Short Story: Stepmother

Author: Wang Qingwei

One

In 1968, when I was six years old, one evening my mother suddenly had a terrible stomachache and kept screaming. My grandmother came from the East House to take a look and quickly asked my grandfather to go out and find the midwife in the village. I sat in kang a little too scared to speak, but my two sisters were so frightened that they cried.

While washing the towel with the washbasin, Grandma smiled and coaxed her sisters to say, "Big girl, second girl, you two don't cry, your mother is going to give you a little brother." ”

Although Grandma was smiling and coaxing, the two younger sisters kept crying with their mother's cries.

Aunt Zhang and Aunt Li, neighbors of the East and West Courtyard, heard their mother's cries and ran over. Aunt Zhang took a towel and comforted her mother while wiping the beads of sweat on her head. Aunt Li went to the outhouse and lit the stove with water on fire.

After a while, the midwife in the village came with a medicine box, and she went into the house to check on her mother and said, "I'm about to give birth." ”

Aunt Li saw that my mother was screaming badly, and whispered to the midwife, "Is it all right?" ”

The midwife said confidently: "She has given birth to three children, and she will be fine." ”

What everyone did not expect was that my mother tossed for a long time, and finally passed out and did not give birth. The midwife was so busy sweating that she finally panicked and told Grandpa to hurry up and find the village carriage to pull her mother to the hospital, saying that the fetal position was not correct, and she could not do anything.

Mom was pulled away by the carriage and came back the next day dead.

My dad got the phone call the night before and didn't get home until noon the next day. At that time, Dad and the militia company in the village were building reservoirs in the field.

Dad was kneeling in front of Mom's shed, howling like a wolf. My sisters and I hid in the house and cried incessantly.

That afternoon, Dad and Grandma were talking in the house, and my sisters and I hid to watch them.

Dad asked Grandma, "What did Xiu'e say before she left?" ”

Grandma said with red eyes: "She said a word, asking me to tell you, don't find a stepmother for the child in the future, save the children from being angry!" ”

Dad sighed and said, "If she doesn't say it, I won't find a stepmother for my child..."

Two

In the summer when I was eight years old, one evening, my father took me to the big river at the mouth of the village to catch fish. When we were about to reach the river, we saw a woman jumping into the river not far from us.

Dad threw down the harpoon in his hand, ran quickly to the river and jumped into the river, and in a few moments pulled the woman to the shore. I saw the woman sitting by the river, crying, punching my dad in the chest with her fist and saying, "Who told you to be nosy?" What are you doing to save me! ”

Dad persuaded the woman for a while before she followed Dad to my house.

It turned out that she was a woman in the city, named Xiuqing. Her parents committed suicide together after being criticized many times, and she came to our village to find her second uncle. Her second uncle and second aunt knew about her parents, and her second aunt, fearing implicated, threw her out. Desperate for a moment, she jumped into the river.

After knowing what happened to Xiuqing, my father and grandpa and grandma still quarreled in the East House, grandpa was timid, he meant to draw a line with a family like Xiuqing, and did not want to cause trouble; Grandma said, save people to the end! If her parents are at fault, what is wrong with the child? Grandma wanted to take in Xiuqing this woman; Dad and Grandma agreed, he said what's so terrible about us an old farmer!

Both Dad and Grandma insisted on keeping Xiuqing as a woman, and Grandpa had to compromise. In this way, Xiuqing stayed at our house.

At first, Grandma was afraid that someone would find Xiuqing, so she wouldn't let her go out during the day, and when she came, she would let her hide.

I was already in elementary school at that time, every day when I came back from school, Xiuqing had to give me make-up lessons, and then the teacher didn't teach, she also told me, I feel that she is better than our teachers.

With Xiuqing's tutoring, I was the first in every exam in the class, and my father and grandparents were very happy. Therefore, I am also very close to Xiuqing.

My academic performance began to decline and I was conflicted with Xiuqing, and it was a year later when she became my stepmother. I don't know why Dad didn't listen to what Mom had left him before she died, and had to marry us a stepmother. I once heard a classmate's mother teach him not to study well, saying that if his son killed her and asked his father to find a stepmother to make him angry, I knew that the stepmother must be very hateful.

Sure enough, because I didn't study well, my stepmother really changed like a person, she not only forced me to learn to do homework, but also often punished me for not completing my homework on time and not letting me eat without finishing my homework. At that time, I not only hated my stepmother, but also hated my father for marrying back a tigress.

One summer, I went to the river with a few friends to take a bath, and my stepmother found out and chased after me, and she beat me up that day. What made me even more angry was that after my father found out, he actually said that she had played well and asked me not to bathe in the river again.

From then on, I knew that my father was a complete defector, and he actually obeyed his stepmother's words and stood in the position of his stepmother everywhere.

What I can't accept is that a year later, my stepmother has her own child, and she not only manages me so tightly, but even my two younger sisters she has not let go.

One day after school, in order to get revenge on my stepmother, I secretly put a toad I caught on the way out of school into my stepmother's quilt. That night, when the stepmother saw the toad screaming in fright when she was laying the quilt, she cried. Because of this, I let my father beat him up hard...

Three

Years later, on the morning I went to report to Southern University, my stepmother said to me with a serious expression, "After that, I will never be able to take care of you again." Although you are admitted to college, you can't relax your study there, only by learning the real skills, you can get ahead and make a difference in the future! ”

Although I was politely dealing with my stepmother at that time, my heart was secretly happy, thinking that although I was forced out by my stepmother to be admitted to college, she let me suffer so much for so many years, and I didn't have any gratitude to her at all.

The university I attended was thousands of miles away from home, and I didn't go home once in the years I had been studying at the university. Although my father called me several times during the period to ask me to go back, I still stuck to school and worked odd jobs during the holidays to earn money. Dad asked me to send me tuition many times, but I pushed it off. I didn't want to leave a handle on my stepmother to say that she provided me with college and made me grateful to her for the rest of my life.

In this way, I completed my studies on my usual work-study, odd jobs, and school grants.

A few years later, I graduated from college and stayed in a unit in Guangzhou. At that time, my second sister was already studying at the university, and my third sister was about to enter the university.

To my surprise, one day when I came home, I found that my father and stepmother not only opened a supermarket in the village, but also had a long-distance bus. Since then, I have really looked at my stepmother differently.

I really developed a crush on my stepmother when I was getting married after a few years of work. My girlfriend and I are both regular employees of the unit, and when we were both worried about not buying enough houses for marriage, my stepmother actually sent the money to buy a house to me.

That day, I was so old that I talked a lot of heartfelt words with my stepmother for the first time, and it was also the first time I really understood my stepmother's hard heart for us.

That day, my father saw that the gap between me and my stepmother had loosened, and he said to me while shedding tears: "Son, our family is thanks to your stepmother!" She is no worse to you than your mother, she wants you to study well and live a good life, do you know how much suffering she has suffered? Even now, she has not been willing to buy a decent set of clothes..."

I listened to my father's words, looked at the gray hair on my stepmother's head, the nose was sour, and suddenly tears came out of my eyes...