At this time, Liang Qiuhua was attending class at school and had no idea that her mother had fallen to the ground and that their fifth child was about to be born.
As usual in the morning, she went to the mountain with her elder brother to cut a basket of pig grass, and came back to drink a bowl of porridge. At that time, her mother had not gotten up yet for the first time.
She took out two sweet potatoes from the pot and put them in her lunch box. This was her breakfast for the day.
Her schoolbag was an old blue cloth bag with a white tint. It was made from her father's old clothes. In the bag were two books, a pencil, an eraser and an iron lunch box.
She walked very fast, her feet moving nimbly back and forth to keep up with the pace. Her two long braids were one after another, and her cross-body backpack made a clanging sound with her steps.
"Qiuhua——" a voice came from behind.
She didn't need to look back to know that it was Zhao Meiying and Zhou Hehua. They were from the next village and were one year older than her.
Although they were of different ages, the three of them played together. They had become sworn sisters in the back mountain and were little sisters.
Liang Qiuhua stopped and turned back to wait for them.
Zhao Meiying was wearing a fashionable jacket. Her family was better off, so she had some fashionable clothes. Zhou Hehua had a chin-length student haircut. She said that this made her look like a proper schoolgirl.
It wasn't so fast when the three of us walked together. We chatted with each other along the way and had a lot of fun.
Liang Qiuhua told her two younger sisters in detail how the elder and younger Lazi had come to her house to steal her thread, how her second brother had taken her to beg for thread, and how they had soiled a bundle of thread.
"Their family are all bad people!" Zhao Meiying was very angry, the kind of anger that was bullied to her.
Everyone in the village knew that the Big and Small Lazi family was fierce and unreasonable. Everyone said that their ancestors had bad tempers, and because they lost their husbands at a young age, they had to become even more fierce and unreasonable in order to support the family. Even their two daughters became extremely arrogant.
"I think she will never get married. Look at her bald head and the rat tail hanging from the back of her head. She's ugly!" Zhao Meiying had a vicious tongue, but she was very nice to her other two sisters.
Zhou Hehua nodded in agreement. Who would like the Lazi sisters? No one.
"Whoever marries her will probably cause chaos in his family." Zhou Hehua added.
Liang Qiuhua listened to the two people talking back and forth, and the unhappiness she had felt at the time disappeared without a trace.
The rice flowers in the fields are yellow with a hint of white. When the wind blows, the rice fields seem to be rolling like waves, one after another, as if something is brewing, surging towards people. Soon, the golden rice ears will appear, telling you that it is time to harvest.
The three of them were laughing so hard that they almost missed the bell.
The school only has two classrooms, one for grades one, two and three, and the other for grades four and five.
In the morning, they had Chinese class. The teacher was an elderly man who always wore the same Zhongshan suit all year round. He wore it inside in winter and rolled up his sleeves in summer. The male classmates said that he never took a bath. While reciting poems, he used two fingers of his left hand to repeatedly pinch the old mud behind his ears, rubbing it into strips and then flicking it out.
The students called him "Old Eggplant" behind his back because he was an intellectual.
Whenever it was time for dinner, Old Eggplant would hang around in front of the students, checking to see what vegetables this student had brought and what meat that student had brought. If he saw a child from a well-off family, he would stand by and say, "Wine and meat go through the intestines..."
At this time, the students would wisely hand over their lunch boxes. He would not be greedy and would only pick up a piece of meat or vegetables, and then say, "I'll just try it."
It is said that his landlady was a shrew who did not bring him any food, so he liked to hang out when the students were eating.
However, he looked down upon Liang Qiuhua's lunch box, which contained either porridge or two pieces of sweet potatoes. Every time he walked past it, he would just walk straight ahead without even glancing at it.
Liang Qiuhua didn't see Zhao Meiying at dinner today, so she thought she must have gone to the bathroom. As soon as Lao Qiezi left, Zhao Meiying poked her head out from the back door.
"Old Eggplant is gone?"
Liang Qiuhua nodded and waved to her.
Zhao Meiying opened the lunch box and spread it in front of the two of them. Qiuhua couldn't help swallowing his saliva. The lunch box was full of vegetables and meat. Then he took out a full box of white rice.
"I asked Mom to give me more. Come on, eat."
She picked up two pieces of meat for each of them. Qiuhua hadn't eaten oily food for half a year. She took a small bite and was so greasy and fragrant that she was reluctant to swallow it.
"Qiuhua, your mother is about to give birth, right?" Zhou Heying asked while eating, completely ignoring the rice hanging from the corner of her mouth.
Qiuhua nodded, her mouth full and unable to speak. After a while, she finally spoke: "It would be best if you could give me a sister."
The other two have sisters, but she has three brothers.
"If your mother really gives birth to a girl, will you stop being our little sister?" Zhao Meiying picked up another piece and gave it to her.
"How could that be? You are my little sisters, you have worshiped me!"
Zhao Meiying nodded with satisfaction. She felt relieved after hearing these words. No matter how many sisters there are in the family, sisters who study and go to school together are precious.
In the afternoon, I had math class with a short, fat old woman. He got angry and left halfway through the class because the "black dog" in the class was snoring and the old woman pulled him up by the ears. He cursed fiercely: "Going to school is worse than raising pigs. I think you are just an old sow!"
The old woman rolled her eyes in anger. "Black Dog" slapped the old woman's hand away. The male classmates all laughed and several girls covered their mouths.
The old woman was so angry that she threw the book and went to the principal to cry. The principal came in with a broom handle. When the "black dog" saw that he was going to be beaten, he ran faster than a rabbit. They ran and chased each other, and they circled outside the classroom. Finally, the principal gave up because he could not run anymore.
Because of this commotion, no one attended classes in the afternoon, and the principal asked everyone to pack up and go home.
Liang Qiuhua calculated that she could get home two hours earlier today, so she decided to catch up on some embroidery, as this was the thing that could make the most money right now.
The three people walked on the road and laughed about today's "hero Black Dog". Thanks to him, they could go home to work early.
"Black Dog is really our hero! Haha!" Zhou Heying laughed so hard that he fell over.
Liang Qiuhua was amused by her and said, "His snoring in class is louder than thunder!"
The three of them were chatting and laughing, and didn't notice a dark shadow suddenly appearing from the bushes.
"Don't leave! You're saying bad things about me!"
It turned out to be today's hero, "Black Dog", holding a bamboo pole in one hand and playing with a long rusty nail in the other.
The three sisters were all a little scared. Black Dog had never done anything good in school. Cursing an old woman until she cried was a minor offense. His most impressive feat was pulling off the pants of a young mermaid.
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