After the younger brothers ate that meal of meat, they dried the grain, ploughed the fields and planted seedlings, planted vegetables and weeds, and Lin Na could no longer spare time to cut bamboo shoots and sell them to buy meat.

The bamboo shoots in the field grew old and turned into bamboo.

The younger brothers are hungry for meat, and she actually wants to eat it too!

When there is nothing to eat, Lin Na will think of these bamboo shoots, pull one, remove the shell, slice it, fry it in water, and the bamboo shoot slices fried without oil are not delicious at all.

There is no fresh sweetness at all, only bitterness and astringency.

The whole summer was spent in a hectic and tiring way.

With her was a lingering hunger and the pain that hunger brought her.

In the fall, the Sanhua plums planted by my father are ripe and ready to be picked and sold.

The red plums hung on the trees, like translucent red lanterns.

"Sister, do you see that plum is like lean meat when you bite it?" The eldest brother asked while carrying the fourth brother on his back and standing under the plum tree.

"You want to eat meat again?"

"Uh-huh." Dadi and the fourth brother replied in unison.

"Sister, when are you going to buy us meat again?" When the third brother heard the word "meat", he was very excited.

"You have to sell the fruit to have money to buy meat!"

Linna replied as she climbed the tree to pick the fruit.

The younger brother heard that he could buy meat to eat by selling fruits, so he was excited to help pick the fruits.

Plum trees grow too tall relative to their height.

My sister and brother couldn't pick many catties of plums for a day.

Dad would come over to help when he was busy with the work in the fields.

The plum hanging on a high place, my father made a fork out of a long bamboo pole, clamped the branch with the fork, twisted it, and the plum fell to the ground along with the branch.

Lin Na took her brothers to pick up under the tree, removed the excess branches, and put the plums in the basket.

Every time I threw in a fruit, it was like smelling the aroma of pork, and the younger brothers were very energetic.

One autumn, they sold about two or three hundred catties of Sanhua plums.

A pound is eight cents, and a few hundred pounds is only twenty or thirty yuan.

During that time, Dad would take money to buy meat for them every four or five days.

A pound of pork sliced and fried raw and served on the table, and it was eaten up by the younger brothers in less than two minutes.

Lin Na looked at her younger brothers smacking their lips after eating, and her heart was sour.

She barely touched her chopsticks to grab meat from the bowl with her brothers.

It would be nice if Mom was still around.

She doesn't have to take her younger brothers to sleep every night, and she doesn't have to get up early every day to cook porridge, cut sweet potato vines, pick vegetables, feed pigs, and wash clothes.

There's a lot of work to be done every day.

The Sanhua plum planted by my father had to go to the village to collect manure to make fertilizer, and the vegetables grown in the field also had to be drenched with manure water.

After finishing her housework every day, Lin Na has to go to the village lawn and the door of each house to collect manure twice a day.

Children younger than her followed her and called her "pig".

What's the solution? Who told dad that he didn't have money to buy fertilizer?

Who told the whole village to plant so many fruit trees in their house? There are no fruit trees, so what do she and her father sell in the autumn to earn money to buy meat for their younger brothers?

In winter, the cassava in the field is ripe.

She and her father and eldest brother took a dustpan to dig cassava.

Cassava grows taller than ears of rice in summer and plum trees in autumn, and she and her brothers can't pull them out.

Dad is in charge of pulling it out.

Some of them could not be pulled out and broke in the dirt, so they had to be dug up with hoes.

She and her brothers are in charge of peeling.

Use sharpened bamboo slices to remove the cassava skin one by one.

It's hard work, too.

The cassava is peeled and dried, some of which are left to be crushed into flour with a rice mill and fed to the pigs.

In addition, the excess is sold.

Throughout the year, in spring, she has no intention of appreciating the flowers in full bloom and the fragrance of birds.

In the summer, there is no chance to listen to the music of nature played by the tinkling of spring water in the small stream.

Autumn is too late to go out into the field to pick fruit.

In winter, there is no time to go to the movies and play hide and seek with friends.

She spent her entire childhood doing housework, farm work, and taking care of her younger brother.

Because there was no one to take her younger brother with, she did not enter the first grade of primary school until she was nine and a half years old.

If it weren't for Li Li's brother coming to her door at the end of August when she was nine and a half years old, with the principal and the village head, her father might not have wanted her to go to school at all.

Before this, every time Brother Li Li saw her, he would catch her back and ask, "Xiao Na, why don't you go to school yet?" ”

"I'm going to take my brother with me!" Lin Na replied like this every time.

"But you're almost seven and a half years old!" Li Li's brother finished elementary school and was admitted to junior high school.

At the beginning of the second year, Lin Na was eight and a half years old.

is still busy taking his younger brother and doing housework every day.

Brother Li Li met her at the entrance of the village: "Xiao Na, you should go to school this year, right?" ”

Lin Na remained unmoved: "I'm going to school, who will take my younger brother?" ”

"Oh, I said Cortana, you can't read if you don't read! Isn't it illiteracy if you can't read? Li Li followed the inducement.

"I ......"

Actually, she also wants to go to school.

In every sweaty afternoon, every night when the younger brothers cried, and every time I saw the little friends in the village, carrying a schoolbag to school, and she was carrying her younger brother.

Brother Li Li saw that he couldn't move her, so he went directly to her house to negotiate with her father.

"Uncle, do you remember, you said that you would take care of her." He looked at Daddy Linna with clear eyes.

"Fuck off, which eye did you see that I didn't take good care of her?" Lin Na's father was touched somewhere in his memory, and immediately issued an eviction order.

Li Li didn't give an inch: "She is eight and a half years old, and you still don't let her go to school." ”

"I didn't let my son go to school!" Father Linna's eyes widened, and he was about to burst into flames.

"That's different!"

"What's the difference! I said, boy, just take care of yourself, don't bother with my housework, get out! Lin Na's father pushed and pushed Li Li's brother out of the house.

In the third year, Lin Na was nine and a half years old.

Brother Li Li found that Lin Na still showed no signs of being ready to go to school, and he was anxious.

At first, he wanted his parents to confront Lin Na's father, and tried his best to persuade Lin Na's father to let Lin Na go to school, but before his parents could enter the door, they were kicked out by Lin Na's father again.

No way, don't cry if you don't see the coffin?

Hum! I don't believe it, I'm going to move the big people out of the village now.

See if you accept it!

Brother Li Li turned around and went to find the principal of the village elementary school.

The principal had a very good impression of him, one of the few outstanding students in the village who were admitted to the town junior high school, and was also deeply disgusted by Lin Na's father's behavior of not letting the child go to school, so he took Li Li and called the village chief again.

Several people rushed to Lin Na's house murderously, using both soft and hard, and said that Lin Na's father was speechless, scolded him so much that he had to agree to send the nine-and-a-half-year-old Lin Na, the eight-year-old eldest brother, and the seven-year-old second brother to school.

In this way, Lin Na finally picked up her broken schoolbag and went to school at the age of nine and a half.