In the summer when I was five years old, I was squatting by the pond watching my father plowing water plants. He suddenly fell into the water, like a heavy bundle of rice. Later, adults said it was epilepsy, but I always felt that it was the fish in the water that pulled him away. My sister was only forty-five days old at that time, and my mother was sitting on the doorstep holding her in her arms, tears making dark circles on her blue cloth gown. I clutched the willow whistle that my father had not finished braiding for me, and I didn't know where to go with my days.
In the spring when I was seven years old, my mother moved us into our stepfather's house. There was air leakage in the adobe house, and his temper was stronger than the north wind. I began to learn to put more wood in the stove when he was cursing.
From the age of eleven, I became a helper. I cleaned and fed the old ladies in the county town, washed dishes and swept the floors in restaurants in the town. I remember one time when I fell into the river while fetching water, the uncle on the bridge rescued me and said, "This girl's life is really tough." Those days were like a worn-out cotton-padded jacket, with holes everywhere,
In the autumn when I was sixteen, my stepfather planned to marry me off for 7,000 yuan, so that night he rolled up an old sweater and ran away. The big chartered car drove forward with a clang. I pressed my face against the glass and watched the moon follow it. Suddenly I thought of the pond where my father fell into. The moonlight fell on the water and swayed like this.
This is not a legend, it is a woman with only an elementary school education who has gone through more than 40 years, from crying by the pond, to tears in the leaky house, from frostbite in the ice water, to the moonlight on the way to escape; from the hard candies stuffed by others, to the cloth bags sewn by herself. When it is broken, it is repaired, and when it falls, it is climbed, like a tree that has been blown away by the wind, it grows slowly, but its roots are also deeper.
Over the years, the wind has come and gone, and the pain I have endured has finally become the strongest part of my body.
