Prose | Han Jia: Half an orange

Text/Han Jia

When I was a child, I lived with my grandmother (when my father was nine years old, my grandfather died. For some reason, I called my grandmother Grandpa from the moment I spoke. Later, my cousins followed me and called my grandmother that. She is referred to as "Grandpa"). The reason is that the family is too poor, there are few rooms, and my parents have to provide for me and my brother to go to school. I don't like the fact that my parents often argue endlessly over small things, but most of them argue over my brother and I growing up. Therefore, my brother did not like to talk very much, and I liked to swallow bitter fruits and tears into my stomach since I was a child.

Grandpa lived in a house that was not very well lit but was close to the kitchen, and I liked the light inside, and I could see through the darkness through the crack in the door what was happening outside: the sparrow stole a few grains of bud grain, flew away and flew away a few times, and Dad came home from farm work, looking tired, and he seemed to look at me and then leave. Hey, he can't see me.

Grandpa liked to put in that room some of the delicious things that my brother and I liked, such as oranges, twist flowers, honey, and rock sugar. It was then that I heard the poignant story of the cowherd weaver girl. Grandpa used to put half an orange on my pillow, and I could wake up in the middle of the night and eat it quietly, making a "let's go" sound. Grandpa would slap me on the butt like a child and say, "Good granddaughter, you're stealing food again." I smiled and put a flap into Grandpa's mouth, and she also made a "let's" sound. Grandpa's favorite thing was that I talked to her and tickled her.

Later, when I went to school, my parents asked me to change to a quiet room. But their quarrels sometimes scared me back into the corner of the house, and I wept as I watched them argue more and more intensely. Dad loves mom very much, but he has a bad temper, his mom has suffered all his life for us, mom is a kind and hardworking woman, and she can always see the vicissitudes of the years on her face. Whenever this happened, there would be an old and powerful roar from the old house, scolding: "You are all still quarreling when you are old, which scares my two good grandchildren..." I took advantage of their temporary "peace" and slipped into my grandfather's bed, and there was half an orange on the pillow as usual, as usual: "Where was last night?" ”

I remember once, my father and mother took my brother to relatives, the power went out at home, my family did not even have the money to buy candles at that time, I did my homework in the gray moonlight. My pencils were running out, the shops were closing, and Grandpa was sitting next to me with a hammer, chanting something, as if "This damn electricity hasn't come yet, and it's broken my grandson's eyes."

I always felt as if my eyes were covered with a thin membrane when I was facing the homework book, raised my head and rubbed my blurry eyes, and suddenly looked back to see helpless tears on my grandfather's wrinkled face. I knew grandpa was hurting me, but I didn't dare to reach over my sleeve to wipe the tear marks on grandpa's face, for fear that she would be even more sad.

In the hot summer, Grandpa often went out with his neighbor Grandma to mow the grass. I went with her, and they talked about things I didn't understand, probably saying that people have lived their whole lives like this. I asked my friend to go to the woods to pick mushrooms, and when I walked to the woods, I heard someone shouting, "Your grandfather fell on his back." I rushed over to help Grandpa get up, and Grandpa said it was okay, it was okay. She stood up with her big rough hands on my shoulders, her face pale and strange. Since then, I have stopped letting Grandpa carry the grass most of the time, and I will carry it after she has cut it.

When I got home, Grandpa called me to a pepper tree in the yard to cool off. The dandelion held on to that little hope pitifully in the autumn wind, and the sun shone obliquely from the leaf slit and fell on Grandpa's wrinkled old face. Grandpa said, "Good grandson, Grandpa will not live long."

I jumped off the slate of laundry and put my arms around my grandfather's neck from behind, remembering the story my grandfather told me since I was a child, I don't know how many half oranges, stood by the courtyard dam and looked at the people who came and went on the road. With a sour nose, I lay down in My Grandfather's ear and said, Grandpa, I won't die, Grandpa won't die, I won't die—no matter how much I shout, on the day of the end of 2005, Grandpa died in the somewhat damp room where the new house was being built.

Her children and grandchildren stood by her bedside, but I was not there. At the moment before leaving, she took the hands of her aunts and said, I must be good to my mother, she has suffered too much, I must help my parents to deal with my personal problems with my brother and me, so that they can live well for the rest of their lives, but unfortunately I can't see Dan Baby!

To this day, these words still echo in my ears. Some people say that before they die, they will watch their whole lives like a movie. I thought that Grandpa should have done the same at that time, but she could not say a word. When I got home, I saw my father's tears falling one by one, and he knelt beside my grandfather and said, Mom, you have never enjoyed a blessing in your life, it is too bitter! You go to another place with peace of mind and you will have a better life. When he finished, he prostrated his head a few times. The absence of the son and the absence of the relatives has become the father's eternal regret.

On the day of my grandfather's burial, my mother told me not to cry, and rural customs say that this is not good. That morning, the weather was overcast, and soon after it began to rain, and the rainwater flowed down the ditch to the dry crevices in the rice fields, swirling. On the bunker on the back hill, everyone sprinkled wheat, rice, beans and other grains into the cemetery.

Suddenly, I wished I could put half an orange next to Grandpa. I wanted to jump into the grave and put half an orange, and everyone pulled me, afraid that I would cry on My Grandfather's coffin. When I got home, I held the oranges that I had bought her when my grandfather was alive, and clutched them deadly, and the oranges were pinched out of the water.

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