Chapter 1
Your name is Nanfei, and your hometown is in Yunnan.
Your mother had you out of wedlock and raised you alone. Her job was driving a truck, delivering goods between Yunnan and Guizhou. She was in a car accident when you were in sixth grade. That day happened to be a Monday, and you were the class representative for Chinese language, standing under the national flag to give a speech.
Your homeroom teacher came over, grabbed your hand, and you remember her eyes were red as she said to you, "Nanfei, I have something to tell you."
...
You love writing essays and you talk a lot about them.
Because your mother is often away from home, and you like to hear praise, and writing is one of your strengths, you can use it to get plenty of appreciation.
Do you remember reading your essay to your mom? She was sitting on a stool, soaking her feet and keeping accounts at the same time.
You say, "Mom, I won an award for my essay!"
What award?
Read it to her.
[Autumn fog shrouded the mountains, the corn ears withered, and Mom climbed the mountain path step by step with a basket on her back. The fog soaked her hair and trouser legs, making her look like a "wet person."]
My mom laughed so hard at that, she thought I was the best girl in the world.
But actually, you lie, probably because you crave attention. You're good at making up stories, treating them as if they really happened, and telling them to your mother and classmates. You tell them with such conviction that they all believe you.
At this moment, you suddenly feel like using your talent for making up stories to tell your teacher, classmates, and relatives.
[Mom is not dead, Mom is still here]
But this lame lie simply doesn't hold water.
...
When you entered junior high school, you started to gain a little weight because of puberty and growth spurts.
Your mother is gone, and your aunt has taken over. She is a talkative, busy, but kind-hearted rural woman. She is only so big-hearted, and has to accommodate your uncle and her two sons.
She doesn't know how to get along with children. When she meets them, she says, "Your mother is dead. I'll take half of the savings and put the other half in a fixed deposit so you can go to college."
You hug your schoolbag and say, "Okay."
Then, in the second week after you came to her house, you ran away from home, carrying a few steamed buns and hiding alone in the mountains, not wanting to go home.
Your aunt searched for you day and night for several days. After finding you, she was furious. She cried a lot, scolded you even more harshly, and held you tightly in her hand. You were confused and lost, and finally fell into a long silence.
I miss my mom.
You didn't say anything and obediently followed her home. On the mountain, you ate too many wild fruits with seeds and couldn't defecate. You turned blue from holding it in. She was an uneducated woman. She stirred some soapy water and was so anxious that she wanted to help you by rubbing your bowels with her hands. Later, someone reminded her that she should go to a small pharmacy to buy laxatives.
She would also scold you, and say some really harsh things, but now you can't really remember the bad things she did; most of what you can remember are the good things.
My aunt has two children, both of whom are quite young. The family is not well-off, and the two older brothers started school relatively late, so they seem a bit slow-witted.
Back then, you were in the first year of junior high, and your cousin was in the sixth grade. You went to elementary and junior high together. When you were going to school, your two older brothers would always leave early and hide on a side road under a loquat tree to finish the homework they had forgotten to do the day before while playing wildly.
You go to school with them, sit under the tree, and wait for them to finish writing.
It is said that my aunt was the most beautiful girl in the next village back then. Her two older brothers looked like her. My aunt and uncle were betrothed when they were young, but my aunt did not like my uncle. Before the marriage, she and her girlfriends made a pact to go to the big city together. The two girls secretly slipped out in the dark with their bags on their backs and walked more than ten miles over mountains and rivers. However, my aunt regretted it halfway. After thinking it over, she abandoned her girlfriends and walked more than ten miles back alone. When she returned, she was carrying a basket of pig feed on her back.
She married her uncle as agreed, had two children, and suffered from her mother-in-law's temper. In the dead of winter, before she had even finished her postpartum confinement, she had to wash diapers for the two children and take care of the whole family's meals.
When my older brother was little, he got sick. My aunt asked my mother-in-law for money to pay for his injections, but my mother-in-law refused. My older brother endured the fever all night until it subsided, but he became a little slow-witted.
You weren't familiar with them at first, and you didn't want to get to know them. You always kept to yourself. You harbored a secret resentment, thinking that your two older brothers were idiots and that even without your mother, you were still better than them.
But for a few days, you noticed that your older brother, who always loved going to school, suddenly started lying and refused to go to school, several times in a row.
Later, you pretended to ask for leave to go to the toilet, went around to their classroom, and secretly tiptoed to see. In the classroom, the older boy couldn't answer the teacher's questions, made mistakes in his homework, and was at the bottom of the class in the exam. He was also the oldest student in the class. The teacher made the tall and strong older boy balance a basin of water on his head and do a horse stance in the classroom for a whole class period. If his legs wobbled, the students next to him would kick him.
The older brother's face was flushed red. He was half-squatting in the middle of the passageway with a basin of water on his head. There were several footprints on his legs. No wonder he always complained of leg pain and soreness when he got home and didn't want to do farm work.
Laughter occasionally broke the silence in the classroom, and students would sometimes raise their right hands, behaving themselves properly and seriously as if they were doing something very important.
"Teacher, Lin Jiangjie's leg is wobbling."
The teacher said, "Kick."
"yes!"
The older boy was carrying a basin of water on his head, wearing a school uniform with a broken zipper and red and white canvas shoes. The shoes were unglued from the force of his feet and looked ugly.
He seemed to realize that he was in an extremely unfavorable environment, and that malice and ridicule from all sides were about to overwhelm him. He couldn't speak, and he didn't know how to express himself to the teacher. He was naturally afraid of the teacher's authority.
The teacher looked at the older boy and said, "Are you useless? You can't even get something this simple right. Classmates, is he useless?"
The other students answered in unison, "Yes!"
Teacher: "Don't play with him, lest you infect him with stupidity."
At first, you envied the older and younger brothers for having parents and complete families, but you discovered that they, too, were misunderstood and bullied because of the gap between themselves and the vast majority of people in the world.
No one lives an easy life; you just can't see it. No one dares to bully you. You're proud and smart, so you don't know these things, nor do you need to understand them.
In that instant, you thought of many things, but you didn't have half a minute to think. You pushed open the door to the older brother's classroom, picked up the basin of water on his head, and splashed it all over the teacher.
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