The persimmons are red
◎ Shao Mingmei
In the dark of the night, with heavy rain, we drove on the country roads that had hardened but still twisted.
It's almost here, and after crossing the north slope in front of you, you can see the village.
I wonder if the persimmon tree at the top of the slope is like this in previous years, full of red lanterns, standing in the open mountains, beautiful alone?
I stared out the window of the car, except for the tears flowing from the rain, the rain curtains woven by the rain lines, and the dark mountain shadows in the distance, I couldn't see anything.
The car turned around and finally stopped in front of the house.
I saw the slender persimmon tree by the door, with a few slightly reddened persimmons hanging, and I also saw my mother leaning against the door next to the tree, her face full of anxiety.
"What are you doing standing in the doorway?!" It was raining, it was windy, and it was weirdly cold. "Of course I knew my mother was waiting for us. It was dark and windy and rainy, and she was worried that she couldn't sit still at home, so she stood in the doorway; but I still couldn't help but complain. While complaining, he blamed himself.
My mother didn't seem to hear my complaint, but instantly hung a smile all over her face and revealed a neat mouth full of dentures.
"Grandma!" "Grandma!"
The crisp, cheerful and warm voices of the children not only made the mother's face bloom a frosted chrysanthemum, making her eyes squint into two crescents, but also warmed this autumn windy and chilly rainy night.
"Take so many more things!" Come back and come back, take so many things every time. "Mother happily counted us as usual, and it was true that we were happy, and it was true that we were happy. Even if we came back empty-handed, she was happy; she was afraid that we would spend money, and it would be much more painful to spend our money than to spend her own money.
Every time we came back, she had to buy a lot of chicken, duck and fish meat and spend a lot of money. When spending money, I didn't blink an eye, and I was even very happy and proud, counting the money outside, and shouting to people, "The children are coming back!" So much so that as long as they see her smiling and spending a lot of money, the people in the village will laugh and ask loudly: "Are the children coming back?" The loud voice sounded as if their children had returned. Only at this time will they change the "search" of the past and become extremely thrifty and generous.
Through the wind and rain, back at home, the dim light glowed warmly, and the low door embraced me, shutting the cold wind and cold rain behind me. "Green ant new wine, red clay stove." The smell of fireworks and the aroma of food in the house went straight into my chest through my mouth and nose, warming my spleen and stomach, and dispelling the coolness of my fingertips a little bit.
Stewed roosters, knife-cut pork heads, home-cooked braised fish, braised prawns..." How come so many fish and meat are made?" Tell you how many times, just fry a few greens! Who still eats fish now?! I complained again, and scolded myself again in my heart. Although it is painful for the mother to be tired and broken, why can't she have more understanding and acceptance? Mothers who have come all the way from poverty have already solidified a certain consciousness in their minds: only a table full of chicken, duck and fish can express the joy of the festival, the enthusiasm of hospitality and the joy of the return of their children.
Why shouldn't we? Whenever the festive season comes, the happy event knocks on the door, and the friends visit, it is always necessary to cook sheep and slaughter cattle, push the cup and change the cup, otherwise you will feel that you are not happy and unhappy. I remembered a sentence I once heard someone say: I became you in the complaining. Generation after generation, when young and crazy, always fantasize about having a pair of invisible wings, flying away from their parents, soaring far away, becoming a different self, but unconsciously walking on the path that their parents and predecessors have walked or are walking.
There was a bottle of drink on the table, and a bottle of wine. Drinks were prepared for me and the children, wine was for lovers. The so-called "long sword a glass of wine, the boy's square heart", in the traditional concept, wine is the standard for men, and men in the family must prepare wine. Just like her father before, my mother had to prepare wine for her lover every time.
Every time I see my mother preparing wine for my lover, I think of my father. I wonder if every time my mother prepares wine for her lover, she also thinks of her father? I never asked her one by one I didn't dare. Even every time the thought of "father" came to my mind, I had to quickly shift my gaze, not daring to stay, and even more afraid to stare.
In memory, the mother also waited for the father in this way.
I remember when I was a child, I woke up in the middle of the night and my mother was still sewing under the dim kerosene lamp. The flames flickered in the haze, and the mother looked up at the window from time to time. Wondering what was outside the window, a knock on the door suddenly sounded, shattering the silence of the night, knocking on the needle and thread in her mother's hand, and loosening her tight lips—one by one, the father had returned from the ox cart to deliver the grain.
One night in the fourth grade, when "Mai Lang Flipped the Wild Yellow", my mother and I finished the harvest, looking at the piles of wheat, and her eyebrow line did not write much pleasure, but slightly wrinkled. I was about to turn off the lights when she unusually stopped me, "Keep it on!" "Doesn't it cost electricity?" "Once in a while, don't be afraid." Looking around, not only our village, but also the surrounding villages, although the family is connected to electricity, it is also pitch black. Seven or eight stars away, how many lights are lit? That night, only the lights of our house were on until my father returned from Qixia to deliver mountain goods.
In the second year of junior high school, I was selected to enter the key class of the town middle school, and the cost soared, and my brother had to pay a large housing fee when he went to high school. For parents facing the loess with their backs to the sky, it is tantamount to a mountain that is difficult to climb and an insurmountable deep ditch. However, in order to stop us from living like them in the mud and without hunger, my father visited relatives and friends, borrowed from east to west, and saw all his faces. One day before the start of school, after dinner, my brother and I wrote some homework, watched TV for a while, and suddenly realized that my mother, who had been busy in and out of the ground, was missing.
I'm going to wait for my father again.
The trees outside the window were still noisy, but my brother and I could no longer watch the liveliness on TV, and we followed each other out of the village to the north hillside, which was the only place for my father to return to the village. The chickens and dogs in the village, the lights and people gradually faded away, and the crickets in the crops and bushes chirped one after another, one after another. I tugged at the back of my brother's shirt and followed him step by step, and in the darkness I heard my breathing getting louder and louder, and my footsteps getting louder and louder... From time to time, he tilted his head with the corner of his frightened eyes and looked at it, always feeling that someone was following behind him.
"Don't follow me too tightly, you're stepping on my feet!" My brother suddenly made a noise, startling me.
When I looked up, I saw the figure of my mother on the top of the slope in the distance. She sat on a cement platform on the side of the ditch by the side of the road, under the stars, the dim and distant light of the distant village, cutting out her thin silhouette, motionless, like a statue - behind her was a graveyard of high and low, large and small, and heavy shadows.
That night father did not return. He got lost on the grave-piercing trail at the head of his relative's village and circled around all night. The sun climbed up the hill, and he stepped out of the fog and fell down when he got home. The villagers said that he had encountered black fire.
Yes, the high tuition fees and the weak despair should be the biggest black trouble that parents encounter.
This is how my mother waited for her father, waiting for the spring when it was cold, waiting for the hot summer, waiting for the cold and windy autumn, waiting for the winter of ice and snow, waiting for the night and day, waiting for year after year... Until the morning of the twelfth day of the first month of my 25th year, my mother never waited for my father to open his eyes through the darkness.
After my father left, my mother quickly grew old. The already tall figure is becoming more and more condescending. White hair came out and spent one by one in my eyes. The biggest change was in her eyes. Throw yourself out the window, throw yourself out the door, throw yourself out of the village, but you can't find the landing point... Thus, into a long period of sluggishness, boundless emptiness...
That sluggishness, that emptiness, traveled through time and space, projected into my heart, condensed into a black hole, a boundless, sad black hole, almost swallowed me up.
I can't be swallowed up.
I cannot allow it to expand.
I couldn't watch my mother sluggish.
I want to escape, to exceed the speed of light, to increase the curvature.
I want to call back the light in my mother's eyes and dispel the darkness in my heart.
Therefore, I often called her, went home to see her more often, nagged about the troubles of work, took her boyfriend home to show her, let her choose a wedding date for us, organize the wedding, report the pregnancy situation, the baby's vision, and listen to the children sweetly call her "grandma" and watch their happy appearance...
The concern for the children finally overcame the sadness of the father's departure. The mother no longer waits for the father, but begins to wait for us: waiting for us to call, waiting for us to get married, have children, come home... She stood at the door and looked out, stood at the mouth of the hutong and looked out, stood by the small bridge at the mouth of the village and looked out... The face is sometimes anxious, sometimes calm, sometimes happy, sometimes worried...
At first, when we came back late, she would call over and over again and ask, "Why haven't you come back yet?" Later, she stopped calling, just waited quietly; even if she made a phone call, she would only say "Go slowly, don't be in a hurry." Sooner or later, just come back."
After getting married, I often sat on the couch in the middle of the night, waiting for my lover to return, looking at the clock from time to time in the flickering light of the TV screen, and listening to the movement outside the door. Whenever this happens, I always think of the silhouette of my mother waiting for my father on that summer night, at the grave. Perhaps, in the future, like my mother today, I will lean against the door and lean against the tree, waiting, looking, and looking forward to my children.
The rain first stopped, the clouds opened and the sun rose, and the sky was as blue as water.
The wind is light and cloudy, the chill is drifting, and the mountains are withering.
On the north hillside, the persimmon tree, with its leaves gone, was bald.
Only round red persimmons, hanging from the branches, overlooking the village under the mountain, inspecting the road into the village, looking at the mountains in the distance...
Seems to be waiting, waiting to return.
A gust of wind blew in, and I shrank my body a little, as if I heard a song: Come back, come back, the wanderer of the world; come back, come back, don't drift around.
(The image in this article is provided by the author, if there is any infringement, please inform and delete it.) ）
About the Author
Shao Mingmei, a native of Yantai, Shandong, master of arts, is a creator of Yantai Literary Creation Research Office and a member of Yantai Prose Literature Society.
One point number Yantai prose