Chapter 2
Kang Xingxing went through many twists and turns to become a member of the Zhou family. First, there were the adoption procedures, where he was reported as an orphan, and then he had to register his household registration.
The household registration system was not strict at that time, but in small cities in the north, one always had to make more than one trip to get things done, with cigarettes and wine being passed around. In addition, Zhou Tiancheng's handsome face and sweet mouth at least made up for the unclear part of the matter.
The last question was whether to change the surname to Zhou. Zhou Tiancheng hesitated for a long time and finally let Kang Xingxing keep the surname Kang.
Zhou Yue inexplicably got a brother with a different surname. She still had another year to go to elementary school. Kang Xingxing was supposed to go to elementary school, but Zhou Tiancheng asked Kang Xingxing to wait another year and go to school with her sister.
Kang Xingxing no longer went to kindergarten. Every evening, he would go to the kindergarten with Dai Yan to pick up Zhou Yue after school. He would follow from a distance, with his head down and not saying a word.
In those days, children in kindergarten were very free. Apart from two meals a day, they would take a nap and then play. After playing, they would have another meal, which was either sweet potatoes or carrots. Zhou Yue only ate sweet sweet potatoes, and she hid the carrots in her trouser pockets and brought them out for Kang Xingxing. She was a wild girl and didn't care about hygiene. Every time she took them out, they were covered with hair and dirt, but Kang Xingxing ate them without any complaints.
The mother and daughter walked in front, and Kang Xingxing followed behind, silently finishing the boiled carrots that were crushed into a mush. She didn't step on their shadows that were lengthened by the sunset, but simply became an extension of their shadows.
To be honest, Zhou Yue thought he was very boring. He was silent at home. She called out "Orangutan?" and then she heard the soft sound of trouser fabric rubbing against each other. After a while, a pitch-black figure emerged.
When watching cartoons, he would watch whatever Zhou Yue was watching. When Zhou Yue sat on the long sofa, he would curl up on the small stool next to the sofa. The stool was short, so was he. Sometimes he would suddenly laugh, which would scare people.
"What are you laughing at?" She glared at him and scolded him, but he stopped laughing. When Zhou Yue looked at him again when she found something funny, he would just sit there with his legs crossed, his chin resting on his knees, his thick lips half open, looking dazed and stupid, like a lump of black iron.
"Why aren't you laughing? Idiot!"
He neither competed for favor nor complained. Zhou Tiancheng bought him the Black Cat Sheriff car, Ultraman, and airplane models that only Guangzhou children had... He took a few glances at them and then gave them to Zhou Yue. He walked quietly to her and handed them to her. If she was drawing, he would put them at her feet, as if he was not interested.
But Zhou Yue didn't like playing with boys' things. After unpacking and fiddling with them for a few times, she lost interest. But when she threw it to Kang Xingxing, he started playing with it very enthusiastically, controlling the plane to take off and land smoothly, and making Black Cat Sheriff's police car pass under the bed, make a circle and drive out again, with Black Cat Sheriff still sitting in the car majestically.
After playing with it, he didn't just throw it away like other children. He always put it back into the box, fitting it tightly as if it had never been opened. Zhou Yue always found this amazing.
He was as silent as ever and would only speak when it was absolutely necessary. Dai Yan served him meals, made his bed, and asked him to take off his clothes for her to wash. Zhou Tiancheng brought him toys, new clothes, and new shoes. At these times, he would purse his lips and smile, and his eyebrows would form two arcs when he smiled, matching the arc of his mouth, and he would say "thank you" in a very low voice.
Zhou Yue ignored him, and the two of them tacitly understood each other and didn't speak. They slept on one bed and used one desk. In the end, the desk was a mess with Zhou Yue's things: watercolor pens, plasticine, books, notebooks... He only had a small corner of the table, which he used to read.
He only reads books and never paints. He also doesn't tell stories he heard from others to everyone he meets like Zhou Yue does. He rarely expresses himself, so rarely that it seems as if he has no self at all.
Zhou Yue liked to read "Story Club" and "Reader's Digest". She could only recognize a few words, but she really wanted to know what stories were told in the books. Zhou Tiancheng could not tell her stories, but Dai Yan could. But later on, Dai Yan was the one who read them with great concentration, crying and sobbing. She was very emotional and would say, "This woman is so pitiful..." or "You can't hit the child no matter what!" But this was only limited to the moments when they were lying quietly in bed reading. With Kang Xingxing, such parent-child moments were basically gone.
Dai Yan never spoke to Kang Xingxing. When Zhou Yue was alone with her, she would tell her to stay away from Kang Xingxing. She told her that he was from Guangzhou and that she should wash her hands after touching him. She also told her to wrap herself tightly in a blanket at night and be careful of poison. What was poison? Zhou Yue didn't understand, but she knew it could kill people.
Dai Yan never let Zhou Yue give money to beggars, not even a dime. She also liked to quarrel when buying vegetables. She could immediately notice if the weight of the vegetable vendor's scale was not right, and she would start cursing the next second. She would go to the bank, the hospital... anywhere, as long as she was not satisfied, even if the queue was just a little long, she would curse without any scruples and without restraint.
But this was nothing. Once, Dai Yan took Zhou Yue on a bus for a long time, going around and around, and finally they arrived at a residential area in the suburbs. Every building was very dilapidated and short, but the window panes were as dense as a hornet's nest.
After getting out of the car, Dai Yan grabbed her wrist, her high heels clattering loudly, and she walked straight into the dark building with her head held high. She went up to the second floor, and the dust flew everywhere, choking Zhou Yue and making her cough. All she could hear was Dai Yan kicking the door, making a loud bang, and people on the first and third floors poked their heads out to look.
The door opened a crack, and Zhou Yue saw an auntie, very thin and white, with waist-length hair like soft seaweed, and wearing a red skirt. She was so scared that she stepped back. Dai Yan went up and slapped her, then dragged her out by her hair, slapped her a few more times, and finally kicked her in the stomach. The auntie squatted at the foot of the wall, holding her stomach, and the blood was as red as her skirt.
Whenever this happened, Zhou Yue felt that her mother was not beautiful at all. Her big waves were as messy as grass, and her saliva looked like a fountain in the sunlight. She didn't look like the mother who patted her back and read stories to her under the desk lamp, and cried until her eyes were swollen.
"Can you read?"
Zhou Yue really couldn't contain her curiosity. Kang Xingxing was so absorbed in reading that she read everything. Zhou Tiancheng bought books for his children just for convenience, buying a whole box at a time. They included "100,000 Whys", "Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales", "Aesop's Fables"... all hardcover editions, without caring whether the children could read or understand pinyin.
Zhou Yue only looked at the good-looking paintings and threw them away after she was done. Kang Xingxing, on the other hand, picked them up one by one and read them. She also marked the words. A rectangle represented a word, a circle represented a word, a triangle represented a word... After a few days, she would erase them and use other words as marks.
He must know quite a few words.
"Tell me a story!" Zhou Yue ordered.
"Okay." He raised his head from the book. The setting sun made his face covered with golden hairs, making him look more like an orangutan. He no longer smelled bad, but was still dark. His eyelashes were darker, thicker, denser, and curled, just like the eyelashes of the ostriches in the zoo. He looked at Zhou Yue calmly.
But later Zhou Yue discovered that he didn't recognize much, because what he said was too short and did not match the number of words in the book, which seemed to be fabricated and tampered with.
For example, take this passage, which was a whole page in "Story Club", but when he said it, it became just a short paragraph:
A displaced girl was accidentally adopted by a kind-hearted businessman and lived a happy life until one day a high-ranking official came to his house and said that the businessman owed him too much money and could not pay it back. He gave the businessman a bowl of poisoned wine. Just as the businessman was about to drink it, the girl snatched the wine from his hand and drank it all, dying on the spot. The high-ranking official was very moved and spared the businessman's life.
Zhou Yue was confused. She just thought the girl in the cheongsam in the black and white illustration was so pretty, with a melon-shaped face and foxy eyes, just like her mother. How could she cause so much trouble?
"Why did she drink the poisoned wine? No one asked her to drink it!"
"Repay a favor." Kang Xingxing said repay a favor in a baby voice, which was very funny.
Although Zhou Yue hated Kang Xingxing, it was better to have someone tell her stories than nothing. So in the third month after Kang Xingxing came to the Zhou family, this scene appeared:
In the evening when Zhou's father and mother were not at home, the white gauze curtains dyed by the setting sun were flying. Two children were sitting in front of the desk, reading a book with their heads leaning against each other. The boy's dark little hands pointed at the pictures in the book and told the girl one story after another, as if he was telling a story by looking at the pictures. Each story was different. They talked until dark, with only a desk lamp on. The girl loved to listen to stories about mother's love and father's love the most, so he always chose to tell these stories.
But apart from telling stories, Kang Xingxing remained silent and stayed away from Zhou Yue when sleeping at night.
"Gorilla, why don't you speak?"
“…”
"come over!"
He swam over wrapped in a quilt, like a moving hillock, and then a pair of bright eyes appeared in the darkness, looking at Zhou Yue silently.
"Dad went to Guangzhou again."
Nodded.
"Dad never comes home."
Nodded.
"Last time, Mommy hit an auntie. The auntie peed, and Mommy said that it wasn't urine, but a baby. Mommy said that if that baby was born, Daddy wouldn't want us anymore. But Daddy didn't get angry. He just sat on the sofa, laughed, and called Mommy a bad person. Did you hear that?"
Nodded.
"Do you think Dad will abandon us?"
This time there was no nod, only silence.
"If Dad doesn't want us anymore, we'll have no home."
"No." He spoke little, and his voice broke every time he spoke, as if he had eaten too much chili pepper or had cried himself hoarse.
"Why?"
He fell silent again, and his bright eyes disappeared, probably covered by his eyelashes.
"Oh... forget it, you don't understand anything, don't worry about anything, you're just a fool!"
Zhou Yue lay flat on her back. On the ceiling, a small white fish was swimming. With a flick of its tail, the child's voice became clear:
"As long as I'm here, I won't leave you and Aunt Dai homeless."
"You?" Zhou Yue turned her head away with disdain, "Kid!"
But it turned out that Zhou Yue was more like a child. She dreamed of the toilet at night, and by the time she felt warm, it was often too late.
Kang Xingxing knelt on the bed, as if apologizing. She was too sleepy to open her eyes. She crawled over to Zhou Yue and said, "I'll sleep over here, and you sleep over here."
Zhou Yue struggled for a short while before rolling over to the dry side and crawling into the warm quilt that Kang Xingxing had slept on. Her side was wet and cold, so of course she couldn't sleep! She fell asleep in a short while.
Zhou Tiancheng was not at home, and Dai Yan had also figured out Kang Xingxing's silence and submissiveness. She often beat and scolded Kang Xingxing, throwing the sheets into the washing machine while scolding her, pouring in half a bag of laundry detergent, and carrying Zhou Yue to the washing machine. Zhou Yue liked to sit on the washing machine and feel the rumbling vibration of the turbine washing machine. It was very loud, but this could not cover up Dai Yan's cursing. She always became more and more angry and louder as she cursed. She had already walked into the living room, and her screams were carried to the bathroom from a distance. Zhou Yue could hear it even with her ears covered: "I'm talking to you! Are you deaf or dumb? Get over here!"
Zhou Yue sat on the washing machine. The rumbling vibration was not as fun as before. She slid down little by little by herself, and looked towards the living room while holding the bathroom door frame. Kang Xingxing was standing at the junction of the balcony and the living room, looking up. He had a very short buzz cut. The sunlight made his eyelashes and hair look golden, and his eyes were also golden. His body was very dark, like a small bronze man coated with a layer of gold.
He tilted his little neck to look at Dai Yan, but lowered his head when the bed brush in her hand whizzed towards him. The wooden lump hit him, but one hit was not enough, so he hit it again and again... Each hit made a dull and solid thud.
Zhou Yue felt her internal organs squeezed into a ball and her heart was in her throat. She wanted her mother to stop beating her. She sympathized with Kang Xingxing, but she was even more afraid that her mother would transfer her anger to her. What should she do then?
When her mother was angry, she dared to hit anyone except her father. She had been beaten a lot, especially after her mother and father had quarreled. Her mother would rush over without any warning and slap her on the back. Sometimes she would be slapped on the head. It was so painful that she felt like her soul was flying away. There was no specific reason. It might be that she was just standing in her mother's way and blocked her way.
But even until her mother changed into a short skirt and a floral shirt, put on black stockings, put on lipstick and green eye shadow, and went out humming "The Moon Represents My Heart" all the way, she still didn't come to settle the score with her.
Zhou Yue came out of the bathroom only after she heard the clattering sound of her mother's high heels fade away. Kang Xingxing was still standing at the junction of the balcony and the living room. She walked over and the air was filled with the strong smell of perfume. The rumbling sound of the washing machine had stopped long ago. The living room was quiet and she could hear the jingling of bells outside. In the evening, the uncle selling milk would ride his bicycle and wander around the nearby residential buildings.
"Does it hurt?" She grabbed the hem of her clothes and asked knowingly.
Kang Xingxing stood there, head down, not saying a word. His chin was chubby, his dark skin shiny in the sun. He neither nodded nor shook his head. Zhou Yue thought he must be in pain.
That day they occupied their parents' bed for the first time because she had peed all over the bed and it still wasn't dry.
Kang Xingxing lay on the bed, burying his face in his arms as if he had done something wrong. Zhou Yue was more frank. She lifted his clothes, sat beside him, and imitated her mother, holding the purple medicine, dipped a cotton ball in it and applied it on him. She dipped a little more and applied more and more, turning him from a little black man into a little purple man.
The curtains were opened a little, and the bed was cut in half by the sunlight. Kang Xingxing's back also seemed to be cut in half. The cut part was bright, and the rest was dark.
The pillowcase has the scent of shower gel and shampoo, as well as the original scent of his mother. Zhou Yue calls it "mom scent", but she doesn't know if Kang Xingxing can smell it because Dai Yan is not his mother.
"Gorilla, do you miss your mother?" Zhou Yue asked softly. Kang Xingxing was silent for a long time, and a hoarse, muffled voice came from the crook of his arms: "Yes."
"Then why doesn't your mother want you?"
"She's dead."
Zhou Yue hugged her legs and looked at him. There were bumps on his back, like hills. Purple medicine had formed lumps on these bumps, and the color was darker than other places. She heard the TV say "Please accept my condolences", but she felt that this would not make the person who had no mother feel any better.
“Is your mother beautiful?”
"pretty."
"As dark as you?"
"No, Mommy is white."
"Then your father is very dark."
"I don't remember Dad."
Zhou Yue thought for a moment, "Then your father is my father?" But her father is very white, and she thought of the aunt in the red dress. If her mother beat Kang Xingxing's mother, Kang Xingxing would no longer be Kang Xingxing, but a pool of sticky blood, flowing down the dirty concrete steps.
He stopped talking.
That night, Zhou Yue crawled into Kang Xingxing's bed and whispered to him, "Xingxing, you don't have a mother anymore. I can hold you for a while, just for a moment."
Kang Xingxing was still breathing silently like a lump of iron, and her milky breath brushed against Zhou Yue's nose, like the pad of a small paw brushing against the tip of her nose.
Zhou Yue was too sleepy and didn't let go of the hug as agreed. Someone hugged her in the chaos. Her mind was fuzzy, as if she was dreaming. She remembered that her parents hadn't hugged her for a long time. She subconsciously reached out to hug him. He had gained some flesh, and it was plump and firm.
"I won't drink water at night," she muttered in her sleep, "and I won't hurt you anymore."
Children always like to say "never again", but they don't know that life is really long.
Kang Xingxing remained silent. When Zhou Yue fell completely asleep, she heard him say, "I'm not in pain."
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