Author: Lian Chuanhao. Finishing and editing: Lian Zhongwei.
One day after lunch, before it was time for the evening self-study, some classmates were washing clothes, some classmates were lying on the ridge, but I was sitting alone on the dirt slope next to the school, facing Zuogang in a daze: it should be time to cook dinner at home, I don't know if I have gone home from Daoguanquan? Will he be able to bring back a pound or two of rice from the side hustle team? Is Mother's dinner or not, and what can be done?
In fact, my younger brother Qinghao is only 5 years old, even if he can find wild vegetables, his mother will take him, Qingfengmei is only 3 years old, and Xiaoqingmei is only 1 year old, and after her mother gets off work, she can't go out at all.
The wild vegetables near home have been exhausted, and the wild vegetables far from home are not necessarily easy to find, so I asked Qinghao to go and get wild vegetables alone, if it fell in the ditch and pond, no one would see it, even if my mother sometimes took him, or I took wild vegetables with him on Sundays, he was always so hungry that he couldn't walk.
A little wild vegetables, sprinkle a little rice flour on top and boil, although the little sister Xiaoqing can't eat wild vegetables, but you can always drink some beige soup! If there is nothing to eat at home tonight, Xiaoqing is only 1 year old, and he is so thin, and he has three younger siblings, how should his mother coax him! ……
I immediately thought of my primary school classmate Feng Boqin, who was not admitted to secondary school, and studied carpentry with his grandfather. Last Sunday, when I was on my way to Houhu with him to dig wild lotus roots, he said that he had gone to other mounds with his grandfather and made wooden boxes for children's corpses several times.
My heart trembled again, I often heard Xiaoqing crying hungry in the middle of the night when I slept at home on Sunday, she won't starve to death this year! I can't think about it anymore.
When I think of children starving to death in the world, I think of Lian Chuanyi, my two or three-year-old brother who died before my father in the spring of 1950, and everyone said that he was much smarter than me......
After eating, I sat down or lay down to rest, and I became a habit to think about it like this, and I didn't dare to move around, for fear that the little food I ate would be digested at once.
While I was thinking wildly, I suddenly saw a little boy walking slowly in the direction of our school in the dry field of Pengjiagang, and he walked to a ridge in front of him that was not very high, and climbed several times before climbing up.
It's him, Qinghao! That's right, it's him! My brother! What did he come to do? I hurriedly got up and greeted him.
If I wasn't lying here, even though the school was not big, he was only a five-year-old child after all, where would he find me?
"What's wrong at home?" I hurriedly asked, "What's the matter, I'll play."
"Does Mom know?" "I don't know".
I couldn't ask any more, I understood everything, and I led Qinghao to my classroom, where there was a row of bunks at the back of the classroom where students were resting.
I told Qinghao to sit on the bunk and don't move, I'll be back soon, I told my classmates that this is my brother, and hurried to the school cafeteria.
The chef in charge of the canteen was very kind to me, his family lived in Tianhe (now Tianhe Airport Town), he always came home every week by my door, I always greeted him when I saw him, and he also knew me, the only student in the school with the surname Lian.
I ran to the cafeteria, gasped for breath and said to Master Fang, my brother is here, please give me two rice sticks, I won't eat tomorrow's meal for a day.
Master Fang is also quite sympathetic, but he still said logically, there is not much rice in two bowls, and your brother must be able to eat it too, but if you don't eat tomorrow, how can you stand it! Take a stick and give it to him to eat and fill his stomach.
I thought, my brother must have been so hungry that he ran away from his mother to come to me, and how did he know the way to my school when he was a five-year-old child with three miles to go?
He must have seen me go to school more than once, and he must have wanted to come to my school, because he was so happy to see me a few times when I came back with rice, all of which were white rice, not mixed with a little miscellaneous grains, and even more so without wild vegetables, what a delicious thing it must be!
So he finally mustered up the courage, even if he didn't worry about dog bites (no one fed the dogs at that time), what if he went the wrong way? What should I do if I fall into the water? It seems that the hungry younger brother, who is only five years old, is desperate.
You said that in this case, I will not let him eat enough to come to the school? But what Teacher Fang said also has some truth. I had no choice but to grab a cold meal and hurry back to the classroom.
My brother's movements and demeanor at the moment of eating, I still remember seeing him and hearing his voice: he knelt on the ground on his knees, rested a piece of rice on my bed, faced the wall, turned his back to me and the table and stool, and only heard the sound of chopping rice and chewing, and I was afraid that I would stand by the bed and make him feel uneasy to eat, so he walked out of the classroom.
When I came back in, I saw him shaving the rice grains on the edge of the rice with a spoon. When Qinghao ate the rice cleanly, I wanted to ask him if he was full, but I couldn't help but didn't ask, he definitely wasn't full, didn't he ask in vain? On the contrary, I felt more uncomfortable.
When I sent him back, I told him to walk on the white road that had been trampled on the ridges, and not to climb the ridges again, or he would be hungry again, and told him not to tell his mother that he had come to me.
I watched him out of sight until I was almost in front of him, and I returned to the classroom with a heavy heart. The heavy feeling is not that he will be hungry for a meal tomorrow, but that the younger brother came with so much hope, but he still did not let him eat a full meal.
When I came home from school this Saturday, my mother didn't ask Qinghao about going to middle school, so I was relieved, otherwise it would be a very sad thing: Can I blame my younger brother for running blindly? Can you blame me for not giving him enough to eat?
The reason why I felt uncomfortable in my heart all my life was because I thought Qing Hao was very sensible and had been hungry for three consecutive years, but he only went to my school this time, and if he ran to me if he was extremely hungry, I felt better in my heart.
Later, in 1960 and 1961, before he went to school, he went to Hengdian to pick up cinders, and when he was hungry and tired, he passed by the school and did not go to my school again.
Seeing that my mother didn't ask Qinghao about going to school, of course I wouldn't say anything, so I listened to my mother and went to dig up the tree roots that my mother couldn't dig up.
The roots were so big and deep that I was hungry and dug until it was dark before my mother and I carried them back.
My mother saw that I was tired from digging the roots, so she went to buy two carrots with sauce and told me to drink some water and go to bed when I was salty.
When I was eating salty carrots, Qinghao had slipped out to play, Xiaoqing couldn't speak, only Qingfeng stood next to me and watched me eat, I just reached out and handed Qingfeng one, before she could pick it up, her mother pulled her out and asked her to go out to play with Qinghao.