In the winter of 2017, I stood guard at a gas station on the edge of a small town in Suihua, Heilongjiang province. The gas station was deserted and business was slow, so I spent most of my time inside reading and surfing the Internet.
Enter the twelfth lunar month, the computer suddenly stopped for a few days, mobile phone signal is poor, I would like to go to the county to buy books. The 50-year-old oiler wayan heard that her cousin had a book at home and insisted to help me to borrow it. The next day, wayan brought two works of Zhang Ailing and Sanmao. I’ve seen them all, and I’m somewhat disappointed. Wayan understood my look and said that my cousin lived in the town and could contact her if she wanted to read any books. She also pushed her cousin’s WeChat to me, which I agreed to.
A few days later wayan asked if I had made contact, and I remembered that after I had sent out my friend request, I had not been approved. Wayan sighed with disappointment and said, “She is a bit of a heresy. She is difficult to get along with.”
I asked wayan to return the two books to her cousin. After a few days, the friend request was approved.
Looking through her circle of friends, it is full of meaningless words. Instead of greeting me, she sent me a few photos of the bookcase and asked me what I wanted to see. The shelves were full of books on psychology and education. After a closer look, I replied, “Thank you very much, but no need.”
Not long after, I still received a copy of “The Rabble.” Wayan relayed the words of her cousin: “This is a book of wisdom. You should read it.” My in the mind sneer, originally want to put the book on the shelf, some day boring, or pick up turn over. He found a handwritten note in the margins of a page: “The longer the poison stays in the body, the deeper it goes into the bone marrow, and the longer it takes to get rid of it. Therefore, we must be prepared for protracted war.” It’s followed by a date, some day in 2016.
Carefully read this passage, and the book has nothing to do with the content, not like reading notes. I really don’t understand what she means by “poison”.
1
One day, wayan’s son was playing on the computer. Bored, I couldn’t help asking wayan about her cousin. Wayan gushed about her book-loving cousin, who is in her 40s and teaches at town Middle School. She turned to her son and asked him what class his aunt taught, but the young man did not look up, “Music.”
“Don’t you teach English?
“I’ve changed classes.”
Wayan looked puzzled and then said to me, “We don’t walk very often. She’s been teaching for years, she’s been divorced twice, she has no children.”
When I mentioned her circle of friends, wayan rolled her eyes: “I thought she didn’t open a circle of friends, but it turned out to be blocking us. What a strange man!”
According to Wayan, visiting relatives during the holiday was frowned upon by the whole family for being an “intellectual” relative who never contacted them. At a nephew’s wedding banquet a few days ago, my cousin sat with her Cousins. Everyone was talking and laughing during the dinner, but she said nothing and seemed lost in the world. In the middle of the banquet, my cousin suddenly left the crowd, dropping her chopsticks and shaking her arms. Someone ran after her and saw her stop a taxi and disappear. There was much discussion. Wayan asked her cousin what was wrong on WeChat, and got no response.
Wayan could not rest assured, on the pretext of borrowing books, went to the school teacher’s apartment to see her, and knocked for a long time before entering.
“She was very listless and asked if she was ill. She said she was fine, but she didn’t look at me, as if she was hiding something. I’ll sit for a while, take my book and go. ‘
When Wayan returned the books and said I wasn’t interested in the books, she approved my friend request. “She asked if you went to college, and I said yes, so she picked up the book and asked me to give it to you.” Wayan glanced at the book in my hand. “Did you go to college?”
“I’m a graduate student at China Society University.”
Her two eyebrows one point, a face of admiration expression, turned to stare at the computer behind the teenager, “He can be admitted to the university I thank god!”
I chuckled to myself and didn’t explain.
Since I know she is a teacher, I often pay attention to the gossip in her circle of friends.
One day, I took the initiative to greet her, a long time, she sent a question mark. After a pause, I began by borrowing books, thanking her, saying I had a few, and asking her if she wanted to read them. Instead of picking me up, she told me her age and said I was afraid I could be my aunt and I should go pick up young women. I quickly said it was just a chat and asked her not to think about it.
After a long pause, she said, “Sorry, I’m not ready…” The remark left me scratching my head and I had to give it up.
Soon, I was in the circle of friends brush to – “God, please give me a invisibility cloak! So no one can see me, and I can choose to see others or not. The point is that I can’t be seen, so I don’t have to be afraid. Maybe I should surround myself so that no one can see me and I’ll feel safe…”
I had never seen such a woman, and I could not imagine what it was like to be a high school teacher with such childish ideas.
Laba Festival that day, I decided to find her to return the book, under the guidance of wayan’s son down to the school teachers apartment downstairs, I sent a message to ask her to go down to get the book. A figure was moving at one of the Windows upstairs, and soon I was told to leave the book on the box at the door. I said I wanted to ask her face to face about something, but she replied very quickly, saying it was still inconvenient to meet.
I left the book on the mailbox and stood nearby chatting with the boy. Maybe she saw me, and she soon texted me again, saying that if I didn’t leave, she would call the security office.
I give up and go to school with the teenager.
The boy said, aunt has been “low-key”, weekdays always head down to walk, students to her hello, but also just nodded. Class is also strange, often talk talk stop, and then left the classroom. He also said that once he went to a restaurant with some of his classmates, my aunt was ordering food inside, saw them sit down, put down the menu and left the restaurant, the owner of the restaurant behind her called her crazy.
‘Do you think she’s ill? I asked.
He nodded and said, “She never wears makeup. Once several girls in our class met her in the corridor and asked her why she didn’t make up. She asked why she made up, and the girls laughed. Then she trembled all over and didn’t come to class for several days.”
“Not making up is sick?”
“All the other women teachers wear makeup, but she wears nothing, like a village maid. The girls in the class wear makeup, too.”
I asked him what was the first day and he said the second day. I smacked my tongue.
During that time, I often saw her words in the circle of friends — happy, sad, crying, like a lonely child whispering to a doll in her hand. But I also did not think too much, because at the end of December, I will leave suihua because of work changes packed up. I left some books with wayan, and asked her to give them to her cousin when she was free. By the time I received the thank you message, I had been home for several days.
We answered a few voice calls. She was always polite, but the conversation was more casual. She usually sent the questions and I answered them. Such as what I have done, where I have been, what memorable things I have done, etc., etc., when I started talking, I would talk a lot. She would quietly listen and make no comments. It was a good process, but she seldom said anything about herself. Even when I brought the topic to her, all I got was silence.
Once, I couldn’t help but ask her what the purpose of always talking to me was, and she stammered, “This is a practice…” I asked what the practice was, but she stopped explaining it.
I suddenly felt a little funny, said his story is almost finished, this is not a normal communication. Then he hung up the phone. Later, she sent a few more chat requests, But I did not accept the busy work.
Later, we did not talk – at that time, my wife on the grounds of “ambiguous born in chat”, to find me angry for several times. My wife was dissatisfied, though I explained that I had chatted with the “teacher sister” out of curiosity. Finally, before the Spring Festival holiday was over, I blocked my wife in front of her.
2
In 2019, the Spring Festival, gas station wayan sent me a message of blessing, I was still in the depression of marriage.
Knowing that I had lost contact with her cousin, Wayan revealed to me that her cousin had committed suicide last year.
Elder sister mentioned a “snow female ghost” video, I have a little impression, in the early spring of last year, in suihua area of WeChat group spread for a while: in the depth of the vast expanse of snow, a woman with hair down, naked, while running howling…… “That woman is my cousin. It was shot by a fat bachelor who lived near a gas station.”
“The old man in the security office said that if he hadn’t felt something wrong and contacted the police to pry the door open, he probably wouldn’t have been there.”
I asked Wayan what had become of him.
Wayan said the trigger for suicide was related to the viral video in the WeChat community. The police found fat Brother, detained him for a few days, and the video was cleaned up. My cousin was taken home by her old mother for a period of recuperation, and then went to the south for several months before returning to Suihua in the autumn to teach in a village school.
My heart sobbed, turning to the WeChat business card wayan sent me before, thinking it over and adding it back to her — I thought she also deleted me, but I didn’t.
A closer look at her circle of friends shows that it is still full of words, but very different from the past — words are no longer full of “words”, but added to the life notes, the words are no longer full of thick gloom.
In one passage, she wrote, “Only in practice and communication can we find out what is wrong with us and make continuous improvement. It’s not a very pleasant process. But I prefer this to being a shrinking tortoise. Yes, no problem. I can stand it. I’ll try again. Let the defeat come more violently!”
She seems to be turning a corner for the better.
Then one day, in July, I saw her write again in her moments: “I am a child growing up in the countryside. I was a shivering child. Yes, I am 45 years old and have been a teacher for 25 years. But I was still a shivering child at heart. I’m scared to see anyone. I think he’s going to hurt me. I was so sad that my eyes filled with tears. However, when the tears come out, I know, I am a little better. The poison’s been taken out of me a little bit more…”
I remembered the words I had first seen her write. Could not help but say hello to her, after a long wait, received a “long time no see”.
After a few simple pleasantries, I asked her why she didn’t delete me. She said there was no need, because I couldn’t “see her” anyway. In reality, everyone who could “see her” had been blocked or blocked by her. We spoke again, and this time her voice was calm and natural, completely free of the tension that had preceded it.
I pointed out that changes to her, she said this is the result of “practice” – the voice chat with me in fact is the beginning of “practice”, after I have disappeared, she was constantly looking for different members of the opposite sex voice calls, is to “overcome the fear” — “before I knew you, I have 3 years didn’t normal talking with people, especially the opposite sex. Not in life, not online.”
“How do you work at school? How do you communicate with your colleagues and students?”
“Sometimes it’s not so obvious and I can control it. Sometimes it does. I stopped last year…” She paused, as if hesitating to say “suicide.” I skipped this part of the conversation and asked her where she had been since her suspension. She said she was on the road.
I don’t believe it. She said she had been to Harbin, Beijing and as far as Chongqing. Also went to Zhengzhou, Wuhan, do cleaning, hourly workers, youth volunteer, and so on, it sounds wonderful. Puzzled, I asked her how she got her first step in meeting so many people.
After a long pause she spoke of “that thing”.
“Since you, I haven’t met anyone who wants to talk to me normally. It’s all in their heads. I feel sick inside. That day I went to the countryside, suddenly want to bury myself in the snow, wonder if it will be colder…… I was devastated by what happened — I lay naked in the snow, only to be found and filmed. I was so desperate that I thought of killing myself…”
I deliberately exclaim.
“After being rescued, I opened my eyes and saw my mother, who was so old, holding my hand with tears in her eyes. At that moment, I felt so warm. There were people who loved me in this world, even though she had never shed tears for me before…”
She paused for a moment, trying to calm herself, and went on: “I have experienced death, not so much fear. I am not afraid of it, I am not afraid of death, why should I be afraid of people? For a moment, I thought through a lot of things, there is a feeling of rebirth. And I took that feeling with me, and I looked for the things that scared me. That’s part of the practice! I feel so much better after my death and this’ practical ‘trip…”
As I listened, I wondered more and more what the “poison” that had invaded her marrow and haunted her for so many years was.
When I wondered, the profile picture had cut off the signal, which was unusually quiet. For a long time I heard the rattle of the chair, and a faint, controlled breath.
“They were stuck in my body for so long… Do you really want to hear it? That’s dirty stuff.”
3
After that, she continued to speak unactively, with obvious hesitation and cowering. I tried to lighten the mood by asking her what she had learned over the years, but she said, “Although I’ve been a teacher for 25 years, I don’t consider myself an educator. If I had any other skills, I would have jumped out of this profession long ago.”
She said that she had taken the normal examination just to jump out of the gate. In 1994, at the age of 20, she went to a village primary school. The two-year village teacher career was monotonous and boring. The children in the class are naughty, unruly, disregard for discipline, also make her tired. She spends most of her time cracking melon seeds and practicing calligraphy in her humble dormitory. The character did not practice well, but the front teeth cut two gaps. She was bored, and soon, relatives introduced her to a girl, a township high school teacher.
After their engagement, she was transferred to the town Middle School as a substitute teacher under her partner’s activities. In the same year, they married and lived in the couple’s dormitory assigned by the school. As the monotony of married life continued, she began to feel more and more strange. Neither a colleague nor a teacher nor a wife could she tell the deeper reason why.
Until one day, she went to the city’s bookstore, see a book “the montessori education”, the book shook her completely, the book is full of normal school didn’t teach knowledge and concept, not only make as a teacher she realized that their own lack of understanding, more let her to re-examine their academic careers, “I have not received education from parents and teachers, some only lessons. I want to erase the history, to erase my humiliation.”
I remember wayan at the gas station telling me that she was the youngest in the family and the favorite, and she said, “It looks like I’m the happiest, but Actually, I’m the least appreciated. My brothers and sisters were much older than me and never took me with them. My father teaches, my mother works on the farm. There are always things to do… They just taught me to dress and eat and then just let it go. They think I’m good as long as I don’t get sick or cry…”
I asked her if her parents had done anything outrageous to her, like domestic violence. She said she had not. “It was the look of repugnance, the vituperation, that hurt her more than the beating.”
“My mother was uneducated, very coarse, very loud, and not at all feminine. My father didn’t like her, so she took it out on me — I’m the only one in the family who doesn’t talk back. As for my father “– she paused –” I adore him and hate him… He was kind to the outside world with a big smile, but at home he kept a straight face. He looked down his nose at my mother. Everyone in the family looked down his nose at him. He did two things to me that I still can’t forgive.”
‘What is it?
He was my teacher. Once he asked me a question in class, but I couldn’t answer it. He was very upset and told my classmates that I was not his own child. The other is once had a wedding banquet, I was only five or six years old, and a few children to learn the name of adults, my father heard after suddenly rushed over to me, shouted at me, scold me not polite. But no one ever taught me what ‘polite’ was? Why should grown-ups be amused when other children shout, while I am scolded for doing the same?”
She said she never knew the difference between right and wrong. She began to tread carefully so as not to be scolded. Gradually, developed a solitary, self-abasement character. This personality makes her the quietest one in the class, but even so, it doesn’t make her invisible.
When I was a little older, there was a young, athletic teacher in the class who often used physical punishment — making the students slap each other, stand on their heads and pull their ears. For her, the male teacher will always carry her on the platform alone, let all the students on her “eye review”.
“I would like to find a crack into the ground, the students shot eyes, like a knife, stabbed in my heart…” Her voice shook violently as she said this.
After finishing primary school with fear, I thought everything could start over again, but the violent male teacher was also transferred to the town to teach, without his father’s “obstruction”, the teacher finally “let go”.
“Instead of slapping my face, he would hit my chest through my clothes. No one would see the hurt, but it always kept me awake.”
“Is he targeting you alone?”
“No, other girls have been beaten like that. Chest thumping, buttocks, that’s what he does to girls.”
The adolescent bullying that plagued her for 30 years
“Why don’t you fight back? Or talk to other teachers?”
“So are the other teachers… Later, when I became a teacher, I realized that in the closed environment of a small town in the country, the boring life day after day, teachers were also distorted. They cover up each other, study, their own life of discontent, vent on the children who do not know how to resist. Now there is the Internet, the media, what was there in those days? At that time, the teacher was heaven, the children were wronged, go back and tell their parents, parents also have no culture, teachers as gods…”
4
After that, things seem to get worse.
One day, with the dormitory girl Millet quietly and she said a secret — the school has a male teacher to millet did “that kind of thing”.
“She was afraid to talk to her family and had to tell me because I felt like I was dumb. Now that I think about it, I regret knowing the secret. Her cries, her description of the event, gave me a terrible fright…”
I asked her how old she was at that time. She said she was 15 or 16 when she was in the second grade.
Millet told her the secret, as if a Pandora’s box. She remembered a lot of horrible things about sex, and she was afraid to tell anyone, but she let them ferment in her mind and become more horrible. For example, she remembered how wonderful it was to be put into a hot tub by an adult and have her body immersed in hot water. When she was five or six years old, her brother, fourteen or fifteen, squatted down, put his hand into the water, and stroked her privates, which deepened her impression of this feeling; After first grade, her brother touched her twice again, and she began to feel ashamed and resistant to him, so much so that as an adult she would remember it every time she saw him.
After entering junior high school, another thing happened that she thought was “polluted” : one weekend after school, she walked alone on the path back to the village, passed a forest, saw several male students posted in a row back and forth, I do not know what is going on. She takes a closer look, the boys see her, and suddenly they split up, and one of the older children, suddenly exposed her genitals, and she’s so scared that she runs home, and she’s funny, she always thinks she’s going to get pregnant.
“No one told me where children come from, why men and women are different, why the body changes, including the first menstruation, seeing so much blood coming out of my body, I thought I had a terminal illness and was going to die.”
And the guy who did the evil thing to her, was in the same class as her, and when she got back to school, she always thought that the way the guys looked at her was mean.
“He must have told the other boys about it because a couple of times they’d get together and talk and I’d walk by and they’d all laugh weird…”
It had been painful for a long time, and she was more closed off.
And millet told her this secret, let her feel more dirty.
She dared not speak in class, did not participate in group activities after class, and even went to the toilet until there were no boys on the playground. I asked her if the boys were really laughing at her, or if she was imagining it. She said she wasn’t sure.
But in adolescence, even if full of fear, it is difficult to resist the heart throb.
When she was in grade three, a boy came to her class and was placed in front of her. The boys were handsome and clean, and did well in their studies. They soon got on well with the people around them. Once, the boy looked back and asked her to borrow the eraser, after getting the eraser, suddenly touched her face, smiling back to his head. It took her a long time to recover, and she was burning.
It reminded her of a scene in Qiong Yao’s novel where the hero and the heroine fall in love. The boy’s smile, and that in her face lightly across the action, like a rope, wrapped around her after every dream. Later days, the boy returned several times, in her desk homework meditation time, the boy also took the initiative to dial her.
“I can’t look him in the eye. It makes my heart race. I kind of think he likes me.”
So, not long after, she wrote her “first love letter.”
“It was a dark night and he left a note saying he was waiting for me to take a walk on the playground after his evening study. There was a bike shed near the playground, where he suddenly stopped and asked me if I liked him. I nodded a head, he hugged me, one hand on my chest, one hand touched my buttocks…” However good feeling is replaced by intense fear in an instant — millet confide to her that “secret”, once like a talon grabbed her throat. Feeling of suffocation, she pushed the boy away and ran back to the dormitory.
She thought, this is a belong to her and that boy’s “secret”, but the boy’s later practice, make her almost make the act of suicide — return to the classroom of her, in the desk found a note, is another boy’s handwriting: “come to the car shed at night, I also want to touch…
She was sure there was no one else on the playground that night, and the boy in front of her did not look back at her, just as the other boys did at recess. It wasn’t long before the girls in the dorm started whispering to each other, describing her as a “seducer” — and the circulation of the page of love letters made her a public joke.
She was afraid to set foot in the classrooms, the canteen, the playground, the dormitory — and later, when she wandered alone by the river, she would think of millet’s icy body pulled out of the river by the police.
‘Did she kill herself?
“I don’t know. Anyway, she’s dead. Sometimes I see her alive, when I look in the mirror…”
I could not speak for a long time. After a long silence, her voice sounded in my ears again. “These memories are my deepest nightmares, in which I spent my youth and my manhood. I don’t know the world, I don’t know how to express myself. My body is mature, but my mind is immature. I split up and lived to 40, then had five years of social phobia…”
5
I remember wayan once said that she had no children, and I always thought that was the main reason her first marriage ended, but after listening to her, I realized that it probably wasn’t.
“In fact, I did not love him, the body needs, but the heart is afraid.” She said she did not have children because her fallopian tubes were blocked, “because I didn’t want to have children, and because the options were limited at that time, I gave up treatment.” Her first marriage lasted six years, and she worked her way through marriage, stoically deferring and trying to maintain her image as a wife. At that stage, she was still living in self-paralysis.
By the year 2000, the Internet had finally brought news from the outside world, and with far more speed than books displayed on wooden shelves. She began to re-examine her life and had the idea to leap out — to quit her teaching job and try something else. The idea was soon opposed by her husband, and without a deal she refused to have sex. After her husband “overbearing hard bow”, she took the initiative to end the marriage, quickly went through the teaching procedures, set foot on the train to the south.
The outside world is really wonderful, but also extremely cruel. Her ability is not outstanding, social experience is almost zero, plus too introverted timid personality, drifting for a year, has not found love, and can support their own career. Got sick on the way, spent almost all of his savings, and had to go back to school. At this time, her ex-husband, has remarried, and was transferred to the county middle school. When I asked her if she regretted it, she denied it.
“He was good to me, but I wasn’t good enough for him. I blessed him, found a woman to have children with, and started a new family. Besides, it would be a liberation for me to leave him.”
After that, she lived alone for a few years, studied English off the job and went to two township high schools. Her teaching has improved, but she remains a “maverick” in the eyes of her leaders and colleagues because of her personality. Although I won the title of “advanced teacher” several times, I did not get promoted.
“I also want to strive for a higher income and a better life. But after working for nearly 20 years, I didn’t even save enough money for a down payment on a county apartment…”
Her heart was full of frustration and her health was no longer young enough to allow her to change careers and start all over again. With a sense of resignation, she began to find sustenance for her excess energy. At this point, music entered her world.
“I spent my spare time studying Musical Instruments. First the guzheng, then the piano. The piano was bought second-hand and cost more than 10,000 yuan, several months ‘salary.”
Later, she fell in love with saxophone again. She went to visit her mother in the county town. When she passed a park, the melodious saxophone music came from the shadows of trees, which made her stop her steps. Holding the Saxophone was a middle-aged man in overalls, fascinated by his solitary figure, his devoted expression and his skillful playing.
This is her second husband.
In retrospect, she had no intention of remarrying and had moved into a man’s bachelor pad out of common interest. But soon, a sulky high school teacher and a dumb construction worker, the only thing that continues their marriage is physical contact.
“I felt divided again. How can I do this with a man I don’t love? I must put an end to this.”
The breakup was calmer than the union. The man walked her to the station and said, “Come back when you want,” which made her sick again.
It was 2014 and she was 40 years old.
After that, things get harder to control.
Also in this winter, one day she was in a daze in the office, a male colleague greeted her, she suddenly felt very uncomfortable. I dropped my head and tried to control my thoughts, but there was a violent tremor. She ran away. “Walking, eating, attending classes, working, whenever you see members of the opposite sex, you have that picture in your head. What a shame! I was afraid to speak, to make eye contact…”
She went to the hospital for a check-up and ran away when she saw a male doctor. Later, she consulted a psychologist online and was diagnosed with “social disorder”. The conversation was charged by the hour, and she gave up after spending a lot of money but failed to find the “toxic source”.
To keep her job, she went on a path of self-healing. First I bought books on psychology to study myself, and then I eased my anxiety by talking to my mind. Gradually, the physical reaction of the body disappeared. “But until now, I have been invisible. There’s still the thought of not being seen…”
“Isn’t it a rebirth?”
“Yes, she’s growing up — my inner child, who used to be eight, is now 18 –” she gave a shy, slightly sprightly laugh.
She said that in the past six months, she finally began to gradually identify and accept themselves, but also reflect on how to continue the career of teachers. She has experienced the psychological shaping and impact of primary education on a person’s life. After 25 years of “teaching” in chaos, she hopes to embark on the road of “educating people” and practice real education.
She said she had written an application with the leadership, the second half of the year to concentrate on acting comprehensive practice class, the psychological construction of this section to do. I just don’t know if I can get approval.
I asked her what she would do if she didn’t apply.
“Not every child can be a great talent, but I want them to leave school in a better state,” she says. I teach music now, so I have a lot of time to communicate with students and do psychological counseling. I know there are a lot of kids just like me, and I want to be their friend.”
Afterword.
At the time of writing this article, we also passed a speech.
When I asked her about her parents, she said that her mother was spending her old age in the county seat. Her father died 10 years ago. Every day of her father’s death, she said, she wanted to write about the “love and hate” between her father and her father, but every time she picked up her pen, her mind was full of him lying in his hospital bed, staring out the window.
“He spent his life with a woman he didn’t love. Mother is also, a lifetime of hard work has not been recognized. They all live lonely lives.”
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