Chapter 364
As Qingming Festival was approaching, he asked if she wanted to ask someone to go to her mother's grave to pay tribute.
Wang Jiazhi felt sad when she thought of her mother lying there alone. No one had visited the grave for nearly ten years.
She made a kitten out of patchwork cloth and asked people to put it on the grave.
I went to the ancestral graves in my hometown once or twice when I was very young, but I don't remember the way at all. The last time I went was when I sent my mother there, and she couldn't remember the exact location after all these years. It's really quite remote and hard to find. But for those people, finding a place is easy.
She drew a rough map from memory and then wrote down some reference points she remembered.
He said, "It's better not to write it. Just ask someone when the time comes."
She also felt that this ambiguous topographical map was useless.
Then I wrote down the names of my grandfather, father, and mother, which I would use when asking for directions. That was all that was useful.
After writing the note, Wang Jiazhi smiled and said, "I need your help with something."
"What's up?"
"Send someone to check on my aunt. My aunt deserved to die, but she still has a son. My uncle is a very good man, but he only has that one son. I don't know how he is doing now."
He returned that day with a letter. Her cousin, who had been working out of town, had heard from neighbors that her aunt had been missing for over six months, and when he returned, he discovered his mother was missing. He'd called the police, but who could help him find her? He didn't seem overly worried, saying his work wouldn't allow him to take long leave, and he'd been back on time. He hadn't been seen since, but he'd mentioned plans to sell his house in Shanghai and never return.
The letter was from her brother, and because no one was at home, he kept it under a soy sauce bottle in the neighbor's kitchen.
Wang Jiazhi looked at the date on the envelope and saw it was a year ago. Of course, she was complaining about her father and stepmother.
It's about how Dad only cares about his stepbrother's younger brother and how he's treating him worse and worse, forcing him to live on campus and work part-time. It also talks about how Dad lost a lot of money in a failed investment, instigated by his stepmother. It's just a bunch of complaints.
Wang Jiazhi thought, "I'm not asking you to do anything. A grown man, how can he not endure the hardship of working part-time while studying?" But it's a waste of money to let him study. It's better to find him something to do now. She had originally wanted to inquire about her cousin, but she didn't expect to bring back news about her own brother.
She always talked to him about her mother, but rarely about her father and brother. However, when she had an attack, she would mention them briefly, and he knew a little about them.
He couldn't understand it. It was understandable that someone couldn't survive, even selling their children. He had money, yet he left his daughter alone in the turmoil of these troubled times. And such a good daughter at that. Even an animal wouldn't do such a thing.
After her mother's death, she encountered nothing but evil spirits, not a single good person, and terrible things happened one after another. Under such circumstances, it was rare for Wang Jiazhi to remain a normal person, not to go crazy or commit suicide, but to only have occasional seizures.
Later, someone came back to say that the grass on the grave was very tall and had been trimmed, and everything else was fine, with no leaks or damage. He also brought back a few small flowers that had bloomed on the grave.
She looked at the flowers with mixed feelings. He also asked someone to bring back a glass jar of kapok flowers for her.
There were other things too, including a few packages of snacks that were surprisingly bought near her home. Back then, her family always bought them there. Perhaps he deliberately had someone buy things near her home so she would feel more at ease seeing them.
Actually, only seven or eight years had passed, and the dim sum shop was still going strong. But for her family, a lot had changed. Her mother had passed away, her father had remarried abroad, and she was dead too. The house had been bought by her aunt, and she didn't know who lived there now, or who would take over her house.
Every year there is a spider that spins a web on the window. I wonder if it will come again now.
The sun still rises day after day, the vegetation still withers and grows again and again, countless people in this world still rush towards happiness or tragedy, and the joys and sorrows of life still unfold. However, some people are already dead, and everything has nothing to do with them anymore.
How can there be no regrets? But this is where it ends.
He asked, "Are you really not going back to take a look?"
She understood what he meant. If she didn't go back now, she might never be able to go back.
"I'm not going back."
In their previous life, none of them returned to their hometown until they died, but they had to find a place to be buried after death.
Ever since she had an attack a few days ago that made them both cry, Wang Jiazhi is now more careful than before not to let him see her sad.
She pulled out a kitten pillow from behind her pillows. She'd recently been learning to make fabrics, and besides the one for her mother, she'd made two more. She'd made a calico kitten for her daughter, but animal pillows like that weren't particularly comfortable, so she just kept them in her crib as a snuggle toy. The larger one was for him, a white cat with a pattern of colorful canvases and a long white tail.
"Take it to the lounge and use it as a pillow to sleep. I put some nightshade in it. How can I sleep with all that dripping noise?"
"The sound of dripping water is only downstairs, how can there be any sound upstairs? Hmm!"
When Wang Jiazhi went there, she thought that if she stayed in a place like that all day, she would go crazy.
He said, "This looks a bit like a paddy field suit."
"How do you know what a paddy field suit is?"
This guy really knows about women's things. In fact, she was just being suspicious. He just played with women. He didn't care about or know anything about women's clothes, jewelry, and cosmetics.
"Many people still had clothes to wear when I was there, but who can find them now?"
Wang Jiazhi recalled her grandmother's double-breasted jacket, styled like a paddy field jacket, which she had made herself when she was young. It was exquisitely crafted, beautifully crafted. It was made of various light-colored diamond-shaped fabrics, each piece embroidered with intricate patterns. She remembered butterflies playing with crabapple blossoms, mandarin ducks and lotus flowers, longevity peaches and bats... Each piece was unique. It was truly a piece from the past.
When I was little, I would look at the patterns on each piece of clothing, piece by piece. I don't know where that piece of clothing is now, or if it's gone. After my grandmother passed away, my aunt sold or threw away all her things, leaving nothing behind.
She was no longer a child at that time, but with her mother around, she felt like a child, as if nothing was a big deal in front of adults and adults could always find a way to solve it.
Thinking about it now, Mom must have been incredibly sad, as if she'd been driven away by Dad to live at school. When Grandma was alive, she always had a mother who would protect her and let her be a little girl. Now that Grandma was gone, there was no one to protect her anymore.
Wang Jiazhi looked at him again. Who else did he have left? He was all alone. His parents were long gone. In this world, people either relied on him, exploited him, or wanted to kill him.
It's so scary to be helpless.
She smiled and said, "If I die, please cut a lock of my hair as a souvenir. No matter how good other things are, they are not yours. In the end, they are all external to you."
He laughed and said, "Then when I die, I can only leave you your hair, nothing else."
She rested her head on his legs and said with a smile, "I like woolen pants the most."
He laughed and said, "If you want to stay, then stay. Will I be able to make the decision then?"
He was very surprised at that time. She liked furry things, but he didn't expect that he also liked furry himself.
Of course, this is just furry hair growing on the legs. If it grew on the chest, you don’t know if she would like it.
Wang Jiazhi thought so. After the person died, how could she make the final decision? Just like her mother, she must have been worried about her, but she couldn't stop her father from abandoning her.
"Then, I want one of your clothes to go inside the coffin. It has to smell like tobacco and jasmine."
"Then I'll bring you another one, one that smells like catnip."
"You're annoying, so what are you going to bring?"
"Then, you can pick out some clothes for me."
They usually avoid talking about this matter, and if it is brought up occasionally, they immediately stop talking about it. Today was really unusual, they were able to talk about it without any pressure, I wonder if it was because they had just returned home to visit the graves.
He was very afraid of her bringing it up, because she wasn't just talking; she might actually do it. Once, she said, "I'm going to follow you, and no one can stop me. Not even the children can stop me."
The child was still so young, and if she died, she would be with him. As a girl with no relatives, what could she do? Wouldn't that mean he couldn't even close his eyes in death?
Wang Jiazhi stroked her woolen trousers and said, "Don't want that kind of fine wood when the time comes. The ancients were really wicked. They insisted on the kind that wouldn't rot for a thousand years, so that a person inside would feel alive. Sooner or later, it would be dug out and who knows how it would be treated. Wasn't it said that the Empress Dowager Cixi's body was left unattended for so many days that it grew an inch or two of white hair. Ordinary wood like that, after sleeping underground for decades, would rot and turn into bones, which would then melt into the soil. It would be best to plant a fragrant tree on top and keep it well."
He smiled and said, "That makes sense. Then bury whatever tree you like. My hometown is full of white orchid trees. Why not bury white orchid trees?"
"White orchid trees are great. I especially like white orchids. When I was a child, my grandmother would pick white orchid buds and make bracelets for me to wear."
But then he thought again and said sadly, "We may not be able to be buried together. You should be buried with Mrs. Yi. Otherwise, burn me. My ashes won't take up much space. You can quietly put me in there. After you bury me, even if she finds out, she won't dig you out and get me out."
He smiled and said, "Then you'll have to listen to the child about how to bury you. Of course the child will bury you and me together."
Only at this moment did Wang Jiazhi suddenly realize how important it was to have a child.
Families with three wives and four concubines, all depending on which child will take charge after death, will bury their own mother alongside the deceased, regardless of whether the parents wished to be together in life and not in life. Then there are those who, after a divorce, still have children, and some children, even heinous crimes, will bury their parents together. This is done either to make it easier to visit the graves, saving the cost of a single plot by not having to travel to two different places, or to fulfill their own selfish desire for a complete family.
This kind of child, having suffered so much to give birth to him and raising him so painstakingly, is it just to raise a debt collector? He should have been strangled to death at birth.
Now she was resting her head on the woolen pants. He took out the woolen pants and it was his turn to rest his head on her.
"Hate it, I want to rest my head on yours."
"You asked me to use your pillow, now it's my turn." He said to his little white cat as he gave him the pillow.
The kitten crawled over to her and snuggled into his arms.
Wang Jiazhi recalled a time in her past life, after she found out she was pregnant, when he'd once rested his head on her like this, his head right against her belly. She'd wanted to ask him if he could hear anything. Of course, he couldn't hear anything; it was too small, he couldn't even touch it.
Some time had passed, and Wang Jiazhi had brought up the old matter again, asking for Mrs. Yi to return home. He said that she had finally adapted, so it would be better for her to calm down for a while and talk about it later.
Wang Jiazhi thought it would be strange if she could adapt.
Mrs. Yi, a country girl, was practically in tears. She had no one to play cards with or flatter her, no fancy restaurants to eat at, no department stores to shop in. The servants she had were locals, unsophisticated and clueless, with no idea what coffee was, and their flattery never quite clicked. She had a few distant relatives she'd roped into playing mahjong, but they were also unsophisticated and clueless, completely clueless about city life, and their flattery never quite hit the mark. She even had to provide them with meals at mealtime, and after two or three days of playing cards, they wouldn't even come back. She felt worse off than dead.
Mrs. Yi asked someone to find a fortune teller again, asking if it was possible to resolve or confuse the problem as the legend said... In short, it didn't matter, she really wanted Old Yi to take her back.
I didn't expect these fortune tellers to always say the same thing: "Your husband wasn't supposed to be your husband, and you weren't supposed to be his wife. His wife is someone else, and because of a calamity in this life, so... but it's destined that the woman who was supposed to be his wife will come back to find him, and when she does, your blessings will be returned to her..."
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
