1
In the West Qinling area, many places call women rice people, girls called rice children.
This call has nothing to do with rice, here do not grow rice, only the New Year to exchange a bag of twenty pounds of rice, to improve life. Called rice people and rice, because the pronunciation. The mountain people are straightforward, simple, tongue is also the same as the axe handle, straight poke, in the mouth can not turn, not roll up the edge, the female will read into the rice.
The village people called Junmei old rice – naturally, the old girl who did not marry out, perhaps still remain a daughter.
Our family and the old Mizi family live in the same sunny slope of the village, separated by a family. Our family travels and goes down to the ground, we have to pass her door.
My mother was afraid that if it snowed in a few days, the road would be bad, so she took me to the field to carry sunflower sticks. We passed by Old Mizi’s house. Old Mizi Junmei was standing under the wall, with her hands tucked into her trouser pockets, getting high on sesame seeds (a Shaanxi specialty, the size of green beans). Mother and she greeted, she responded, with two big teeth to jam the hemp seeds, a bite, hemp seeds skin broken into two, white fat hemp seeds rolled into the mouth, hemp seeds skin with the tip of the tongue a top spit out, hanging on the edge of the mouth, because there is saliva sticky, accumulated into a lump, did not fall, like hanging a hornet’s nest.
Throughout the winter, the old miko only do two things: stand under the south wall to warm up in the sun, high pinenuts. The skin of hemp seeds that fell on the ground, it is estimated that a dustpan can be swept. After getting high for a while, he went to the door. In the village of Ma, it is also called “Yushi”, which seems to have the meaning of wandering the world. For the mountains blocked hemp village, a palm-sized village, a hundred or so families, should be the world for everyone. The North, the Pacific, the more distant United States, Africa, for those who remain in the village, is out of reach, but also meaningless, they only exist in the 7:00 pm to 7:30 pm “news broadcast”.
People Yushi, either pinch a pair of insoles, or hold a ball of wool, or carry a horse spoon or something, by the hand to ask for a spoon of sauerkraut. Old Mizi Yousei, two hands dropped on the crotch, nothing to bring.
For those who are traveling in the world, while warming someone’s hot bed and chattering about their parents, the needlework in their hands will be done. Old Mizi, on the other hand, likes to go in and out of the house empty-handed. When you go in, you go to the kitchen, look at the cooking, occasionally a mouthful of food, and then something to say a few words, and then go away. When I went to another house, I went into the hall, but I didn’t go to the bed, I stood on the ground and said a few words about nothing, and then I left. Then I went to another house. One day, she would go into the neighbor’s house near the door seven or eight times a day.
My mother deliberately scolded her, “You’re going in and out, breaking the threshold of my house.”
Old Mizi laughed and said, “Is this a threshold made of bean curd? It’s so hard to step on.”
Old Mizi does not like to watch TV. The TV at home, bought years ago, a dozen inches, a long time, big red and green, but also a layer of unclean sweeping snow spots. The old Mizi mash open the TV, a blur, the light is loud, each station is singing ah dance ah, feel to die of joy in general.
She wondered, those people on TV, how so happy it? It is really strange. She punched out the TV and fiddled with her phone for a while. Although the phone is a smart phone, but the traffic was used up in 3 days, now a little dialing and pulling a look, unpaid notifications like a ghost, one after another sent, so she did not dare to tinker with the phone. The family business is handled by her 70-year-old father, and she does not touch a finger.
There are not many people left in the village, and there are not many things left. Apart from TV and cell phone, the only thing she can do is to get high on marijuana and swim in the world. The only way to squeeze out the panic and loneliness in her heart is by going in and out of other people’s homes.
She wasted 40 years of her life by being idle.
2
Old Mizi, a person from 1978. People in the countryside have a saying: “When a person is over 35, half of him is in the ground.” But Lao Mizi did not think about this, she will not think about these things.
Forty years old, old Mizi is still a female bachelor. This is a strange thing in the West Qinling, where rice is still scarcer than gold. It’s not that no one has introduced her to Lao Mizi, it’s not that no man has been to her door, and it’s not that the family is not anxious about her marriage.
These are all there, but it is difficult to say.
About ten years ago, someone to the old Mizi to pick up a man, conditions are also good, people look smart, parents complete house, raising a bullock (breeding cattle), to the surrounding four miles and eight townships of female cattle breeding, the money collected material, so that the family live a free and generous life, the corners of the mouth always flowing oil flowers.
The man’s family came, carrying tobacco, wine, sugar and tea, the marriage was engaged. When the engagement, my mother also took me to the old Mizi family sat a simple seat – five bowls and four plates. After the engagement, the man picked up the old miko, let play a few days, said the nearby village singing opera, to see a lively. Old Mizi went, after a few days, the play is over, came back. People in the village thought, “Jun Mei (then not called Lao Mizi) marriage is also engaged, over the officer (to hold a wedding) should be soon”.
But a few days later, someone in the village biting ears and said, “Junmei’s wedding is just”. People hung their jaws and froze for half a day before asking, “Isn’t it fine?”
“Who knows, the day before yesterday, the man’s family came to withdraw from the marriage, saying that the engagement day, broke a bowl, unlucky, looking for a yin and yang, pinch a finger, the phase genus does not match, rushing miles.”
This is, of course, the man made an excuse, what specific reasons, who knows.
Old Mizi’s first marriage has not yet begun, it is over. No one knows what really happened to the old miko and the man’s family. This is a secret, how many years later, still has not been unlocked. And old Mizi, too, kept his mouth shut.
After half a year, another relative gave the old miko a fling. This time the man, is door-to-door. Old Mizi’s parents are also happy, after all, the family only gave birth to such a girl, find a son-in-law, old also have a finger to rely on, there is a top family, a few collapsed house rotten yard will be someone to guard.
This time the man, the person is very honest, from the looks of it, is a simple face, four brothers in the family, he is the oldest three, really can not plate the daughter-in-law, only ready to go to the door of the next policy. When the matter has a point, the man came to the old miko home, although not yet officially over the door, but and family like.
At that time, it was the summer harvest farming busy. The first time the rooster crowed, the man got up early in the morning, without saying a word, carrying a scythe, dark on the ground to start the scythe. 6:00 o’clock, when others went to the ground one after another, he had cut down a hundred pieces of wheat. When he was pulling wheat to the wheat field, he carried two acres of wheat to the highway, put it on a truck, pulled it back, and stacked it in the field. In addition to the work in the field, the family roof leaks, the house to replace the tiles; thatch pits full of manure, to the ground to carry manure; animals no grass, get up early to cut grass; kitchen no salt, even in the rain to go to the market to buy back. Inside and out, the man should take care of everything, like a cow, just know how to work, no temper. This makes the old mizi parents so happy that they can not close their mouths, like a ripped shoe mouth all day long.
That year, pulling the wheat to the mill, always the bottom of the old rice family, finally busy in front of other families, let their family played a person. My father is lazy and likes to procrastinate when doing farm work, my mother scolds, my father always takes the old rice family as a reference, saying what is the hurry, you do not see the old rice to what extent? My mother could do nothing about it. But this time, the old Mizi family did in the front, the mother got the same power, the father picked up a severe beating.
When Lao Mizi’s parents think Lao Mizi’s marriage is a done deal, the man carried a green rice bag, stuffed with a few rotten clothes, and left their home.
No one knows what really happened between the man and the old rice. This is also a secret, how many years later, still has not been unlocked. The old miko, too, is closed-mouthed and secretive.
Old Mizi’s mother was worried about the marriage of the doll out of the disease, a few years later, passed away. Since then, the old Mizi and his father lived a life of dependence. During this period, there were intermittent people to the old Mizi to promote the object, but did not become.
Old Mizi’s father is an honest and wilful man, seeing the calendar turned to 2010, the baby is getting older, and crops, like a crop, a crop over, can no longer find an in-law, out of date. But his heart is anxious, the mouth but can not say, plus the family was born old Mizi a treasure, not scolded a child, spoiled and accustomed to a little bit of verbal conflict, it is not good. Forced to anxious, the old miko instead turn around, the adults scolded a dog.
So, when the father is anxious again, but also dare not say anything. It is not good to ask what the reason for the marriage is, and let the doll grow older and older every year, and finally, become the old rice in people’s mouths.
When people and old mizi father bragging about the marriage of the doll, he just waved his hands and sighed and said, really mizi baby harm pumping milk – painful to touch can not, shame to say. Then, there are no more words.
The village that can not marry the old miko
Later, people are not to the old mizi to promote the object, because they know that this thing can not be done, and do not want to trip that water, to provoke that trouble. There are also rumors in the village, saying that the old miko afraid of problems, otherwise introduced so many, why not one did not become. But after all, people are blind guesses, no one has any evidence to prove where the old mizi have problems.
So after a few years, people are also used to the old mizi married, used to her in the village son loud voice, east in and west out. If one day she gets married, people are still uncomfortable.
3
In the past few years, Lao Mizi and his father two keep the house. Old Mizi occasionally go out to work, but not for a long time, came back, came back to live a life of marijuana, you world.
Everything in the house was left to her father alone. He did all the planting, hoeing, weed pulling, dung carrying, dusting, and even sewing, all by himself. He couldn’t send her away, and he didn’t bother to send her away, so he did all the work, big and small, inside and out, that he could do, except for two meals a day, washing a few clothes, or helping to guillotine some wheat grass, and leaving a seed in the field. Other work, do not touch a finger.
Although Lao Mizi’s father worked without darkness, but after all, only a few acres of farming, in addition to being able to eat and wear warm, the days are not going to have any improvement, save a few money. And the old miko go out to work, outside a little earned, not forbidden to spend, there is no more.
Slowly, their family has become the worst family in the village.
Some years ago, the hands of a little more generous people, have built a brick house. Not built, either in the city to do public work, or in the city to buy a house.
When I was young, my mother went to the old miko’s house to play, and I followed her, I saw several dilapidated adobe houses, and it was dark everywhere. My mother and Lao Mizi were talking on the bed, and I was running around her house.
Decades later, my mother still went to their house to tour the world, and I no longer followed her there. I passed by Lao Mizi’s house, and through the doorway of the courtyard, I saw still a few dilapidated adobe houses. Decades, in addition to people are aging, everything seems to be the same.
The north room, old Mizi’s father lives. The windows are embedded with a piece of glass underneath, with old newspapers glued on top, and the light is filtered in the yard. Inside the house, even in the daytime, it was dark and dreary. There was an old kang, a crate, a three-drawer cupboard, a long table, a noodle cupboard, and two lame chairs.
Everything in the house has been worn out by the years, and then by the sweat and dirt, it looks dim, decrepit and shaky. The other side of the house, supported by a board, the board neatly yard twenty bags of food, which is a year of rations, not eaten, there is a surplus head. Behind the bags of grain, the rats plucked out the holes, every late at night, they jumped down from the rafters full of moths, eating all night. When I heard the sound of rats in a daze, my father picked up the stick behind the door and knocked it on the edge of the bed a few times, cursing the rats’ ancestors. The rats were frightened and fled.
To the right of the north room was the kitchen, and to the left was the room where Old Miko lived. Old Mizi’s house had only one kang. There was an aisle in front of the kang that could just squeeze one person. Old Mizi went to the bed when he entered the house and went out when he got off the bed. There was a mat on the kang, which had been used for a long time and was caramelized by the heat of the kang. On the mat was a mattress and a pillow. The blankets were rarely folded and were piled at the root of the bed. At the other end of the bed, two large boxes were packed with clothes. On top of them were two new quilts that Lao Mizi’s mother had sewn for her as a dowry when she was still alive, but now she couldn’t use them anymore.
The quilt old mizi can not cover, afraid to get dirty, wrapped with fertilizer bags of plastic cloth, wrapped, hemp silk bundle. The box side, supported by a few bricks, above a wooden board, laid on newspaper, the old TV set. The walls are hung with gray strings of Tigers, Andy Lau’s paintings, there is nothing more.
On the west side of the courtyard, there was a straw shed with farming tools and the usual wheat straw that the donkeys ate and chopped up. To the east, an earthen room was a donkey pen. The two donkeys of Lao Mizi’s family are two of the few donkeys in the village.
In front, there are the courtyard wall and the gate. The courtyard wall was so twisted and crooked that it seemed to fall down when it was slightly relaxed. The gate, or two old wooden doors, was white from the wind and sun. The top of the gate collapsed, the old Mizi’s father used hemp sticks to pile up the top, it seems incestuous.
The year the north house of the old Mizi family was built, the old Mizi had just given birth. 40 years had passed, a person grew from a baby to an old girl who could not get married, an earthen house stood on the earth with a sore back, and several people were loaded in the chest, the dead ones died, the old ones grew old, and one, who lived without knowing the days and months, was drowsy.
The walls that were blackened, crusted and withered by the eyes of the bed must be the tear marks left by the years in the human world. In the rising white smoke, the soot accumulates thicker and thicker, and becomes the flesh of the earth that cannot be peeled off.
4
The old mizi father is only a person who will plant, raise livestock, the days of the rotten bag of people, is the village can not talk about people, days and days, he also do not want to talk. Just like the sack, the mouth of the self, a thousand things, muffled in the stomach.
He always wears the gray clothes that have lost their color, wearing a collapsed brim of green cloth hat, black face, eyes stagnant, followed by two donkey asses, in and out of the 8 acres of land. Anyway, he seems to have given up on the marriage of the old miko.
Old Mizi, how many years, repeating the old pattern: black hair tied in the back of the head; exposed half of the arms of the blouse, some of the pattern opened into the traces of the next age; she still stands under the south wall of the sun, high mazi, still full of village tour world. But she can go to fewer and fewer homes. The disappearance of a family in the hemp village, step by step, tied up the boundaries of what she could reach.
Except for sometimes helping her father with some farm work, she still goes out for a few days to work and then, comes back again, seemingly with a leather strap tied around her hips, as soon as she goes far away, she will be pulled back. Only the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and her graying complexion could not be torn away in the northwest wind.
The people finally can not understand the old miko’s mind: she does not want a man? Is she not anxious? She does not want to earn some money to live a good life? She does not want to live in a wide house compound? Wasn’t she blinded by the flowers and greenery outside? Wouldn’t she have left her whole life in this mountainous area? Did she not think about anything when she saw the sunset, when she fell asleep on her bed, when she looked at the locked doors of every house? Did she really not think about anything?
In the past, Old Miko probably came to our house the most often and had to take off her shoes and go to the bed. Over the years, my parents worked outside most of the time, and the door of the house was locked tight. I don’t know if Old Miko will think of our family when he travels the world.
During the New Year’s holidays, when my parents came home, the old miko couldn’t wait to come to our house to tour the world. When my father was there, Old Miko just went around and talked a little bit of gossip, after all, she felt uncomfortable. When my father wasn’t there, she took off her shoes and went to the bed, sitting cross-legged under the blanket with my mother, and talked about various things for a long time. They laughed, whispered, were silent, and pointed. When I was a kid, I couldn’t quite understand their gossip. Now I can understand it, but it is not convenient to listen, sometimes, unintentionally, to pick up an ear.
One day, my mother still asked Lao Mizi something about her personal matters: “You are also old, personal matters how to think about it?”
Lao Mizi sat against the wall: “I used to think about it, but now I don’t. I live alone, I’m freer.”
Mother asked again: “usually not anxious ah, is a chicken, are trying to get a companion, you are alone, sleep at night is not cold?”
Lao Mizi said faintly: “used to it, I also do not seem to love men, not interested, a long time ago flirting with men, not to see, but no feeling, I’m afraid it is a fake woman.”
Mother hey, do not know what to say, after half a day, the hands of the insoles wrapped up the edge, and said, “You do not want to go to the city to work, a restaurant to serve a plate, and then not on the site to do some odd jobs, earn some money, the days will be better, do not rely on your father, he is also an old man.”
Old Mizi said, “I also do not love the city, there are people everywhere, serving dishes I am afraid to look at the face, doing odd jobs I am afraid of labor, I love the hemp village, you world convenient, spit a hemp skin also no one cares.”
“Then what do you do in the future?”
“Why worry about so far away? Just live well in front of you, people, life is very short.”
Mother did not know how to answer.
After all, the people of Ma Village could not understand her heart. In the highlands where the loess is winding and everything is undulating, in the highlands where thousands of ancestors’ bones are buried, there are too many things to understand, not to mention the heart of an old girl. Can not understand, then pull down. You are you, I am me. You live as you are, I live as I am.
5
Last year, someone came to the old mizi father, of course, not to propose marriage, is to say that the house matter.
The old Mizi father has long been ignored family matters, told him, he is also a confused, do not know how to do, and do not know how to answer. Finally, someone came back from someone else’s house and found the old Mizi who was swimming in the world.
The visitor brought the policy, said: your house, more years, look, the wall is a little crooked, you must hurry to tear down, build a new house. To build a new house, the government has subsidies and loans for the renovation of dangerous houses.
Old Mizi spat a grain of sesame seed skin to the ground and refused their request: “You do the math, build a house, bricks, tiles, cement, sand, wood, and labor, we do not compare with others, just build a general, down at least 100,000, right? Where will I get these 100,000 or so? Even if there is a subsidy, but that little subsidy, what can it do? The loan, although no interest, but the loan in a few years, but still have to pay people back, I then pull a mess, how to pay?”
The back of Lao Mizi’s right hand slapped the left heart, giving them a calculation. The government people smoked cigarettes and would not explain.
In the days that followed, Lao Mizi was not too fond of sun warming, she was busy touring the world, going to each house to repeatedly tell others that the government let her build a house. A account in her heart, still clear. Her words, too, are completely reasonable. She really can’t get that much money, but also really can’t afford to build a side of the house, and moreover, her father can’t make the decision, she is a girl, can afford to take this burden? No.
She needed us to help her, and my father went along with her to help for a while. She wiped the pockmarked skin off the corner of her mouth and said angrily, “I have money and you have to say? I also love to live in a new house with wide doors and big windows. Besides, I have that more than 100,000, spend in this poor mountain help on what? I would have gone to the city to buy a building.”
The people from above, and repeatedly looked for Lao Mizi several times. Because the old Mizi family is a dangerous house, according to the requirements, to be eliminated this year. If they can not eliminate, their task will not be completed. But, by the people how to explain, old Mizi did not change his mind, the reason is simple: “no money, unless you give me free cover.”
This matter, so deadlocked, can not sort out a frown.
The people from above, came more diligently, because the time line drawn by the top will soon arrive. Old Mizi at first still have patience and they talk, the back far see people come, the door is not locked, buttocks a shot, like hiding from the gas like hiding away. The people who came always floundered, and finally, they found Lao Mizi’s father and wanted to talk to him.
Old Mizi’s father was mixing grass for the donkeys, sticking to two hands of wheat bran, with a handful of hay on his green hat. After the visitors had talked for half a day, Old Mizi’s father wiped off the bran from his arm pits, poured a pot of slop into a bucket, and said slowly, “There is a way, it depends on whether you get it or not.”
The visitor asked, “What is the solution?”
“As you can see, my girl is 40 years old, you can introduce a man and start a family, and when the time comes, you can bring me there, and then you don’t have to build a house, so your difficulties will be solved naturally.”
When Lao Mizi went home, it was already dark, so she went into the kitchen, scooped up a bowl of sour soup and drank it.
She lay down on the bed, with nothing to do, and turned on the TV with her hands, which was still full of snowflakes, with no one in sight, but only sound, which came out clearly and filled the room.
The TV was broadcasting the news, and the host said in a nice tone: “Help the poor first ……”
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