One afternoon, during the self-study class, the whole class was doing their homework in the classroom. A female student who liked to chatter usually borrowed books from another female student. When the female student lowered her head to look in the table, the female student who liked to chatter saw half a bowl of leftovers in her table and said," Why didn't you give your leftovers to Old Bull?”，As he spoke, he took out the bowl from the female classmate's table and shouted at his brother," Old Bull, there's leftovers here. Eat it!”，The eyes of the whole class were fixed on the elder brother. The elder brother was busy with his autumn homework. When he was suddenly called by the female student, his face immediately turned red. He looked at the whole class in shock and did not know how to answer. Fortunately, the female student in the seat had an idea. She snatched the bowl and stuffed it back into the drawer. She said," What are you doing? I still want to eat after class!"”，However, the whole class was still staring at his brother. He lowered his head awkwardly. The noisy female student did not have any malicious intentions. It could even be said that she had good intentions. However, at the age of fifteen, he was the most concerned about his face. He was also the most psychologically fragile and sensitive age. His brother could not help but be agitated by this. From then on, he no longer ate the leftovers given to him by his classmates. He even lost his temper at the students who took the initiative to give him leftovers.
When I was in primary school, I was good friends with Zhi. When I was in middle school, we were even closer. I followed Zhi all day long, and Zhi really became like my brother. When he saw that I didn't have enough to eat, he tried to bring food from home for me. Zhi also tried to let me go to his house for dinner. He came up with the best of both worlds. He let us brothers go to cut firewood with his family on Sunday. This way, we could eat at his house. Zhi's mother also agreed. That night for dinner, Zhi's mother cooked a big pot of rice and a big basin of pork stewed with vermicelli (his family was from the northeast). My brother and I ate bowl after bowl. Zhihua's mother looked at me and my brother eating and said sadly,"How can these two children be so hungry? They're so pitiful!"”。
The teacher still advised us to change our household registration to a farm household registration. This way, we could increase our monthly grain quota by seven catties (from twenty-one catties to twenty-eight catties). However, my brother and I were too focused on the commercial grain household registration at that time and did not listen to the teacher's suggestion. However, three years later, due to the cultural revolution, the school was suspended and then disbanded. My brother and I were the same as the farm children. Our household registration was also transferred to the farm production team and also became farm household registration. Thinking about it, I really regretted it. If I had transferred to the farm household registration as soon as I entered middle school, I could eat seven kilograms of rice a month. I could increase the rice by two taels of rice a day. That was a very considerable amount at that time. Perhaps my brother would not have suffered from severe malnutrition due to hunger.
(Spring of 1965) It was the second semester of our independent life. About a month after school started, my brother became swollen. His face was swollen like bread coated with yellow wax, and his legs were so swollen that he couldn't even put on his shoes. The teacher found out about this situation and asked my brother to go to the hospital for a check-up. The diagnosis was that my brother had icteric epilepsy. My brother and I didn't know that icteric epilepsy was a very infectious disease, so we still slept in the same bed as my brother. Because when the family moved away, we only left a set of bedding. A teacher who was concerned about us said that we must not sleep together anymore. If we did that, we would both get rabies. This teacher even lent me a blanket and let me sleep separately from my brother. I also didn't know how to take care of my brother at all. I let him lie alone in the room. He was already unable to get up and go to class (the teacher also didn't let him go to class anymore, afraid of causing infection in class). I couldn't add any nutrition to him. I still steamed a bowl of porridge like rice soup for him, even though he really wanted to eat some dry rice at this time.
Perhaps the teacher had sent a letter to my family. After class, I returned to my room and was pleasantly surprised to find that my mother had come. As my brother had been dragging his illness out, his illness was very serious. He was already suffering from anorexia and would vomit whenever he ate. If my mother had not come to school, my brother's life might have disappeared from that illness.
Mother saw that the dishes I brought back from the canteen were just some water convolvulus and green vegetables. The rice I brought back was just like porridge. She asked me if there were any other dishes in the canteen. I told her that there were steamed eggs and salted vegetables with diced meat. Mother asked me to go back to the canteen and get a portion of salted vegetables with diced meat for brother. I told her that it was not enough to eat the food tickets like this. Mother felt sad after hearing that. She had not imagined that brother and I could live like this for half a year. She immediately told brother and me,"Don't study anymore. Go home with mother.""A family together is better than you two brothers being left alone." I remained silent and didn't say anything. Mother looked at brother again and brother didn't say anything.
At that time, the supply of meat was based on tickets. Mother begged Zhi's mother to help sell more than two catties of fat.(Cut off the lean meat. At that time, fat meat was more popular than lean meat because it could be refined into pork fat.) We stewed it in a pot and served it to my brother and me. When the teacher saw it, he stopped my mother and said that my brother's liver disease could not eat greasy things, otherwise it would aggravate the condition. However, my brother and I still ate all the fat meat in a short time. There was no oil left in my brother's stomach.
Before my mother came, I always felt that there were insects biting me, especially at night. I told my mother about this, and she asked me to take off my underwear. She was shocked when she saw that the gap between my underwear was full of lice eggs. She looked at my brother's clothes and it was the same. She knew that lice sucking human blood would spread diseases, and she was worried that my brother's liver had been transmitted to me (she went to check later to see if it was true). Mother asked me and brother to change our clothes from inside to outside. She boiled a pot of water and ironed the clothes thoroughly. The scalded lice floated on the water surface. Mother took the bedding apart and boiled the water. Another layer of scalded lice floated on the water surface. Mother guessed that the students had lice on their bodies. She told the teacher that there was indeed a large cross-infection of lice in the student dormitory. If mother didn't come in time, I would have probably contracted the virus. Mother said,"This is really unimaginable. In the ignorant and backward living environment of Dafutun, our family did not get lice. I didn't expect that in the south, the students had lice. So she was embarrassed to boil water outside the room to burn the lice, but closed the door, afraid that others would see it and laugh at her."
Under his mother's care, half a month later, his brother's swelling slowly disappeared. The doctor said that his acute infectious period had passed and he could go back to class. One day, after class, Mother suddenly disappeared. I asked my brother, but he didn't answer me directly. He only said that she left. She left. I was skeptical. If Mother wanted to leave, she should have told me. But every afternoon after class, I couldn't find my brother. For more than ten days in a row, he would only return to his room when it was dark. Every time he came back, he would give me half a steamed bun to eat. I asked him what he was doing, and he said that he went to Auntie Zhang's house in the field headquarters (Auntie's colleague in the provincial capital. She had brought my brother to meet her when she came to Zhoutian). Auntie Zhang had something to do at home and he said that the steamed bun was also given by Auntie Zhang.
It had been almost a month. I stared at my brother every day and asked where my mother had gone. After class that afternoon, my brother asked me to follow him along the path at the foot of the mountain that led to the university. Before we finished the path, we were far away. I saw a person washing clothes sitting by the well in the university building. She looked like my mother. I was confused. Why would my mother be here?
It turned out that mother wanted to take me and brother out of school and go home. Seeing that we didn't agree, and the money she brought with her (brother's injections and medicine, as well as improving our food) had been used up, mother could only ask brother to find Auntie Zhang in the field headquarters to ask if there was anyone who needed a servant. Auntie Zhang took mother to a young teacher and his wife in the university to be a nanny. The child was over one year old. It turned out that her brother disappeared after school every day to help her mother fetch water and wash clothes by the well. It was because I was one year younger than my brother, but I was many years younger than my brother in terms of being considerate to adults. They knew that I was very vain and were afraid that I would be under psychological pressure if I knew that she was a servant (my brother was also afraid that his classmates would know about this), so they simply hid it from me.
This year, Mother was already forty-six years old. In fact, she (high fat, high blood pressure, and small feet, so she couldn't stand steadily) didn't have the ability to do heavy physical work. It was very dangerous for her to draw water from a ten-meter deep well. Therefore, my brother came to help Mother draw water every day after class, but I didn't know about it. After class, I only played by myself.
The teacher and his wife were very surprised to see the two of us. They actually thought that we were twins. They said to my mother,"You have such a good son (it looks like the two of us brothers are already young men). Why are you still working as a servant?" It turned out that her brother did not meet the teacher and his wife when he came here every day. Instead, he went to the well to help his mother and then returned to school.
The teacher and his wife had a very good impression of their mother from the beginning, so they were not harsh on their mother. The breakfast lady bought breakfast for them from the school canteen, coaxed the children in the morning, tidied up the room, cooked lunch and dinner, and washed clothes. She gave them a commission of ten yuan a month. Mother secretly kept the steamed bun she ate for breakfast and only drank some porridge. When my brother went in the afternoon, she gave the remaining steamed bun to him to bring back and share with me.
On this day, my brother brought me to the teacher's house where my mother worked as a servant. He wanted to bring my mother back. When he came a few days ago, he had already asked my mother to resign from the teacher and his wife in advance. After working for a month, she would stop working because my family urged my mother to go back. There were still three younger siblings who needed her. This morning, the teacher and his wife had already given their mother a month's salary (10 yuan). Just as he was about to leave, his mother swept his house again, tidied up the things in the house, and exhorted the young teacher couple on how to take care of the child. As the host, he said many words of thanks to his mother.
Walking out of the teacher and his wife's house, I walked on the small path. I talked to my brother and mother and walked back easily. Suddenly, my mother became nervous. Her hand did not touch the ten yuan that she had worked hard for a month in her pocket. She searched left and right but could not find it. She was so anxious that her face changed color and she stuttered. The elder brother quickly asked if he had put it in the bag that was used to store the clothes. He immediately put down the bag and shook all the clothes, but he still couldn't see the ten yuan. His mother probably dropped it at the teacher and his wife's house. He gritted his teeth and said," Forget it, let's go. It's not good to go back and look for it even if it fell into someone else's house. It's not worth it to go back and look for someone else for ten yuan."”
Mother didn't speak again on the road, and she didn't speak again that night. Before the land reform, ten yuan was really nothing to her family. She didn't know how many ten yuan she spent on the servants at home every month. But now, she had earned ten yuan from working as a servant for a month. She was still counting on this ten yuan to improve her son's life. Sure enough, the next day, Auntie Zhang sent ten yuan over. It turned out that the mother cared too much about the ten yuan. She was afraid that it would fly away in her hand and she was afraid that it would be lost in her pocket. She picked it up and put it down, not knowing where to put it. Later, when the child cried, she hurriedly stuffed it under the mattress to carry the child. Later on, she forgot about it and thought that it was still in her pocket. Sigh, it was really an endless relationship between parents.
I still had to take a physical education test for my promotion in junior high school. Just like in primary school, physical education was always the most embarrassing subject for me. This time, I had to climb a rope. The rule was that girls could use their feet to twist the rope to climb, while boys could only climb with their bare hands. It might not be difficult for healthy students who had eaten their fill, but I did not have the ability to do it. I could not use my hands to take a step forward. Many students cheered and encouraged me, but it was useless. I did not have the strength at all. Some students begged the physical education teacher for mercy. Let me follow the girl's rules and use my feet to twist the rope to climb. Listening to my classmates plead for me, my tears couldn't stop flowing...
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