On a moonlit night, the sky is dotted with stars.
The silent Wangjia Village was shrouded in black fog.
Li Chunhua tossed and turned on the kang, unable to sleep, thinking about what happened during the day.
The mother-in-law said that she was going to lose Zhuzi. She was so panicked that she ran back home and asked Zhuzi to return the job.
But Zhuzi said that he had just started working and had not yet adapted to the job. If he resigned like this, he would definitely be criticized by his superiors and they would say that he was not proactive enough.
Seeing that he was determined, Li Chunhua felt very complicated. It was like she had waited hard for a year to finally get a fish, but when she was cleaning the fish, she accidentally punctured the fish gallbladder.
Others were unwilling to eat it because it was too bitter, but she was the only one who was reluctant to waste it and forced herself to finish it.
Although fish is hard to come by, it tastes really bad, bitter and astringent. That’s how she feels now.
She turned over and sat up, recalling every detail of the past.
The ecstasy she felt when she first saw the pillar seemed like it was yesterday.
Zhuzi is very well behaved and rarely cries. He likes to play with his older brothers and sisters and be their little tail.
Although he is not her biological son, she and her husband will rely on him for their old age in the future, so she treats him well.
Her daughters all treated Zhuzi as their own brother. Although they were not related by blood, the affection they had for each other since childhood could not be ignored.
But now, the son she raised with great effort actually wants to recognize his biological mother.
This result can be said to be caused by her instigation.
Zhuzi has always refused to accept any favors from his own mother, and it was she who instigated him.
Li Chunhua couldn't help but tear up, she felt extremely regretful. Why was she so stupid that she didn't figure out Zhuzi's thoughts, nor did she see through his mother's intentions
Why did he not want to snatch his son from her? Then why did he have to compensate Zhuzi? It was all a lie. Because she was easy to deceive.
She pounded the kang, her heart full of regret, and tears fell down her face.
She cried for most of the night and only fell asleep around three in the morning.
She had a dream, a very long dream.
It was a long time ago, probably in 1958, when she adopted Zhuzi, a three-year-old boy whose father had just died.
His mother pushed the pillar towards her and walked resolutely into the black fog.
She finally had a son, and both she and the man had hope.
What was different from the dream was that her mother-in-law was not willing to accept Zhuzi. The reason was very simple: the family had too little food and there was no reason to support a person from another family.
But the man knelt in the yard for three days and three nights before finally getting his mother-in-law to compromise.
During the famine, food was scarce everywhere, and the Wang family was no exception.
Many strong laborers in the village did not want to starve to death, so they organized people to grab food.
Her husband also left and never came back.
My mother-in-law took out all her belongings and went to the county town with several men in the family to buy expensive grain, but they were intercepted halfway.
Only my mother-in-law and my eldest brother came back.
After losing two sons in succession, the mother-in-law became very bad-tempered. She only gave the food she brought back to her only son and several grandchildren, and the rest had to find food on their own.
She had no choice but to dig up grass roots and tree bark from the canal and cook them at home for the children.
Even so, she lost two daughters during the famine.
After the famine, Wangjia Village was better off. But the suffering they had endured during those three years had caused great damage to everyone's health, especially Zhuzi, whose spleen and stomach had become very bad.
Later, when Xiao He reached marriageable age, her mother-in-law wanted to marry her off in exchange for some dowry money to supplement the family income, but Zhu Zi insisted on not doing so.
Finally one day, Xiao He did the ugly thing of eloping with a man.
The Wang family had a very bad reputation. When Zhuzi was eighteen years old, because of the bad reputation and the fact that she couldn't afford a decent dowry, she had never been able to find a suitable partner for Zhuzi.
At this time, Zhuzi's mother came back and said that she would take Zhuzi to the county town, teach him to read and write, and find him a job.
At that time, she could be said to have reached the end of her rope.
When Zhuzi said he didn't want to leave her, she pushed Zhuzi out. She was fed up with this kind of miserable life where one day came before another.
She wanted her son to be a city dweller, eat commercial grain, and in the future she could enjoy the good life with him.
After Zhuzi arrived in the county town, he came into contact with the good life outside and changed his previous confusion and inferiority.
He studied hard, adapted to everything around him, and finally became a worker a year later. After getting his wages, he gave them back to her, and she thought her good days were finally here.
But she never expected that everything that happened next would make all her efforts over the years come to naught.
Zhuzi married the stepdaughter of Zhuzi's biological mother, and the family lived a happy life in the city. But she hardly saw him except for the living expenses he gave her every month. He was always busy, busy with work, busy with promotion, busy with making connections with others.
Before she died, she had no man, no son, no daughter by her side. Only her mother-in-law looked at her before she died and said, "I've said it before, you can't raise a son who is not your own. You worked so hard to raise him, but it was all for others. You have been stupid all your life. In your next life, you should be more careful."
Her eyes were blurred with tears, she was sad about her short life. She had suffered all her life, she thought she had children, but who would have thought that when she got old, she would have no one to rely on.
She kept asking herself, what had she done wrong
"Mom? Mom?" A familiar voice came from her ears, and Li Chunhua struggled to wake up from her dream.
The person who came into view was Zhuzi.
Li Chunhua stared at him blankly and reached out to touch his face, "Pillar?"
Zhuzi felt his mother's palm was a little hot, so he touched her forehead with his hand, "Mom? You are sick."
He immediately squatted down on the edge of the kang and motioned for her to come up, "Mom, come up quickly, I'll take you to the health center."
Li Chunhua looked at his back, thought about everything in her dream, and finally woke up.
Her son now belongs only to her and has not been taken away by that extremely hypocritical woman.
Li Chunhua lay on the back of the pillar, and gradually regained her composure as he moved.
Zhengjun took out a thermometer and measured it for a while. "38.2 degrees. Just take some antipyretic medicine."
Zhuzi immediately poured her some water and said, "Mom, eat quickly."
After taking the medicine, Li Chunhua still felt a little confused.
Everything in the dream was too clear, so she couldn't tell which was reality. But she knew one thing, that is, she couldn't let Zhuzi go to the county town to contact that woman. She subconsciously grabbed Zhuzi's arm and said, "Zhuzi, give that job to someone else. Mother is really wrong."
Although Zhuzi refused to go back to the countryside to accompany her in the dream, Li Chunhua felt that Zhuzi was still a good boy, otherwise he would not send her money every month.
Zhuzi was stunned for a moment, then he put her on his back again and carried her out. After walking for a while, he whispered, "Grandma said to wait a little longer. She has already gone to investigate the other party."
Li Chunhua didn't quite hear, "What?"
The column can only be repeated once more.
Li Chunhua felt a little uncomfortable. Suddenly, she had a very strange feeling: why was the mother-in-law in her dream so different from her current mother-in-law
Putting aside their abilities, it is no exaggeration to describe their attitudes towards the pillars as being completely opposite.
But she was not smart and couldn't figure out the key after thinking about it for a long time.
In the end, she could only treat the dream as half true and half false and not take it completely seriously. She only needed to remember the most important part.
Seeing her mother-in-law had her own ideas, Li Chunhua calmed down and said after a long while, "Your grandmother's greatest ability is that she can see through people at a glance. Mother is too stupid to learn from her."
When she said this, Zhuzi had just arrived home. After putting her on the kang, he felt a little unbelievable that his mother would actually reflect on herself. It was really rare.
He sat on the edge of the kang and said to Li Chunhua, "Mom, people are different. Although you are not as smart as grandma, you can make clothes. The clothes made by grandma are not as beautiful as yours."
Li Chunhua rubbed her face and glared at him, "If your grandmother knew this, she would definitely say that it was because I had never learned it. If I had learned it, I would definitely be better than your mother."
Thinking of his grandmother's unyielding character, Zhuzi felt that these words were something his grandmother would say, and he immediately laughed.
Li Chunhua sighed heavily, "I won't cause you any trouble in the future. When your grandma is here, I will listen to her. When you are here, I will listen to you. Anyway, you won't hurt me." Li Chunhua knew that she was quite useless, but she had no choice. Her brain was like this, and she couldn't catch up with others even if she flattered them. Not to mention asking her to act in front of others.
To be honest, Zhuzi was very happy that his mother thought this way, otherwise it would be a headache for him to have his mother holding him back all the time.
"You have to be careful of your adoptive mother, she is a fake person. Maybe she wants to recognize you and wants you to marry her stepdaughter." Li Chunhua didn't want Zhuzi to marry that woman as in her dream. Although the other party was a city dweller, Li Chunhua always felt that the marriage between the two was not simple. But she couldn't figure out the reason.
Zhuzi didn't think much about it. He just thought that his mother knew that his mother had a stepdaughter. It was his mother who revealed it to her. "Mom, I know."
It was three days later that Qian Shulan received the investigation materials.
During this time, Zhuzi refused to stay with his biological mother.
Compared to his previous life, Zhuzi had more horizons in this life. He had heard, seen, and witnessed all those dirty things in the high school he attended in the county.
If he wasn't careful, he might fall into the opponent's trap, so he could only avoid it.
When Zhuzi got home, he heard his mother tell him to go home to his grandmother.
After Zhuzi simply filled his stomach, he arrived at the end of the village.
Zhuzi got the information and quickly found a piece of information, "My mother's son fell into the river and froze to death last winter. Grandma, don't you think this is too weird?"
Although all the boys like to swim in the river, it is winter and the river is covered with ice, so it is impossible to swim. What is he doing in the river? Zhuzi doesn't think that such a young boy would go ice fishing.
Qian Shulan patted his shoulder, very pleased. She pointed to one of the messages and said, "Look, her daughter is already seventeen years old. She just graduated from high school this year, which means she should go to the countryside."
Zhuzi's face turned pale, and he instantly understood what his grandmother meant. He was a little surprised, "Grandma, you mean her son's death is related to her daughter."
This was of course just Qian Shulan's guess. This information was just the most basic stuff. She spread her hands and looked into his eyes. "What's fake won't be real, and what's real won't be fake. Why don't you just give it a try?"
Zhuzi felt that what his grandma said made sense, and immediately nodded, "Okay!"