Wen Sheng

Wen Sheng is the second child in the family.

There is an older sister who was sent to her maternal grandmother's house in the countryside to "help look after the chickens" as soon as she learned to walk. There is also a younger brother who became the treasure of the whole family from the moment he was born.

She was caught in the middle, neither liked nor expected, especially in an era when the preference for sons over daughters could still be openly written into the family genealogy. The arrival of the second girl was, in the eyes of the adults, another "money-losing child".

It was raining the day Wen Sheng was born.

The village midwife brought her out and said it was a girl. No one in the house spoke, except her father, Wen Dazhi, who turned around, lit a cigarette, sighed, and said, "Sigh, another girl."

The sound of "again" made her mother, Ye Caifeng, turn deathly pale. Blood was still flowing from her body. Her lips trembled, but she dared not utter a sound.

Everyone in the village knew that the Wen family had always wanted a son, but the Wen family's wife couldn't give birth.

But the first child was a daughter, and the second was also a daughter. Aunt Zhang from the village entrance gossiped, "This belly must be from sins committed in a past life."

No one looked at Wen Sheng when she was born.

Even whether she cried or not was just something the midwife casually said to appease her: "Oh dear, she cried, quite loudly."

From then on, she had a name, not given by her father, not chosen by her mother, but simply called out by people: "Er Ya".

"Er Ya, go pour some water."

"Er Ya, keep an eye on your brother."

"Er Ya, don't block the way."

They called it that for ten years, and nobody thought it was inappropriate.

Until one day, she gave herself a name.

That year she was in fifth grade, and the teacher handed out student registration forms. The village primary school was dilapidated; dozens of children were crammed into one classroom, and the teacher read out each word carefully: "Name, gender, date of birth..."

She didn't want to write Wen Er Ya's name on the form; it was too awful. She held the registration form, her pen pausing, and hesitated for a long time.

He was given a name, Wen Sheng.

When the teacher saw her name, she frowned and asked, "Isn't your name Wen Er Ya?"

Wen Sheng blushed, as if she had been caught stealing in public. Her face turned bright red, her lips trembled, and she whispered, "My mother named it."

The teacher's gaze fell on those two words. She didn't say anything, just nodded and took the form.

Actually, it wasn't her mother who named it; she stole it herself.

Last Friday evening after school, she passed by the entrance of a village. As she passed the village chief's house, the radio was on, and a deep, clear boy's voice suddenly broke in the static.

He said, "The sheng is a musical instrument with a clear and bright sound, like the cry of a phoenix."

She stopped and held her breath to listen. She understood the word "phoenix".

"The phoenix is ​​calling."

She had never seen a phoenix and didn't know what a phoenix looked like, but she thought it couldn't be Er Ya.

Later, she learned to use the Xinhua Dictionary and discovered that it was not "生" but "笙". She wrote the two characters "温笙" on the paper stroke by stroke and kept copying them until her mother found out.

Ye Caifeng didn't say anything. Instead, she pulled her aside, patted her hair, and said, "If you want to call me that, then call me that."

From then on, she stopped calling herself Wen Er Ya and started calling herself Wen Sheng.

After class, one of the annoying boys started laughing: "Hey, Er Ya changed her name, what's it now?"

"Wen Sheng? Why don't you call yourself Wen Si?"

Wen Sheng ignored it, thinking that even if she explained, these uncultured boys wouldn't know how to write the character "Sheng," let alone how important the name was to her.

She silently squatted by the tap to wash her hands, which still had mud on them from when she helped Ye Caifeng wash pig feed that morning. The water was cold, and her hands were prone to red spots when they touched cold water, but she didn't care.

Wen Sheng was still wondering if the teacher would change the name "Wen Sheng" on the registration form back to "Wen Er Ya," and how she should explain it to the teacher. Should she say that she chose that name herself? Would the teacher laugh?

She bent down and kicked at the pebbles on the ground, wondering if she could change it again if the teacher really crossed it out. She wanted to change it to something even harder to write, something no one else could pronounce, and ideally, something the teacher wouldn't know how to write either.

Ye Caifeng told herself that she could take her to change her name, but what if it was a lie?

It's not like she hasn't been scammed before.

When I was little, I was begging for a piece of candy, and Ye Caifeng would coax me by saying, "I'll buy you one after you finish chopping this pile of firewood."

She believed it, chopped the firewood, but the sugar never came.

Another time, when I had a high fever, Ye Caifeng said, "I'll take you to the town hospital tomorrow." The next day, after the fever subsided a bit, Ye Caifeng said again, "The fever's gone, why go to the hospital?"

Wen Sheng remembered lying in bed, her head spinning with fever, and she could hear her grandmother scolding from the kitchen: "Girls are so delicate. They'll be fine after a good night's sleep. Why are you in the hospital? Do you have too much money to burn?"

She was young then and didn't know what "spoiled" meant. She only knew that the more she coughed, the more her grandmother scolded her. Later, she dared not cough anymore. When she couldn't hold it in anymore, she would secretly run outside to cough.

She doesn't blame Ye Caifeng.

Ye Caifeng farmed, fed pigs, and raised three children all by herself. She got up early and went to bed late, and didn't buy a single new piece of clothing all year round. The blue cloth coat she was wearing was the one she wore when she married into the family.

But she also knew that her mother's talk of "changing her name" was most likely just a trick to appease a child, like that piece of candy, and a way to brush her off.

That's why she didn't want to be called "Er Ya" anymore.

"Er Ya" is the kind of child you can coax, hit, or ignore at will.

"Wen Sheng" is different. Wen Sheng is a name she chose herself. She secretly thought: even if no one takes it seriously, she will write this name for the rest of her life until everyone recognizes the character "Sheng".

Wen Sheng walked home from school more slowly than usual.

She was relieved that the teacher hadn't changed her name back to "Wen Er Ya" or called her by her original name in public. The teacher just frowned at her for a moment, then continued to grade the next form. At that moment, she felt as if she had quietly won a small but very important battle.

As she passed by the fields, the setting sun painted the horizon with a thick layer of gold, and the smell of cow dung mixed with the fishy smell of the fields—a familiar evening scent to her.

When Wen Sheng was twelve years old, he had just started junior high school.

She gets up at five o'clock every morning, walks in the dark on the dirt road to the middle school in town, and when she comes back in the evening, she still has to carry a bucket of water to feed the pigs, collect firewood, and do her homework. She thought life was hard enough, but she also had to deal with her devilish younger brother Wen Dongliang every day.

This little devil is already in fifth grade, but he has a bigger temper than anyone else. He can't do his homework and needs her to teach him, he can't pack his schoolbag and needs her to organize it, and he even blames her for losing his pencil.

"My second sister won't help me with my homework!" Wen Dongliang's voice boomed from inside the house, and Grandma immediately rushed into the room, leaning on her cane. "Wen Sheng, are you bullying your brother again?!"

"I didn't..." Before she could finish speaking, a feather duster had already struck the corner of the table, causing books to fly.

"You don't have it, you don't have it! Girls always hold grudges and can't stand seeing their younger brothers doing well!" Grandma scolded her, but her mother remained silent, and her father did nothing at all.

"I said I didn't, and that's final!" Wen Sheng suddenly stood up and shouted at them.

Grandma was taken aback, not expecting her to talk back. She slammed her cane down and said, "You little brat, you think you're all grown up now?"

"How dare you speak to your grandmother like that!" Wen Dazhi finally spoke, scolding, "You have no manners! Are you the head of the household now?"

Wen Sheng clenched her fists tightly, her nails digging into her palms, trying to keep herself calm.

Ye Caifeng hurriedly pulled Wen Dazhi, "Hey, say less, Er Ya, hurry up and go back to the room with your sister."

Wen Chunhua pulled Wen Sheng back into the house, led him to a small stool, sat him down, rested her chin on her hands, and said in a muffled voice, "Mother is pregnant again."

Her voice was very soft, as if she were telling Wen Sheng a secret, but her expression was not excited at all, but rather a little annoyed.

"real?"

"It's true, Mom isn't showing much. I heard she's already five months along."

Wen Chunhua leaned closer and lowered her voice: "I heard from Grandma that if it's another girl, she'll trade her for a chicken."

"Don't talk nonsense."

"Your mother was able to stop your father from getting angry today thanks to the baby in your belly. You were spared a beating this time thanks to this baby."

Wen Sheng couldn't be happy after hearing Wen Chunhua's words.

Why did Mother have to give birth again?

They already have a boy, isn't that enough?

She and Chunhua already couldn't get any eggs, and now they can't even get porridge?

Wen Chunhua patted her shoulder: "Go wash up quickly, your mother will need you to help hang the clothes to dry later."

Wen Sheng nodded, picked up the basin and went to the yard. Before she could fill it with water, tears fell into the basin first.

She secretly wiped away her tears, looked up at the sky, and the wind dried them quickly.

"I can't cry anymore," Wen Sheng told herself silently.

No one would feel sorry for her even if she cried. Ye Caifeng would only frown and remain silent. Her grandmother would scold her, saying, "It's shameful for a little girl to cry like this." Her father wouldn't even glance at her.

Wen Sheng lowered her head and rubbed her hands in the water a few times. Her rough knuckles turned red. As she rubbed them, she thought that she wished she could be like the older sister from the next village who got into university.

I heard that the girl was wearing a blue dress, holding her college acceptance letter, and boarded the green train in town. The whole village came to see her off.

Wen Sheng imagined the scene, then glanced at the crooked pile of firewood and the moldy wall in the yard, and her lips slowly tightened.

She didn't want to be locked in this house for the rest of her life, not even getting a share of the eggs, and having to be careful of her younger brother's every glance. What would she and Chunhua do if her mother gave birth to another younger brother this time?

Several months later, Ye Caifeng's baby was born.

It was a boy. I heard that he cried loudly as soon as he was born, and he was named Wen Laifu.

Grandma was overjoyed, kowtowing to the ancestral tablets on the wall while muttering, "Another boy! Our Wen family is blessed."

Father was so happy that he killed the only old hen in the house that very day and cooked a pot of chicken soup for Mother to use during her postpartum period. Not even the soup residue was left. Wen Sheng and Wen Chunhua squatted at the kitchen door, smelling the aroma, but neither of them said a word.

The younger brother saw that his father and grandmother were ignoring him, and he started to cry in distress.

Wen Sheng looked at the pot of chicken soup at the door, swallowed hard, silently turned around and went into the woodshed, folded her clothes, and prepared to get up at five o'clock the next morning as usual.

When her second brother was 100 days old, the school was distributing new textbooks. Wen Sheng ran home with the books that day, and before she even entered the door, she saw Chunhua sitting on the threshold, staring blankly at the yard.

"Chunhua, we've released a new book!"

"I'm not going." Wen Chunhua lowered her head, her voice trembling with tears.

"What, you're not going?"

"I'm not going to school anymore."

Wen Sheng was stunned. She let go of the textbook in her arms and it fell to the ground. "Didn't you say you were going to high school?"

“High school costs money. My mother said that with the addition of another boy to the family, she has to work and someone has to stay to help take care of her younger brother.”

"But isn't our family wealthy? Dad made quite a bit of money as a carpenter..."

"And why you?" Wen Sheng murmured.

"Because I'm the eldest child and the eldest sister," Chunhua said with a wry smile. "There's a lack of people in the family to take care of my younger brother."

"Mother also said that girls will get married sooner or later, so what's the point of studying so much?"

Wen Sheng wanted to retort, but when she opened her mouth, she couldn't say anything. She was the second child, and she didn't dare to think that one day it would be her turn. Maybe in a few years, when her mother got pregnant again, even if it was a girl just like her, she would have to drop out of school.

Wen Chunhua stood up, patted the dust off her trousers, her eyes no longer shining. "Anyway, my grades aren't good. Er Ya, you should study hard. I'll go boil some water; my little brother needs to take a bath later."

Wen Sheng opened her mouth, but said nothing.

She wants to go to school.

To read my name on the admission notice, to be as outstanding as the girl from the next village, and to board the green train bound for the outside world.

Perhaps then, no one will call her "Er Ya" anymore.