The third day after eating the cake was the first day of school. Lin Shuying had been crazy all summer long, and she was a little overwhelmed at the thought of going back to school. She didn't start to organize her schoolbag until the morning of the first day of school.
It was the second son, Lin Shu, who packed up the cloth bag that Chen Chunhua had made for him that night after eating the cake. Inside it were the pencils, erasers, and a small, thin notebook that Lin Guoqing had brought back from the provincial capital.
Lin Shugan treasured it like a treasure. He refused to let the third and fourth children touch it, saying that their parents would buy it for them after they went to school. The two youngest children were extremely jealous.
Early in the morning, Lin Shuying took Lin Shugan's hand and went out to school together. When they passed by their aunt Lin Yulan's house, Ma Wuni and Ma Liuni came back carrying a basin of clothes, followed by Ma Qini, who kept chattering.
"Sister Shuying! Brother Shugan!" Ma Qini greeted her cousins from her uncle's family quickly when she saw them, and Wuni and Liuni also turned around to look at her.
"Sister Wu Ni, Sister Liu Ni, Sister Qi Ni, you are back from washing clothes so early." Lin Shuying greeted them like an adult.
Qi Ni is 4 years old, the same age as Lin Shuchao. She has two pigtails that look very lively. I don't know which of her sisters did them for her. Wu Ni is 9 years old and Liu Ni is 7 years old. They don't go to school yet. Their clothes are worn but clean.
Originally, washing clothes was not their job, but their mother was still in confinement recently, and their grandparents, father, and eldest and second sisters all had to go to work, so their third and fourth sisters took on the responsibilities of cooking, feeding the chickens and ducks, and taking care of their mother and two youngest sisters during the day.
The two of them were responsible for washing clothes, cleaning and taking care of Qini.
Liu Ni was very envious when she saw her two cousins carrying school bags and looking like they were going to school.
"Shugan is going to school this year, right? This school bag is so pretty, is it something your aunt made for you?"
Lin Shu nodded. "My grandma brought me half a meter of cloth, but the color is a bit strange..."
It was red, and the cloth was torn according to Mrs. Liang's own aesthetic taste. She said it was festive, so Lin Shu had no choice but to use it.
"It's not strange. It's good enough that I can go to school. There's no need to be so strange." She wanted to say something, but after looking at her sister's expression, she changed her mind and said something.
"You guys should go to school quickly, or you'll be late. We'll go in first."
The two groups separated at the door. The brother and sister still walked hand in hand towards the school, while the two sisters opened the door and walked in carrying the wooden basin.
Qi Ni refused to go into the house. She held onto the door panel and kept looking in the direction where her cousin and the others had gone. She didn't go in until the figures disappeared.
Wu Ni and Liu Ni were hanging the washed clothes on the clothesline. They were both young, and the clothesline was a little too high for them. Someone on one side had to swing the clothes over, and someone on the other side had to catch the other end, and then spread them out together.
The Ma family has a large population, and they can hang a whole yard of clothes every day.
"Fifth sister! Sixth sister! When can Xiaoqi go to school?" Qi Ni circled around the two of them, occasionally moving under their wet clothes and pants, and was pulled out by Wu Ni.
"Come out! If your clothes get wet later, I won't have any extra clothes for you to change into!"
Her tone was not very good, and Qi Ni pouted when she heard it. She turned around, hugged her sixth sister's waist and hid behind her.
Liu Ni looked at her seventh sister, then at her fifth sister, and sighed, "Fifth sister, Qi Ni doesn't know..."
Two years ago, when Ma Wuni was 7 and Lin Shuying was 6, she watched her cousin skipping to school, carrying her schoolbag and holding her uncle's hand. She was so envious that she asked her cousin why she didn't have to go to school. She wanted to go to school too.
In the end, her grandmother brushed her off by saying she had no money and had used it to buy medicine for her mother. What medicine? Her mother wasn't sick. Grandma said her mother couldn't have children.
Ma Wuni was filled with confusion. Aren't all her sisters her mother's? And her mother was pregnant with another child, so why wouldn't she give birth? She felt like her mother had been giving birth for as long as she could remember.
I went back to ask my parents, but my father only sighed and my mother just kept wiping away tears. My eldest sister said that because there were so many people, it was hard to just feed them, so where would we get the money for her education?
She was even more puzzled. If there were too many people, why would they have more children? If they had no money, why would they spend money on medicine for a disease that didn't cause them?
The eldest sister said that her mother was pregnant with her younger brother, and once he was born, she wouldn’t have to take medicine anymore, and she wouldn’t have to have any more children in the future, so she could save money for her education.
In the end, the one she gave birth to was not a brother, but Bani, and then she continued to get pregnant. She seemed to understand something, but her grandmother didn't finish her words. It's not that her mother can't give birth, but she can't give birth to a brother.
So when will she be born? When can she go to school?
She rolled on the ground and made a fuss about going to school, saying that all the other children went to school, but she and her sisters didn't. So if her mother couldn't give birth to a younger brother, would she never be able to go to school?
But the final outcome was that she was beaten with a rattan stick by her grandfather, and her grandmother was still cursing and angrily, saying that she was cursing the Ma family to have no descendants, that she was a jinx, an ungrateful person, who came specifically to bring disaster upon the Ma family, and that it would not be an exaggeration to beat her to death.
If her mother hadn't rushed over to protect her, her sisters hadn't knelt on the ground to plead for her, and her father hadn't hugged her grandfather's thighs and said they would try harder, that day would probably have been her death anniversary.
From then on, Wu Ni never mentioned going to school again, but every morning she would sit at the door and watch other children go to school.
Liuni was still young that year, but she already has some memories. She remembers that her sister was very lively and cheerful, and she liked to play cat's cradle with her. But ever since she was beaten by her grandparents, she no longer liked to play anything. When she was not working, she would sit at the door and look into the distance for the whole day.
That direction, she remembered, was the village primary school.
Ma Wu Ni lowered her head and said nothing. Liu Ni gritted her teeth and whispered in her ear,
"Fifth sister, I saw Daddy get money from Grandma the other day and divide it among the eldest and second sisters."
Wu Ni still lowered her head and did not move, but she stopped the movement of her hands.
"It seems to mean that from now on they don't have to give their work points to grandma anymore, they can just keep it in their own hands!"
Ma Wuni raised her head quickly, her eyes sparkling, "Really? When did it happen?"
Ma Liuni nodded, "The day after Mom went to the hospital to give birth to the ninth child, Dad went to Grandma's room and told her. I was feeding the chickens in the back and heard it with my own ears!"
There must have been some talk about not having children anymore, but she didn't hear it clearly, and she didn't really believe what her parents said. But she did see that the money was given to her eldest and second sisters.
She wanted to say, "Fifth sister, if you really want to go to school, why don't you go and see if you can earn some money so that you can support yourself in school."
However, Ma Wuni's ideas were slightly different from hers.
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