Mother came down from the countryside. Wearing a pair of cheap flat shoes, standing in the neighborhood more than thirty floors of the high floor, left hand carry a faded canvas bag, right hand on the forehead, try to tilt the head back, squinting, just barely saw the top of the broken sky and a few strands of leakage of the sun. Niang rubbed her somewhat cloudy eyes, and I saw a hint of helplessness and confusion.
Mother is a rural person, a rural person who will never be able to integrate into the city life. But in order to take care of the children for me, she had to leave the land where she had lived for more than 60 years and came to the unfamiliar Kunming.
The mother will not dance square dance, take the bus will also be motion sickness, she only dared to go to the vegetable market and grandson kindergarten that two streets, far away from the fear of getting lost back, she and the neighborhood of the retired old lady never chat a piece, she did not understand what the CPI is something, only know that the vegetable market in the cabbage are to more than a dollar a catty, that is too expensive, if in the old country in the corner of the field randomly planted two, all year round can not eat, so the mother of pearl, the mother of pearl and the grandson kindergarten, the mother of pearl and the grandson kindergarten. So she doesn't have a friend in this city.
My wife and I are busy with work, early morning and late at night, who did not notice a rural elderly in the city of loneliness and misery. One afternoon, I was at a meeting, suddenly received a phone call from the child's kindergarten teacher, said that more than ten minutes after school, other children are picked up, leaving my daughter unattended. Put down the phone, I rushed to call my mother's phone, rang half a day before she answered, the phone is connected, I was impatiently yelled: "Mom, what are you doing, and now you do not go to pick up the child? The other has long been picked up."
After saying this, I just heard the cell phone came puffing and puffing sound of gasping, mother while gasping for air, while like a child who did something wrong, came up for air and said: "My watch ...... somehow... ...stopped, just watched TV ...... only to realize that ...... time is over, not afraid ...... I ran to... ...four or five more minutes ...... before I arrive." My eyes blurred for a moment.
I seemed to see: an old woman with arthritis in the countryside, limping running in the streets of Kunming, mouth gasping for breath, forehead covered with beads of sweat but not too late to wipe away with their hands, a face of self-condemnation and guilt.
In this way, the mother silently in this strange city for the children to hold on, never in front of us called a bitter and tired. Every day after picking up the children home and having dinner, she went back to her hut early to rest, but I know that she was insomnia every night, and got up before dawn. Gradually, my mother said less and less, and didn't even talk much all day.
One day at noon I ate in the unit cafeteria, go home to get a material, open the door, the mother sat alone quietly in the somewhat dim living room, I asked her how not to turn on the TV to see, she said, see more eye pain, do not want to see. I said that go out for a walk, she said her feet hurt, the yard and not a friend, the streets are crowded with cars, upset.
Looking at the face of some haggard mother, head full of silk half into white hair, rough hands constantly rubbing some of the swelling of the knee, every time to stand up, have to use two hands to support the knee, hands and feet together, when I heard the sound of the bone creak creak creak. I sat down beside my mother and took her hand, and for the first time in many years, I held her hand like this. This is a pair of what kind of hand ah: rough as a file, knuckles have been swollen deformation, the back of the hand crawling with a strip of earthworm-like veins. Looking at this pair of hands that nurtured me grew up, my tears once again in the eye sockets.
In my impression, my mother's hands are the most dexterous hands under the sky: she sews good clothes, cooks good food, holds a tiny embroidery needle, and does heavy farm work. When I was in junior high school, in order to pay off the debt that my family owed from the renovation of the old house, my mother subsidized the family by making tiles in the winter when she was not working. This is a very heavy hard work, the key is in the cold winter, do this work hand injury is particularly big.
In winter, when the light is late and the dark is early, and the day is short, my mother would get up at five o'clock in the morning to do the tile, and sometimes the sky is too dark, so I would use the family's horse lamp to shine. Winter weather is cold, sometimes there will be a thin layer of ice in the mud water basin in the morning, mother will crack the ice to continue to do. Many years later, I can still imagine in the zero-degree environment, bare hands holding up the clay piece of ice water to do tile the kind of bone marrow cold.
Every winter, my mother's rough hands will crack a channel seeping out of the blood beads of the mouth, smeared with Vaseline, in addition to letting the hands of black, and not much effect, so my mother's ten fingertips will be wrapped in a layer of adhesive tape, and sometimes we accidentally touched the blood seepage of the mouth, my mother's hand will be violent trembling a little. The first thing you need to do is to get your hands dirty.
That night, I lost sleep, I really understand the mother's attachment to the land and the father's thoughts. The young couple is old, she needs is not this prosperous city and closet I bought for her brand-name clothes, but with the father in the countryside in the noise and spend a happy old age. Discussed with his wife, decided to send her back home to the countryside.
The next day, I put the idea and the mother said, I obviously felt her eyes flashed a trace of surprise, but then said worriedly: "I left the child who will take? Hire a nanny, your father and I are not assured." I pretended to be relaxed and reassured her, "There is no need to hire a nanny, I am now working very lightly and can bring up the child by myself." The tip of my mother's eyebrows spread, and the trace of surprise returned. She said, "Then I'll go back for a while, and if you're too busy, I'll come back to help you bring it up."
Throughout the day, Niang, in contrast to her usual sullenness, was happily busy cleaning up the house, taking out all the garbage and putting her clothes neatly folded into her travel bag. I went to the coach bus station to buy her a ticket home, the night I took the ticket to her, at the same time gave her two thousand dollars, let her take home with her, the ticket she took, the money but said nothing, said the family has, so this push back and forth to four or five rounds, she took the money.
The next morning, I sent her to the passenger station, the car is about to start, she put her head out of the car window, said to me: "money I pressed under the pillow, I and your father can not use a lot of money, you are in the city of big expenses, save a little bit of their own use."
The car drove away, the sky was drizzling, I could not tell whether it was rain or tears that flowed on my face.
? Author Resume: ? Wan Jixing, a native of Yunnan, born in 1976, is a member of the Yunnan Provincial Writers' Association. In the "People's Daily", "Chinese Writers", "China Art Newspaper", "Times Literature", "Prose Hundred", "Anhui Literature" and other dozens of publications published more than 100 literary works. He has been selected in several provincial and municipal secondary school language papers and various anthologies and annual anthologies. He is the deputy editor-in-chief of a provincial literary journal, and the founder of [Ten and a Half Points Literature] public number.