More than thirty years ago, when I was in the first grade, two things happened to my family, one was that my mother was suspended from work, and then my sister died.
My mother worked in the mine, then in the bureau of the sub-store to manage the materials, and she had an office of five or six people, including an aunt Dong, as if just married soon after the “reactionary words and deeds”. It is said that the day she finished her accounts, she wandered around the house, and then stared at the wall Chairman Mao and Chairman Hua’s big picture, saying that Chairman Hua is quite like Chairman Mao, but the face is shorter, and her object is the same, is a cow belly face. Soon her remarks were reported up, when their unit leader surnamed Liu, stopped the work of Aunt Dong, but also to find my mother to investigate the situation, my mother said she was only concerned about doing the accounts, did not pay attention to who said what. The last one was very angry, and my mother’s job was also stopped.
The first thing you need to do is to go to the class and reason with them, but it’s useless to say that they let her write a certificate, and if you don’t write it, you won’t be allowed to work. My mother never wrote, and she was always suspended. Later she realized that she could not change anything, she began to play sweater, raise chickens, and sometimes take me to the door.
The first time I went to Aunt Dong’s house, it seemed to be more than two o’clock in the afternoon, the two of them were only ready to eat, Aunt Dong was disheveled and had to pull us to sit at the table to eat together, and she did not insist until she excused herself for half a day, when the aunt’s husband, who had a face like President Hua’s, came in from the outer room and handed Aunt Dong a spittoon with a happy character in his hand, saying she should “try it”. I saw Aunt Dong stick her chopsticks into the spittoon and pick out a piece of fecal matter, saying “light” while eating, giving me the first impression that the two had gone crazy, when I pulled my mother’s lapel with a sobbing voice and shouted desperately to go home, and then it was explained that she was eating eggplant with soy sauce, and her family only had one enameled vegetable pot, but the spittoon had Four of them were wedding gifts, so they used the spittoons as vegetable pots. They were the most appalling couple I had ever seen in my childhood.
My sister, who was five years older than me and in the fifth grade, woke up on the seventh day of the lunar month and said she had a headache, so my father carried her on his bicycle to the General Mine Hospital, where she died the next afternoon. At night, I saw my father standing in the middle of the house staring at the things on the cabinet, and finally vacated the plywood box containing the radio, and drew a few strokes on the top, and now I remember that the drawing was probably an orchid, but at that time I did not know what he got that for. When I was in middle school, one day the radio said where where the land is ready to build something, there are several graves in the area, the owner is required to move, “late not moved, according to the unoccupied grave treatment”, my father asked me to bring a shovel, accompany him to my sister to move the grave, I just saw the box again, it turned out that is my sister’s urn. At that time, I didn’t find any suitable place, so I dug a deep hole in the woods next to the highway and used a bicycle to bring the bricks from the old grave to lay them down, and then put the box in and fill it with soil, which completed the relocation. Later, when I went to look for it again, I couldn’t find the place.
After my sister’s death, my mother’s eyes were always staring, giving the impression that she was not quite normal anymore. But the unit soon allowed her to go to work, and only slowly returned to normal. The first thing you need to do is to get a good idea of what you’re getting into.
The second year after the death of my sister summer vacation, the provincial rural first cousin came to live with my family for two days after taking me to her home for about a week. It was this week that became the most terrifying time in my childhood.
I took the train with my first cousin to her home in Xinmin Tun Santaizi, in addition to her there were six people at home, namely my great uncle, great aunt, first cousin, first cousin’s wife, second cousin and first cousin’s recently born son. First cousin because to bring me back, but also received a reprimand from my uncle, said she “bold”, “you can afford to be responsible for the accident”, and finally said “you have to bring a good stay ah”. I guess my older cousin was also scared and led me wherever I went, when she got up in the morning and had to work in the field with the community members, I was also made to get up and go with her. When we arrived at the field, it seems they did not do anything, chatted for a while and then dispersed, she led me back, and picked a thing called “wormy” for me to eat, the thing looks like a very small spike of bush rice, peeled off the green skin inside the black charcoal like a, I took a bite, feel like mud froth, never want to eat, she also as a treasure to persuade I eat, saying “is not delicious, how delicious ah”, when a forty-year-old man came up to me, saw me and asked first cousin who this is ah, know my age, he very seriously lifted my arm, look at my scar after planting cowpox, turned his head with a heavy face to first cousin said: ” You know what, this child is going to be finished, may not live past the end of the year.”
Then the man explained that the Lin Biao counter-revolutionary group before the end, a poison under the smallpox vaccine, the children who have played the vaccine have to be poisoned, and now there is no solution, the state does not dare to leak, for fear of causing panic.
First cousin was dumbfounded, I was also blinded. On the way back, she looked pale. The next two days, many relatives and villagers have come to see me, they are also from different channels, heard the same news, eyes full of sympathy and pity.
I was too scared to eat, my grandma looked at me and wiped her tears, saying that the second girl (referring to my mother) was really miserable, her daughter died, and now the kid can’t be saved, “how can she live afterwards.
The third aunt is even more creepy: “Do not talk about what you do not need! What the child wants to eat, we try to get. Child, tell third aunt, what do you want to eat? You say it!”
I held back my tears, my mind was empty, and I couldn’t say a word because of the bone-chilling grief and anger and helplessness.
I pretended to be asleep at night, but I couldn’t sleep at all. People outside the window were still chattering about the incident.
Some people counted the days, in which year Lin Biao was exposed and died, and in which year his poisoning plan should be implemented, and after counting, it was my turn to be one of the children, and his plot just succeeded.
This was the first time in my life that I felt the fear of death, and the word “Lin Biao” tumbled into my mind as one of the most hideous and sinister names.
In the shadow of death, I was angry, hated and aggrieved, and I lay on the bed, repeating in my mind: “Why am I so unlucky?
When the day came to send me back, my first cousin said she would not send me back, she told my uncle, “How can I tell my second aunt about this, how can she stand it?” Uncle told her that there was no proof whether the vaccine was poisoned or not, and that if it was, the state would not care. But the first cousin said, “What if it’s true, when something like this happens, would the state dare to tell?”
The second uncle’s daughter – I call her third sister – volunteered to drive me. Before we got into the car, my older cousin finally couldn’t help herself and cried out “wow”.
Back home, of course, I did not dare to tell my parents such a thing, and I do not know whether the third sister said. But this year I was weak and waxy, how to look like a precarious look. So my parents, who were already 40 years old, decided to have another child, and the next year my brother was born.
I later suspected that they might have heard a similar story, so to be on the safe side, they gave birth to a second son, despite the risk of advanced age. From then on, my name changed from “old son” to “big old son”, and my brother was called “little old son”. -This is my family’s unique title, and I have never heard them called that in other families.
Now I can’t figure out who made the rumor that “Lin Biao poisoned the vaccine” more than 30 years ago, how wide it spread, and whether it only appeared in the Liaoshen area, or also outside? How come there is such a “genius” mind, it is really too “secret”! However, I have some sincere thanks to the “genius”, because his rumor made me realize the importance of my life from the tears of my loved ones for the first time, and I gradually realized that there is nothing in the world more important than the word “love”.
I have always believed that those who commit suicide with healthy limbs, if they experienced the “shadow of death” similar to what I experienced in childhood, they will never live lightly; those criminals who kill and set fire for money, for various desires or even just to save face for a moment, if they had the same experience as I did in childhood, they will never take the risk – the tears of love and care of loved ones in childhood are enough to wash away all the cowardice and sinful hearts in the world’s holy water.
I live, for myself, more for those who love me and those I love!
April 15, 2009
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