Chapter 008 Separation of Consciousness
When she came back from washing clothes, still carrying the bucket, she saw an old lady looking around at her door. Seeing her coming back, she immediately greeted her happily: "Xiaoyuan, did you go to wash clothes?"
Tang Yuan looked down at the clothes in the bucket, then looked at the old man who was asking the question knowing the answer.
"We are acquaintances. A few days ago, you had a quarrel with your father and stepmother, and I helped you," the old lady said with a smile, "Look at you, you are so thin, why are you still washing your own clothes? You should hang all these clothes out. I will do it."
Having said that, he snatched the clothes away without waiting for Tang Yuan to say anything.
The location here is not very good, and there are not many families living here. There is a rope hanging at the door of every household. Normally, you don’t even need a clothes hanger. You just need to wipe the rope clean and hang your clothes directly on it.
The old lady put the bucket on the ground and took out the clothes to hang out to dry. As she hung them, she said, "Don't be polite. Come sit down. I just feel sorry for you. You are such a poor kid. You even have to wash your own clothes. You are so pitiful."
Tang Yuan didn't know what she was up to, but this man was not familiar with her, and coming up to her suddenly, he must have no good intentions.
She looked a few more times and saw the old lady carefully touching the clothes she had just made. She raised her eyebrows, went into the house, and when she came out, she held a dustpan in one hand and a small chair in the other.
It was hot now, so she found a shady spot at the doorway to sit down, placed the small dustpan on her legs, pulled out needle, thread and scraps of cloth from it, and began to sew with gestures.
When she came out this time, she directly grabbed the scraps of cloth that Aunt Qian had cut into small pieces in advance. Now no matter how she put them together, she could get something big.
When the old lady saw her action, she quickly hung up the clothes in the bucket and walked quickly to Tang Yuan: "Xiao Yuan, can you do needlework?"
Tang Yuan raised his head and waited for her to continue.
The old lady rubbed her hands, bent slightly, and sighed: "Life is really hard now. We have three children to feed. We don't have enough food and clothes. Look at me, my clothes are patched up to the limit. There is not even a complete piece of rag in my house. Many kind-hearted people give me some rags. They are all good people."
As she spoke, she saw Tang Yuan looking at her, and continued to chat. However, she reached into Tang Yuan's dustpan, grabbed a handful, and was suddenly shocked: "Why are they all so small?"
Tang Yuan blinked, quickly looked up at her, then looked at the rags in his dustpan and said loudly, "There are no bigger ones!"
"Impossible, you bought so many pieces of cloth, how could you not have any big ones? Did you hide them in the house?" The old lady's plan failed, and she was inexplicably angry. She stood up and walked into the house, "Are you deliberately avoiding me? Did you hide all the big pieces of cloth in the house?"
"There is no more big cloth! No more!" Tang Yuan glanced at the few people who had just returned from the river, and the voices were getting louder and louder.
The old lady listened to her voice and subconsciously shouted louder: "Impossible, I don't believe it, you must be hiding in the house!"
As soon as the words were shouted, the people who had returned dropped their buckets and rushed over to grab the man: "What are you doing? What are you doing? Are you stealing things?"
"Come quickly, come and see, someone is stealing things openly. How dare they steal things in broad daylight? Is there any law?"
"I didn't steal anything, I just looked at the rags!" The old lady came back to her senses, "I just asked her for some rags, I didn't steal anything."
"You want rags, why are you going into someone's house? Aren't you just trying to steal something?"
"That's it. Get out of here."
"Oh, who am I? It turns out to be Mrs. Xu. Your family is having a hard time, so why are you begging for food again?"
"Who? It's Mrs. Xu again. Your family is not so poor that you can't afford to buy food. Why do you always ask for other people's things? Xiaoyuan is having a hard time alone, and you still come to ask her for things. Do you have any shame?"
"Originally, this old lady Xu was just pestering me for it, why did she start snatching it away today?"
"You definitely have bad intentions. Your previous harassment was no different from robbery. Today you are completely shameless. Don't be afraid, Xiaoyuan. We will support you. Don't be afraid."
Tang Yuan was still holding a dustpan in his hand, looking at the crowd that was gradually gathering around him, and then at the angry Xu Pozi, and whispered, "I used small scraps of cloth to make a pillow, and she said I deliberately hid the big scraps of cloth. I have a few big scraps in my room that I want to make handkerchiefs with, so I won't make handkerchiefs for now?"
"Of course you should do it. It's your own cloth, you can do whatever you want with it. Don't be like some shameless people who steal things from children."
"If we don't come back, Xiaoyuan will definitely not be able to hold on, and Mrs. Xu will bully the honest people. Bah."
"Last time, it was this old woman Xu who asked for those scraps of cloth from my family. But my daughter-in-law was shy and didn't know how to refuse. Those scraps of cloth could have been made into several handkerchiefs."
“Someone in my family was also taken away.”
"I have some at home, too. There are quite a few large pieces of rags."
Tang Yuan was surrounded by people and watched the old lady's eyes flash. She pursed her lips and said in a voice that only two or three people around her could hear: "You can get so many pieces of cloth and piece them together to make a piece of clothing."
The scraps of cloth left over these days aren't too big, but if a family has two or three pieces, and the colors are similar, they can be put together by visiting a few houses and they can be a piece of clothing.
The patches on the old lady's clothes were all made of very small pieces of cloth, and those large scraps of cloth obviously had other uses.
When she said this, the people who were listening immediately shouted, "Hey, hey, hey, everyone, tell me, whose rags were taken away? Are there more than ten or twenty or thirty pieces?"
"My family has it, and so does my neighbor's family."
"There are some in my house too. Several houses have had their cases taken away."
"They were all large scraps of cloth. The small ones were not wanted. The scraps taken from my house could be used to make a few handkerchiefs for the children."
The onlookers talked one after another, and soon there were about twenty or thirty of them. After hearing this, everyone felt that something was wrong.
"I've seen her family, everyone's clothes are full of patches, and they still want to take away the scraps. There are only a few of us, if there are more, we can get a lot of clothes."
"Have you ever seen her family members wearing clean new clothes made of scraps of cloth?"
"What did you do with the rags?"
"I saw someone outside holding a handkerchief that looked very similar to the floral fabric in my house. That floral fabric was sent by someone in my family from another city. We don't have it here. I originally thought it was a coincidence, but now it seems... it can't really be my floral fabric, right?"
"Nonsense, it's great that your family can send you the floral fabric, can't you send it to others? I won't say anything more to you, if you don't want to give it to me, then don't give it to me. You are so stingy that you can't even bear to give me such a small amount of fabric." The old lady paused in her place, suddenly squeezed out of the crowd, and left in two or three steps.
She was gone, and everyone at the scene reacted.
"She wouldn't really take our scraps and make them into handkerchiefs and sell them, would she?"
"No?"
"What should I do?"
"What can we do? We have no evidence. This old lady Xu is really... who else gave it to her? We can't give it to her again in the future. Whether she sells it or not is not the point. If this gets out, our machinery factory will have a bad reputation."
"It's not nice to hear that, it's Mrs. Xu, what does it have to do with us?"
"That's right, why not let the factory leaders pay attention to it..."
The crowd was talking, and they dispersed in twos and threes. Some were still whispering as they left. I believe that it would not take long for this matter to spread throughout the machinery factory.
There is no substantial evidence that Mrs. Xu sold handkerchiefs, so the factory will not do anything to her. However, her reputation in this matter will definitely spread, and someone will be watching her all the time. I'm afraid she won't dare to sell handkerchiefs again.
Tang Yuan returned to the front of the house with the dustpan in her arms, and continued to sew pillowcases with her head down.
She really wanted to sew pillowcases, at least there had to be one pillowcase in the room that could be taken out.
Complete fabrics are valuable. In her current situation, it is not easy to use too much good fabric. It is just right to use scraps of fabric to make pillowcases. The gray, blue and green colors are not particularly bright, and putting them together will not affect the beauty of the pillowcase.
Of course, the pillowcase was just a decoration, and she didn't sleep in the hut outside.
She finished making a quarter of the pillowcase in the morning, had a meal and went to work. As expected, the story of Mrs. Xu's deeds spread all over the boiler room.
"I heard that she asked someone for some rags again, but the person refused to give them to her, so she just stretched out her hands to snatch them away."
"How can that be? She didn't give it to me, but she robbed me. Does she think she is a thief?"
"She is a robber, isn't she? Even if she isn't, she is almost a robber. I guess she must have taken the scraps of cloth to make handkerchiefs and sold them. Unfortunately, I didn't catch her. I am so angry. Two days ago, she took two good scraps of cloth from me. I gave them to her because I felt sorry for her. I didn't expect that I was the one who was pitiful."
"You gave it to her too? Then how many scraps of cloth did she get from our factory?"
"It's probably at least a few hundred dollars."
"So many? How many handkerchiefs did she sell? Even if the handkerchiefs were sold at 1 cent a piece, she would make more than 10 yuan, which is enough for Xiaoyuan's monthly salary."
"Yes, Xiaoyuan, I'll point out Mrs. Xu to you later. You must stay away from her when the time comes. You are an honest person. Maybe she will ask you for it, but you must not be fooled."
Tang Yuan nodded and said softly, "I saw it."
Otherwise, everyone in the boiler room would think too much if they knew that today’s incident started with her.
However, her words did not cause much reaction. She only received a warning: "You should be careful too. This kind of person is shameless. Even though she has been exposed now, she may still be able to do it in the future. It's always better to be vigilant."
Tang Yuan nodded again, then sat behind the stove and began to watch the fire.
While looking at the fire, she was distracted, and her separated consciousness opened her eyes in another body. She stretched out her dark hand, pushed open the transparent door in front of her, confirmed that there was no one around, walked out quickly, and closed the temporary rectangular door.
When one of her consciousnesses was distracted, she was able to control both consciousnesses with great ease.
Now she is Xiaofang.