Shu Ting's work: Flowers in the Dark

Mom's skin was superb, snow white and delicate, and it was not too much to describe it as a shelled egg. Influenced by my mother, I always thought that good skin is one of the prerequisites for female beauty.

　

　　Grandma gave birth to eleven children, eight of whom survived, half male and half male. The mother ranked third among the daughters, and the brothers and sisters all adhered to grandpa's concave eyes, high nose, and wide forehead. What made my mother most ashamed of herself was that they were all double eyelids, big eyes, round and shiny. And the mother all accepted the apricot eyes of the grandmother, and a pair of thin beautiful shoulders. The old mother of the family bullied her mother and deceived her, saying that her birth mother was originally a domestic servant and was sold far into the mountains by her grandmother in anger.

　　

　　Mom was often sad and uncontrollable for no reason.

　　Grandpa is dashing and handsome, grandma is shrewd and sharp, and her sex is as fierce as fire, and she gradually ignores this well-behaved child with a rare smile at home. Mom became more and more convinced of the ambiguity of her birth. Insomnia at a young age, wandering in the night, the confusion of unknowable life, the fierceness of death, so that the fantasy nature leaks everywhere, and the grass and trees are soldiers. Every midnight, she touched the boudoir where she lived alone, and quietly snuggled up to her grandmother's threshold and cried silently.

　　On the night of the Japanese air raid, it was the sleepless mother who cried and woke up the grandmother who was sleeping with her fourth uncle, who had just turned one year old. A family of more than twenty people was saved from a disaster.

After the birth of the fourth aunt, the grandfather's business suddenly met the source, so he opened a chain of cloth villages in the name of the fourth aunt, all called "Huiji". The fourth aunt is both a lucky star and a daughter, with bright eyes and bright teeth, extremely spoiled, grandpa bought a piano for her, and the famous teacher taught her, but unfortunately, the fourth aunt's piano skills have not been satisfactory. As the new year drew to a close, there were beggars from outside the country singing "Lotus Falling" at the gate of the big house, and the thirteen-year-old mother held the piano in her hand. At one point, the inside and outside of the door were full of people, the mother's huge tears dripped on the black button, and after the beggar left, the mother kept playing the palm lamp, and the family did not dare to disturb. That night, the organist resigned and said, "Miss Four's homework is more than enough for Miss Three." In my childhood at my grandmother's house, I loved to watch my mother sit in the vast corridor and play the guitar at dusk. She frowned slightly, not rolling tears, but more hurt than tears. At that time, the furniture piano and even my mother's mink coat had been replaced by fried noodles, lard, shrimp skin, beaten into packages, and sent to My father's labor camp farm.

　　The mother with single eyelids grew to be fifteen or sixteen years old, and she stood out, and she suddenly looked like a flower, tall, slim and light. Although the sisters' facial features are exquisite and picturesque. God made up for it very fairly, and each of them developed into a pocket-sized body like a grandmother. Insomnia and melancholy added to mom's exhilarating elegance. At every temple fair, everyone came to ask their mother to dress up as Guanyin. The mother who nodded her lips and bent her eyebrows was really beautiful.

The mother of the second grade of the church girls' high school is always the first place in the calligraphy competition. Cooking, sewing, flower arrangement results are also among the best, that is, chess is not beginner. When I came home from school and put my bag down, my mother went to the patio to scoop up water to wash the ink on my hands, and my father, who was sitting in the flower hall preparing to propose to the second aunt, saw his mother in a white dress and a black dress, and accidentally spilled a cup of hot tea on the borrowed suit, and even changed his course and begged the third girl. Grandpa refused on the grounds that my mother was still studying at a young age. In fact, in the old-style family law, Shang Yunying, who is a sister, is not married, so how can she be a sister and make a promise early? Because her mother had covered her snow-white glutinous rice teeth, Wan'er smiled and asked, "Why are your teeth yellow?" Dad squeezed inch toothpaste every day, brushed his teeth three times, and went to Yang House to wait for his mother to finish school. In his left hand, he held his mother's favorite words, plum, candied fruit, and Pingshan grapefruit, and in his right hand, he held Grandpa's Danfeng sorghum and Grandma's Qinglan pie.

　　Dad was determined, and Mom was getting longer and longer to wash her hands on the patio. Grandma sighed, waiting for the second aunt, who was six years older than her mother, to have a good family affair, and the grandmother would decide. Finally, it's done.

　　Is it not love that makes the mother under the age of eighteen abandon her studies and marry in a hurry, and now it seems a little confused to look back, but the mother who grew up in a big family with a mischievous temperament must hope to have a small nest that is completely her own. His father, who has graduated from a school of finance and economics and works in a large bank, is sophisticated and mature, has independent financial ability, so that even if her mother is not happy in the days after marriage, she must be peaceful and happy. The love that was lacking in childhood was repaid several times over by Dad.

　　Even if my brother's difficult childbirth, I was almost killed by my nanny when I was swaddled, my father was wrongfully hanged during the rebellion, my mother stripped off all the jewelry on her body, and rushed back to her mother's house for help in the starry night, these frights still could not damage the roundness and richness of my mother's flowers blooming after marriage.

　　Until 1957.

　　Mother's beauty is well known among the relatives, fragile, sensitive, tender like water, how to bear the burden of red dust! My mother left the same age as I am now. Countless times back in my dreams, I am still in the hospital with my mother waiting for tomorrow's surgery. Mom sat wordlessly on the hospital bed, her face still smooth, her brow slightly furrowed, and death's last gaze was so gentle. Mom disappeared into darkness in an instant, and all the beauty preserved did not wither away.