Everyone looked at Sun Hongmei. The dissatisfaction in Liu Zhishuang's eyes scared Sun Hongmei so much that she wanted to stop talking, but she was unwilling to accept it: this year she did not work in Pingan Manor, so she would not get any share of the dividends from Pingan Manor. If Xia Juhua really said that each branch and she would each manage half, the dividends of the first branch couple would be much more than Liu Zhishuang alone!
How could I be outdone by the first wife's life just after getting married? Sun Hongmei tried her best to ignore Liu Zhishuang's gaze on her, tried to smile more naturally, and spoke a little slower so that her voice would not sound so harsh:
"I heard that in Ping An Manor, the old man who heads the family usually keeps some money for use in case of emergency, and the remaining dividends are divided equally among the brothers. Mother is thinking of keeping half of the dividends, and the remaining half will be divided equally between us and my eldest brother, right?"
Liu Zhiquan and Wang Caifeng were stunned, but Liu Zhishuang was not. His eyes turned red and he wanted to cover Sun Hongmei's mouth immediately: This woman really doesn't want to live a good life, right? These days, he has been pretending to be crazy and stupid in front of his mother to make her happy. Who is he doing this for?
Couldn't she see that her mother ignored her and no one else wanted to pay attention to her? It was too late for her to listen to her mother and let her know that she really wanted to correct her mistakes. How could she have the nerve to say that she wanted to share the profits with her eldest brother and sister-in-law?
Liu Zhishuang didn't believe that Sun Hongmei didn't understand what his mother meant at first. There was only one reason why she said that, which was that she felt that the money she got was too little, and that her mother was unfair, so she wanted to get the same amount as her eldest brother and his wife.
Did she really think that her mother had been saving face for her these few days because she was afraid that she would go back to her parents' home and be single for the rest of her life? Liu Zhishuang looked at Sun Hongmei like a fool and was in no mood to cover up for her. Without waiting for Xia Juhua to speak, he asked, "Who did you hear that from?"
"What?" Sun Hongmei was stunned by Liu Zhishuang's question and asked without thinking.
Xia Juhua still didn't say anything, just looked at Liu Zhishuang and continued to ask Sun Hongmei: "I want to ask you, from whom did you hear that Ping'an Manor has such a rule, that no matter how many work points the brothers earn, they have to share it equally among the several families? Tell me about it."
Sun Hongmei couldn't say it, and couldn't say it.
After Sun Guizhi instigated Sun's family to come to their house and cause trouble, Sun Hongmei promised Liu Zhishuang that she would never have any contact with Sun Guizhi again. Now she dared not say that she had told her before Sun Guizhi introduced her to Liu Zhishuang. The old Liu family has always done this, so Liu Sizhuang and his wife can live a lazy life every day and still have enough food and clothes.
Even without her saying anything, Liu Zhishuang could guess who had given Sun Hongmei this idea. No one in the room could have guessed it except Liu Baoguo.
Xia Juhua looked at Sun Hongmei who was speechless, and suddenly she lost interest - arguing with a brainless person, her own brain was useless. She shook her head at Liu Zhishuang: "Second brother, you don't need to ask her, and I don't want to listen to her. She is not my child, I can't control her, I will listen to whatever you two say."
The harmonious atmosphere had long since disappeared. Liu Zhiquan looked at Liu Zhishuang angrily and had to nod in agreement with Xia Juhua. Wang Caifeng wanted to express that she didn't want to take the money, but was glared back by Liu Zhiquan.
Didn't Xia Juhua see the look Liu Zhiquan gave Wang Caifeng? She had been paying attention to everyone's actions with her peripheral vision, so how could she not see it? It was because she saw it that she became more determined to let the two sons live separately - Liu Zhiquan could make Wang Caifeng shut up at any time in this life, so why couldn't he do it in his previous life?
There was no point in thinking too much, so Xia Juhua neatly divided the money from the two rooms into two parts, and pushed one of them in front of Liu Zhiquan and Liu Zhishuang: "It's getting late, have you counted correctly? If you are, go back to sleep, you still have to go to work tomorrow."
Liu Zhiquan opened his mouth and swallowed his words. Xia Juhua had no interest in knowing what he was swallowing. Liu Zhishuang put aside his lazy behavior of the past two days, stuffed the money into his pocket without even counting it, and suddenly stood up and walked out the door.
Sun Hongmei looked at Xia Juhua somewhat at a loss, and found that her mother-in-law didn't even glance at her. She stood up with Liu Zhishuang in boredom, and said with a forced smile: "Mom, you should also go to bed early. Sister-in-law, you are in a heavy body, so I will cook for you tomorrow morning."
After she said that, Xia Juhua remembered that she had forgotten to take out the food for tomorrow morning's cooking because of the money, so she had to get off the kang. Wang Caifeng said that she would go to get food for Xia Juhua, but she refused. Since the day she took back the key, Xia Juhua never thought of giving the key to anyone else.
It has nothing to do with trust or not, she just wants everyone in the family to understand that without her, they won't even have enough to eat.
Are you angry and think that you, as a mother-in-law, are too strict and want to go out and complain about yourself? Xia Juhua is not worried at all. Her approach is a common practice in Pingan Village where families that have not separated their families usually do so. When daughters-in-law go out and complain, people who hear them will teach them a lesson.
Thinking of Sun Hongmei's broken iron voice that night, Xia Juhua found some cotton before going to bed and plugged her ears. She actually slept soundly. I don't know if the cotton really blocked the noise for her, or if the couple didn't have any conflicts at all. Xia Juhua would rather be the latter - she is not a member of the Red Team, and she hopes that her family will be in turmoil every day.
If you didn't hear it, it didn't happen. Now Xia Juhua is very good at pretending to be deaf and dumb. She can ignore the smugness in Wang Caifeng's eyes and eyebrows, and she can turn a blind eye to Sun Hongmei cooking with unkempt hair again.
The current Sun Hongmei is completely different from the sympathy she received in her previous life. Xia Juhua doesn't have that much energy to spend on her as she has more important things to do.
For example, the rice that had been bought back from the warehouse had been picked out, and the broken rice had been sifted out. It was time to grind it into flour and mix it into the cornmeal, and then steam it into the dry grain when the Liu Zhiquan brothers went to repair the dike.
In the past, Xia Juhua never ordered others to do this kind of work. She could grind the mill herself after lunch, and it would take two or three days to grind the rice. Now she is not so stupid. Why not use her sons? She directly ordered her two sons to grind the mill, and no one else could expect to eat the ready-made rice.
Wang Caifeng felt a little sorry for the man and wanted to take the bag on Liu Zhiquan's back to grind the mill. But Xia Juhua asked her, "Don't you care about that thing in your stomach?" Liu Zhiquan obediently put the bag of food on his shoulders.
As for Sun Hongmei, who wanted to ease the relationship with Liu Zhishuang and wanted to go with him, Xia Juhua said nothing because Sun Hongmei was not pregnant and every rural woman had experienced hard work.
Xia Juhua didn't think Sun Hongmei was overdoing it at all - she was busy every day weaving reed mats in the production team's yard. At this time, Xia Juhua had already woven three reed mats, the fastest of all the women.
The women who wanted to see Xia Juhua laugh at first now just wanted her to weave slower, because compared to her, they were obviously slacking off - the reed mats sold at the supply and marketing cooperative cost 2.5 yuan a sheet, and the production team charged 1.5 yuan. The production team gave the women who weaved mats five to six hours a day, but required them to weave one reed mat in two and a half days before they could be credited.
Many women were illiterate, but many knew how to calculate work points. They could figure out how much work they had to do to get the work points they were worth, so as not to anger the production team leaders, and to avoid doing too much and getting into trouble. Women in the production team had lived this way for many years, and except for those like Li Changwang who were too slow and made people uncomfortable, no one else could blame anyone.
As a result, Xia Juhua wove three reed mats in five days, disrupting the peace of the women weaving reed mats. Everyone looked at her in a strange way. This "Xia Xiaohuo" was too capable. In the past, people only thought she was strong and could endure hardships, but they didn't expect that she was so good at doing work that didn't require any strength but only skill.
Compared with her, Liu Erzhuang and the accountant were no longer happy with those women who were slacking off at work, and even gave them an ultimatum that if they failed to weave a mat within two days, they would only be given four work points a day in the future.
No one knew what the women were discussing. An Baoling sat next to Xia Juhua that day, weaving mats absent-mindedly and looking at Xia Juhua from time to time.
"Just say what you want to say." Xia Juhua felt frightened by An Baoling's gaze, so she had to ask herself.
An Baoling felt a little embarrassed. It was hard to say this. But if she didn't tell everyone to take less credit, Xia Juhua would inevitably be gossiped about behind her back. An Baoling gritted her teeth and said, "Can you weave the mats a little slower?"
"What?" Xia Juhua didn't quite understand. She was always so focused on her work that she didn't care about anything else. She couldn't understand why she had to work slower when she could be fast: "Isn't it okay to finish early and go home earlier?"
An Baoling was amused by her innocent expression: "It's not that I can't, it's that you don't fit in. If everyone gets one less day's work because of you, won't they all hate you?"
Xia Juhua is a quick worker. The word "slacking off" doesn't exist in her dictionary. She looked at An Baoling with some embarrassment: "But I get used to it as I weave. I can't be slow."
Well, An Baoling didn't know what to say. Xia Juhua herself began to think, and realized that if she really let all the women weaving the mats squeeze out, Sun Hongmei and Sun Guizhi would have to use their skills again, and the sympathy she had won by the words she said when she first came to weave the mats would be blown away by the wind.
How could she weave the mat more slowly and still make Liu Erzhuang and the accountant feel that it was a natural process? Xia Juhua thought about it and came up with an idea. When she was breaking the reed pieces, she deliberately picked a few reed stalks that had been stored for a long time and had darkened in color, and used these reed stalks to weave four double happiness characters at the four corners of the mat.
Because the four corners had to be symmetrical and it was the first time to weave words on the mat, Xia Juhua spent two and a half days weaving this mat. Liu Erzhuang, who was inspecting it, asked in disbelief, "Sister-in-law, did someone say something to you? Why are you weaving so slowly this time?"
劉二壯的生産隊長也不是白當的，又給夏菊花做了二十來年的小叔子，知道他嫂子幹活有多利索。兩天半才編一張席，根本不是她嫂子的水平，一定是那些婦女們對着嫂子說怪話了。
他都想好了，只要夏菊花一點頭，他就去給那些老娘們上上課，咋地，自己磨洋工編的慢，還編排人家編的快的，是不是都想從此以後真記四個工？
夏菊花不想得罪一群人，連忙搖頭說：“不是不是，我是想着咱們編出來的席子，別的生産隊也都會編，所以供銷社才給不上價，就試着編了喜字上去。你往供銷社交的時候問問，這張席他們能不能提一下價。”
“往席上編字？”劉二壯有些不相信，打開席子一眼就看出夏菊花這張席與別人編的不同：四個雙喜字各據一角，顏色是淡金色，在四周潔白的葦片襯托之下，橫平豎直的看着就精神。
“嫂子，你是咋想出來的？”劉二壯摸索着一個喜字，動作很輕，生怕自己把喜字的顏色摸掉了一樣。會計在旁邊看着也新奇，說：
“二壯，要不這席別往供銷社交了，正好我兄弟要結婚，我出兩塊五買下來得了。”供銷社應該不會出這麽高的錢收，當哥哥的送兄弟這麽一張與衆不同的炕席，看着好看說着好聽。
劉二壯有些為難的看夏菊花，席是夏菊花編的不假，可葦子是生産隊統一割回來的，場地也是生産隊提供的，不管會計用多少錢買，夏菊花也只能得到一天五個工的工分。
夏菊花另有想頭，她笑着跟會計說：“你兄弟結婚不是還得兩天呢嗎，我再給他編一張，你自己找葦子，我回家編趕趕工，不收錢。這張還是去公社問問，要是能提提價的話，咱們以後都這麽編，隊裏收入還能多點兒。”
“行！”劉二壯直接同意了，會計也眉開眼笑的直向夏菊花道謝，還跟劉二壯商量這幾天是不是就該給夏菊花記六個工。
劉二壯是沒啥意見，夏菊花也不覺得自己不該多得一個工分——她比別人編的席都快，憑啥不能多得一個工。不過她還是和劉二壯跟會計說：“還是等二壯從供銷社回來再說吧。要不你們剛說要給別人一天記四個工，就給我記六個，那些人還不把我吃了。”
婦女們的嘴，劉二壯和會計都領教過，兩人點頭同意了夏菊花的意見，夏菊花就重新坐回了自己的位置。別人不知道夏菊花編席編出了花樣，坐在她旁邊的安寶玲可看得清楚着呢，見她回來就湊過來問：“我二哥咋說的？”
夏菊花上次跟供銷社主任打過交道，知道他是一個有想法的人，心裏對提價還是挺期待的。但席子跟糖霜花生不一樣，誰知道供銷社主任會不會看上眼，只好說：“還得看供銷社提不提價呢。”
安寶玲比夏菊花本人還樂觀：“我覺得行，你那幾個字編得多好呀，大小都一樣，別說結婚的年輕人，就是我都想給自己家編一張。”
夏菊花樂了，也不急着重新起邊，繼續去葦垛裏找顏色深重些的葦杆破了起來。就算供銷社不提價，她還得繼續編普通的葦席，也得把給會計兄弟結婚用的席子編好不是。
沒等夏菊花把所有挑出來的葦杆破完，劉二壯已經從供銷社回來了，臉上看不出多少喜氣，反而表情十分凝重的看着編席的婦女們。
安寶玲知道他是從供銷社回來的，不由碰了碰夏菊花的胳膊：“我二哥這是咋啦，就算供銷社不同意提價，也不至于跟丢了錢似的。”
夏菊花也覺得劉二壯的表情有些奇怪，就如安寶玲說的，供銷社不同意提價，那夏菊花接着編普通的席子好了，劉二壯用不着苦大仇深的看着所有人。
沒見大家被看的席都不知道怎麽編了，還有人竟然被葦片劃破了手指頭——以前也沒見劉二壯這麽有威嚴呀。
“嫂子，你過來我有點事和你商量。”劉二壯又把編席的人看了個遍，最後招呼夏菊花。安寶玲十分不解的看向夏菊花，發現大嫂也一臉詫異的看劉二壯。
看來大嫂也不知道劉二壯找她是什麽事兒。
夏菊花心裏納悶，臉上自然帶着疑惑，劉二壯沒走遠，就在場院邊上等着她。見夏菊花過來，他先嘆了一口氣說：“嫂子，供銷社覺得你那張席編的挺好，同意按二塊一張收。”
一張席就提價五毛，這難道不是好事兒嗎？劉二壯咋還跟人欠了他錢似的？夏菊花越發不解，不過她的性格從不主動打聽事兒，只看着劉二壯等他接着往下說。
劉二壯對大嫂很了解，才覺得接下來的話很為難。再為難也得說，他又往場院裏看了一圈，仍然沒發現能代替夏菊花的人，只好開口道：“供銷社想跟咱們生産隊定兩百張席，都要你編的那個花樣。”
還是好事呀。生産隊編席的婦女有十幾個人，按現在的進度有一個月就能完成供銷社的訂單，都不會耽誤過年。看着劉二壯為難的表情，夏菊花後知後覺的想到，花樣是自己想出來的，新席也是自己編出來的，場院裏的婦女們還不會編新花樣。
于是她向劉二壯笑了一下：“沒事，下午我把新花樣教給大家，一起編很快就編完了。”會編葦席的哪兒有笨人，不過是大家的手藝都是一代一代傳下來的，沒有人想過改變罷了。
夏菊花相信，只要她用心教，這些婦女用不了兩天，都能學會怎麽把雙喜編到席上去。
誰知劉二壯聽了她的話，表情并沒有松動多少，還是那麽擰着眉苦着臉站着，真跟夏菊花欠了他幾百塊錢不還似的。
夏菊花想了想又說：“其實你把這些人分分工，誰破葦片破的好就專門破葦片，編席快的就專門編席，找不同顏色葦杆的也專門派個人，二百張席不是難事。”
劉二壯聽到嫂子一心替自己分憂，更不好意思把話說出口了。他不說，不代表別人不說，王彩鳳已經抱着劉保國出現在場院邊上，見夏菊花在跟劉二壯說話，叫了一聲：“娘。”劉保國更是張着兩只小手一邊叫奶一邊求抱。
這下子劉二壯不說也得說了。在夏菊花疑惑家裏有什麽事兒，讓王彩鳳非得抱着劉保國來找自己的時候，聽到劉二壯艱難的說：
“供銷社主任說了，上次你炒的花生縣供銷社很滿意，所以想讓你再炒二千斤花生。剛才我回來的時候，彩鳳她堂姐帶着東西一起過來了。”
夏菊花一下子知道劉二壯為啥不好意思說出口了：她給供銷社炒花生，是按斤得補貼，實實在在落在自己的口袋裏。給生産隊編席卻不一樣，得先教會這些婦女，然後每天得到的只有五六個工分。
沒上過學的都會算這一筆帳。
生産隊長劉二壯也會算，還算得很精明——供銷社主任說了，如果一個月內能交上二百張席，就直接給生産隊現錢，賣的好的話過了年還會跟生産隊定。一張席足足多出五毛錢，劉二壯傻了才不同意。
他可以同意，夏菊花怎麽辦？兩千斤花生同樣不是小數目，炒起來得費力氣、看火候，同樣需要年前交到供銷社。大嫂哪兒來的時間即炒花生又教別人編席？！
從生産隊的利益出發，劉二壯當然希望夏菊花教會所有人編新花樣。可是從夏菊花的角度呢？一直覺得對夏菊花和兩個侄子有所虧欠的劉二壯，真沒有立場讓夏菊花放棄替供銷社炒花生。
就在劉二壯不知所措的時候，夏菊花開口了：“我這兩天晚上多炒一會兒花生，白天教大家編花樣。”
“嫂子。”劉二壯有些感動，張了張嘴沒說出口。這已經是最好的解決辦法，不管他再說什麽都顯得虛僞。
知道劉二壯為啥為難，也就知道王彩鳳為啥來找自己，夏菊花跟劉二壯打了個招呼，上前接過劉保國，跟着王彩鳳快步回家——王彩霞是王彩鳳的堂姐，大小算是娘家客。人又幫過夏菊花的忙，連炒花生的活也是因為她才得到的，夏菊花當然不能怠慢了王彩霞。
“你來也不說一聲，我要是早知道就在家等着你不去上工了，倒讓你等着我，多不好。”
王彩霞聽了一笑：“我們主任本來還想着你們生産隊活多，晚兩天再把花生給你送來。今天見了你們生産隊長，聽說你跟着編席呢，覺得還不如讓你替供銷社炒花生賺錢，就讓我給你送來了。”
說着，她指了指已經卸到倉房門口的幾個大麻袋說：“都在這兒了，出庫的時候我替你看過了，一斤份量都不少。”
Xia Juhua quickly pulled her towards the main room, saying as they walked: "If someone else had brought it to me, I would have weighed it in person. There is nothing for us to worry about. Don't leave at noon, just eat at home."
Wang Caifeng still wanted to refuse, but Xia Juhua whispered to her: "We are real relatives, I won't be polite with you. But there is also the boss of the car, we can't let him help us in vain." In the future, it will be inevitable to deal with the supply and marketing cooperative, and it will be inevitable to ask the boss of the car for help, so it is time to establish a good relationship now.
Xia Juhua didn’t understand these things in her previous life, so she has to learn them from scratch in this life.