2. Unintentionally returning home

Sunday, October 1, 2017 Sunny

During the National Day holiday, I didn't plan to go home, but I remembered what my mother said when I called a few days ago that my father might have to go to the hospital for chemotherapy in the next few days.

Afraid of not being able to catch the train, at half past five to get up, early in the morning to the passenger station, only to find that it is indeed too early, from the first train departure time still forty minutes, touched the empty stomach, thinking about going to the supermarket to buy something to eat. The only supermarket in the station doesn't have many items, and the prices are still high. Carrying a backpack around, a layer of floating ash accumulated on the shelves, and the proprietress at the cashier crossed her legs, eating melon seeds while watching the show. I didn't want to eat anything, but I was afraid that I would get motion sickness on an empty stomach, so I took a meat floss bread that looked a little greasy, a carton of pure milk, no way, there was only this kind of bread. When I was about to check out, I found a rice cooker next to the cash register, and the dark sauce-colored juice was warm with tea eggs, and it was steaming, and it looked pretty good, so I brought one. I found a corner of the waiting hall and sat down by the window, the taste of the bread was really as undelicious as it seemed on the surface, and after eating two bites, I felt that the whole mouth, esophagus and stomach were as greasy as swallowing a mouthful of oil, and I drank a little milk before I could barely suppress it, and decisively threw the rest of the bread into the trash, and finally ate the tea egg.

In less than an hour, I had an ambivalence that I wanted the car to drive faster and that it would slow down, I didn't want to go home, I didn't know how to tell my parents about the bar exam, and I longed for time to pass slower, but it seemed that praying was useless, and at the same time my stomach was tumbling, complaining about why I wanted to buy that bad quality bread that didn't look very good, and wishing that the trip would end quickly.

After thinking about the wording all the way, how to express it in order to tell my parents about the failure of the exam without losing dignity, although the results have not yet come out, but how to do it is a bit of a spectrum in my heart.

There are four judicial exams in two days, and the whole process is very strict, and you can only enter the examination room at the specified time, and you must have an admission ticket, ID card and other things to enter the examination room. The people who took the exam were also diverse, ranging from elderly people in their sixties to pregnant women with big bellies. Looking at everyone's serious appearance before entering the examination room, I felt that this was a fateful exam for them. Speaking of which, there was a big incident in the examination room where I was, there was a woman who looked like she was in her forties and was banned from entering the examination room because she forgot to bring the admission ticket, she had an argument with the invigilator at the door, and said all the soft words, but the rules are the rules, the invigilator guarded the door, and said that she would not let her in, and then the woman began to collapse, lying on the ground and splashing, wailing all the time, her voice was terrible like a resentful female ghost, and the nearby candidates came to watch curiously, and the woman had been making trouble for a long time, In order not to affect the normal conduct of the exam, more than a dozen security personnel came over and carried her out on a stretcher. I was touched by this farce without any waves in my heart, and I couldn't help but think about how important this exam was to her whole life, if she brought the admission ticket, maybe she could pass the judicial exam and embark on this road, but if she couldn't pass the exam, I don't know how to collapse at that time. I don't know how many unknown days and nights she has worked hard for this exam, how many sweat and grievance tears she has shed, and I can't think of the story behind her, but everyone sitting in the examination room has no story, and if you sympathize with them one by one, the law may no longer be the law. Rules are rules, I don't sympathize with that woman, forgetting to bring the admission ticket seems to be a trivial matter, but I feel that I can't even do such a small thing, if you become a lawyer in the future, how can you make others believe you? Moreover, the rules of the examination are the rules, and the rules are small laws, and if a person who studies law does not even abide by these small rules, how can he make people believe that he will keep the bottom line of the law in the future and do his duty? This is the consciousness that a person who studies law should have! The law is not created for a single person, it cannot cater to everyone, so it can only become cold-blooded and impersonal, and the more cold-blooded and impersonal it is, the more impersonal it will be to uphold the fairness and justice of all. So no matter how hard the woman cried, I didn't feel pity, but just quietly looked out the window at a small gray sky and lost my mind.

After the whole exam, I was in a state of confusion, some of the multiple-choice questions seemed to have multiple correct answers, some of the multiple-choice questions seemed to have one, and the multiple-choice questions were even more outrageous. But fortunately, my mentality is relatively flat, I didn't put too much pressure on myself, I skipped the topic that I wouldn't have, and I did the next one directly, so that I still had a lot of free time in the end, I wanted to take a closer look at the topic, and I found that I wouldn't be able to do it, and I wrote some answers casually, and I began to look out the window and give up, in the end, I gave up from the bottom of my heart, yes, yes, no, there is nothing to say, and I didn't say that I must pass this exam, and the sky will fall if I can't, Everything is like being pushed forward by the tide, the future is coming, even if you can't pass it, it is still coming, the road of life is more than this, and I have to go step by step after all.

Arrived at the county hospital at noon.

Although it was supposed to be a cool day in early October, the sun was still shining brightly overhead, so hot that a layer of fine sweat oozed from my body, and I had always been afraid of the sun, not only could I not open my eyes, but I also inevitably had an itchy nose and a few sneezes. Because the ward was so tight that there were no extra beds, my father barely lived in the hall on the eleventh floor. The hall is about fifty or sixty square meters of semi-circular shape, along the wall of the place placed five or six beds are still relatively spacious, the west is a row of floor-to-ceiling windows, the view is very good, you can see the dense buildings of the formation of this half of the small city. The city is really small, and from the eleventh floor, you can almost overlook the border. The boundary of the city is the mountain, this is a small city embraced by the mountain, when the mountain embraces in the arms, it will give people a sense of closure and backwardness, indeed, this city is much more backward than Beijing and Shanghai, if you look through this glass window, even the subway is not there, public transportation is still the kind of swaying old-fashioned bus, in the traffic leisurely forward, a stop for a while. The city, like the bus in the city, is not in a hurry. The cars on the motorway are slow, the pedestrians on the sidewalk are slow, the aunt who sells pancakes at the intersection is leisurely, the soy milk sold in the breakfast shop is freshly beaten, and there are always people sitting on the benches in the park at any time. The people in the small town speak in a dialect with a hint of anger, and the accent is relatively strong, which will sound noisy. But I like people in the small town, to buy catties of apples, you can bargain with the fruit seller aunt, the aunt will be a mouthful of yellow teeth, while saying that it is not profitable, it is not profitable, and after settling the account, it will stuff two sweet dates in your hand, unlike the hawkers outside the city who try their best to raise the price and lack catties and two, the people in the small town have a fierce reality. I can't say how I feel for this small city that gave birth to me, the town is hazy in my impression, it seems to be nothing, when I am in it, I will be disgusted and abused by the garbage littered in the corner of the street and the bus that has not come for a long time, but when I leave this city, I will have a boundless sense of sadness in my heart, and I have countless thoughts of going to the big city to struggle, but I vaguely feel in my heart that I always want to return here. People always have to go home.

My father has lived here for generations, and he has hardly ever been out of the city, and in his grandfather's words, no matter where he goes, everyone is begging for a living in the same way. I didn't really know what kind of life I wanted to live, whether I wanted to go to a big city that I dreamed of a lot many times, or go back to a small town after graduation. Everything is confusing, I don't know when the future will come, I feel like a lonely boat on the sea, and at this time the sea is foggy, I really can't see clearly, I can't find the direction.

"Have you had lunch? I shouldn't have had lunch at this time, but your dad and I just had dinner. Mother sat cross-legged on the edge of the bed, and then leaned sideways to get the food from the bag on the windowsill.

"I'm not hungry, I'm just thirsty."

My mother took out a tea egg from the bag and handed it to me, and then took out a large rhubarb pear and sat on the edge of the bed to peel it.

Dad looked up at the infusion bottle and said, "Let your mother accompany you down to eat something, I'm fine here, there are still so many potions that haven't been lost, if it really doesn't work, I'll call the nurse over, I can do it myself." ”

"It's okay Dad, I'm not hungry. I sat all the way in the car, and I didn't have much appetite. ”

Mom handed me the peeled pear, I shirked and said that I couldn't finish eating, so I asked my mother to cut the pear and divide it for everyone to eat, but my mother glanced at me complainingly, "Dividing the pear is 'separation', haven't I told you before?" This taboo still has to be taken into account, you kid is really getting more and more ignorant! ”

Dad opened his mouth but didn't say anything, I took the pear from Mom's hand, sat on the pony without saying a word, and gnawed on it.

None of us spoke, the atmosphere was cold for a while, and we fantasized about various topics in our minds, but we were finally denied by ourselves one by one, and when we tilted our heads, we happened to see a very low flying plane dragging a long white tail, like a white fox flying in the sky, and watched it slowly glide through the sky, until it disappeared into view, and then I was surprised that my eyes were a little sore when I stared at it without blinking.

Looking closer, the leaves of a large poplar tree were whirring, and the wind was coming.

Speaking of which, the wind knows the most about this small town, and it knows everything about how the town has changed from a blue brick house to a forest of high and low buildings over the decades. At the same time, it is everywhere, brushing everyone's skin, so it also knows the story of everyone in the city, but it doesn't say it, it just sees it all, silently knows it in its heart. I should have asked the wind why my parents were so alienated from me. But I don't dare, it's not necessarily a good thing to know some answers, I'm waiting, even if I've heard the rumors that have traveled through the streets and alleys of the neighborhood, I'm still waiting, waiting for the rumors to be dispelled, waiting for the answers I want to see.

Rumors, what is a rumor, a rumor is an after-dinner conversation in the neighborhood, two points of fact plus five points of subjective conjecture and processing of the communicator, and three points of distortion between each other's word of mouth, and even in the end, I began to doubt whether what the rumor said was true.

During the Spring Festival of that year, when my parents brought him back from my grandmother's house, my grandfather suddenly suffered a cerebral hemorrhage, and my grandmother's asthma also went the summer of the second year when my grandfather went. A month after my grandmother went, I suddenly found that the friends who often played together were alienated from me one by one, I was very confused and angry, I blocked my best friend at the time after school, and asked her why she didn't play with herself, I still clearly remember her sad and helpless expression at that time, that was the first time I knew that I was a "dead star", the little girl cried and said to me, her grandmother didn't let her play with me, saying that I was dead in my life, and I killed my grandparents in less than a year after returning home, begging me to let her go and spare her life. I remember that I didn't cry at the time, I just thought it was funny, a little girl who was less than seven years old killed her grandparents, is this superstitious saying really believed?

So my childhood was lonely, none of the children wanted to play with me, not a single one, fortunately they were all afraid of my death, I was not subjected to the so-called school violence, but often alone, one person went to school, one person left school, one person ate, one person went to the toilet. But I'm not lonely, I go to read books when other children play games, I read everything, I can read a piece of paper with words with relish, and when I was in the fifth grade of primary school, I even finished reading the two little yellow books that my cousin hid under the mattress without blushing and heartbeat.

However, when I was 13 years old, my brother was diagnosed with bone cancer, and all my parents' savings were used to treat my brother. Seeing my brother's shaved head and pale face due to chemotherapy, and my mother's gray hair, which seemed to have grown overnight, I often fell into deep thought, and when I was alone, I would look at the sky in a daze. These gods must have heard my prayers day and night by chance, which is why they caused my brother to suffer from this serious illness. Seeing him lying on the hospital bed struggling and in pain, I just had an evil thought for a moment, and I felt very relieved, but ah, I never thought that he would really die, it was all the wish of the eight or nine years old, how could the gods take the jokes of an ignorant child seriously?

I remember the night my brother was diagnosed, I went to the hospital to deliver food to my parents, my mother saw me for the first time, rushed up and beat me like crazy, and was stopped by my father, but the rice porridge I made spilled all over the ground and was slapped in the face, but I didn't feel any pain at all, because my mind was full of what my mother said: "I have known for a long time that you have a dead spirit, and I blame me for being soft-hearted for a while, and I didn't strangle you on the night you were born, not only killing your grandparents, but now I want to kill your brother!" ”

After that, I was never allowed to see my brother again.

My parents took my younger brother to Beijing to see a doctor, leaving me alone in my hometown, but my grandmother couldn't bear it and forced me to move over to take care of my daily life. I remember that the weather was very gloomy on the day of my grandmother's death, and the wind was very strong, and my grandmother said that my uncle had not come back from a business trip, and that I had to go home to clean up the flowers in my yard, and I said to go with her, but she didn't let me stay at home and do my homework, but my grandmother had a car accident on the road, and the driver hit and run, and my grandmother never came back.

Since then, the rumors have intensified, saying that I am the "reincarnation of the Death Star", saying that my grandmother saw a thick black gas on my body before she died, and saying that if I don't stay away from me, the whole family will be killed by me.

So I was sent to another place to study in high school, and the distance of a few kilometers from home was a little relieved to my parents, and my brother's condition was well controlled. When a person is in a foreign country, sometimes he is particularly helpless, and his relatives around him die one after another and fall ill. Tell myself again and again that there are no so-called ghosts and gods in this world, everything is just a coincidence, everything is feudal superstition, but when everyone thinks so, I wonder if I am really a "dead star", and now my father is like this.

When I think about it, my parents' eyes when they look at me imply more than alienation, but also a trace of fear.

When I got home in the evening, perhaps because of the inappropriate watering, the flowers and plants planted by my mother on the balcony were scattered, and some of the leaves of the spider plant had turned slightly yellow or blackened.

My mother has never been as attentive to raising flowers as my grandmother.

Good night, tomorrow will be fine.