, where I didn't know anyone, and I would never return home. And that drift is not under your control, making you anxious and helpless and want to stand up but can't stand up, this is death.

I'm not afraid of death, but I'm afraid I'm going to be drifted to a strange place.

In the conversation they continued, I knew that although I died, I let Aunt Fan save me, so I became Aunt Fan's child, Aunt Fan's aunt, and I will be filial to her until the next time I die. Compared with going to a strange place, I went to live at Aunt Fan's house as an aunt, which was okay. After all, her house is only at the other end of my alley, and I have been led to her house by my mother, and I am no stranger to hers. What's more, from the process of holding me just now, I also felt an inexplicable warm current from her. Therefore, I still have some expectations for becoming an aunt and living in Aunt Fan's house.

Aunt Fan's family is the cleanest and most classy family in the hutongs, although she and my mother are colleagues and both work in the canteen, but she has a high school education, and her personal qualities and aesthetics are much higher than other neighbors, including my mother. I heard my mother say that she worked in the canteen to manage meal tickets, reselling, recycling, sorting, and reselling, and now I think about it, I should be a clerical job like an accounting cost clerk. And my mom was cooking for the workers at the window. But she never seemed to feel superior because she was in an office, but instead mingled with my mother and some other neighborhood women. Although her house is not big, it is very chic. She asked her honest husband to put the kang along the top all the way to the roof of the shed, and used wooden squares to make frames more than one meter wide on the left and right sides, and then nailed a thick paper shell to make the back panel, pasted colored paper, and then inlaid with glass, one side was glued with family photos, and one side was a photo of Chairman Mao in various periods. This is probably the earliest screen I've ever seen. The kang inside the screen is covered with a kang quilt and bed sheets, which are always flat and neat. Outside the screen, facing the wall, there was a floor table and two chests supported by shelves side by side, and the shelves below the boxes were blocked by pale lattice curtains. Tables and chests are filled with objects in an orderly manner, from high to low, large to small. There are two folding chairs with red leather seats under the window opposite the screen, although there are chairs, but I have never entered this room to sit, Aunt Fan usually does not allow people to enter this house, she stays in the hut behind the stove in the outhouse, whether it is a neighbor or her own family. Only when it was time to sleep, Aunt Fan, her husband and her youngest son came in, and the next morning, after the kang quilt was laid out, the family was completely active in the hut behind the stove of the two older daughters. In fact, her daughter's cottage is much cleaner and tidier than other people's rooms I have seen, and I never see clothes piled up or food thrown away indiscriminately. There are always a few pictorials on the windowsill, and in those pictorials I have seen Ma Liang and Nezha, and I thought Nezha was a child about my age. Aunt Fan's house obviously planned the living room, kitchen, and bedroom in that era, but it was not correctly implemented in terms of function.

After accepting my new identity, I couldn't bear it anymore and finally fell asleep.

When I woke up, I found that I was still on the kang at my mother's house, and I didn't sit on the chair in Aunt Fan's house instead of my aunt. My mom is still my mom, my dad is still my dad, my mom is still there embroidering her little white cloth curtain with flower supports, and my dad still covers me with a quilt. Compared with being Aunt Fan's aunt, in fact, I prefer to be the second child in my parents' family, after all, this is the home I am used to and close to. So this matter was held in my heart for a while, and I thought that they had forgotten, so I didn't ask more, for fear that I would remind them. But anyway, I can accept both cases, so let them arrange it. So, I got up silently, and under all the questioning of my dad and my mom, I went to lie on the edge of the basin where my brother was squatting on the floor and brushing his teeth, and observed the foam on his mouth. It was the next morning, my eldest sister had washed up and sat down at the dining table in the outhouse, they had to go out to school in a moment, and one of my pleasures every morning was watching them grinning with toothpaste foam.

Later, Aunt Fan didn't take me to her house, but she still stayed on her lips, and she still stared at me with flashing eyes and smiled and shouted, "Uncle!" I was still sometimes taken by my mother on a bicycle to the cafeteria where she worked, sometimes by my brother or older sister to play at someone's house, and sometimes locked in the yard by myself, chatting with the children outside through the wooden fence gate.

I was sometimes locked in my home alone, and the only reason my second sister was sent to my grandmother's house.

(Gengzi anti-epidemic, thank you!) ）