Chapter 23 23. Mother from Spain

you'll never hear me, You just see the clothes I wear, or care more, is the color of my hair, Every story has two sides, and I am not the same as I started. - Band of Public Image Ltd. "In the increasingly hot weather, the cicadas squeaked on the poplar trees in the old concession area, and the stone steps covered with dust and car exhaust lead to the secret gardens, ancient mansions and the mysterious nocturnal fashion in this city. Crowd. High-heeled shoes walk through moss-covered alleys, streets lined with modern buildings, and dreams in north, south, east, west, and east, and the knocking sound is the most perfect material echo in the city's ears...”

In the afternoon without warning, when I just wrote the above-mentioned poetic text, there was a clear sound of heels hitting the ground outside the door, followed by a low and controlled knock on the door.A strange middle-aged woman knocked on my door. Her overly delicate dress and her tongue-rolling accent with a strong exotic color made me instantly understand who the unexpected guest in front of me was. "Is Bi Tiantian not here?" She looked at me complicatedly for a few seconds, then smiled, "You must be CoCo." I subconsciously smoothed out the hair that was loose on my shoulders, and there were still one or two black stains of ink on the back of my hands. What's more, I was only wearing a thin and short nightdress, and no vision could be seen through the white cotton fabric. Anyone above 0.5 can tell that I'm not wearing anything underneath.I folded my hands and put them on my stomach, pretending that everything was normal, invited her into the room, then went into the bathroom and took out the underwear I just changed last night from the washing machine as fast as I could and put them on. That's it.Facing the mirror, I tied up my hair and checked my face for abnormalities. I never thought that Tiantian's mother would appear in this room so suddenly.

It was embarrassing and tense at the beginning, and I haven't recovered from the novel I'm writing. I believe any girl will have such a panic when her boyfriend's mother suddenly comes to the house where they live together, especially What am I supposed to tell her about her son when that boy is locked up in a horrible place of isolation because of a drug addiction, will she have a violent reaction, will she pass out?She would scream at me and ask me why I didn't take good care of her son, why I was so irresponsible and still lived in this house and wrote my own novel?Maybe pinch my neck with a nail.

I walked into the kitchen and searched for a long time. There was almost nothing in the refrigerator, and there was only a little bit of coffee left in the coffee bottle. Those brown powders made a cup of coffee, with white foam floating on the surface, which looked like low-quality coffee sold in black shops. I tasted it, but luckily it didn't have a sour taste. She was sitting on the sofa, still looking at the layout around the room, her eyes lingered on Tian Tian's self-portrait hanging on the wall for a long time, it was the most outstanding work that Tian Tian had ever drawn, he drew the expression in his eyes. As transparent as an ice valley, some elusive emotion is brewing in his brush. It seems that when he is tracing his facial features in front of the mirror, he is enjoying the unspeakable pleasure in loneliness. The boy, and then poured the enchanted blood into the boy, reborn him, and made him rise to the highest sky in an instant like a cloud of mist.

I handed her the coffee, and she thanked me, staring at me unabashedly, "You look better than I expected, I thought you were a big man." I smiled, feeling agitated inside of. "Oh, I'm sorry, I haven't introduced myself formally yet. I'm Tian Tian's mother, you can call me Connie." She took out a hardcover box of Cuban cigars from her handbag, and I handed over a lighter. She lit it carefully, and a blue-gray smoke filled the room. The smell was a bit pungent, but exotic. The atmosphere was pleasant and we all relaxed a bit. "I didn't tell you the time of my return in advance, but I thought it would be more appropriate. My son said in the letter that he didn't want me to come back." She smiled sadly.There are almost no obvious wrinkles on the well-maintained face, and the oil-baked hair is black and shiny, with a childlike haircut like Jin Yuxi. Chinese middle-aged women who have lived overseas for many years seem to be in love with this hairstyle, and that The coffee-colored eye shadow, the wine-red lipstick, and the delicately tailored bright-colored dresses may be that the overseas life style encourages them to decorate themselves in such a grand way to make up for the marginal status of the Chinese race that has always been underestimated by the mainstream society.

She stared at Tian Tian's self-portrait for a long time, with a particularly gloomy expression as if she had just been fished out of deep water, then her eyes moved to the big bed that was never made up, and I sat next to her helplessly, ready to accept Everything comes from the severe interrogation of maternal love.Sure enough, she said, "When will Tiantian come back? It's all my fault that I didn't call or write in advance." Connie finally got to the point, her eyes full of anticipation and anxiety, like a young girl waiting for an important moment to come.I opened my mouth dry, "He..."

"By the way." She took out a photo from her bag, "This is a photo of my son 10 years ago. He was still a baby face and very small at that time. When I see him later, I'm afraid I want to Can't recognize it." She handed me the photo, and what I saw was a thin boy with quiet eyes, wearing a brown jacket, corduroy trousers, and white sneakers, standing in front of a bush of fiery cannas, the sun shining down , his hair is as soft and shiny as a dandelion, and can be blown away by the wind at any time. This is Tiantian in the autumn of 1989. It is like a hazy scene I saw in a dream before. I have a feeling of deja vu. Traces were identified from some colors and breaths.

"Actually, Tiantian hasn't lived here for a long time..." Although these words were difficult to utter, I still told her the whole story.My brain flashed one shimmering floater after another, a sad, steaming distillation of memory. The coffee cup in Connie's hand fell to the floor. It didn't shatter, but her crimson skirt and knees were soaked. She was pale and didn't speak for a while, didn't scream at me, or do anything else. Dangerous move. I felt an unexplained sense of relief that there was another significant other to share this deep hurt, and she seemed to be struggling to hold herself together.I jumped up and went to the bathroom to get a dry towel to wipe the coffee stains on her dress, and she waved her hand to indicate that it was okay or not in the mood.

"I have clean dresses in my closet, you can pick out a suitable one and change into it." "I want to see him, is that okay?" She raised her head to me with weak eyes. "According to the regulations, this is not allowed, but he will be able to come out in a few days." I said softly, and again suggested that she dry or change the skirt. "No," she murmured, "It's all my fault, I shouldn't have let him be like that, I hate myself for not giving him anything all these years, I should have taken him out Those who are by my side, even if he refuses, I should force him to do that..." She began to cry, covering her nose with a tissue and crying.

"Why did you never come to see him, until now?" I asked her bluntly, even though her crying infected me, and there was a twitch in my throat, but I never thought she She is a competent mother. No matter how many unspeakable secrets this strange woman from Spain has, how many unexplainable past events, I have no right to judge her life, her personality, but I always think that she is full of enchanting shadows every day. Life has a fatal relationship with this woman, his relationship to her is the rotten umbilical cord between the baby and the womb, since she left her family for Spain, since her husband's ashes were transported by a MD plane When she came back, some kind of chaotic trajectory of fate lay in front of her young son. It was a process of slowly losing certain beliefs, talents, fanaticism, and happiness, just like the cells inside a body, slowly losing Against some kind of cold, corrosive immunity, mother, son, smog, death, fear, indifference, grabbing pain, everything is completely glued together, cause and effect, like the wheel of law in nature.

"He must have hated me to the extreme. He respected me and tried to run as far away as possible." She murmured to herself, "If I come back, he might hate me even more. He always thought that I killed him. Dad..." A gleam of cold light suddenly flashed in her eyes, like a drop of winter rain hitting the glass. "It's all because of the old woman who spread rumors and slandered me. My son would rather believe her words than say a word to me. We have almost no communication. I send him money is the only way I feel relieved, and I have been I am busy running the restaurant, I think one day I will give all the money I earn to my son, and that day he will truly understand that the person who loves him the most in the world is his mother." She burst into tears Under the rain, the haggard state of the moment has been revealed. I kept handing her tissues. I couldn't watch a woman cry in front of me like this. A woman's tears are like a drizzle of silver drumbeats, which infects people with a special rhythm, causing a certain part of the mind of the bystander to collapse. . I stood up, went to the closet, took out a black one-step dress, which I hadn't worn since I bought it a year ago, and handed it to her, the only way to stop her endless chatter. Tears, to stop her sinking deeper and deeper sad imagination. "Although I'm back now, he might not be willing to see me." She whispered. "Do you want to wash your face? There is hot water in the bathroom. This skirt looks very suitable for you. Please change it on." I looked at her with concern. The brown stains are very obvious. "Thank you!" She snotted her nose, "You are a good and considerate girl." She stretched out her hand to straighten the bangs on her forehead, and a certain feminine elegance was restored in her gestures. "I'd like to have another cup of coffee, can I?" "Oh, sorry," I smiled awkwardly, "that's the last drink, there's nothing left in the kitchen." Before she left, she put on my clean dress. Looking at the front, back, left, and right sides, the size was very suitable. I found a brown shopping paper bag and helped her put the dirty dress in it.She gave me a hug and said ok, she'll be waiting for the moment to meet her son, and in the meantime she and her Spanish husband need to work with a real estate agency to check out a few downtown homes to see where the best Suitable for a restaurant, she handed me a note with the room number and phone number of the Peace Hotel. "We will meet again soon. I forgot to bring another gift. I will definitely give it to you next time. There is also Tiantian's one." Her voice was soft, and there was a trace of gratitude in her eyes.A certain sympathetic and sympathetic atmosphere exists between us.Mistakes, intentional or inadvertent, are everywhere, flaws and torments are everywhere, they exist in the first fiber of my body, every nerve, even if the hands of this woman named Connie who fell from the sky are really sticky There is the ghost of her dead husband, even if her heart has been infested by this or that evil demon, even if there are thousands of truths that cannot be revealed in a lifetime, even if all you despise, hate Things that flow out of my heart, things that resist, condemn, and want to be converted into punishment... There is always a moment when something soft and innocent will grab everyone's heart, like a hand of God stretched out , in a trance, made an empty gesture to the world.