Chapter 48 Little Doll
"Aunt Qingqing, why do you like painting?"
Ren Fenghe lay on the ground, his face supported by his hands, his legs swaying as he looked at Miao Qingqing who was revising the painting, and asked curiously.
She could still remember why she learned ballet, and looking back now, the reason seemed so ridiculous.
At that time, there was only her brother, the nanny who took care of her brother, and Aunt Wang who took care of her at home. When she was a child, she liked to stick to her brother.
One day, when her brother was taking a Taekwondo class, she insisted on going with him. Because she refused to leave the gym, with the permission of her Taekwondo teacher, she was able to sit in on the one-on-one private lessons given by her teacher and her brother.
During the intermission, the teacher played with Ren Fenghe using a wooden board and asked him to try to chop it.
At that time, little Ren Fenghe raised his hand, wanting to split the wooden board in two as handsomely as his brother, but the board didn't react at all when he raised and lowered his hand, and his hand became numb instead.
"It's okay, try again, you will definitely learn it!" the teacher encouraged her again.
The little girl couldn't tell that the teacher was holding back her laughter, so she mustered up her strength and hit the board again, but there was no scratch on the board. Her hand was numb and a little painful.
At that time, she immediately burst into tears out of grievance.
Then, through her crystal tears, she saw her brother holding his belly with laughter, and he held her behind him and said, "Teacher, please don't bully my sister."
She was very attached to her brother, but he was much older than her and had his own friends. He was impatient to play childish games with her, and he rarely laughed as happily as he did now.
Looking at his brother who was smiling happily, little Ren Fenghe didn't feel so sad anymore.
Her brother turned around, wiped the remaining tears from her face, and comforted her, saying, "The teacher is just teasing you. You are still young, of course you can't break the wooden board. Besides, your brother will protect you, so you don't have to learn how to break the wooden board."
"Will my brother always protect me?" Little Ren Fenghe sniffed, and his nasal voice sounded particularly cute.
"Of course!" said my brother.
"But my brother is not at home when he goes out to class, so he can't protect me." Little Ren Fenghe couldn't speak so fluently, and his voice was slow when he spoke long sentences.
My brother thought for a moment and said, "There is a ballet class nearby. We can go to class together. I will learn Taekwondo and you will learn ballet. This way, I will be by your side."
The tears in little Ren Fenghe's eyes stopped for a moment, and she nodded very vigorously, saying "hmm" in a heavy voice.
Ren Fenghe came out of her memories. She actually learned ballet for this reason and has been learning it for more than ten years.
But it is undeniable that learning ballet has indeed made her stronger over the past decade.
In the eyes of outsiders, ballet dancers are delicate, beautiful yet fragile beings floating on a music box. But only ballet dancers know how much hardship they have endured, how many injuries they have suffered, and how strong and powerful the muscles are under their TUTU skirts and stockings on the stage.
Miao Qingqing concentrated on finishing the last stroke before she began typing her reply to Ren Fenghe.
“I started to like painting because of my mother’s influence.”
"Does Grandma Miao like painting? But I've never seen her paint."
While she was coloring the picture book, Ms. Miao looked completely uninterested.
Miao Qingqing opened her lips slightly and let out a light sigh.
"My mother liked it, but because of me, she has forgotten how much she liked it."
The emotionless, robotic female voice coming from the phone was also tinged with sadness because of these words.
Ren Fenghe looked at Miao Qingqing in confusion.
"What does that mean?" Ren Fenghe asked.
Miao Qingqing thought for a moment and said, "That's a very long story."
She put the finished painting aside to wait for it to dry, then picked up the things on the floor and walked to the bathroom with the paintbrushes to be washed. Ren Fenghe followed closely behind her.
"Can you tell me about it?"
"Of course, but I'm not sure if you'll find it boring. This story is different from the storybooks. It's a very ordinary story."
“No way!”
Miao Qingqing washed the pen and took Ren Fenghe back to the room. She peeked into the kitchen to confirm that Ms. Miao was still busy.
She returned to her room and closed the door.
Miao Qingqing gently took off the clothes on Ren Fenghe, tidied her messy hair, and began to tell a story.
"I've been deaf since I was born." She pointed to her ears.
More than 20 years ago.
On the operating table, the completely exhausted woman lay weakly. After experiencing the severe pain of tearing, the pain in her lower body suddenly became numb, and she only felt vague pain from time to time.
Her vision became blurred, but she was still cheering up. Her open eyes moved along the doctor's hand and then to the nurse's hand.
"Little baby, little baby, are you healthy?" Her voice was as weak as a mosquito's.
The nurse looked at the silent, wrinkled baby in her arms and patted her bottom.
"Wuuuwaa——" the baby felt the pain and started crying loudly.
Hearing the baby's cry, the woman smiled. Her scattered vision focused and the light from the operating table became stars in her eyes.
"It can cry and shout. Look, all its limbs are intact." The nurse showed the baby to the woman.
The relieved woman soon fell into a deep sleep.
When the woman woke up again, she didn't notice anything wrong with the baby at first.
In the first week, she found it difficult to even walk and spent most of the time sleeping.
The baby was handed over to her family to take care of. Every time she took the baby from her family, held the baby, and fed the baby, she could hear praise from her family.
"This little baby is easy to take care of. He just chirps when he's hungry or sleepy. He doesn't cry. He's very well behaved."
She looked at the baby in her arms, and the baby was also looking at her. The light and fluttering baby made her heart full.
But as her body gradually recovered, she discovered that something was wrong with the baby.
Other babies would always react to the sounds around them, but her baby wouldn't. No matter how noisy the surroundings are, she will always be quiet. She will not be scared by the sound of the hair dryer, nor will she cry because of the noise made by too many people coming to visit her.
"Oh, this baby is so sweet and never cries." This is what everyone who comes to visit says.
But the woman just felt something was wrong.
Then she discovered that her little doll seemed unable to hear.
There was still a long time before dinner time, so Miao Qingqing simply started from the beginning.
At this point, Ren Fenghe pulled her clothes and interrupted the story.
"Aunt Qingqing, didn't the doctor check the baby when it was born?"
Miao Qingqing shook her head and explained to Ren Fenghe: "When I was born, there was no comprehensive examination like now."
She went on.
The young woman doubted that the tiny baby who filled her heart so fully could not hear.
The woman's husband was holding a bowl of rice soup he had brought from home. He and the woman each had a bowl. Upon hearing the woman's doubts, the man impatiently scooped up the bits of chicken in the soup and said, "Don't let your imagination run wild. How could you not hear me?"
The man raised his hand and snapped his fingers, the loud snapping sound echoing in the ward.
The little baby didn't cry. Instead, he stared at the woman with his grape-like eyes, and saliva was about to flow out of his grinning mouth.
The man asked suspiciously, "Why don't you look over here?"
He put his hand to the baby's ear and was about to snap his fingers again, but his hand was held by the woman.
“Don’t snap your fingers next to her ears,” the woman stopped her.
The man said, "How do I know if she can hear me if I don't snap my fingers?"
The woman looked unhappy and said, "No way."
The man said, "You didn't give birth to my family, and you still have such a bad temper. Who else but me can tolerate you?"
The woman glared at him and said, "You are not recognizing my daughter, are you?"
The man muttered, "How can a girl carry on the family line? Forget it, she can still give birth."
The woman was dissatisfied and said, "What do you mean by carrying on the family line? There are only a few pieces of broken copper and rotten iron in the house. What do you mean by carrying on the family line? Just because of what you said, I am not willing to give birth to a child for you."
The man said, "I noticed that you have become more and more irritable since you got pregnant. I never saw you say these things before."
The woman ignored the man, she just looked down at the baby in her arms and wrapped the baby tightly with the quilt.
She needs to have a bad temper to protect her little baby, the woman thought.
Although the man said that the baby couldn't be deaf, the woman still told the doctor her guess.
Soon, the doctor took the baby for a check-up and got a bad result.
"Although she can't hear, she is still young and can learn to speak if early intervention is given," said the doctor.
The woman hugged the baby tighter in her arms and asked hurriedly, "Doctor, how can I intervene?"
The doctor said: "The best way is to get a cochlear implant while you are still young."
The woman asked, "Doctor, how much does this cost?"
The doctor quoted a price, which was met with silence from the woman.
In the evening, when the man came over from get off work, the woman told him what the doctor had said.
"We still have some savings. We can borrow some from someone and implant a cochlear implant in the baby. The baby will be able to hear something and speak normally in the future," said the woman.
The man frowned and refused, saying, "Why bother? It's a girl anyway. Just feed her and raise her up. We can give birth to a healthy boy in the future."
The woman tried to persuade the man for many days, but he just couldn't accept it.
They were all migrant workers who had moved from the countryside to the city, and they had planned to use the money they saved to buy a house, but the woman thought that a house could be bought at any time, and her daughter had missed the best time and would not be able to live like a normal person in the future.
Men don't lend, women do.
The woman borrowed money from everyone who came to visit her, but the amount of money was too large at the time and she couldn't borrow enough. Moreover, her behavior of borrowing money without the man's consent angered the man.
The woman, who was still in confinement after giving birth, had a big fight with the man, and the fight continued until the woman was out of confinement.
"How can I pay back such a large sum of money? It's not just 10,000 or 20,000 yuan, it's hundreds of thousands! Houses in the city are also priced like this!"
The woman knew that the amount of money was too much, but when she thought about the little baby who couldn't hear any sound, she couldn't stop crying.
The woman and the man divorced.
It was not because of the money, but because the man no longer considered the baby his own child after he knew that the baby was deaf. His parents were the same. Every time they came, they would urge the woman to have another child with the man.
Women don't want this.
The doctor said that the implant can still be used before the age of six.
The woman's parents were in the countryside. She couldn't ask her parents to help take care of her child, nor did she trust anyone else to take care of the child. She could only find a job that allowed her to take her child with her.
She worked three jobs a day, sweeping the streets, assembling in a factory, and cooking in the canteen, with her little doll tied to her body.
The deaf little baby lay quietly on her body, occasionally making "ah ah ah" sounds whose meaning was unknown.
The woman wiped her sweat and laughed when she heard the sound.
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