Chapter 9 Chapter 9 Your Mom Doesn't Want You
After delivering the money, Qingmei rushed to the market to sell shepherd's purse cakes.
In the twelfth lunar month, there was a long line in front of her stall.
Auntie Ma from next door arrived early and left a bag of dried whitebait for Qingmei. These small whitebait, after drying, are as thin and long as bean sprouts and are quite salty.
In winter, when there's little food to eat, many coastal residents eat dried whitebait mixed with rice. The better-off families fry it in oil, making it even more fragrant and crispy.
Qingmei made three shepherd's purse cakes for Aunt Ma. After all, favors should be reciprocated.
Her shepherd's purse cakes were sold out quickly. Qingmei had other plans and said hello to others.
After returning to Donghe Village, she first went to find Brother Wang Yang's house. He was an older brother from the same production team as her and knew how to make a kang.
Qingmei asked about the price and was told it would cost ten yuan to have it done on the same day.
Qingmei first gave the money to Wang Yang, and agreed that after lunch, he would bring people to buy bricks and go to her house to build the kang.
I also found someone to repair the roof and courtyard wall. These were not as expensive as the kang, but they still cost five yuan.
Qingmei finished these things, returned the bicycle, and took a special look into the office.
Captain Jin was having a meeting with the staff. At the end of the year, money and food would be distributed to everyone. Those who were good at accounting, including Chen Qiaoxiang's father, were all together to calculate all the accounts that had not been distributed this year.
This is a good opportunity for Qingmei to retaliate.
Back home, grandma used the whitebait she brought back to make a bright kelp and whitebait soup. The old and the young ate it on the stove.
Just after finishing the meal, Brother Wang Yang came over with his men pushing a cart.
Grandma quickly boiled water for them to drink.
Qingmei was in the yard, squatting in the corner and writing and drawing on the ground with a small stick.
She remembered that the book briefly mentioned how Chen Qiaoxiang's father cooked the accounts, but she wanted to find a way to let Captain Jin know and then let Captain Jin take the initiative to investigate.
After some writing and calculations were almost done, the roof and fence repairmen arrived. They replaced the worn-out roof tiles with new ones to prevent leaks from rain and snow. And as for the fence, there was only one word: raise it!
Around four o'clock, Qingmei had to prepare dinner for the workers, which was the employer's rule for hiring temporary workers.
She stewed the head of a large black carp with frozen tofu and added two rounds of cornmeal pancakes.
The fish soup is as white as milk, rich and fragrant. A mouthful of cornmeal pancakes, a sip of hot and delicious fish soup, and large chunks of fish with garlic cloves are so delicious that they make your tongue drop.
Seven or eight helpers came over and ate up all the soup. They dipped more than 20 cornmeal cakes in the remaining soup and ate them all.
"If I hadn't come to your house to work, I wouldn't have known that Qingmei's cooking skills are so good." Wang Yang is straightforward. It doesn't matter that there are no chairs in Qingmei's house. He squats by the stove with others, slurping his food and enjoying the delicious food.
He wiped his mouth with his sleeve, still unsatisfied, and said, "I'll ask your sister-in-law to learn from you later. Big black fish can actually be stewed to produce a meaty aroma. It's really satisfying."
"Yes, with this skill, you can go to the brigade to cook for the big pot. Even the collective pigs won't be happy to eat the food there."
"I have a big herring at home. Can you help me cook it? We can each split half, and I'll provide the firewood."
These older brothers were all from respectable families, and usually kept their distance due to the old saying, "There's always trouble around a widow." Today, when they came together to work, they were able to talk a little, but they also knew their limits and asked their wives to come over and interact with Qingmei.
Qingmei agreed with a smile and promised them: "As long as the work is done well for my family, these are all trivial matters."
"What's the problem? We are well-known for our good workmanship. Let's go on and continue to build the kang so that the old man can sleep on a warm kang tonight."
"The roof I repair won't leak for three years. If it leaks, come to me and I'll fix it for you for free."
"If the wall is not strong, come to me."
...
When the sun goes down, the house inside and outside becomes brighter.
Wang Yang lit the kang and asked his grandmother to touch it all over. After finding it was warm, he smiled and took everyone away.
Grandma was kindhearted. She sat on the kang, clasping her hands together and saying, "I'm so happy that I can sleep on a warm kang in my lifetime."
Qingmei was very happy today. When she bought frozen tofu, she also bought a handful of white pumpkin seeds. She coaxed her grandmother to drink the medicine and let her grandmother crack pumpkin seeds on the kang to pass the time while waiting for her to come back from night school.
"Working at night hurts your eyes, so don't sew the soles anymore. Eat the melon seeds first. I'll come back and check."
Grandma said with red eyes: "Okay, I will enjoy it today too."
"You'll have plenty of places to enjoy yourself in the future." Qingmei climbed onto the kang and closed the window before leaving. "I'll be back after class at eight o'clock."
After settling her grandmother down, Qingmei went to the supply and marketing cooperative to buy a primary school grid and pencils.
There are three classes in the night school.
One is a literacy class, one is a cultural study class, and one is a scientific planting and breeding class.
When Teacher Qin saw Qingmei coming, she first asked about her basic knowledge. She knew Qingmei was from the city, but she had never taught her well and thought she was illiterate.
Qingmei didn't want to start with pinyin, she wanted to go to a more advanced class.
"You can actually recognize words?" Teacher Qin is the only female teacher in the night school. After Teacher Wang left, she took over as the main teacher of the literacy class.
Although he is called a teacher, he is actually only at the junior high school level.
Qingmei made the excuse that her parents were both teachers and that she had some education, but not much. Everyone knew her mother was a professor, and now that she was gone, her father couldn't have raised her.
In front of Teacher Qin, Qingmei wrote her name stroke by stroke and learned a few pinyin characters, and was promoted to the training class.
The number of students in the training class is half that of the literacy class, with only about ten people.
Qingmei studied there for three consecutive days, and finally met Captain Jin, the substitute teacher, on the fourth day.
Captain Jin is the new team leader this year. The Chinese New Year is just one month away, and Captain Jin asked the team accountants to sort out the accounts so that the work quotas and rations can be distributed in time.
After teaching the quotations of great men and asking the students to copy them, she took the account book and took the time to help with the accounting on the stage.
Unlike urban accountants, rural people's accounting is not as clear as urban accountants in terms of detailed expenditures and clear item categories. They often make a lot of mistakes.
From time to time, she would call Chen Qiaoxiang's dad, that is, Chen Han, to ask questions. Fortunately, Chen Han was an experienced accountant and could explain every transaction in detail.
Qingmei dawdled until she finished copying the last quotation. Everyone else left. She pretended to ask Captain Jin to check her work and walked over to her. As if she had accidentally spotted the words in the account book, she smiled and asked Captain Jin, "Is this 'Fertilizer No. 1'?"
Captain Jin looked up and said encouragingly, "Yes, this is the 'Fertilizer No. 1' produced in Wei County."
Qingmei said with nostalgia: "Our village used the old No. 3 last year. I heard from other villages that those who used No. 1 all saw an increase in production. It was really enviable."
Captain Jin suddenly looked up and asked, "You didn't use the No. 1 fertilizer this year?"
Qingmei said confidently, "Yes, the yield is there. We only harvested 60,000 tons of wheat in total. After paying the public grain tax, we have 30,000 tons left. We still have to pay back the government for seed grain, and we donated 1,000 kilograms to the disaster-stricken county next door. After paying it back, we only have 10,000 tons left. But it's okay, at least we won't go hungry."
Sixty thousand tons were collected, leaving thirty thousand tons; one thousand kilograms were donated, leaving ten thousand tons.
None of these figures are reflected in the account books.
Captain Jin had always felt that the accounts were unclear and inconsistent, but he figured they were all farmers and that this had happened before, so he assumed it was just a matter of record keeping.
"Are you sure?"
"Quite sure."
Captain Jin slammed his pen down on the podium, thought for a moment, and then said to Qingmei, "Could you please call Comrade Wang Yang for me? Don't tell him about the bill, just say the school stove is broken. Don't tell anyone about what happened today, I'll have to ask you later."
Brother Wang Yang was a good man, the first person everyone thought of when things went wrong in the village. He was honest and upright, and a good worker. He was the one who could verify the numbers Qingmei had given.
"Is there something going on?" Qingmei pretended to be confused so that Captain Jin couldn't guess that these numbers were the result of her careful calculations over several days.
Captain Jin patted the account book lightly: "Oh, this year has been a mess."
Qingmei followed Captain Jin's instructions and went to the door of Wang Yang's house, where she happened to meet Wang's wife. Wang's wife thought it was about the kang, so Qingmei followed Captain Jin's instructions and told her to go inside and talk to Wang Yang. Qingmei stood outside the door and refused to go in.
Mrs. Wang knew that she wanted to avoid suspicion, so she said "Hey", went into the house and quickly called Wang Yang out, asking him to take his tools and go to school quickly.
Qingmei knew that Wang Yang had his own agenda, just waiting for the right moment. Last year, when Chen Qiaoxiang's father distributed work points, he had undercounted Wang Yang's. Wang Yang had explained the situation clearly to him in front of everyone in the production team.
After watching Brother Wang Yang go to night school, Qingmei went back alone.
The next day, she didn't notice any movement at the brigade headquarters, so she went to the market to sell shepherd's purse cakes as usual in the morning.
It will snow heavily in a few days, and we won’t be able to sell it then.
When she arrived at the market, she actually saw Zhao Wuhe in the queue to buy shepherd's purse cakes.
Zhao Wuhe had just recovered after staying up all night with Qingmei. She was concerned about her son, and after finishing the tasks at hand, she wanted to go to the army to see her youngest son, who had sacrificed his life in his previous life, with her own eyes.
"Give me twenty shepherd's purse cakes, and I'll go find my son."
Qingmei said crisply, "Okay, I'll wrap it up for you while it's still hot."
Qingmei didn't know what Zhao Wuhe was planning, so she handed the shepherd's purse cake to Zhao Wuhe and watched her leave in a hurry.
The closer Zhao Wuhe got to the army, the more excited she became. How could she not be excited when her son, who had sacrificed his life in his previous life, appeared before her alive again?
Gu Qingzhou thought Zhao Wuhe came to urge him to get married, but he never expected that Zhao Wuhe would start crying when she saw him in public. She cried so sadly that she hit him with her elbow while crying.
There were still quite a few soldiers in the duty room, including Mu Ran. Everyone couldn't help but laugh. Mu Ran even thought, "Good for you, Old Gu, you've finally met this day."
Gu Qingzhou said with a smile: "I'm only 26 this year, you don't have to force me to get married like this."
"You know nothing." Zhao Wuhe reached out to give her youngest son a hug, patted him on the back and said, "Very good, very good!"
Gu Qingzhou looked at Zhao Wuhe doubtfully: "I am indeed doing well in the army."
Zhao Wuhe breathed a sigh of relief, and the pent-up anger in her heart dissipated a lot when she saw her son. She looked her youngest son up and down carefully, and slapped her thigh: "Oh, by the way, Mom brought you some delicious food."
Zhao Wuhe took out the shepherd's purse pancake, opened the oil-paper package, and tore off a piece. The pancake was steaming warm, and everyone could see that it also contained small river shrimp, leeks, eggs, and vermicelli noodles.
"Eat yourselves, don't be polite to Auntie."
Mu Ran was naturally not polite and took a quick bite after grabbing it. The fragrance of shepherd's purse and the crispy baked dough filled his lips and teeth.
The fresh and delicious taste of leeks and river shrimps made him unable to stop eating one bite after another.
Even though Zhao Wuhe beat and scolded Gu Qingzhou, she felt sorry for him.
She stuffed the last piece of shepherd's purse cake into his hand and said caringly, "Try your wife's cooking. Most people can't have it."
Gu Qingzhou took a bite and almost choked: "What do you mean my wife?"
Mu Ran and the other soldiers forgot to chew and said with silly mouths, "Ah, Lao Gu...you are doing something big without saying anything?"
Gu Qingzhou said helplessly: "My mother was joking with me." Then he put the shepherd's purse cake on the table, expressing his refusal with his actions.
Zhao Wuhe knew he would make such a scene, so she pointed at the shepherd's purse cake that Gu Qingzhou didn't eat and said, "If you eat it, you will be my son."
Gu Qingzhou said: "Mom, can't we do this?"
Zhao Wuhe understood and said with a sneer, "Okay. I won't force you."
Gu Qingzhou was about to breathe a sigh of relief when Zhao Wuhe said, "I've been here for a while now, I'm leaving now. Just be well. By the way, remember to eat the shepherd's purse cakes, don't waste my daughter's cooking skills."
Gu Qingzhou: "..."
Mu Ran: "Puff!"
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