On that wedding night, my grandfather, who was only nineteen years old, unveiled the bride's red hijab with anticipation.
A woman's face that was not moving made my young grandfather feel a chill of loss in his heart. On this woman's face, there were also deep and shallow scars of different sizes.
It was a scar on my grandmother from a smallpox disease. Regarding the illness that almost killed her, the struggle and pain in it, my nineteen-year-old grandfather could not see it, and all he could see was the ugliness.
When my grandmother was fifteen years old, she contracted smallpox. That year, several girls in the village where she lived died of the epidemic. My grandmother also struggled between life and death on the sickbed.
However, when my grandmother was dying of illness, her parents did not even think of seeking medical treatment for this daughter. So many girls in the same village have died of this disease, what is the difference between this second girl in their family and those dead girls?
Although the family's family is still quite solid, after years of painstaking management by the family, the family bought a field, caught up with the big car, and built a green brick house that made the eyes of the whole village hot. However, even if it is such a family of peasants, how can they be willing to use the sweat beads of the family to break eight petals, and work hard to get some money to buy medicine for such a terminal illness as their daughter?
My grandmother was bedridden with a serious illness, and her family was still busy with their own livelihoods and livelihoods. Grandma's mother was only able to spare half a day out of her busy schedule to care for her second daughter, who was dying in pain.
All the regrets and love of this mother can only flood in this half a day. She had eight children in her life, and in her heart she cared about each one. But life is going on, and there are so many jobs outside the house that she, the housewife, has to take care of. At the moment, her diligent and capable second daughter was dying, and all her warm concerns about this child could only be released in this half of the day.
In these half a day, the mother finally had a time to shed tears that hurt her heart. And every morning before that, she glanced at her dying child, still going out of the house to finish her busy day's work. The life of the Zhuanghu people is hard work, it is not easy to live, and such a life full of hardships seems to be a pity that death is not enough. Those who have experienced the hardships of the world and a thousand hammers will often have too many children and daughters in their hearts, no matter how many lives and deaths they have experienced, life will be like the water of the mighty river flowing through their hometown, as they continue to flow forward. And the tide of new life will eventually wash away the love and pain of the past to the places where memories do not want to take in.
Either way, my grandmother's mother took half a day out of her daughter. Quan took this half day as a ceremony before her and her daughter's life and death, expressing her love and compassion for this child.
And the dying girl will eventually overcome this disease and regain a new life with the stubborn life force hidden in her body.
I don't know if it was the first few days after the infection, the high fever that was burning the girl's body subsided, and the ulcerated acne rash on the body also scab. The fifteen-year-old girl, awakened from the confusion of sleep and whispering, once again filled her youthful body with vitality and vitality. Her life did not come to an abrupt end, like the girls in the village who died of the epidemic.
Those poor beings, who lived in silence, and then quietly withered away, eventually melted into the earth under the vast land of the northeast. My grandmother, on the other hand, continued her long journey through her life, and how could the fifteen-year-old girl know that in her lifetime she had to endure eighty-three years of days and nights of sorrow and joy.
Because when my grandmother was fifteen years old, she used her tenacious vitality to overcome that disease, and was destined to remain in the blood after she stepped into eternal silence. One day, her children will have their own children, and her grandchildren will give birth to her great-grandchildren.
Life goes on and on, and it seems like a matter of course, for granted. But who knows, at that time, my fifteen-year-old grandmother, exhausted her tired and painful struggle to keep this endless river of life from flowing.
My grandmother will live forever with the scars left on her face by this epidemic. Perhaps, by the year she got married, she no longer remembered the pain she had experienced as a teenager.
However, these wordless scars on the face of the bride's grandmother were another deficiency in the eyes of my young grandfather. The nineteen-year-old grandfather saw his bride for the first time, and in his heart, he was disappointed in his marriage.