My grandfather learned some yin and yang gossip, saying that my mother is the life of water. There are two waters in my mother's birthday, and there are many waters in the five elements. My grandfather was very superstitious and believed that all things are mutually reinforcing, so he married his daughter to our village, a village short of water, according to the direction of gossip.
Since the first day my mother was married to this village, she has been in love with water. Especially in summer, there is only one well in the natural village of more than 100 households, and the reel well is more than ten feet deep. In the first few years of marriage, my mother didn't dare to fetch water, and she didn't even dare to look at it. However, if she wants to raise her own child, she must be like everyone else, singing songs, shaking a reel to fetch water, and carrying a bucket of dozens of pounds to run like a fly. As a result, the usually daunting and high well platform is almost no different from her own stove. Sometimes, she dares to go down the well to salvage the fallen bucket, or to wash the water bit by bit. However, there are too few years with water, and most of the time the well has only a small amount of water. In the hot summer, as long as there is no rain for half a month, the well starts to strike, and its spring looks like it has a blood clot. The queue to carry water is getting longer and longer, and there are more people than water.
I personally witnessed the scene of my mother going down the well to scour the water: someone came and wrapped the well rope around her waist, and under the expectant gaze, she walked to the wellhead calmly and normally with my terrified expression, and posed to the people. Waving their hands, the two of them shook the reels and sent them down little by little. At that time, all kinds of accidents flashed through my mind: the rope broke, the reel was broken, the two people let go, and my mother hit the edge of the well. It was not until the rope shook violently a few times that the man who shook the reel let go and began to shake the well rope upwards. I was not convinced that my mother had reached the bottom of the well.
The first bucket of water came up soon, and everyone agreed to send the first two buckets of water to our house first. I heard it was for my house, so I hurried over and wanted to take a sip. Looking closer, I was stunned, how could there be any cool well water! It was clearly the mud in the bowl of ox hoof after the rain.
But this kind of mud is the treasure of the whole family, and not a drop will be wasted: rice-washing water for washing clothes and face, and vegetable-washing water for feeding pigs. One of my mother's words is: "Taomi water washes clothes without itching, and washes face is tender and white. People in the city use this to wash their faces, and each one has fine skin and tender meat; water for vegetables is fed to pigs, and pigs grow strong." This must be the consensus of the villagers. But I questioned why my clothes washed with rice water are so itchy? Why can't any of our pigs grow to 100 pounds?
The night when I went down the well to wash water, I don't know when my mother went back. All I know is that she went to fetch water again in the morning, and there was a match skin on her forehead (equivalent to today's Band-Aid). This time, it was a place beyond seven miles. Thanks to the concerted efforts of the people, the well in the village was truly clotted, so tightly that no drop of water could flow out.
Seven miles away is just a small mountain spring, and I can't wait for a bucket of water for half an hour. Everyone humbled each other and left after receiving only half a bucket, leaving some time and water for the next person.
Day after day, year after year, my mother washed her face with rice-washing water for many years. Not only did she not have the skin and tender flesh like the people in the city, but it became rougher and rougher. She also had a little plateau red, and the back of her hand looked like a turtle. The cracked mud stems, the cracks are vertical and horizontal. I have to admit that without enough water, my mother was getting old before she got old, and the whole village was the same.
Even so, the parents still grow melons in the yard at home. Every year, they don't ask how much food they can get in exchange. It is enough to buy these children clothes that change in season. The habit of melons is very suitable here, and it is resistant to drought, but I am afraid of continuous rain, especially when the melons are ripe, a rain, the melons will change their taste and may rot. One year in July, it rained for several days in a row, and the melon eyes were about to die. Don't talk about parents, even my teenage child is anxious. "His dad, go sell melons, you can't see them rotten." Mother couldn't hold it anymore.
"There's no one in the market. Who will sell the ones on a rainy day? Wait and see." My father responded.
"His dad, I looked at it, and it's rotten again. Let's sell it." The next day, the mother urged again.
On the third day, the rain did not stop, and the sky seemed to leak. The father had his own way to deal with the mother. No matter what the mother said, he just held his ground and picked the melons that were about to ripen and gave them to the neighbors.
This day, my mother went out to take a look early in the morning, and the rain stopped.
She went to the melon orchard for a while, was very anxious, and urged again. My father went out to check the weather and told us, "If it's not sunny today, I'm afraid there will be a heavy rain in the afternoon."
My mother didn't answer the call, she packed up for dinner. Surprisingly, it was served something that can only be eaten during Chinese New Year, a plate of fried fish. Everyone was stunned, this is a luxury. I guess it must have been given by someone else, in return for those melons. And his father knew in his heart that this was urging him to go out.
Father didn't refute this time, maybe he felt that refutation was useless, he said cheerfully: "Let's go after dinner. Si'er (calling me), the white coat (shirt) you said, this trip will sell melon money to buy white cloth. That's enough, I might buy it today, and let your sister-in-law roll it with a scooter (sewing machine)."
However, what I was waiting for that day was not a white shirt, but the raging storm in the afternoon, my father's icy-cold corpse covered in sand and blood, and the white cloth that the adults put on my head - Xiaobu, which is also considered white. shirt?
Water, or water, took the life of the mother's closest person. Heartbroken, regretful, self-blame, the mother, who already had spiritual genetic genes, was defeated.
Since then, she has never seen her mother grow melons, nor eat melons, nor fish, and what's more, she never does laundry in the sun, indoors, and most of the time at night. She seemed to be afraid of water, not to mention her father. I don't know since when, she started smoking, rolled up a dry cigarette tremblingly, struck a match, and let the match light, she seemed to remember something, put down the cigarette and went to work for a while. Sometimes a cigarette is lit, and only a few symbolic puffs are taken. It was a morbid confession, I thought, to hide the pain in her heart.
Later I understood that it was a kind of willpower supporting her. In a situation like my mother, she should have been sent to the psychiatry department of the hospital. But she understands the mission on her shoulders. She wants to go to the production team to earn work points and earn a subsidy for her children; she has to take care of her family's private land, and she can only get half-starved and half-satiated rations for the children; she It is necessary to drive at night, make winter cotton coats and bedding for the children, and shoes that have to be broken in less than a month; there is also the marriage of children and daughters; and all kinds of human relationships. She no longer communicates with people, the language she communicates seems to be from another world, and no one can understand her language.
She has completely turned into a machine, clenching her teeth, pulling children, and continuing to fight with God in this dry village.
The higher-level department has also been trying to find a way. They once called the drilling team, drilled more than 100 meters, and got to the water, but the water was not enough to supply the villagers. I remember that at that time my mother was also very excited at first, and finally fell silent.
After the reform and opening up, production was contracted to households, people's pockets were bulging, and they began to look at wasteland villages. Many homes have tried it, but nothing works. But Emperor Tian paid off, and there was really a family that pumped water and installed a Yangjing (pressed water well). Wasteland Village was a sensation, and they were all seen as a rarity, including me and my mother of course.
The mother is a strong person. The neighbors can beg her (and often beg her), but she rarely opens her mouth to the neighbors and asks her to go to the house to fetch water. It is too difficult for her. In fact, this is also the case in other families. In the end, this job falls on the children. Of course, our family falls on me and my brother.
During the drought, the large wells in the village are all dry, and such wells cannot survive on their own. The owner understands this and picks the hook of the well every day. People go, and when they see this situation, they leave naturally. When the child goes, he doesn't look at his face, and calls out to the master. The master sometimes pretends not to hear, and sometimes he just comes out and scolds the child like a joke, and gives the reason: Where is there water? You won't be allowed to eat without water! It's not a baby thing! Do you think it's sesame oil? Smiling, he sent the person away. The strange thing is that every time our brothers go, the master sees it in the window without us shouting, holding a big water scoop in his hand, which is filled with water, pours it in with a squeak, draws in the water, and walks in. , I don't forget to say something every time, don't be lazy, pick one more trip when you are attracted to the water. Don't forget to take off the hook when you're done.
In recent years, the poverty alleviation and relocation, the wasteland village moved to the flat land, a bridge flew from north to south, and lived in a new house like a villa.
However, my mother, a kind woman who has been tortured by water all her life, has gone, completely gone, and left this dry world. Wherever she is now, I think she will see it.
