Chapter 2: Facing the Scumbag
When Xu Yao stepped on the blue bricks and climbed over the courtyard wall, the osmanthus branch hooked the third button of her floral shirt.
In her previous life, she always sewed the jasmine soapberry that Sun Zhiqiang loved to smell on her collar. Now, she no longer felt sorry for it and just pulled the thread hard and broke it.
The moment the door curtain of the main room was lifted, Sun Zhiqiang's hand holding the enamel pot trembled.
Under the dim kerosene lamp, the third sister's arm, as white as lotus roots, was resting on the back of his neck, her fingertips still stained with the black medicine she had boiled for her grandson's mother.
“Yaoyao, why are you here at this hour…” Sun Zhiqiang hurriedly pushed his third sister away, and the enamel pot hit the edge of the kang with a dull sound.
He caught a glimpse of Xu Yao's cold eyes, and with his Adam's apple rolling, he took out a wrinkled candy. "This is the new assorted candy from the supply and marketing cooperative, and I saved it especially for you."
Xu Yao looked at the brown medicine residue stuck on the candy wrapper, and suddenly remembered the night when her daughter had a fever in her previous life. She ran twenty miles in the rain to get the antipyretic medicine, but it ended up in the schoolbag of her third sister's son.
She raised her foot to crush the candy that rolled to her feet. The mahogany window frame cut the moonlight into silver pieces, which fell on the men's vest embroidered with the word "three".
"break off an engagement."
These two words startled the medicine jar on the stove and caused it to bubble.
Sun Zhiqiang was stunned for a moment and suddenly laughed out loud. He reached out to hug her with his hands stained with medicine: "Last time you made a fuss about asking for red leather shoes, and this time you're breaking off the engagement like the people in the city?" When his fingers rubbed across Xu Yao's collar, the smell of Chinese medicine mixed with the aroma of clam oil that his third sister often used was nauseating.
"Last December, your father was coughing up blood. You said you couldn't return to the commune for your mission, but you were actually helping your third sister with the water cellar."
Xu Yao shook him off and retreated into the moonlight. The castor leaves in the corner of the yard rustled in the night wind. "Last month, I earned the food coupons by sewing shoe soles. You said you were going to buy gifts for the militiamen guarding the dike, but it turned into a new schoolbag for my third sister's son."
Sun Zhiqiang's face suddenly changed, and he swept the kerosene lamp on the table to the ground.
The third sister jumped away with a cry, but the cotton uppers of her shoes embroidered with lotus flowers were still splashed with hot lamp oil.
"Uncle Xu is still coughing on the kang, and you are cursing your own family like this?" Sun's mother rushed out in a patched jacket, her skinny fingers almost poking Xu Yao's nose, "If your father hadn't begged on his knees, would our Sun family have accepted a sickly girl as a daughter-in-law?"
Xu Yao showed the brick hidden behind her back. A centipede crawled out from the cracks of the brick and dropped dirt. "Auntie has a bad memory. When the flood washed away the granary, whose family packed up their bedding and fled overnight?"
She deliberately raised her voice, causing Aunt Wang's dog next door to bark wildly, "The disaster relief report that Sun Zhiqiang submitted to the commune was written by my father!"
A few swaying black shadows peeked out from the wall, and someone's wife burst into laughter.
Mother Sun picked up a broom and was about to hit him, but Xu Yao suddenly squatted down and stroked the dark red marks on the blue brick with her fingertips: "Last year at the beginning of winter, Brother Zhiqiang said he was looking for medicine for my father, and he brought back 20 kilograms of old grain soaked in water - this blue brick that was used as a pad for the grain pile at that time was stained with the blood that my father coughed up, right?"
The night wind blew up the men's vest on the clothesline, and the crooked word "three" was covering Sun's mother's pale face.
Sun Zhiqiang suddenly jumped up and grabbed Xu Yao's wrist, but froze when he touched the hard object on her waist - the commune seal was hitting the scar on his palm, which was caused when he was chopping wood for his third sister.
"What are you fussing about!"
When the village chief, wrapped in a military coat, pushed open the gate, the straw stacks in the threshing ground were rustling and falling off.
The accountant following behind him was holding an account book, and the flying dust in the flashlight looked very much like the fluttering paper money in his previous life.
Sun Zhiqiang's Adam's apple rolled rapidly, and the moonlight distorted his shadow on the brick wall into a trapped beast.
The third sister suddenly coughed weakly, and her nails stained with marigold juice quietly hooked on the hem of the village chief's clothes.
There were heavy footsteps coming from the direction of the threshing ground, and someone with sharp eyes noticed the account book in the accountant's hand.
Sun Zhiqiang stared at the corner of brown paper faintly visible on Xu Yao's waist, and suddenly realized that the little girl who chased him for candy wrappers that year had a cold light in her eyes that was sharper than the new sickles issued by the commune.
The whispers outside the courtyard wall were like a gradually tightening fishing net, which made cold sweat seep out of his back - the vest embroidered with the word "three" was now waving in the night wind like a dazzling flag.
The moonlight shattered into dancing silver fish on the bluestone road, and Xu Yao's hurriedly running shadow startled the crickets in the haystack.
The mottled wooden door of the village committee was ajar, and the light from the kerosene lamp cut light and dark cracks on the portrait of the door god.
"When you guaranteed the quota for educated youth to return to the city, you said 'justice comes from the heart.'" Xu Yao tapped the dusty enamel pot on the table with her fingertips. The bottom of the pot was still caked with brown tea stains from last year's autumn tea.
She deliberately threw the blue brick covered with centipede dirt onto the corner of the table, startling the moth on the account book so that it fluttered towards the lampshade.
The village chief stroked the frayed cuffs of his military coat and tried to light his pipe over the oil lamp three times but it failed to catch fire.
The corner of the advanced production team award certificate pressed under the glass plate of the table suddenly lifted up, revealing half of a yellowed engagement letter - it was the one he had written himself at the beginning of spring last year.
"Marriage is not a joke." He finally spoke, and the smell of burnt tobacco mixed with damp musty smell filled the room. "If Zhiqiang really made a mistake, you should talk to his mother..."
The wooden door creaked and hit against a rusty spring sheet, and the third sister flashed in wrapped in Sun Zhiqiang's work jacket, the ends of her hair still stained with wheat awns from the threshing floor.
She carried a steaming bamboo basket in her left hand, and with her right hand she stuffed a cloth bag embroidered with red double happiness into the arms of the village chief: "Freshly steamed locust flower steamed bread, fill your uncle's stomach."
Xu Yao stared at the peony pattern exposed on the edge of the cloth bag. It was clearly the pillowcase she embroidered for her grandson's mother last December.
The new silver bracelet on the third sister's wrist jingled against the bamboo basket, which was even clearer than her voice: "Brother Zhiqiang sprained his ankle while carrying water for my family's cellar. Sister Yao, you can't just believe everything you hear."
"You still have the energy to help people sew soles after spraining your ankle?" Xu Yao suddenly opened the bamboo basket. In the steaming hot air, under three steamed buns, there was a pair of cloth shoes with thousand-layer soles. "The size of these shoes looks two fingers larger than Zhiqiang's. They seem to be prepared for Accountant Wang?"
The third sister dug her fingernails stained with marigold juice into the bamboo strips and suddenly covered her face and sobbed.
The radio speaker hanging on the beam suddenly made a hissing sound, waking up the barefoot doctor who was dozing in the rattan chair. The enamel diagnosis box in his arms fell to the ground with a clang, and half a bottle of cough syrup with the name of "Third Sister" rolled out.
The village chief slammed the table, and the engagement letter under the glass plate cracked again: "Nonsense!
Back then, your father... "
"The flood washed away the IOU, but the five bushels of corn from my third sister's house were written down as a receipt." Xu Yao suddenly pointed to the brown paper sticking out of the medical box. The yellowed corner of the paper shone under the kerosene lamp. "Last month, my third sister's son needed a guarantor for school enrollment. You saw the IOU when you acted as guarantor, right?"
The barefoot doctor hurriedly stuffed the paper back into the consultation box, but took out a piece of dried osmanthus - it was exactly what fell from Xu Yao's torn collar.
The third sister's sobbing stopped abruptly, and the silver bracelet on her wrist suddenly got stuck on the handle of the bamboo basket, pulling the steamed bread in the basket onto the village chief's worn-out Liberation shoes.
"Tomorrow at noon, next to the stone mill in the threshing ground."
Xu Yao grabbed a blue brick and slammed it against the medical box, startling the swallows on the beam and causing them to flutter and break through the spider webs. "Village Chief, please be a witness. After all..."
Her fingertips brushed across the damp certificate under the glass plate of the table. "The most feared thing for the advanced production team's account book is to be stained with muddled accounts that cannot be explained."
The night wind suddenly blew into the house, and the kerosene lamp wick burst into sparks.
The silver bracelet on the third sister's wrist clanged against the door frame. When she bent down to pick up the steamed bread, a dark red scratch appeared on the back of her neck - it was exactly the shape of Sun Zhiqiang's scar on his palm.
The kerosene lamp that the barefoot doctor kicked over in panic rolled half a circle on the ground. In the swaying light and shadow, Xu Yao caught a glimpse of her third sister quietly putting a hardcover book into the pocket of the village chief's military coat.
The gauze bandage hanging on the windowsill was suddenly blown up by the wind, covering the cracked engagement letter under the glass plate. The bloodstains on the bandage gradually blurred into the shape of a plum blossom under the moonlight.
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