Chapter 2 of the Quiet Year
The morning sky is full of novelty, white clouds climb deeper into the clouds one by one, and the sun covers everything with a soft gold. Birds sing in the depths of the forest on a beautiful morning, and this gentle world makes people feel that their hearts are full of soft sunshine.
After breakfast, Ya washed the dishes. There was a lot of food left, and Yaichi shook it into the grass downstairs. But there is a fence downstairs, and it is inevitable that there will be bits and pieces of food falling within the wall, and Ya is afraid that the cleaner will see it, so she puts the food in a plastic bag, the mouth of the bag is open, and she throws it into the depths of the grass.
This secluded grove is home to unknown birds, chickens and ducks, insects and mice...... These leftovers can make them less of the hard work of foraging.
The wide wardrobe is partitioned, but there is no cabinet door, only layers of partitions divide the cabinet into a space, and Ya stacks the clothes according to spring, summer, autumn and winter. There is a square space in the middle of the wardrobe, and Ya uses it as a bookcase. In order to put more things, Ya put a rectangular cardboard box in it, so that things can be placed on top of the cardboard box. This one has been put for more than a year, and my daughter took it out and wanted to rearrange it.
As soon as the cardboard box was taken out, her daughter exclaimed, "Cockroaches! Cockroach! Ya took the cardboard box and saw a lot of rat droppings and crawling cockroaches at the bottom of the box. Cockroaches are agile and soon disappear. Jaya brought a rag to wipe the board clean, and her daughter put the books in order.
After living here for about a year, Ya didn't notice any cockroaches or rats. After the Spring Festival that year, Ya found that the rats were visiting. In order to facilitate the wire pulling, a hole was made in the window pane, and the hole was the size of a fist. When Ya returned to her hometown, the rice, noodles, peanuts, dates, and beans in the house were all loosely placed in the cabinet, and there was no cabinet door. The rat entered this no-man's land, feasting on it and not thinking about it.
They burrowed into the closet, jumped into the cardboard box on the bunk of the little bed, and every night they could hear the sound of their bite. Ya bought a rat cage and caught only two and a half sized mice. Ya released them into the reeds by the river in the distance, but I don't know if they have been found again.
Ya once saw in an article that rats are highly intelligent animals and can even understand human speech. I don't know if the rats have issued a notice: be careful of the rat cages. In short, the rat cage can no longer catch a mouse.
Ya went shopping one day and saw an old man selling a medicine that was specially used to treat rats, which was white flour. The old man said that he opened the lid and put it in a place infested with rats, and the rats ran away when they smelled it. Ya sniffed it, but didn't smell anything.
Ya bought four boxes and kept them in different corners of the house. But the rats still come at night, and they do not set up camp in the house, but crawl in through the windowpane hole at night, and climb out again at dawn, and they do not enter or leave through the door even though the door is wide open.
Ya had no choice but to buy a few woven bags with zippers and put all the clothes in them. But the rats use the woven bag as a barrier and hide behind it at night to eat. Ya Tianming removed the braided belt and saw that there were melon seeds, candy, biscuits, walnuts and other snacks. The children's snacks always fall under the table under the bed, and the mice carry them behind the woven bags.
Today, Ya found a long strip of foam to plug the hole in the glass. Why hasn't it been blocked for so long? Ya was afraid that it was blocked, and the rats entered and exited unimpeded through the door.
Does this rat live inside the fence downstairs or in the land outside the wall? Why don't you eat so many meals? Why do you climb so high every night to disturb people's dreams? Jabis was puzzled.
The large bed by the back door was longer than the door, and under the window next to the door was a long table with a kettle, a rice cooker, an electric baking pan, and a pickle jar. There are always people walking around outside the gate, and when the door is open, Ya has to keep greeting people. That's why Ya always likes to keep the door closed, but the light in the room is dim. Ya then moved a small table and put it behind the big bed, and Ya and the children usually write and draw on the small table, but the aisle at the door seems narrower.
When I was working in Beijing, the staff dormitory was often a house rented by the boss, and a dozen or so people lived together (Ya remembers the most twenty or thirty people), and everyone lined up to take a shower every night, sometimes two or three people washed at the same time. Ya doesn't want to squeeze with others, and often waits for everyone else to finish washing before she washes. The people who washed first complained about why Ya was old and last, which affected their rest. Ya was speechless when she heard this, and secretly sulked. In order to save money, the boss rented a dormitory that is still some distance away from work, and it takes a few stops to get there by bus.
The staff dormitories in Guangzhou are often in the factory, and the dormitories are generally rectangular houses, behind the house is a balcony, one side of the balcony is the bathroom and shower, the other side is the water pipe, generally there are two or three faucets, and below is a cement pool of equal length with the wall.
The dormitory where Ya and her husband live is a husband and wife room, the cement pool is half covered by her husband with terrazzo slabs, and the oil, salt, sauce and vinegar bottles and liquefied gas stove are put in the kitchen, leaving only a faucet for washing. Ya thinks that it is more comfortable to live in the staff dormitory in Guangzhou.
When his husband was stir-frying on the balcony, he needed to keep going into the house to get the ingredients, and the narrow aisle couldn't help but make him angry. Ya said that the long table was moved to a vertical position, and her husband glared and shouted, "Do you have long eyes?" Can you put it down?! Ya thought that he really couldn't put it down, so he didn't mention it.
Now that my husband is gone, Ya thought: Why not give it a try? Ya took the things off the table and put the table upright against the wall, which not only fit down, but also more than enough. The door immediately became spacious, and it seemed that the husband was too self-righteous.
There has been a cardboard box in the corner of the wall for many years, and some miscellaneous items are placed in it. This is the outer packaging of Yamai's rice cooker. Ya took out the miscellaneous items and found a lot of cockroaches in the foam hole inside, and they quickly crawled into the bottom of the box. Ya poured a cardboard box on the balcony railing, and the cockroaches fell one after another, Ya hoped that these cockroaches would live in the land and not climb so high. Ya poured food down two ends in three days, and these cockroaches should have no worries about food and clothing.
There are a lot of waste plastic bags, waste paper, empty cartons in the house, now it's a holiday, no one in the factory is cleaning, if they are thrown into the trash can at the staircase, they will definitely not be able to put down, and the trash can is not big.
When the New Year starts, the cleaner will inevitably feel resentful when he sees so much garbage: these two girls! Don't go back to your hometown for the Chinese New Year, and make so much garbage here!
The trash cans on the balcony were iron, and Ya tore open the cardboard boxes and lit them with a lighter. The flames grew larger and larger, swaying and dancing on the iron bucket, like a dancer dressed in red, whirling and leaping. The flames turned out to be so ethereal and wonderful.
By noon, a tidy home is in plain sight. Ya and her daughter watched all this with admiration, and a satisfied smile appeared on their faces. Usually Ya cleaned up the house, but it didn't take long for the children to tear up the paper and scatter it all over the ground like a goddess scattering flowers, and pile up quilts and pillows into a hill and climb over. The more Ya stopped, the more energetic the children became. It happened that my husband came back and saw a mess, and inevitably scolded Ya Yitong, Ya had a hard time saying and a hard time arguing.
When the neighbor returned to his hometown, he gave Ya the leftover sweet potatoes, and his son immediately asked for food. Ya boiled a few, and there were two big ones left. The daughter clamored for sweet potato buds and grits. So Ya made sweet potatoes and grits three times a day, and the vegetables were pork vermicelli and cabbage. Yaxiao's family is not wealthy, and sweet potato buds and grits are often eaten. Ya never seems to have eaten enough, her sister and sister will ask for steamed noodles and rice after a few days, Ya never mentions it, she really thinks it is better than other rice. Yaxiao's face was red and white, and many people said when they saw her: "What are you eating, you eat so well." "Yaxiao's complexion is like that of her mother, who has worked hard all her life, but she is ruddy and fair all her life.
When I grew up, I didn't often eat sweet potato buds and grits, and Ya's face became darker and darker, and she became the kind of person who said that yellow was not yellow and white was not white.
Thinking that there will be no sweet potatoes tomorrow, and her daughter loves to eat them so much, Ya decided to come and buy them for the last time before the year. She rode her motorcycle straight to the supermarket and bought a bag of sweet potatoes, a bag of potatoes, a bag of onions, and a bag of cakes and biscuits.
On the way back, the clouds in the western sky resemble a beautiful picture. The blue clouds surround the sea of molten gold clouds, the dazzling brilliance, the beautiful sea, it is impossible to tell whether it is the sea or the sky. Ya looked at the beautiful western sky, and wanted to give birth to a pair of big wings and fly into the beautiful sea......
At night, given that they didn't warm their feet all night last night, Ya and her daughter didn't sleep in the big bed. When her husband and son were there, the family slept in a big bed, and Ya felt quite warm.
Although she is sleeping on a small bed now, her daughter keeps kicking the quilt, which makes Ya feel not warm. And she went to the big bed, and brought another quilt, and covered it with her daughter. Ya didn't sleep well, her daughter kept kicking the quilt, and she kept covering her.
The night was quiet, and occasionally the barking of dogs could be heard. It is a huge factory, usually lively and lively, with people coming and going. Even though it was very late, there was also the sound of playing cards and mahjong in the dormitory, and my husband was the backbone of it, and he was obsessed with mahjong. My husband's work is actually very tiring, so the big and thick board was originally carried by two people, but he completed it alone. Maybe it's because of the charm of mahjong at night, my husband doesn't feel tired during the day, and he hurriedly goes downstairs every night when he puts his rice bowl away.
Sometimes my husband goes to the mahjong parlor outside the factory to play, but he has to rush back before half past one. Because at one o'clock, the security guard will release the big wolfdog. Ya had heard someone screaming in horror in the middle of the night, it was a narrow encounter with a big wolf dog, but she had not heard of anyone being bitten. Ya used to get up to work in the morning, and she would see dog poop on the stairs, but then the staircase was pressed by the iron fence, and she never saw dog poop again.
Yazhu's staff dormitory is at the back of the factory, just like the last courtyard of the deep house compound. The first floor is the staff cafeteria, and the security guards come to eat on motorcycles. The big wolfdog was leashed in a small bungalow behind the first floor. Once, Ya's clothes were blown downstairs by the wind, and Ya went down to pick them up. Before I could get there, I heard the barking of a wolfdog. Ya picked up her clothes and ran, for fear that the wolf dog would jump out.
The wolfhound sometimes barked so violently that it made people's scalps tingle when they heard it. In the middle of the night, it was unchained, and it ran freely in the vast courtyard, its free blood boiling in its veins, and its alert eyes saw a wide horizon, how could it be willing to be chained to a small dark room every day.
Now, only Ya's mother and daughter, a security guard, and a big wolf dog are left in this huge factory, and Ya's heart has a sense of loneliness.
The hole in the window glass was blocked, but Ya still heard the sound of rats gnawing food near the cabinet, and the frustration filled Ya's heart......