Chapter 5 Taking My Sister to Get Married
"It was Mo Zhong who shamelessly peeked at me while I was taking a bath! Why is it that this family can't tolerate me?" Mo He demanded, her neck stiff and her eyes red.
“He’s a man, and you’re a woman. If you don’t marry him, are you going to make him marry him?” Ge Damei retorted to Mo He.
Mo He refused to back down, saying, "Since no one is going to marry him anyway, he can just marry into the family."
"shut up!"
Liu Ahua raised her hand to hit Mo He, but Mo He took two steps back to dodge. She glared at Liu Ahua angrily and said, "You never raised me, so you have no right to hit me."
Snap!
A crisp slap rang out, and everyone was stunned.
Molly, who was in the crowd, was also stunned for a moment. The next second, she appeared next to Mo He, pushed Mo Gaofeng aside, and slapped him at the same time.
Another crisp slap resounded.
"You dare hit me!"
"How dare you hit my son!"
"Honey, are you alright?"
"Don't bully my sister!"
"Big sister, second sister, I'm here to help you!"
The melee begins—
Mo He's side only had three people, while the opposing side had five. It was thought that Mo He's three would be at a disadvantage, but it turned out that Mo Gaofeng and his group were the ones who suffered the most injuries.
"This is outrageous!"
Ge Damei sat down on the ground and burst into tears, crying, "Whose grandchildren beat their grandmother? My life is so hard, I've raised a few ungrateful wretches."
Mo He glanced at her, then, holding her younger brother's hand with her left and her younger sister's hand with her right, turned and went back to her room.
"stop!"
Mo Gaofeng shouted, "Apologize to your grandmother."
Mohe: "We didn't hit Grandma."
The three of them didn't actually hit Ge Damei; at most, they pushed her a few times. Ge Damei fell several times, and it took her quite a while to get up each time, so she didn't have a chance to join the fight.
"You must get married!" Ge Damei said through gritted teeth. "If you don't get married soon, you'll become an old maid, which will affect the family's reputation."
Mo He: "I won't get married. I want to stay at home and raise my younger siblings."
Ge Damei: "Marry your sister off too. As for your brother, your dad and mom will take care of him."
Liu Ahua: "Her sister is disabled and mentally unstable, so nobody wants her."
She also wanted to marry off the two sisters, but the matchmaker said that the older sister was in high demand, while the younger sister was unwanted.
Ge Damei's eyes lit up. "Then let Mo He take Mo Li and marry into the family."
With both parents alive (and a stepmother who is also a mother), the older sister bringing her younger sister with her when she got married was something unheard of in the Mo family brigade.
Ge Damei said to others, "Moli is not clear-headed. As soon as she heard that her sister was getting married, she insisted on following her sister no matter what. It was no use talking to her."
Liu Ahua wiped away her tears and said, "After I married into the family, I treated the sisters with all my heart. I don't think I've ever wronged them. But they treat me like an outsider. They're worried that after they get married, I, their stepmother, will mistreat their sister. They insist on taking their sister with them when they get married. I tried to persuade them, but they wouldn't listen. What can I, as a stepmother, do?"
The team members said in front of others, "...Perhaps, the sisters are very close and can't bear to be apart."
The team members said, "Mo He is probably afraid that after she gets married, her stepbrother will bully his younger sister. Don't let Molly's dark and thin appearance fool you, her features are just as good as Mo He's."
“I think it’s because Molly is disabled and can’t do farm work. With Mohe getting married, the Mo family has one less person to earn work points, so they simply took Molly away as well, so there’s one less person to freeload off them.”
"If the older sister brings her younger sister with her when she gets married, will the husband's family agree to it?"
"It's said that he married a cripple, and the cripple only has a widowed mother at home. In order to help her son get married, she is willing to give fifty yuan as a bride price!"
"So many? Enough for a normal person to take two."
"The Mo family originally wanted eighty yuan, but when the crippled widow heard that she was going to bring her younger sister with her when she married into the family, she immediately lowered it to forty. The two sides argued for a long time and finally settled on fifty yuan."
"Give me twenty-five yuan." Mo He reached out to Liu Ahua.
Liu Ahua didn't even look up. "No."
Mohe: "No family will not provide a dowry when their daughter gets married. If you don't give it, I will go to the commune tomorrow to report you for selling your daughter."
Liu Ahua gritted her teeth, "You dare!"
The commune might not care about this, but if Mohe complains to the commune, her reputation will be ruined.
Mo He: "You see if I dare, I don't want to get married anyway."
Mo He was telling the truth. She didn't want to marry a cripple, nor did she want her sister to live a life of subservience in someone else's home.
Seeing that Mo He didn't seem to be lying, Liu Ahua became anxious, "I'll give you ten yuan at most."
Mohe: "Twenty-five, I'll take half, you keep the other half."
Liu Ahua: "Fifteen yuan."
Mo He: "Twenty-five."
Liu Ahua: "At most twenty."
Mo He: "Deal, give me the money."
Mo He happily returned to his room with the "huge sum" of twenty yuan.
"Big sister, second sister, I can't bear to leave you." Mo An's tears fell. He also wanted to get married with his eldest sister, but his eldest sister had already taken his second sister with her and couldn't take him with her.
Mo He hugged her younger brother tightly, saying, "Eat well, grow up quickly, and when you grow up and get married, you'll be separated from your family."
Molly frowned. "He'll be bullied if we're not around."
“How could I not know that? But he’s a boy, and Dad definitely won’t let him come with us.” Mo He patted her younger brother’s head. “Your sister will come back to see you often.”
Mo An looked up and said, "Sister, come back whenever you have time. If you don't have time, don't worry about me. If I get bullied, I'll go to the captain."
Looking at her sensible younger brother, Mo He's eyes welled up with tears. "Yes, if you're bullied, go to the brigade leader or the neighbors. Even if they don't stand up for you, at least let them know how Liu Ahua treats you. If you're not filial to Liu Ahua in the future, others will understand."
Mo He had just gotten engaged when Mo Zhong also got engaged to a girl from Liu Ahua's village, named Liu Daya.
Liu Daya has four younger sisters; she is the eldest, thin and small, but very capable, reportedly earning nine work points. Because she earns so many work points, her parents are reluctant to let her marry, keeping her as an "old maid" until she is twenty-one. Now her mother is pregnant again, and her father dreamed that this time the baby is a boy. To provide nutrition for the unborn child, he demanded a high dowry and married Liu Daya off.
Liu Ahua wanted Mo Zhong to get married first, and then Mo He would get married later.
But Mohe did not do as she wished. The morning after she received the money, before dawn, she secretly took the peach wood box left by their mother and went to Xiaonan Village with her younger sister.
The man she's going to marry lives in Xiaonan Village. His name is Zhao Shangxun, and he's twenty-five years old this year.
"Sister, does your brother-in-law know we're here today?" Molly didn't know the local wedding customs, but her intuition told her that Mo He's actions were a bit too frivolous.
"He doesn't know now, but he will when he sees us."
"......."
“Yesterday I heard the brigade leader say that the relief grain will arrive in two days. Everyone, young and old, can get ten catties of potatoes and ten catties of sweet potatoes. In the next two days, I will transfer our household registration to your brother-in-law’s house so that Liu Ahua can’t take our relief grain.”
This is one of the reasons why Mo He was in a hurry to get married: to obtain their own relief grain. The second reason was that she wanted others to know that Liu Ahua had sold her so that she could have money to marry off her son, and that by driving her and her sister away, Mo Zhong could have a room to marry.
Once Mo Zhong gets married, Mo Liang will definitely sleep in her brother's room, which is no different from taking over their room.
Mo Family Village and Xiao Nan Village are twenty miles apart. Molly and Mohe were starving and weak halfway there. Mohe took out the last piece of snake meat from the box, cut it in half, and handed one half to Molly.
They took the box, leaving three pieces of snake meat for Mo An.
"I hope Xiao An hides the meat well so no one finds it." Mo He said worriedly, and the meat in her mouth no longer tasted good.
Molly wasn't worried. "Xiao An is a smart child."
After finishing the snake meat, the two continued their journey.
When the sun was high in the sky, they finally arrived at Xiaonan Village.
Mo He asked two villagers and successfully found Zhao Shangxun's house.
Zhao Shangxun's house looked even more dilapidated than Mo's. It consisted of three rammed earth houses with thatched roofs, two bedrooms, a main room, and a simple thatched shed for the kitchen.
"Who are you looking for?" Li Xiaoju was turning over the vegetable garden in front of the house when she saw Mo He and Mo Li and stopped.
"My name is Mo He, and this is my younger sister, Molly," Mo He said crisply, without any hesitation or timidity.
Li Xiaoju was stunned. "This—"
What girl goes to her boyfriend's house by herself without an adult's guidance?
Li Xiaoju invited them in and poured them water.
After finishing her water, Mo He explained why she had come early.
Upon hearing about the relief grain, Li Xiaoju's eyes lit up. "Come on, I'll take you to the brigade leader. Tomorrow you and Shangxun will go get your marriage certificate, and after that, you can transfer your household registration."
"Okay," Mo He agreed. "What about the people from the first ten days?"
“He went to till the brigade’s land. I was going to go too, but the grain seeds haven’t arrived yet, and the brigade isn’t in a hurry, so I thought I’d plant the vegetables I need first.”
Holding Mo He's hand, Li Xiaoju felt the thick calluses and was already quite satisfied with Mo He.
The matchmaker was right; this person has been working since childhood.
"Captain, my comrade broke his leg while saving your nephew. Can't you make an exception?" Zhao Jian'an said to his uncle, his mouth dry from talking.
The battalion commander spread his hands, "This concerns the interests of the entire battalion; I can't make the decision alone."
“He Feng said he didn’t want the team’s food, he just wanted to buy a house and live in the team temporarily. As you know, he still has to go back to his unit, so he won’t be staying here for long.”
"That won't work either, there's no precedent for that." The captain remained unmoved.
"The grain seeds should be coming in soon, right?" Zhao Jian'an played his trump card. "I heard from people at the commune that brigades with money to buy them can get the grain seeds first, while those who buy on credit will have to wait in line."
Relief grain is free, but the seeds cost money.
"real?"
"Absolutely true."
The captain's face darkened. "There's no money in the team's accounts."
The opportunity has arrived.
Zhao Jian'an curled his lips, "My comrade is willing to pay two hundred yuan to buy those houses at the foot of Beishan Mountain."
hiss--
People around gasped in shock. Two hundred yuan! Their whole family couldn't save two hundred yuan in ten years.
The captain gritted his teeth and said, "Fine, I've approved it."
With these two hundred yuan, the team members were satisfied.
Having achieved his goal, Zhao Jian'an happily left the brigade office, only to see Molly standing at the door.
"Little Molly, what are you doing here?"
Molly: "My sister brought me here to marry into Xiaonan Village."
Zhao Jian'an: "......."
After your sister got married, you had no one left in your family?
From Zhao Jian'an, Molly learned that Ji Hefeng had broken his leg. Two nights ago, during a torrential downpour, a house collapsed. Zhao Jian'an and Ji Hefeng went to rescue the people, but Ji Hefeng was unlucky; after rescuing the people, he himself was crushed by the collapsed wall and broke his leg.
"Isn't he still recovering from his injuries? Why did he go to save people?" Molly asked, puzzled.
“It was my uncle’s house that collapsed, right next to ours. There was no time to call others, so we had to go up ourselves.”
"You are truly selfless."
“Serving the people, right? If I had to do it all over again, even if I knew my leg was broken, I would still go and save people. Come on, let me show you my house and Hefeng’s new house. Remember to come visit sometime. But I’m busy these days. I have to help Hefeng tidy up his house and go to the county to take care of him. Wait a few days, when Hefeng comes back, we’ll invite you to his new housewarming party.”
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