Hometown without mother, not hometown| Peng Xueming's "Mother"

This article is excerpted from Chapter 20 of Peng Xueming's long documentary essay "Niang"

The long documentary essay "Niang" is an epic poem about women in Xiangxi, as well as an epic about mothers. "Niang" truly describes the humiliation and suffering of a mother in the depths of the mountains of western Hunan Province, and from the perspective of her son, it records the experience and grace of her mother sacrificing her own reputation and suffering, raising and protecting her children with blood and tears and life, educating her children with virtue and spirit, and cultivating her children.

With an affectionate tone and a brushstroke of memory, the author tells the story of the years when he was abandoned by his father at an early age and relied on his mother for his life until his mother died, and the mother gave all her energy for her children and endured all the blood and tears. Forced to make ends meet, the weak and strong mother remarried twice with her children. However, in order to maintain the growth of her son, the mother resolutely decided to divorce and did not remarry. The mother worked hard with an iron will and raised the whole family alone. The mother was on the verge of paralysis, her son failed to repeat the college entrance examination three times, the younger daughter was married to a non-human, the mother experienced many hardships, but with the unique hard-working and sacrificial spirit of Chinese women, she supported her son all the way out of the mountains...

mother

Chapter XX

As I wandered left and right, in the dark clouds of the sky, a ray of light suddenly leaked out, shining on the crossroads of my life. Sunshine and raindrops fell at the same time, setting up a rainbow in my life.

The hometown where I was born, Boiling Creek, has come to look for me.

Here came second uncle Peng Wengui and my brother Silong, who was not the same mother as my father.

This was the first time I had met my brother Silong, who was the same as my father.

Brother Four Dragons, silent, taciturn. The skin is black and red, and the tendons of the body are all over the body. The eldest man in his thirties blushed and bowed his head as soon as he spoke.

The first time the brothers met, there was no such scene of hugging and crying. Eighteen years of turbulent and displaced life have put a very high and thick wall between me and my brother, and we are strangers to each other. Especially when I learned from the villagers that I was abandoned by my father, the arrival of my brother did not stir up a ripple in my heart.

But the mother was surprised and delighted.

Although my mother had not seen my brother who was different from my father for so many years, she still recognized him at a glance. The mother cried out pityingly: Four dragons.

My mother pulled me to the side of the four dragons and said: This is your brother, the four dragons.

I didn't shout.

In the dictionary I have been wandering for eighteen years, there are no words "Four Dragon Brothers".

My brother didn't call me out, but he shouted first: Mother.

This mother of my brother surprised me very much and was touched a little. Over the years, I have always resented my mother, I have not called out to my mother much, and my brother who is different from my father has actually shouted. I have a soft spot for my brother. The mother who shouted by the brother made me imagine that the mother was very good to the brother.

Second Uncle Peng Wengui said: The old family is very happy to hear that you have moved back to Baojing County. After eighteen years of your mother and son's departure, you don't know whether you are dead or alive, and now that you have raised xueming who is one foot old, everyone wants to go around and see it, and wants you to move your hukou to Boiling Creek.

When Second Uncle Peng Wengui spoke, my brother had been quietly watching me. His eyes were flustered and confused, and he could see the excitement and uneasiness. Excited that he had a brother who had been lost for eighteen years, he was uneasy about whether this brother would recognize him.

Mother said: I have (no) any opinions, look at the learning. Xueming agrees, he goes; Xueming does not agree, he does not go. We walked on the broken foot pole just to go to a good place to live.

Before the mother finished speaking, I cut through the iron and cold two words: don't go!

The second uncle said: Are you not at ease with your mother and sister? They all go.

I shook my head: No, I just don't want to go.

The brother said: Second brother, you can rest assured, your sister-in-law and I will be kind to your mother and sister, and will not let your mother and sister suffer.

I sneered: Won't suffer? Can you bear it less? Don't go!

I only have these few words on my mouth, but I have a lot of words in my heart: Eighteen years, we have suffered so much outside, which of you has come to me? Who thought about picking me up? Now that I'm an adult and can support myself, you pretend to pick me up, will I go? Also, I myself am like this to my mother and sister, will you be good to my mother and sister? Ghosts believe!

Brother and second uncle, just like this, were coldly sent away by me.

I was full of resentment toward that old home, for all the people in that old home. I don't need them to offer their hospitality at this time. Eighteen years later, after leaving my hometown, have I not survived? When my brother and second uncle left on the sunset, the afterglow of the sunset sprinkled me not with the heat of autumn, but with the sadness of winter.

The dirt road that passed through a forest of oil tea in front of the house froze the back of the brother and the second uncle with some loss and sadness.

In the days that followed, I often thought of the backs of my brother and second uncle, especially the back of my brother. The dirt road of the red soil, unconsciously, became an umbilical cord, connecting me and my brother, connecting me with my hometown, the hometown I left before I was less than a year old.

I began to imagine my hometown, that hometown, the wooden house where my brother lived, the room where I was born, the relatives in the village who had never met. What would that look like? My feelings for my hometown unconsciously began to take root and sprout. At this time, I found that everyone has a root buried deep in the hometown, as long as a little bit of hometown breath wafts in, the root will tightly tie you and the hometown together and grow new shoots. The reason why my feelings for my hometown have slowly awakened and resurrected is because my brother and second uncle have brought a hint of hometown.

I had the desire and urge to go to my hometown to see.

However, when this desire and impulse arises, the scene of my mother robbing me when she asks my father for food will be strongly reproduced, and the suffering of my mother and our brothers and sisters will be replayed in my mind one scene at a time. There was a voice shouting: Can't go! Can't go! Don't forget how you got out there! Don't forget how you suffered!

For the first time, I was in a travalic because of my hometown.

The mother seemed to see my thoughts and said: Son, if you want to go, it is not far, it is seven or eight miles.

Mother said: Mother and your father divorced, not your father is not good, not your brother is not good. They're all good. Your dad is an honest man. Good heart. Nice people. Temper is also good. Your father's father also died early, and several of your uncles were brought up by your father begging for rice. Your father also raised his four uncles and four aunts, and gave them a pension to send them to the end. Your dad is just too cowardly, and Mi has (no) opinion. Listen to his four uncles and four aunts. If it weren't for his four uncles and four aunts, your father wouldn't have wanted us.

It was the first time in eighteen years that I had heard about my dad. For eighteen years, I knew that I didn't have a father, so I never asked my mother about my father. My mother also knew that my father was very hurtful to my young heart and never talked to me about my father. Dad in my life is not even a shadow or a symbol, it is nothingness.

It is indeed a nothingness. Dad never left me a single picture in his life, and I don't know what he looked like. I don't know until now. There is no room for imagination.

Mother said: You see your four dragon brothers, your father is like your four dragon brothers, shedding the shell. I didn't expect that my mother had suffered so much and suffered so much because of her father, and that she actually said that her father was a good person, a good heart, and a good father.

Mother said: I know that you hate your father, your father does not want us, your father died early, you died before your father was five years old, if your father did not die, he would definitely have taken our mothers (mother and son) earlier, you do not hate your father. Your father also did not live easily, and he had time to burn incense with your father.

Go burn incense with my dad? Joke!

I really don't know what my mother thinks.

I'm not going!

Mother said: You don't hate your four dragon brothers and those housework halls, your four dragon brothers have had (no) father since they were young, they are orphans like lonely birds, and they are more bitter than you. In this world, there is no rice that owes anyone, and only each person (himself) owes everyone. Whether there should be or should not be, it is all on fate. They are all in the countryside, they are all bitter, everyone can't get up, which door (how) can still afford to support others? You Peng family are in the Boiling Creek Dagen clan, everyone's great cause, you are the Peng family sent down a horse whip, how can you not recognize the ancestors and return to the ancestors?

My uncle and aunt advised me not to go, and my uncle and aunt said: You have suffered (eating) to raise Xueming so big, which of them will come to see you? Now that you're older, they've come to pick you up, where did they go? They are looking at the learning and are a good labor force.

Mother said: I have owed the most in my life. Shui Yu and Xue Cui's fathers are alive and well, they can see it if they want to, Xue Ming was born without knowing what his father looked like, and Mi had (no) his father's side of the house (family) hurt him. Now, his father's housework hall is hard to hurt him, how can I not let them hurt? The more learned people, the better.

Uncle said: You forgot who they made you whole? Have you forgotten the days when your tears were soaked in rice? You forget, we have forgotten.

So my aunt told me about the scene of the disaster when I was born.

My uncle said that when your mother was born, your father and they all had rice edges, and your mother each ripped off the umbilical cord to give birth to you. Rice has a bark, rice has something to wear, even a stick of wood has rice. I carried dozens of pounds of rice in the house that day, caught the only chicken in the house to see your mother, and your mother and your second sister were hungry for a day. I want to burn the fire for your mother to kill chickens and repair chickens, a look, a stick of firewood is rice, I am angry, ran to your father's house and your father and his four uncles and four mothers had a big fight, they don't think that there are people in your mother's house! I want to go to your father to carry firewood, your father and his four uncles and four aunts, dead to me, not allowed me to move, I will scold while removing a few pieces of your father's siding, for your mother to kill stewed chicken. Ah, you're done with your, forget all this bitterness!

After the speech, the uncle's tears were thrown away, and the sadness was hard to suppress.

The mother also wiped her tears and said: I have forgotten the rice, and those sufferings are what each of me has endured and suffered, which door (how) will I forget? It's just that those sufferings have passed, and people can't soak each person in bitter water and think about it every day, and the more they think about it, the more they can't taste it. The previous generation is the previous generation of people, as long as they are good at learning, those bittersweets are worth it.

Uncle and aunt stopped talking and looked at me.

I could not resist the curiosity and temptation of my hometown, and under the repeated persuasion of my mother, I returned to the vague and long-ago birthplace of Boiling Creek.

When my mother stood on the hillside and pointed to a village and said that this was boiling creek, my tears immediately poured out. I squatted on the ground, sobbing and sobbing. - Home! I finally see you!

In eighteen years, I have never shed tears in other places, even if I am a great grievance, I have never shed tears. Those sufferings and grievances have long since become strong bones that support the course of my life. However, when I stepped into the land of my hometown and saw the tile houses and cooking smoke in my hometown, my tears actually burst out like a dike, and I couldn't control it. Hometown is a place where wanderers can shed tears and place their sorrows.

The first tears of my birth when I was far away from home drifted for a long time and fell back to my hometown.

The sunset burns in the sky of my hometown. The red clouds are not piece by piece, one by one, but a very long and wide slip, like the thick ink of some painter dragging a wolf. To be precise, it should be rouge. Coagulated rouge. And the sky is still as blue as a wash. Red rouge, just like a touch of lipstick in the blue sky. An eagle stretched out its arms and hovered low over its homeland. Is this the owner of the hometown or a visitor from afar? Its flying posture, why so dashing and excellent

Elegant? The road that splits the hills passes through the waist of the hometown, picking the two small villages of the hometown on the shoulders. This end of the shoulder is the village where I was born, and the other side of the shoulder is another village. Between the two villages, there is a dam of pastoral. A few piles of straw stacks full of tenderness and sweetness, like a woman squatting at the edge of the field to untie her hands; the straw piles brushed in the field are like the plates that a man has just managed. There was a flock of ducks. There is a flock of chickens. There were also a couple of pigs and dogs. They all idled and ran to the field to fight tooth sacrifices.

I couldn't wait to walk through a few bamboo groves, looking for the old tree and the old well I remembered. The tall maple tree had long since been cut down and vanished. I can't see the crown of flowers in the clouds, I can't see the red leaves all over the ground, and I can't see the roots buried deep in the earth. But the ancient well still flows abundantly with the milk and sweetness of the hometown, feeding the villagers and all things in the hometown. I picked up the well water and drank it one by one, washed it one by one, and let my hometown take me from body to heart, watering and bathing. One

A fish that has left its hometown has swum thousands of mountains and rivers, and today it finally swims back to the source of life.

The news of my return to my hometown, less than a bag of cigarettes, spread all over the place. The whole village, whether housework or not, and relatives, rushed to my brother's house with joyful footboards to see me, a child who had been gone for eighteen years. Even the people of the other villages came from afar to see what was going on.

For several days in a row, the brother house was like a new year's wedding, and people came and went, and they were full of joy. Even the chickens and dogs from my hometown kept coming and talking to me in the vernacular and the local dialect.

Chicken, duck, fish and eggs from a village were all laid out on the table to welcome my relative, who had been away from home for eighteen years.

My relatives learned that my grades had always been the first in the school, and the college entrance examination was only one point short, and they unanimously agreed to fight (together) to let me study. This great piece of good news is indeed the dearest light in my gloomy life. It was as if in the clouds, a paper of university admission letter was flying up and down, falling.

My brother and everyone mentioned the same old things, hoping that I would move my hukou back to Boiling Creek and be with them. I remembered when I was a child, when the three of us were bullied without a single relative around to help, I agreed. With such a big house and so many relatives all of a sudden, who would dare to bully us again?

For the first time in my life, I felt like a backer.

However, when the village committee handed the matter over to all the villagers for discussion, the sister-in-law's mother-in-law's family firmly opposed it. They only agreed to move my hukou back to Boiling Creek to divide the land and divide the land, and they did not agree to move my mother and sister's hukou back to the boiling creek and divide the land. The excuse is that I was born in Boiling Creek, but my mother and sister are not.

As soon as I heard it, I was not happy. Although I hated and complained about my mother, I never thought of abandoning my mother. How could I abandon my mother, who had worked so hard to raise me for eighteen years, and return to my hometown alone? So what have I become? Tile peacock? Or a white-eyed wolf?

Tile peacock is a bird unique to our Xiangxi, I don't know what the scientific name is, the whole body is gray, like the color of tile, so it is called tile peacock. Legend has it that the peacock grew up eating meat. No matter how grumpy my temper is, no matter how bad my conscience is, it will not be bad enough for a peacock to eat meat, nor will I be a humane watt-finches and white-eyed wolves.

I categorically refused the kindness of my brother and the villagers and returned to my mother's side.

Without dirt there would be no earth, without stones there would be no mountains, and without a mother there would be me?

If there is no mother's hometown, it is not called hometown.

The dream of my youth is indeed like a rainbow in life, fleeting.

When my mother heard me tell me that I did not want to be a peacock and a white-eyed wolf, she hid in a corner and cried with joy.

Eighteen years of hard work, in exchange for this sentence of the child, it is enough.

Destiny is destined, children and mothers, are inseparable flesh and bones in past lives and this life.

【Finish】

Peng Xueming, Tujia family, Hunan Xiangxi people. Renowned scholar, writer and literary critic. He is currently the director of the Creation and Alliance Department of the Chinese Writers Association, a deputy to the Ninth National People's Congress, and a deputy to the Tenth National People's Congress. He has served as a judge of the Mao Dun Literature Award, a judge of the Lu Xun Literature Award, and a judge of the "Five Ones Project" Award for many times. His main representative works include the sensational long documentary essay "Niang" and the prose collection "My Xiangxi" and "Ancestral Song and Dance".

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