"Don't pay attention to these words. When you have a boy, they'll shut them up."
Wangwang sat on the wooden chair, looking at Amian who walked a little like a duck, and said, "How about I become the godmother of your child?"
"Why do you say that?" A-Mian pretended to hit her with her spoon. "Just because it's a girl doesn't mean you won't be her godmother. I had a dream the other day where a phoenix was carrying a bundle and threw it into my arms. When I opened it, it was a very beautiful, fair-skinned little girl."
Wangwang perked up, "If you had such a dream about your baby, it must be a girl! Look at what you're saying, being a girl's godmother is the most interesting thing."
You can buy lots of pretty little clothes and shoes, dress them up, braid their hair—a cute little doll is simply the most fun thing to do.
Amian refused to agree, and said with a "humph," "Then why did you say that just now?"
"I'm sorry... I didn't know. Sigh, you don't understand. Generally, if you tell a pregnant woman it's a boy, nine times out of ten she'll be happy. It's just a polite way of saying it."
Of course, not everyone in the world thinks boys are better. To be more precise, in the poor at that time, many people could barely fill their stomachs and could not afford to have children.
The locals prefer to have sons, mainly because the eldest son will be responsible for their parents' old age, ensuring their future well-being.
"Even if my baby is a boy, I didn't have it so that he would take care of us in the future," A-Mian said in a simple and honest way.
"What will you do when you get old?"
Ah Mian had no idea and shrugged, saying, "We'll figure something out when the time comes."
She couldn't think that far ahead.
She simply felt that having a child just to make the most of it seemed like a very unfortunate thing.
As for A-Mian's dream about her pregnancy, Meng Chijian thought it was pretty good, since his family had already had enough of raising boys.
We never had any good bowls at home; they were all broken into pieces. The adults would then try to mend them and make do with what we had.
But will Ah Mian's daughter be even more mischievous than the boys?
Meng Chijian and A Mian both considered these external doubts to be a huge slander. They diligently prepared for their unborn baby.
All the scraps of cotton cloth that had been saved up were sewn into diapers.
Because of A-Mian's reputation in the village, they quickly gathered the materials to make a patchwork quilt.
Their room was also slightly renovated. Meng Chijian ordered a small wooden bed from a carpenter, painted it with varnish, let it dry, and then placed it in the house.
On the day of Qingming Festival, it drizzled.
Seeing that the dark clouds were not thick and should not turn into a downpour, Meng Chijian said, "Bring the bamboo umbrella. Amian, come here, I'll comb your hair."
Ah Mian changed her clothes, and her hair was styled in a crooked bun.
"We're not in a rush. If you feel unwell, just tell me and we'll come back first. Mom knows you're going to have a baby and won't blame you."
"Oh." A-Mian was already showing a bit of a baby bump, but her belly wasn't very big; from a distance, she didn't look much different from someone who had gained weight. Meng Chijian, mindful of the late spring chill, still made A-Mian put on her tiger-head hat.
The two dawdled and ate breakfast, and the weather had miraculously cleared up by the time they finished.
The dirt road is not easy to walk on, but the advantage is that it is not as bumpy as it used to be and does not kick up as much dust.
Amian sat on the donkey cart, while Meng Chijian sometimes led the donkey (on the bumpy and uneven parts of the road) and sometimes rode it. By noon, they finally arrived at Lujia Village.
The filial daughter, A-Mian, said she had come to pay respects to her father, and immediately received a chorus of praise.
Since being publicly beaten in the ancestral hall last time, Lu Xingjia has been unusually obedient to A-Mian's family and has stopped mentioning his father's debts. It's not wrong for the son to be in debt, but since the debt hasn't reached the married daughter, there's no point in continuing to pursue it.
But secretly she was furious, muttering angrily, "It would be best if she were to give birth to a useless girl, no, a stupid child, just like the Zhang family!"
When A-Mian offered sacrifices to her father, the offerings were very simple, consisting of some wild fruits picked along the way in spring. Yet, she still spoke with great conviction: "Father, these are the fruits you used to love eating with your wine. I'm pregnant now, and I searched for them for two days and two nights with my big belly before I could gather just these..."
That's impossible, of course.
On the way here, Meng Chijian saw A-Mian by the roadside. A-Mian clamored to try some, so he climbed a tree and picked a small basketful. A-Mian ate three or five, but then complained that they were sour. A-Dou also refused to eat them, so her father got to enjoy them.
After circling around Lu's father's grave, they went to the grave of the person they really wanted to pay their respects to.
Now, after burning a lot of yellow paper and arranging offerings properly, A-Mian said, "Mother, we've come to see you. You can use this money. Oh, and I have something very important to tell you: I'm pregnant, and I've been running my tofu pudding stall all this time. Life is pretty good now..."
After she finished speaking, it was Meng Chijian's turn to speak.
Meng Chijian always spoke well of his mother, so A-Mian wasn't worried and started looking around.
However, this time Meng Chijian came to complain!
He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket, on which were listed the various lawless crimes Ah Mian had committed since she became pregnant:
"First, Ah Mian often doesn't wear a foot cover in winter. When she was discovered, she said that wearing a foot cover was uncomfortable, and as a result, her feet were frozen solid once."
Second, A-Mian is domineering in her words and actions. She secretly told the baby twice that I have a bad temper, and said that she would be so scared that she would cry when she saw me in the future.
Third, Ah Mian, pregnant and prone to overthinking, haphazardly composed stories—"
Lu Amian panicked and protested in a low voice, "You were peeking at my notebook."
Meng Chijian took out the book. "...Even illegitimate daughters have appeared. Are you really not afraid that my mother will drag my father out of his coffin?" He knew that A Mian would never argue with him in front of her mother, so he coughed twice and began to read A Mian's storybook calmly.
Ah Mian's toes, hidden in her cloth shoes, curled up in embarrassment. "Don't read it aloud."
"You're not allowed to write anything about me finding a body double anymore. That's all made up. If the baby sees this later, he might think the family relationships are complicated. These pages are going to be burned."
“Ah…” Ah Mian looked at him pitifully, “I explained later that it was all a misunderstanding.”
"How come such a misunderstanding has been unresolved for ten years? Are we mute?" Meng Chijian burned the pages that described him finding a "substitute" and how he and A Mian were heartbroken on a rainy night, absconding with the money and the baby. Only then did he vent his anger.
"Mother, these are all things that A-Mian wrote to pass the time. Not a single word of them is true. You can read them if you're bored though."
The two talked for more than an hour. As usual, Meng Chijian asked his mother to take good care of Amian in heaven before preparing to go home.
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