Chapter 3 scar

scar ——Xu Anmei's story When I was young, in China, my grandmother told me that my mother was already a ghost.But my mother is not dead, a living person cannot be called a "ghost".So I understand that my grandmother did this on purpose to make me forget my mother and treat her as dead.In fact, I have gradually lost my impression of my mother.My memory can be traced back to our big house in Ningbo. Its stairs were steep and narrow, and the aisles were gloomy. It was the house of my uncle and aunt, and my younger brother and grandmother lived together. there. Adults often tell us ghost stories, the kind of ghosts who specialize in sucking the blood of children, especially the kind of stubborn and disobedient girls.

All my life, I have been afraid of my grandmother, especially when she was very ill later on, it really terrified me. It was 1923, and I was nine years old.Grandma's whole body was swollen like a big overripe pumpkin.She, who was originally plump and rich, almost turned into a pile of stinking rotten meat.Even now, she called me into her stinking room and said she would tell me a story. "Anmei," she said, calling me by my scientific name, "Listen," this is the usual opening line, but all the stories she told were so weird that I couldn't understand them at all. A greedy girl who suddenly has a big belly, and it's getting bigger and bigger.The girl refused to say whose child she was pregnant with, so she committed suicide by taking poison.Later people cut her body open and found that there was a big white winter melon inside.

"A greedy person will never be satisfied." Grandma finally said. There is another story about a disobedient girl.One day, the girl was quarreling with her aunt again, and she shook her head desperately to refuse to listen to her aunt. Suddenly, when she was shaking her head desperately, something like a white ball fell out of her ear, just like that, Her mind was so drained that it disappeared like chicken soup spilled. "This is the so-called 'no brain'. Your head is full of self-assessed ideas, and other brains can only be thrown out like this." Grandma warned me like this.

When my grandmother's condition worsened and she knew she would die soon, she called me to the bedside and told me about my mother. "You never mention her name—ever. To mention her name is to insult your father." All I have of my father is a huge portrait hanging in the living room.A big man without a trace of smile lines hangs on the wall depressed and lonely all day long.His worried eyes always follow my figure.From the hall down to my own room, I seemed to feel his peering eyes. Grandma said he was watching for my faux pas and naughtiness.So whenever I threw pebbles at school, or lost a book or something inadvertently, I would hurried past the portrait of my father mechanically, and then go back to the room and hide in the corner, thinking that he would Can't see me.

I deeply feel that our home is so depressing and unhappy, but my younger brother doesn't realize it. He rode a bicycle in the yard, chased chickens, played with the children, screamed loudly, and was the most noisy in the quiet house. As long as he watched his uncle and aunt go out, he would sit on their nice velvet sofa. Jump up and trample. However, he also soon ceased to be happy.In a hot summer season, my grandma was already very ill. My brother and I were watching the fun outside. A neighbor was going to a big funeral. When they passed by my door, the photo of the deceased suddenly fell from the seat onto the dusty floor. On the ground, an old lady yelled immediately and fainted. The younger brother laughed out loud when he saw this, and his aunt immediately gave him a slap on the ear.

My aunt has always been very rough with children.My brother gave her a disapproving look, and she immediately reprimanded him for his disrespectful behavior, just like our mother.My aunt's tongue kept moving, like a sharp knife.She ranted on and off about my mother, saying that she was so foolish and so eager to go to the north to get married that she didn't even bring the ten pairs of silver chopsticks with her as a dowry.This is shameful and ruins the feng shui of the ancestor's grave.The younger brother blamed his aunt, saying that she had bluffed his mother away.The aunt immediately cursed, saying that my mother left with a man named Wu Qing, and that man already had a wife, two concubines, and a lot of cowards.

The younger brother retorted that she was smacking like a hen that had lost its head and was running around. She was so angry that she spat on his face, grabbed his hair, and slammed it against the door. "I made you talk fiercely, let you speak fiercely! You bastard!" the aunt said through gritted teeth. , This bitch, even ghosts look down on her." The scolding by my aunt made me finally understand why my grandmother told me those stories. It was because of my mother that I had such a compulsory course. "When you lose face, Anmei," my grandmother often said to me, "it's like you dropped your necklace into a well, and the only way to get it back is to jump in."

In this way, I could imagine what my rebellious mother looked like: brainless, ladylike, ugly, with chopsticks raining down on dessert.She was happy to be free from the fetters and restraints of her grandmother, her husband with a rigid face hanging on the wall, and two stubborn little guys.I feel very unfortunate that there is such a mother in the booth, and she has left us.This thought crept into my mind whenever I hid in the corner of my room, away from my father's peeping eyes on the wall. I was sitting on the top of the stairs when my mother suddenly appeared that day, and I knew immediately that it was my mother!Although I don't remember her at all.At that time, she was standing in the aisle, so her face was a shadow.

She was much taller than my aunt and almost as tall as my uncle.Her demeanor and demeanor also surprised me, a bit like a woman in our school church. I saw her standing there arrogantly and confidently in a suit, with short hair and thin feet and high heels. After the aunt glanced at her, she didn't answer her anymore, neither greeted her to sit down, nor made her tea. An old woman who had been there for many years couldn't stand it, so she had to retreat quickly.I tried my best to hold my breath, but my heart was like a cricket, up and down.My mother must have heard my heartbeat, and she looked up for a moment. In an instant, my soul seemed to go out of my body. It escaped from my body and hid on one side, clearly peeping at my stunned appearance.

I only heard my aunt yelling in my grandmother's room: "It's too late, it's too late." She tried her best to prevent my mother from approaching my grandmother's bed, but my mother ignored her and walked into the room. "I'm back, and I won't leave again," Mom whispered into grandma's ear, "Your daughter is back." Grandma's eyes were wide open, but her consciousness had drifted far, far away, Never come back.If my grandmother had been sane at this point, I think she might have thrown my mother out. I stare at my mother, the first time I've seen her since she left.She is very beautiful, with a fair and delicate oval face, neither flat like my aunt nor thin like my grandmother.She has a long and tender white neck, with elegant and undulating lines, which reminds me of the neck of a swan.Like a ghost, she floated soundlessly from one end of the room to the other, light and graceful.After she kept wringing the towel wet, she gently covered grandma's swollen face.Looking at grandma's half-closed eyes, which were staring blankly, the mother couldn't help but sighed deeply.I stared at her intently, only to feel that her voice was so familiar.I was in a trance: I vaguely remembered hearing such a voice somewhere, as if it came from a forgotten dream.

When I went back to my room, I was surprised to find that my mother was inside, standing there upright.I remember my grandma told me not to pay attention to my mother, so I just stood aside silently.But my mother took my hand, led me to the sofa, and sat down. Everything seemed so natural, as if we got along like this every day. Mom unbraided my hair and combed it gently with a long-handled comb. "An Mei, are you good?" She asked me, smiling knowingly. I was at a loss.But my heart was trembling: I felt that I had become that girl with a big wax gourd in her stomach. "Anmei, you don't know me anymore?" She said angrily.I thought again of the child who didn't listen to her elders. I didn't want her head to bloom and her brains to fall out of her ears. She stopped combing my hair, and I felt that her long, smooth fingers were stroking and searching on my chin, and she finally found it. It was a scar on my neck.When she gently stroked my scar, my mood suddenly calmed down, as if she gently rubbed the "past" into my skin and into my memory. She dropped her hands and wept, wrapping them tightly around her own neck, weeping very sadly.All this aroused my memory, and I remembered the dream-like past. I was four years old that year, and I happened to be one head above the dining table, with my chin just touching the table. I could see the other side of the table from this side, and my younger brother was sitting in my grandmother’s arms, crying loudly with purple face.At this time, I heard a sound of "snapping, snorting", that is a hot hot pot was brought to the table, and I only heard the sound of "please, please" on the dining table. Suddenly, the dinner table fell silent, and uncle jumped up from the chair. Everyone's gazes shot to the door, where a tall woman stood.I was the only one at the table making a sound. "Mom!" I yelled and got off the seat, but my aunt immediately gave me a scratch and pushed me back to the seat.At this time, everyone at the dinner table stood up one after another, blaming something loudly, while the mother cried out loudly: "An Mei, An Mei!" "You goblin, instead of being a widow at home, you become someone's third concubine, and you want to take your daughter away. If you follow you, she will become as shameful as you are, and she will never be able to lift her up for the rest of her life." It started." My mother still calls me loudly, and to this day, I can still hear her call clearly: "Anmei, Anmei!" Across the table, I can clearly see her face, between me and her, It is a hot hot pot with a chimney, and the dark soup is tumbling.Suddenly, I heard screams from around me, and the pot of soup splashed on my neck. The pain is indescribable, it is not something a child can bear.This pain is a mark that has been seared on my skin forever.I couldn't even cry because my skin was so hot that it hurt to breathe. I couldn't speak either, the pain made me burst into tears, and everything in front of my eyes was blurred by tears.But in the yelling of grandma and aunt, I can still hear my mother's crying, and gradually, I don't know anything. That night, my grandma came to my bed and said, "Anmei, listen!" The voice was still full of accusations, just as harsh as usual when she scolded me for running around on the South Road. "Anmei, we have prepared your shroud and shoes for you, all made of white cloth." I listened and felt as uncomfortable as being cut by a knife. "Anmei," her tone became softer now, "Your shroud is very ordinary and not beautiful, because you are only a child, even if your life is shorter, you still owe your family , and therefore your funeral will be very simple. We will soon forget you." Grandma said something similar again, which hurt me more than the wound on my neck. "Even your mother, who is crying like hell, will forget you if you die." Grandma did this very beautifully, and I hurriedly struggled to turn my head from the underworld, in order to find my mother. I was crying every night, my eyes and neck were burning from crying, while my grandma was sitting by the bed, pouring cold water on my neck, pouring and pouring, until my breathing began to become weak. It's even and smooth, and, I'm starting to fall asleep.The next morning, grandma used her long, pointed nails like tweezers to gently peel off the cuticles on the wound. For two full years, there was a pale and bright scar on my neck.But my memory of my mother has disappeared without a trace.A wound in my life just healed and shut up.No one can see what kind of pain is buried under it, and no one knows where the cause of that pain comes from.Scars are the end of pain. However, the mother standing by my grandmother's bed in front of me is completely different from the mother in my dream. However, I began to fall in love with the mother in front of me gradually.Not because she came here to beg my forgiveness, in fact, she didn't.She didn't have to explain to me why she didn't visit me when I was dying, it was my grandmother who stopped her, I understood that.She didn't need to tell me that she married Wu Qing, and she changed from one unhappy situation to another. I also understand this point. How on earth did I gradually fall in love with my mother?I think she made me discover my true self, the real me wrapped in a skin. It was late at night, and I was called into my grandmother's room.My aunt said, grandma is leaving soon, I must do my best.I put on a clean dress and stood at my grandmother's feet, between my uncle and my aunt.I sob softly. At the other end of the room, my mother was alone, grieving in silence.She was taking care of a pot of medicinal soup. On the stove, the medicinal soup was boiling, exuding a herbal smell.Suddenly, I saw her roll up her sleeves, pick up a sharp knife, and put it on my arm. I dare not open my eyes to look at her. The mother cut a piece of flesh on her arm, tears flowed down her face, and blood dripped on the floor in a "da la" and "da la". Mother put the piece of meat cut off from her arm into the medicinal soup, just like an ancient witch, hoping to use an unknown magic to do her last filial piety for her mother.Mom managed to pry open grandma's tightly closed lips, and fed the soup into it.But that night, grandma still left. Although I was young at the time, I can imagine my mother's pain and the value of this pain. A daughter is filial to her mother in this way.This kind of filial piety has been deeply imprinted in the bone marrow, and the pain suffered for it seems so insignificant.You have to forget that pain.Because sometimes, that's the only way you'll realize what "Parents of the Heart" is all about.You are obliged to disembowel your mother, and your mother should do this for her mother, and her mother will do it for the mothers of the previous generation, and so on, until the beginning of all things.