The plastic pearls on the crown were mottled with holes from the years, and the hanging tassels were entangled with a few strands of gray hair - like burial objects dug out from a grave.
"Put it on." Her mother rubbed the faded lipstick between her lips, and Chen Chunhua smelled the familiar sweet scent of strawberries.
This was the children's lipstick that Hua Jinyue had secretly given her. Now the lipstick was mixed with her sister-in-law's cheap perfume, and it had spread into two blood scabs on the cracked mirror surface.
The dew at the hour of Mao had not yet dissipated, and the sound of suona tore through the silence at the entrance of the village.
The wedding sedan, carried by eight people, creaked and creaked, its curtains sewn with red silk thread from disassembled fertilizer bags. Chen Chunhua was jostled and fell into the sedan. Through the leaky window, she saw Wang Daniu leading the way on a motorcycle covered in reflective strips.
He was wearing a Mao suit from the 1990s, with the third button stretched over his beer belly. His gold teeth gleamed coldly in the morning light, like weapons embedded in his fat.
"Tick-tick-tick-"
The suona suddenly played "A Hundred Birds Paying Homage to the Phoenix", and the sharp tune hurt Chen Chunhua's eardrums.
The tremolo reminded her of the Steinway piano at Ye's house, where six-year-old Ye Qingliu always loved playing etudes at dusk. Ye Qingliu pressed his fingers on the keys, the halo of the crystal chandelier dancing in his hair. "Auntie Chen..."
The sedan jolted violently, and Chen Chunhua's forehead struck the pillar. As the pain spread, the scent of wisteria suddenly lingered at her nose—the waterfall of flowers outside the piano room's floor-to-ceiling windows.
Whenever Ye Qingliu played a wrong note, flower petals would fall onto the music score. Hua Jinyue always said that the wisteria flowers that floated into the music box were notes kissed by the moonlight.
"Stop the sedan!!!"
Wang Daniu's roar shook off the memories. He lifted the curtain of the sedan chair and peered in, his drunken head smelt of alcohol. His shiny nose almost poked at the caked foundation on Chen Chunhua's face. "Who are you showing this sad face to?"
Mother Chen suddenly rushed in front of the sedan chair, the four gold bracelets on her wrists clashing with each other and saying, "Chunhua, you must be filial to your parents-in-law..."
Chen's mother pretended to wipe her tears but actually pinched her daughter's hand hard. This was the hidden strength she had acquired when she forced her elder sister to drink pesticide 20 years ago.
Twenty eight-person tables were set up in the threshing yard, their legs padded with yellowed gambling debt notes. Wang Daniu had three buttons undone, a gilded Guanyin pendant dangling from his chest hair.
He staggered over with a bottle of white wine in his hand, and the wine poured down Chen Chunhua's head. As the cold liquid slid into her collar, she suddenly caught a glimpse of half a pink hairpin flashing across the table.
That was the strawberry hairpin that Hua Jinyue had pinned on her canvas bag while crying, but now it was pinned on the little girl's hair at the end of the village - the girl was sold to a cripple last year, and now she came to the banquet with her mentally retarded son.
Two rhinestones on the hairpin had fallen off, just like the starlight that leaked in when the little girl hid in the closet and sobbed after losing her hair accessory that day.
"Husband and wife bow to each other——"
The emcee's hoarse voice startled the swallows beneath the beams. Chen Chunhua was forced to kowtow by the scruff of her neck, her forehead banging against the bluestone slabs splattered with chicken blood. As the smell of blood filled the air, Chen Chunhua heard the tinkling of a piano rising from the depths of her memory.
That day, a sudden rainstorm hit. Hua Jinyue pressed a crystal hairpin to her temple and said, "Sister Chunhua, lower your head. This way, the raindrops will slide along the hairpin and form musical notation."
Chen Chunhua stared at the hemp rope hanging from the beam. It was the same rope that had been used to hang her second aunt three years ago. Half a dried wisteria petal was wrapped around the knot.
Wang Daniu's gold teeth glowed green in the dim light. He threw off his Zhongshan suit to reveal a red vest that had been washed and deformed. The sour smell of sweat mixed with alcohol hit his face.
As the tearing pain came, a gust of wind suddenly blew through the threshing ground.
The rice husks flying all over the sky looked like a rain of wisteria flowers falling from a piano room in the sunset. Chen Chunhua closed her eyes in pain, bit her tongue, and her hands trembled uncontrollably.
Amid the smell of blood, Chen Chunhua seemed to hear the "Moonlight Sonata" played by Ye Qingliu, Hua Jinyue's silver bell-like laughter, and the French nursery rhymes she hummed softly - those were the secrets woven by the children with starlight while hiding in the cloakroom at night.
Moonlight filtered through the cracks in the tiles, gathering into tiny specks of light on her bare shoulders. Chen Chunhua suddenly remembered the last time she read "The Little Prince" to Hua Jinyue. Hua Jinyue had pointed to the roses in the illustration and said, "Sister Chunhua's eyes are brighter than the stars."
The suona outside the window had changed its tune at some point, and it was whimpering like a wild cat with its neck stepped on.
In Chen Chunhua's broken memory, the Steinway piano was playing Debussy's "Moonlight". The six-year-old boy Ye Qingliu could not reach the pedals with his feet, so Hua Jinyue put his rabbit doll under his feet.
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