Mother's Day | Ring (Fiction)

Text/Zhang Fuxian Photo/From the Internet

I wanted a school bag, a new one—the kind painted with blue Ultraman painted on it, like the new school bag of my brother Erwei next door.

"Second ghost, when will you buy a new school bag?" Erwei's nickname was "Er Ghost" – the children in the village took its consonant and gave him this nickname. The second ghost walked with his head held high, carrying a blue Ultraman school bag, and behind his ass was a group of bare-chested little fart children, all of whom were his admirers. What do they worship him for? He has a new school bag.

"I won't tell you, my dad bought it for me." The second ghost hummed a few syllables with his nose in a high spirit, and looked at the old plastic bag containing the book in my hand, with a dismissive look.

I pounced, pushed him, and then ran. Who made him look down on me? My self-esteem was seriously hurt, but he was too big, I couldn't beat him, thirty-six counts, go for the best!

"I told your mother to go." But the second ghost did not come after me, he said breathlessly behind me.

After school that day, I didn't come home until late in the evening— I stayed in the classroom to do my homework. My homework has always been good, because my head is good, and I know it in my heart. However, I don't have a new school bag, I don't have a blue Ultraman to accompany me, what is the meaning of life?

The sun was about to set, and the sun lazily shone on me, casting my long shadow on the ground. I kicked the stones on the side of the road and walked unhappily toward the house.

Turn another corner, and I'm about to go to my alley, and a low voice comes from the alley.

"Sister-in-law, don't be like my family's Xiaoqiang." You're a lot of adults..." was the mother's poor voice. The other woman was a woman, and I poked my head into the alley and saw her at a glance.

The second ghost his father is the village party secretary, he contracted the coal kiln in the village, their family is rich and powerful in the village, I regret that I should not have pushed the second ghost to add this mess to the mother.

"It's all right. Little children's family, I don't see him in general. The second ghost and his mother grinned, smiled happily, and dragged a handful of locust flowers in her hand, twisted her ass, and disappeared into the depths of the alley.

When my mother entered the house, I slipped into the house sullenly, but my mother did not reprimand me, which was really unexpected. Perhaps, I should have expected that she would not reprimand me, but I was still too young.

I went into the back room and looked at a borrowed copy of Water Margin. There was something wrong with his father's lungs, and in order to treat him, the family's savings had already been spent. I didn't dare to mess with my mother, she didn't let me drop out of school, I was already content. For me, the blue Ultraman bag was just a beautiful dream.

My mother still saw my heart, and in the middle of the night, when I got up to relieve myself, I heard the voices of my father and mother talking.

"Xiao Qiang's academic performance has always been very good, no matter how difficult it is at home, we must insist on letting him go to school, and his brain shell is good." It was the mother's voice.

"Well, they all complain that I'm tired of you two." Dad's nasal voice was very heavy, and he blew a handful of snot.

"Look at you! And what do you say about these unusable words? You see, what is this? ”

I grabbed the crack in the door and looked into my mother's bedroom, and a golden ring lay in the palm of her mother's hand, which was an "heirloom" left by my grandmother, and I had seen it since I was very young.

"What are you doing with this?" Dad asked the mother with some puzzlement.

“……”

Their voices went down so loud that I couldn't hear them. I climbed into bed, slipped into the duvet, covered my head, and went to sleep.

Two days later, in the evening, I came home from school with a new school bag in front of my bed, the blue Ultraman bag! It's exactly the same as the two ghosts. I pounced on it, hugged it tightly, and wept with joy.

Niang sold her ring to the second ghost and his mother, but she was only willing to pay 100 yuan, and there was no second person in the village who was willing to pay for the gold ring, so the mother had to endure the pain of cutting love.

That year, I understood the hardships and difficulties of my father. Since then, I have studied hard, and every year I have taken the double award certificates of the first place and the three good students home for the New Year, because the teacher has told me that knowledge changes fate and hard work creates miracles.

"And later?" I parked the car at the entrance of the alley and was about to get out of the car, but my son still wanted to listen to me continue.

"Later? Later, I was admitted to college and went to the city; the second ghost and his father became village tyrants and were 'beaten up and eliminated'. Carrying a package containing a gold ring, I walked into my mother's yard with my wife and son.

The pomegranate trees in the courtyard were blooming again, the fiery red durian flowers were burning in mid-air, and Daddy and Mother were sitting in the courtyard basking in the sun.

Today, it's Mother's Day.

About the author: Zhang Fuxian, formerly known as Zhang Huifeng, is a geography teacher at Chengwu Bole No.1 Middle School in Shandong Province, an insignificant little author. He likes to record the joys and sorrows of life with poetry, and use words to describe the good, evil, beauty and ugliness of the world. Knowing that the writing is clumsy, although the top kung fu is done, it is a skill of the end, and I sincerely hope that the teacher and friend will be correct. He is a contracted writer of original Chinese novels, and has written the novella "Auspicious and His Companions", which has millions of words of poetry, prose and novels, which are scattered on various online platforms.

One Point No. Selected Works of Zhang Huifeng