7. Bad Woman
After checking the extra math problems Xiao Tong assigned her, Tang Sizhuo drew a small red flower on the paper with all the right marks with satisfaction. She swayed back and forth, and put her ear closer to the door, as if she could hear Xiao Tong coming back in advance. After the winter came, it got dark early, so when her homework, piano, words and deeds were impeccable, Xiao Tong would allow her to play in the yard for half an hour before dinner. Tang Sizhuo glanced at the clock on the wall again. Xiao Tong had gone for this week's beauty treatment and usually got home at 5:30. It was now 5:28. She silently wished in her heart that time would go faster, longing to hear footsteps coming in and going upstairs in the next second, but she didn't dare to leave the desk, for fear that Xiao Tong would come back and see that she was not studying, and would scold her for not being able to sit still and only wanting to go out to play.
She waited and waited, until finally she heard a noise downstairs. Her heart leaped with excitement, wanting to escape immediately, but then she heard Xiao Tong's screams. The security door was banging loudly, and finally, someone pushed it open and slammed against the wall. Then, shouting, cursing, groaning, fighting, all kinds of sounds poured into the living room, interweaving and echoing.
Tang Sizhuo's body seemed frozen in place, unable to even sense fear. He felt only his heart swell instantly, filling his entire chest cavity. His flesh was stretched bloodless, struggling on the brink of bursting. A strange woman's voice seemed to be cursing Xiao Tong, mixed with a few words Tang Sizhuo could understand, saying that Xiao Tong was dirty and cheap, and could only survive by crawling into men's beds.
After an unknown amount of time, the commotion finally ended with the sound of shattering glass. The sudden silence gave Tang Sizhu a sense of foreboding. She frantically glanced at her bed, curtains, desk, and wardrobe, wanting to transform into any object and hide within the furniture.
However, footsteps were heard on the stairs, dragging and shaking, one by one, slowly approaching.
Tang Sizhu's limbs began to tremble violently, and her teeth chattered. She prayed that the footsteps would last longer, so long that they would pass by her door without stopping. But it stopped, stopped in front of her bedroom door.
The moment the door was pushed open, she saw Xiao Tong's disheveled hair, bloody lips, and devil-like eyes in the backlight of the setting sun.
Xiao Tong held Tang Sizhu in her arms with unprecedented tenderness, rubbing her daughter's neck affectionately, her voice soft.
She asked Tang Sizhuo, "Before, when your uncle snatched the meat from my bowl, they said I was a fool and that I deserved it. How come it's my fault now?"
She then asked Tang Sizhuo, "It's obviously her own fault for not being able to keep a man, why is she blaming me?"
Her arms tightened more and more, and Tang Sizhu felt his mother's warm kiss in the pain of suffocation.
"You also think that Mom is not wrong, right? Mom only has you, only you... You are the flesh that fell from Mom, and you will always be one with Mom... Mom is also doing this for you..."
His confused and chaotic thoughts were no longer able to move his body. His delicate arms were bewitched and lifted up inch by inch, hugging his mother's back.
Tang Sizhuo remembered the model essay she had memorized, which said that in the warm winter sun, a mother's embrace is the best medicine to heal everything, so her empty gaze slowly fell back and focused on the fingertips that were soothing her mother.
She thought this should be a happy moment.
Zeng Xiasheng skipped the afternoon activity class and squeezed out through the fence at the school's back gate. Even if the teacher caught him, he'd only get a beating. He didn't understand the point of learning geometry and reciting ancient poetry here. A passing grade wouldn't be worth more than two pairs of cotton socks.
The snakeskin bag was hidden in his schoolbag, mixed in with wrinkled and stained textbooks and exercises. He took off his school uniform jacket and stuffed it inside, leaving only an oversized sweater. He ran to the bus stop and nimbly squeezed into the crowd, squatting, hunching his back, and hunching his body. He boarded the bus on the 1.2-meter-long line and managed to snatch a seat. Eight stops later, Zeng Xiasheng got off at a nature park on the outskirts of Jiangming City and quickly ran towards the villa area across the way.
This exclusive neighborhood, where adults couldn't get in, was like a treasure trove to him. He didn't have to compete with other scavengers, the trash cans were always full, and he often found discarded clothes. Coming once a week was enough to meet his needs. Although he was nearly wrongly accused of being a thief a few months ago, he also had other gains, such as the little girl who would occasionally appear at the windowsill and talk to him in a soft voice.
She said her name was Tang Sizhuo because her mother wanted her to be better than everyone else. It was clearly a good omen, but the girl didn't seem happy saying it. She then asked him what his name was and who gave it to him. Zeng Xiasheng thought about it and said he didn't know. He didn't know his name until he started elementary school. Maybe it was given by the police station, since he was born in the summer.
They didn't talk much, though. Tang Sizhuo would only dare run upstairs when no one was home, stand on tiptoe, poke half her head out the window, and call his name with a smile. Most of the time, she stayed in her bedroom on the second floor, staring down at the stairs. When Zeng Xiasheng looked up during a break from his work, she would wave excitedly or rock her lost and found teddy bear.
Zeng Xiasheng calculated the time, sweeping through each house before the adults returned. He arrived at Tang Sizhuo's house just as she was getting out of school. Lately, she'd been able to occasionally come out to play. They'd hide in the woods, in the shadows behind the pump house, playing games that the two of them could barely play. Tang Sizhuo never disdained his tattered clothes, but Zeng Xiasheng would still try to clean himself up. After all, a well-dressed young girl always had a pleasant, sweet, fruity scent, and he didn't want to disappoint her.
However, on this day, he slowly searched the trash can downstairs in her building, then hid in the corner and waited again and again, until he knew he would miss the last bus if he didn't go back, and he didn't see the girl show up.
After nightfall, the community became lively again. Ladies walking their dogs were strolling leisurely. Zeng Xiasheng heard Tang Sizhuo's name in their deliberately lowered voices.
They said she was so pitiful for having a mother who was not ashamed of being a mistress.
They also said she was so beautiful, and I'm afraid that she will learn from them in a few years.
Tang Sizhuo was taken away by Xiao Tong and put in a hotel for a few days. Xiao Tong alternated between tears and laughter, insisting that Tang Sizhuo remain within her sight, as they depended on each other. The closed curtains masked the passage of time, and only the three daily room service reminders of her connection to reality. A week later, Sun Changming returned from a business trip and took them home, assuring Xiao Tong that he was only still struggling with the division of property and that they would definitely divorce within two years.
Tang Sizhuo thought she should make up an excuse to her classmates for her disappearance, but the argument that day seemed to spread silently in the air, passing through her home, over the community wall, over the dense trees in the park, and diffused across the campus. Wherever she walked, the casual chatter would abruptly cease, replaced by pairs of deliberately lowered, quietly observing eyes.
They said her mother was a bad woman, so she would be a bad woman in the future too.
They also mentioned her when they were playing, attacking each other with a vague understanding, saying "Tang Sizhuo wants to be your stepmother."
Tang Sizhuo didn't dare mention this to Xiao Tong, not even to the teacher. She thought what they said was true, because she was Xiao Tong's child and inherited her beauty, but also her meanness naturally.
The only purpose of going to school was to study. She no longer participated in activities, talked to people, or stayed after school. Only when she hid in her bedroom, took out her treasured teddy bear from under the bed, and curled up behind the heavy curtains could she feel a little bit of peace.
She looked out from the second floor every day, wondering when Zeng Xiasheng would come back, but she would hide at the slightest sign of trouble.
Zeng Xiasheng and she were not in the same school, but perhaps the gossip had already taken root throughout the city and, like dandelions, was blown away to even farther places.
Zeng Xiasheng, as usual, skipped out on Wednesday afternoon's activities class. His ripped schoolbag was neatly packed for the first time, free of falling-apart exercise books and stinky plastic bags. He wiped and rinsed it again before finally putting the bear pendant he'd bought at the mall that weekend inside. The pendant had cost him nearly all his savings. Seeing his awkward attire and hesitant expression, the clerk kindly reminded him that they also had it sold at the nearby wholesale market. It looked similar, but the price was less than a tenth of what he'd paid here.
But Zeng Xiasheng picked it up and put it down, put it down and picked it up again, and finally decided to be the one who was taken advantage of.
He couldn't understand why the price was so high, and he didn't even understand why he should buy such a useless toy, but the girl said that when she couldn't see him, she could only talk to the teddy bear, so Zeng Xiasheng thought that if he gave her another teddy bear, she would have another friend.
Lacking snakeskin bags to carry the waste, and fearing getting his hands dirty, he climbed over the wall and could only regretfully pass by the trash cans in front of each household. He slipped into the small courtyard below Tang Sizhuo's building and squatted in the shade of a corner, waiting for her. Tang Sizhuo finished school at 3:30 pm, and the driver would pick her up at the school gate on time and take her home another ten minutes later. So Zeng Xiasheng didn't have to wait long before he saw a black car pull up, Tang Sizhuo opened the door, and walked home with his head lowered.
Zeng Xiasheng shook the branches of a nearby bush, making some noise, but Tang Sizhuo paid no attention, walking straight into the living room and closing the door. He had no choice but to stand up, wary of anyone who might pass by, and hit her bedroom window with a small stone. The curtains swung several times, but Tang Sizhuo didn't come out as usual.
After several hours, when Zeng Xiasheng was almost ready to leave, Tang Sizhuo finally peeked out of the first-floor window. Her eyes welled up at the sight of him. Zeng Xiasheng hurriedly pulled the teddy bear from his bag and thrust it through the security net at her, but Tang Sizhuo didn't take it.
She lay on the windowsill, tears streaming down her face, and asked him if he would hate her if she became a bad woman in the future.
Bad woman.
In that self-built house in the urban-rural fringe, there were many evil women. Starting in the evening, they would appear, accompanied by the successive lighting of light boxes, heavily made up, with strange smiles on their faces, bare legs even in the coldest weather, and exuding a pungent fragrance. His grandmother would always sit at the doorway, cursing and mumbling in dialect, saying that it was these evil women who had ruined his father, and blaming his mother for being useless, dying too early, unable to protect the family.
Zeng Xiasheng looked up at Tang Sizhuo. Her face was flushed from crying and her eyelashes were covered with tears.
He thought, she is so clean, so pretty, and has no strange smell, how could she be a bad woman?
So Zeng Xiasheng stood on tiptoe, held the teddy bear in front of her, and shook it gently.
"You're not a bad woman," he said. "No bad woman would be friends with a bear."
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