"Novella" "Partner" (excerpt) by Li Fengqun

An excerpt from Li Fengqun's novella "Partners"

……

My son grew up to be eighteen, and I only enjoyed the joy of being a mother for the first seven years after he was born, and then for more than ten years, it was basically unpleasant and annoying. No, there are many happy things in it, but those things are hidden deep and covered by other things.

　　Before he was seven, I believed we were all truly happy. At that time, my mind was open, not limited to those rough success experiences, believing in happiness above all else, hoping that my son would temper a strong character in nature, and I also hoped that he would have the ability to love, know how to give, share, in short, I have my own set. I bought the house in the suburbs, although it is a little inconvenient to work, but there are more greenery, science and technology museums and open-air parks in the suburbs. Other children learn piano and taekwondo at a young age, while I teach my son to be happy and play. He rode a bicycle to play happily in the park every day and met a childhood playmate named Chen Yi. Chen Yi's parents coincide with ours in terms of education, and adults and children are very close. Neither of our families deliberately chose a key primary school, and the two children attended a regular school near the community in the same year.

　　As soon as he entered primary school, Wang Jiarui showed the gap with others. He didn't get good grades and obviously didn't belong to the kind of kid with an amazing memory and interest in learning, but that didn't make me particularly wary. Once, I saw my son's 83-point exam paper with a circle drawn in the upper right corner of the exam paper, and inside was a "40". What is it? I asked my son.

　　This is my student number. My son answered me loudly.

　　However, the next test paper with a score of 79 was impressively drawn with a 44. Will your student number change?

　　No, it won't. The son tilted his head to look at the test paper. I realized it wasn't a student number, it could be a ranking. There were 45 students in the class, which meant my son was at the bottom of the class. I had a vague uneasiness.

　　The next afternoon after school, I tried to go to the door of the classroom to pick up the child and took the initiative to chat with his Chinese teacher. She confirmed my suspicions: that it was indeed a ranking and not a student number. She was glad I finally came to talk to her. She told me that other children had completed pinyin and addition and subtraction within 100 digits before going to elementary school, and Wang Jiarui's foundation in this regard was indeed very poor. However, she went on to say that he could catch up with the progress of school by going to cram school on weekends.

　　He's not stupid, he's just a poor foundation, as long as the parents use snacks.

　　Seeing that I didn't particularly care, the teacher looked displeased: the college entrance examination system is placed here, success or failure, at a glance. Going to a key middle school and becoming a useful, decent, and successful person can only be decided by adulthood on the surface, but in fact the decisive factor is on the starting line, in elementary school, every day, in the concept of parents. She said it philosophically. This is a young teacher of thirty-five or six years old, and her face is full of sophistication and experience. There was a sense of "no choice" and "no choice" in her expression. There was another meaning on her face: you, and your child, had slipped on the brink of some kind of danger. I was flustered.

　　It wasn't until my first parent-teacher conference that I became more aware of the situation of a child with poor grades in school. My son, who was supposed to be ignorant, saw his mother sitting in his place, grinned excitedly, threw his bag to me and fled. He played games on the playground and waited for me to take him home with him after the parent-teacher conference.

　　Years later, when I think about that parent-teacher conference, I still feel creepy.

　　It seems that in the last second there were parents like me, who communicated easily and happily, like me, firmly immersed in the ideal of giving their children a "happy natural and healthy" growth, and determined to be a different parent. However, the moment the class teacher opened his mouth, he gave the chaotic and excited parents a dismount. She said hello succinctly and stepped on the topic. She listed the problems and problems of this class, talked about the pressure and fatigue she was under, and especially talked about some children, which brought great challenges to the class. Parents stop turning their heads and ears and sit upright. The head teacher didn't look at us when she spoke, and couldn't tell whose child she was talking about. The atmosphere quickly became rather dull and even alarming. Immediately after, she began to praise several children. She pointed to the children who were helping from the side and listed their strengths. She repeatedly mentioned the names of these children, saying that they had a high degree of self-awareness in learning, did not let people worry, and played a leading role. The children were selected to write welcome speeches on the blackboard, and they shuttled through the seats of the students who were full of parents, handing out the notes mentioned by the teacher to each parent. They act quite confidently, a bit like successful people in society. Obviously, the expressions of the parents of these children were relaxed. In short, she was slightly comforted that in this bad class, five or six near-perfect children were still being fished out, which made her somewhat more relaxed. I have to admit that there are gifted children in this world, who have conquered the teacher with outstanding performance in such a short period of time and won attention.

　　I gradually discovered that all the criticism and concerns of the teacher were directed at my son. But Wang Jiarui simply did not feel that he was the kind of poor student in the teacher's mouth who was "thick branches and leaves, easy to be distracted in class, improper attitude, and liked to hand over the ears" who urgently needed parents' attention and repair. As soon as the parent-teacher conference was over, he came over and took my hand in joy. His hands were hot, and there were residual beads of sweat on his forehead. He didn't know that my mood had fallen to the bottom. The teacher said that the child's problem is the parent's problem, and the learning problem is the problem of fate. Rising to this height makes me feel tight chest. My son was an idiot, and the idea began to pop up, and my theory of happiness education was now less certain. I thought compromisedly, I don't want to be a genius mom, I just want to be a mother of an ordinary child, at least not to let the teacher think that my child is a trouble, when other moms hear my self-introduction, they will not "mmmmm" haha, and the mothers of those star students are surrounded by admiration, this scene is too hurtful.

　　This is a new chapter in our lives. I vaguely felt that Wang Jiarui was not the kind of person I wanted to be: lively, clever, optimistic, assertive, and competitive. He's not. He is mischievous, playful, and especially loves lively occasions, but when he sees adults, he does not take the initiative to greet him politely, and he seems to be not interested in becoming a strong person, afraid to watch horror movies, and has no curiosity to dismantle the TV. Before he was four years old, he had only two feats: once by putting his dad's new phone in a teacup filled with water; and once by cutting a quilt. Regarding the quilt, I forced him to ask. In limited language, he expressed his thoughts: he wondered if the scissors could cut the quilt to pieces. As soon as he explained I forgave him, no, and loved him even more.

　　But he's an idiot. This is frustrating, and it seems to be a fact, as evidenced by the rankings on various examination papers.

　　This sentiment deepens as the semester progresses. I developed a bad feeling about this elementary school. I had a brief exchange with Chen Yi's mother. Her son's problems were the same as Wang's, and her own feelings of repression and humiliation were the same as mine, even if she was facing another class, another class teacher, and another group of outstanding students.

　　His father and I are both presidents of the student union of prestigious universities, and we receive scholarships every year, so for us, learning is a natural thing, but I did not expect that my son was considered a poor student from the first grade, and he could not even be the leader of the class. Her voice was clearly not calm enough.

　　You are not a rare group leader...

　　It's one thing that I'm not rare, it's another thing not to be.

　　It can be seen that her educational philosophy has changed. Her words made me feel bad about the school instead of lessening, but worsening.

　　The consequences of a happy childhood did not fade away because of my attention, as if I did not let my son enjoy the happy and unrestrained time of preschool age, but overdrafted the credit card of life and had to repay it twice with interest. The teacher forms a QQ group of parents in the class and assigns homework from here every day. In the beginning, it was just homework. Later, in addition to assigning homework, it was the admonition of the homeroom teacher. The homeroom teacher said that parents think about it, our school is not ranked in the top, the chance of promoting to a good middle school is not large, if you can no longer become a top student, so all the way down, even an ordinary three books can not be on. These are all speaking with data, not made up out of thin air. These words are repeated every three or five minutes. Many parents nodded yes and were a little indifferent, and I was discouraged. The math teacher seems to have clairvoyance and sees that I am not a taste, she added in the group, in fact, it is not difficult, education, at any time it is not too late to act. They attacked me in such a contradictory and cooperative manner. Since I was so easily disturbed, I decided to pick myself up and try to prepare to teach my children as the teacher wanted. Responsibly, this is also against my own will. Every night I forced him to play the piano—and since his classmates all had their own strengths, it seemed that he should follow suit. The rest of the time, I pushed him to write his homework. I sat across from him, inching away, looking straight at his hand, occasionally encouraging him with empty words. As soon as the tip of his pen went around the paper without falling, I realized he was deserting. At that time we could still be called friends. I often use feelings to seduce him. I told him that even if the whole world betrayed him, I wouldn't. But more and more conflicts were inevitable, once he got back a paper with a bottom ranking, once his teacher told me what mistakes he had made, once I attended a parent-teacher meeting, so much once, the patience and love for me was fatally destroyed.

　　And, without any suspense, the situation did not improve, he did not become the child that I and the teacher expected, the only few good performances, full marks in mathematics. When he got "excellent" in the sports test, our whole family went out to celebrate, just to strengthen his memory and pleasure and determination to pursue achievements. Unfortunately, such times are very rare and pitifully rare. No matter how much I put in mind, he rewarded me with worse grades. There are things on the test paper that he has not learned, but others can also get high scores. There is no doubt that his classmates not only began to learn before school age, but are still accelerating and improving. This made it impossible for me to reason with the teacher and argue. I knew they had a whole bunch of ready-made theories waiting to be revised, and all they expected was me nodding my head and saying yes. Even if I am like a lost dog, they will not be satisfied, will not forgive, and finally give up. My son's grades became my weakness, and I was sometimes like his accomplice, a school saboteur and hind leg, and I began to hide. When I met their squad leader's mother, I pretended not to see it. Those spirited parents made me ashamed of myself. Later, every day, I cated like a thief behind the school walls, waiting for him to come out and take him home. The most torturous thing is that every evening, the children say goodbye to the teachers at the school gate, but behind the laughter, there is a cruelty that is difficult to understand. In addition, when I accompany my homework, I can obviously feel the tiredness of my child. He was not diligent in thinking, did not know the clear answers, and sometimes obviously wanted to pretend to be confused and run away. It was as if he felt that as long as he did it fast enough, his mother would assign more homework. Other parents do exactly that: If their children finish their homework at school, they will come up with more exercises at night. But I didn't have that chance. I repeatedly assured Wang Jiarui that I would finish early and rest early. He did not resist, but passively fiddled with the workbook, so that it was late at night and we were tired of each other. This negotiation process brought me great pain. I knew in my heart that I wanted him to be a good, productive person more than a happy childhood. And he is proving with practical actions that he may go to the opposite place. I used to hold back, wanting to jump up and slap him until he was stunned.

Excerpted from Li Fengqun's novella "Partners"

The title of the novel, "Partners", is a multi-point phrase, the bright part refers to the partnership between "I" and the friends and relatives around me, and the dark place is the multiple pressures that cannot be shaken off everywhere around me and at home and abroad, such pressures are secular, interpersonal, survival, education, competition, and so on. From the perspective of a middle-aged mother, the novel is turbulent in the silent narrative, and with an unforgettable sense of pain, it writes about the unbearable weight of Chinese education and Chinese life, and there is a sense of mixed taste and unspeakable depression, which is touching to read and covers up long thoughts.

About author:Li Fengqun, female, Anhui Wuren. He is the author of many novels such as "Great Hope", "Daye", "Gale", "Big Riverside", "Trembling", "Reason to Live", "Contrary to the Road", "Liangxia" and so on. He has won the 3rd and 4th Purple Mountain Literature Award, the "Five One Project" Award of Jiangsu Province, the First Lu Yanzhou Literature Award of Anhui Province, the Second Novel Rising Star Award of Anhui Province, the 2003 Annual Young Writer Award, the Nomination Award of the 7th Lu Xun Literature Award Novella Award, the 2018 Annual Novella Award of People's Literature, and the 2020 Novelist Nomination Award of the Southern Literature Festival.