Chapter 72 Today is your birthday

The sky was ablaze with the glow of sunset, and the summer evening was cool and refreshing.

As the crows returned to their nests, the chirping of sparrows gradually faded away, and the mountains and fields fell silent.

As the sunset faded and darkness fell, the fourth brother finally led the sheep home.

Song Chunxue filled the water tank in the kitchen and fed all the livestock and poultry in the house. She sat outside the courtyard gate watching Xiujuan sitting in the dirt mound, giggling.

Judging from the uneasy footsteps, Song Chunxue knew that Lao Si had been thoroughly angered by the sheep today.

Turning around, the fourth brother, with a stern face and dirt still on his hair, strode into the yard and casually tossed the sheep shovel aside.

"Clang." The sheep shovel lost its footing and fell to the ground against the mottled mud wall.

Sanwa, who was checking his mistakes, put away his paper, pen and book, stood up, put the things into a cloth bag and put it in the west room.

Seeing that the fourth brother had gone into the east room and hadn't come out, the third brother didn't want to provoke him. He took a bowl, left the yard, and headed towards the sheep pen.

Song Chunxue put the child in the haystack on the kitchen floor and went to help in the sheepfold.

“Mother, I’ll catch this sheep for you to milk. This sheep has a lot of milk; it should be enough for one night.”

The third child squeezed a ewe into a corner, while the lambs beside it were very well-behaved, unaware that they were there to steal its food.

"If they don't want it, wouldn't it be a waste if we milked them?" Song Chunxue hesitated, wondering if she should wait until they wanted it next time before milking them.

“They came to ask for some yesterday. We’ll squeeze in whatever we can. The children are so pitiful. If they have any, we won’t squeeze in anymore.” As he spoke, Sanwa bent down and parted the wool. “It’ll be time to shear the sheep in a few days. They’re all getting a fever.”

"Then I'll cut the apricots after I've finished processing them in a couple of days." Song Chunxue held a bowl and squatted on the ground to milk the cows.

Sure enough, the ewe had milk, and soon a bowl was produced.

It was getting darker and darker. Thinking about going to Li Tang's house, and the fact that no one had been home for the past two days, Sanwa was a little afraid to go.

"Mom, how about we both go together?"

"Alright, let's go take a look together, so that they won't say we're arguing with them over a bowl of rice."

Song Chunxue carefully carried the bowl out of the sheepfold. "I used to see Li Tang's mother often. She must be feeling terrible to lose two relatives like this. I guess she hasn't cooked for the past two days. Go get two steamed buns."

"Okay, all done." Sanwa closed the door and ran quickly to the kitchen.

The mother and daughter carefully carried a bowl of milk to Li Tang's house.

Their front door was tightly shut, and the sound of two children crying could be heard from inside the house. If you listened carefully, you could also hear the low sobs of adults.

Song Chunxue raised her hand and knocked on the door.

"Knock knock knock".

A short while later, someone in the courtyard asked, "Who is it?"

“It’s me, Third Child’s mother. You asked for goat milk before, but Fourth Child and I didn’t know how to express it, so we’ve expressed some now.”

The heavy wooden door opened from the inside, and Li Tang glanced at Song Chunxue, his gaze falling on the bowl in her hand.

"Come in."

Li Tang was originally a bit dark-skinned, but he must have been sleeping poorly these past few days, looking listless and unusually thin.

They arrived at the low, old main house. Li Tang's mother sat on the kang (a heated brick bed) with tears in her eyes, holding a crying baby in her arms, and a little girl lying on her knees, crying incessantly.

"I want my mother, I want my mother, waaaah, where did my mother go?"

"You owe me my mother, you owe me my mother."

The three-year-old girl already remembers things; her face, washed with tears, is covered in tear stains from wiping them with her hands.

Song Chunxue couldn't hold back her tears.

Li Tang's mother, Liang Cuicui, was two years older than Song Chunxue, and the two used to see each other frequently.

Later, Song Chunxue didn't want to associate with the Li family anymore, nor did she want to be the butt of their jokes, so she gradually distanced herself from them.

Now, Liang Cuicui is sitting on the kang (a heated brick bed) holding her grandson. When she sees Song Chunxue, she cries uncontrollably.

Song Chunxue stood on the ground, wiping away her tears, unsure of how to speak to her.

She handed the goat milk to Li Tang, saying, "Pour it into your bowl. I won't stay any longer. We haven't eaten yet, so give me the bowl. If you want more, come earlier tomorrow."

Li Tang nodded, went to the kitchen to get a bowl, and poured the goat milk into it.

Song Chunxue glanced at Liang Cuicui on the kang (a heated brick bed), but couldn't say anything. She could only bend down and leave.

As darkness fell, the mother and daughter, though feeling unwell, walked quickly and soon returned home.

Song Chunxue was always a crybaby, she had been crying since she was a child. Later, she raised her children alone, and she never cried in front of others. At night, after the children were asleep, she would find a place to have a good cry.

She was very tired and had a hard time by herself. She was bullied and suffered injustice. She was so upset by her child that she couldn't sleep and cried.

As she grew older, especially when she was unable to move and lay on the kang (a heated brick bed), she would often let out a few sad shouts to feel better.

Having lived her life again, she doesn't cry as much anymore, but she still gets teary-eyed.

But today, when she went to Li Tang's house, she remembered many things. The resentment and bitterness from her past and present lives filled her chest, and she couldn't even cry it out.

"Sanwa, go eat. I'll eat later." With that, Song Chunxue hid in the west room, closed the door, lay down on the quilt, and sobbed.

*

After the lentils were harvested, the peas were harvested, and in the blink of an eye, the peas were also harvested. Then came the wheat, which turned yellower day by day.

The sixth month of wheat harvest is the most intense time.

The days this month have been unusually long, and the nights unusually short, as if they were made specifically for the wheat harvest.

As soon as Song Chunxue opened her eyes at dawn, she didn't have time to think about anything else. She washed her face, drank some water, ate her dry rations on the road, and hurriedly went to the fields to pull wheat.

June is already sunny, and the longer the wheat is left to ripen, the more yellow it will become. If the wheat is too ripe, the grains will burrow into the soil when you squeeze it.

Therefore, in order not to let the wheat go to waste in the field, they had to hurry and pull up any yellow patches as soon as possible.

But when it's the transition from green to yellow wheat, they will keep the green wheat, otherwise the wheat grains will be shriveled, there will be less flour, and all the hard work of the year will be in vain.

Fortunately, the school was closed for the holidays, allowing the children to go home and harvest wheat.

Sanwa followed Song Chunxue around every day, pulling wheat as fast as he could, which made Song Chunxue's life much easier.

Jiang Yeming's leg had healed, so he wasn't in a hurry to make mud bricks. After having breakfast, he leisurely went to the fields to help pull wheat.

He didn't pull wheat in the same field as Song Chunxue. Instead, he went to another wheat field and carefully picked the yellow wheat. Although he would be a little later than others, he went every morning and evening.

While resting and eating dry rations in the field, Song Chunxue chewed on dry bread, making it a little more palatable with sour apricots, staring at Jiang Yeming in the distant wheat field, completely puzzled.

"Tell me, what's wrong with your older brother all of a sudden? I didn't tell him to pull the wheat, but he went to the field on his own. It's been three days now, he's been to the field morning and night, and he hasn't come to me to ask for credit. Why is that?"

Sanwa bit open the apricot pit, picked out the almond, chewed it a couple of times, and then spat it out.

“This one is bitter,” he said casually. “Maybe it’s because it suddenly became sensible, or maybe it’s so that it can get a bigger share of wheat later, since the grain in the field hasn’t been distributed yet.”

“That makes sense,” Song Chunxue felt much more at ease. “Then let’s finish clearing this land as soon as possible so we can go home early today and make some long noodles. Have you forgotten that today is your birthday?”