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Chapter 6 Don't Go to Work

When Xie Hushan returned to his home, it was almost midnight. He did not dare to go to the water pressurized well in the yard to fetch water for washing and make noise, for fear of disturbing his grandmother's rest in the east room. He just quietly slipped back to his west room.

When I entered the room and turned on the light, I saw that a basin of clean water had been placed under the kang, with a thermos next to it, and folded towels and soap next to the kang.

Obviously, grandma prepared it for me before going to bed.

After Xie Hushan simply washed his head, face, hands and feet with water, he turned off the lights and went to sleep. When he opened his eyes again, the melody of "The East is Red" was playing from the brigade's radio loudspeaker, calling everyone to get up in the morning, wash up, and get ready to gather for work.

This song is played three times in the morning, the first time at 5:30, the second time at 5:45, and the third time at 6 o'clock.

After the third broadcast, everyone should have gotten up and finished their meals. At this time, the team leader or deputy team leader of each production team should go from street to street and greet everyone at the door of each house to gather at the team headquarters and assign work for the day.

This was only the first time. Although Xie Hushan woke up, he had no intention of getting up. He planned to stay in bed for a while. Then someone poked a hole in the window paper of his room from outside, and the other person shouted into the hole:

"Brother~~~ Grandma asked me to call you to eat!"

"Get out!" Xie Hushan yelled angrily toward the window.

The mouth did not move away, but changed the words to call Xie Hushan to get up: "Nan is fetching water, and asked me not to tell you, so that you can sleep a little longer."

This sentence had a very good effect in waking up. Xie Hushan jumped up from the kang without even bothering to put on his shirt. He ran out with his bare chest in his cloth shoes.

When he came out to the courtyard, he found that the water tank under the eaves was already full. A small table was set up under the grape trellis in the courtyard. The silver-haired grandmother was sitting on a bench in front of the table, fanning herself with a palm-leaf fan. When she saw Xie Hushan stand up, she smiled:
"Get up, wash your face and rinse your mouth, I'll go serve the meal."

As he spoke, he put down his palm-leaf fan, supported his knees with his hands and was about to stand up slowly. Xie Hushan signaled his grandmother not to stand up, and looked at his cousin Xie Yuxiu who had just poked the window paper of his room, with a face full of disgust:

"Bring the food! You have no tact!"

"I came to this yard this morning to help grandma fetch water!" Fifteen-year-old Xie Yuxiu went to the main room to serve food, her braids shaking.

"I don't know how to draw water, so why should I use you? You owe it to yourself." Xie Hushan walked to the old-fashioned water pump in the yard, pressed the pressure handle a few times, and cool spring water gushed out from the outlet in front.

I washed away the sleepiness thoroughly with cold water, brushed my teeth and rinsed my mouth with a toothbrush dipped in toothpowder that smelled like camphor balls, and then sat down at the dining table refreshed.

The breakfast was similar to usual, six mixed flour steamed buns, a bowl of corn grits porridge mixed with sweet potatoes, three cucumbers picked from the home yard, a small bowl of pickled vegetables, and a pickled egg cut into four small pieces with an oily yolk.

At this time, Xie Yuxiu was holding the bowl of porridge and looking straight at her grandmother. This was a rule that the original owner Xie Hushan had taught her since he was a child: no one could pick up their chopsticks until their grandmother took the first bite.

Grandma waited until Xie Hushan finished washing up and sat down before she picked up the bowl and took a sip of porridge. Seeing that grandma had eaten first, Xie Yuxiu hurriedly picked up a pickled egg and put it into her own porridge bowl, then quickly shoved it into her mouth with chopsticks, making slurping eating sounds.

"Grandma, show off your eating habits. Even the refugees in the old society were not as scary as her, right? I guess all the monsters in Journey to the West are like her. They don't look ugly, but they reveal their true colors when they talk or eat." Xie Hushan bit a cucumber and sneered at his sister's eating habits:

"Also, you've made the window paper of my room into a hornet's nest! I've told you so many times, just call me if you want, no need to pick at the window, I can hear you! Why are the mosquitoes in my house fatter than those in other houses? That's all because of you picking at the window paper. If I were a mosquito, I would kowtow to you every holiday."

The original owner was very filial. Of the three bungalows he lives in now, the windows of the east room where his grandmother lives were all replaced with glass with good lighting last year at his insistence, so that the old lady can stay in the house and sit on the kang to bask in the sun. However, the windows of the west room where he sleeps are still covered with paper, and in winter, a layer of plastic sheeting is added to keep the old lady warm.

The main reason for not changing it was to save money. Besides, he worked from sunrise to sunset, so it was not important whether his room had light or not. In summer, Xie Hushan felt it was quite cool with window paper. The only drawback was that Xie Yuxiu, who didn't pick at the window paper and couldn't talk, would often let some mosquitoes into his room to feed them.

At this time, Xie Yuxiu seemed to be oblivious to her brother's ridicule. She remained unmoved and put all her energy into eating. While Xie Hushan was talking, she had already finished a bowl of corn porridge with a pickled egg, and then started to get a second bowl. She picked up a steamed bread and put another pickled egg into the bowl.

After swallowing the porridge in her mouth, the grandmother said softly to her granddaughter, "Eat slowly, don't eat the eggs, save some for your brother. He has to do heavy work all day, so he needs to eat something oily and salty to replenish his strength. You sleep in school all day, so you won't be hungry."

"I didn't eat it for free." Xie Yuxiu puffed up her cheeks and said in defense, not even swallowing the steamed bread in her mouth. Then she took out a half-pack of "Labor" cigarettes from her pocket and put them in front of Xie Hushan: "I left three for my dad, and I brought the rest to my brother. Brother, can I have another egg?"

"I didn't steal your father's cigarettes, but I gave you eggs to eat. I was angry because you scratched the window paper, not because of the eggs." Xie Hushan smiled and passed the eggs to Xie Yuxiu, saying, "Eat it."

"Don't give this stuff to your brother. What's so good about it? Don't eat it. Put it back and keep it for your brother." When Wei Guijin saw the box of cigarettes worth nine cents, the smile disappeared from his face.

Xie Hushan knew that grandma hated things with cigarettes on them, so he quickly put away the cigarette box, rubbed a piece of steamed bread into small pieces with his hands, put it in an empty bowl and poured it directly into grandma's porridge bowl, and said with a smile: "Grandma, let her eat it. She doesn't come to eat every day. I'll eat more tomorrow. Besides, I'm not hungry."

Grandma looked at the steamed bread that her grandson had thoughtfully helped to crush in the porridge bowl with satisfaction, and she also laughed: "It's not like her mother didn't give her food. The food in the eldest brother's yard is one of the best in the team, if not the best. But this girl comes to grab food from us every now and then."

Seeing that only one slice of the pickled egg was left, the old lady took the initiative to pick up the last slice with chopsticks and put it into Xie Hushan's bowl, then lowered her head to drink the porridge.

"Brother, I don't want to go to school today. Can I go play in the fields with you guys? I want to catch crickets." Xie Yuxiu leaned closer to her brother and said in a friendly and flattering tone, "I get a headache as soon as I enter the classroom."

"No, the country doesn't allow a 15-year-old fool like you who is still in primary school to play with me." Xie Hushan used chopsticks to pick up a small piece of oily yolk from the top of the pickled egg in the bowl and put it into grandma's bowl. He then threw the remaining egg white into Xie Yuxiu's bowl. Hearing his sister's words and thinking of her terrible academic performance, he said unhappily:

"I graduated from primary school at the age of twelve, and my grades were always among the best. If my family hadn't been poor and I hadn't had the money to go to junior high school, I might have graduated from a technical secondary school by now. But you've been held back for three years. I tell you, if you keep doing this for another two years, the classmates you bullied back then will come back to be your teachers, and they'll beat you up every day for revenge! Why does your mother treat me like an enemy now? Isn't it because she thinks I was hiding something when I tutored you and deliberately delayed you? I tutored you from the age of fifteen to eighteen, for a full three years. I heard your mother introduce me to outsiders with the name "this is my nephew, just like her own son", and recently it has become "this is Xie Laoliu, who lives in my mother-in-law's yard and is not from us."

"Xie Laoliu, isn't that my grandpa?" Xie Yuxiu blinked and asked in confusion, "Every time my grandpa made my mom so angry that she passed out, she wouldn't call me dad, but pointed at my grandpa and called him Xie Laoliu. Is she calling you that now?"

Xie Hushan picked up the bowl of porridge and looked at Xie Yuxiu with disdain: "Maybe it's because I'm the sixth male in the Xie family. It may also be because, thanks to you, your mother thinks I'm worthy of this glorious title that used to belong to your grandfather."

His cousin Xie Yuxiu is the granddaughter of his grandmother. Of course, Xie Hushan is also a relative, but the relationship is a bit complicated. The grandmother he has now is his aunt, the elder sister of his deceased grandmother.

This aunt first married Xie Laoliu of the Xie family, and later arranged for her younger sister to marry Xie Laosi of the Xie family, which meant that the two sisters became sisters-in-law.

His grandparents died early, and his father and mother also died after the earthquake. Xie Hushan was the only child left in the Xie family. When his aunt, who had liked him since childhood and treated him like her own grandson, learned that the brigade was going to treat Xie Hushan as an orphan, she took the initiative to come to the door and said: The Xie family is not extinct yet, how can my grandson be an orphan? There is no need for the state to raise children for the Xie family. The Xie family can give birth to children themselves, so they can raise them themselves and not cause trouble to the state.

The old lady kept her word and moved her and her husband Xie Laoliu's household registration from her own son's household registration book to Xie Hushan's household registration book.

So after the earthquake, there were three people on his family’s household registration book: his aunt Wei Guijin, his aunt’s husband Xie Laoliu, and Xie Hushan.

However, Mr. Liu did not move in with the old lady, but chose to continue living in his biological son's home where the conditions were better.

No matter how you look at it, Xie Hushan got the upper hand in this matter, because my aunt had her own children and grandchildren, and the food they provided was enough to satisfy the daily food and drink of the old and the young. Xie Hushan could save every cent of the dividends he earned from his work in the production team. It was equivalent to my aunt asking her three sons to work hard to support a boy like Xie Hushan.

In my great aunt's words, she had to help Xie Hushan save money to build a house and get married. She had to see her grandson get married and start a family with her own eyes before she could close her eyes in peace and go down to see her sister.

Xie Yuxiu is the cousin of Xie Laoliu of the Xie family. She is tall and fair-skinned. At first glance, she looks like a girl of eighteen or nineteen. In fact, she is just fifteen years old this year. Don't be fooled by her seemingly cute and quiet appearance. In fact, Xie Yuxiu's academic performance is very poor. At the age of fifteen, she is still in the sixth grade of elementary school. She has failed the junior high school entrance examination for three years. In her previous life, there was a word to describe people like her: straw bag beauty.

With the advantages of age and height, Xie Yuxiu is now invincible in Zhongping Primary School. From the sixth grade to the Yuhong class, any boy has been beaten by her. She is truly the school's top teacher. New young private teachers have to learn about the inside story of the campus from her.

That is to say, her family has some savings, and her mother has some thoughts about Daxiu'er. She is unwilling to let her daughter only graduate from elementary school, and hopes that her daughter can take over her father's job one day. That is why she has been paying tuition for her to stay in classes, hoping that she will be able to get into junior high school one day.

If it were an ordinary farm child, not to mention repeating a grade for three years, if he failed the junior high school entrance exam, he would have to go home and help his parents repair the earth. They would not have the spare money to let their children squander like this. It would be enough if the child could know a few words and was better than himself.

The three of them were chatting and laughing as they ate most of their breakfast when they heard footsteps outside, getting closer and closer. Then a figure pushed open the gate and rushed in: "Third brother, my second brother asked me to tell you something. Hurry up and pretend to be sick and ask for leave! Don't go to work today, or you're done!"

(End of this chapter)