The beef was as obedient as clay in my hands.
I held the three-year-old kitchen knife in my right hand. With a flick of my wrist, the blade slid against the texture of the beef, and the sliced meat was so thin that it could transmit light. After three years of cutting, this feeling has long been engraved into the bones. You can clearly decompose a cow with your eyes closed.
In the past, this knife was not used to cut beef.
There was the sound of the stool legs scraping the floor behind me. Xiaolu moved her pink plastic stool and shakily dragged it towards me. The stool was not much higher than her knees. She held the legs of the stool with both hands, her little face turned red from suppressing it, and she was still humming and trying hard.
I pretended not to notice, slowed down my movements a little, and looked at her from the corner of my eye.
She dragged the stool to the counter behind me, climbed on the stool, stood up straight, held the edge of the counter with her little hands, stood on tiptoes and looked in: "Dad, what are you cutting?"
"Beef." I said without looking back, "I'll roast beef tongue for you at noon."
"Wow!" She clapped her little hands and almost drooled, "I want to eat a lot!"
The three-year-old girl is just above my knees. She is wearing a cartoon rabbit-patterned apron that I took her to the market to buy. Her hair is tied into two crooked pigtails - I combed her hair in the morning, one high and one low. It looks like it has been gnawed by a dog.
If her mother were still alive, she would definitely call me useless.
