Melon girl (novel)

Gua girl, people here call her that, from an octogenarian to a three-year-old who just learned to shout.

As far as I can remember, the melon girl's back is curved and shorter. At that time, she was about thirty years old, and this age was also calculated when I grew up. After all, her promising brother was only thirty-eight years old, just like my father. Guamei's mouth always drools, but she also knows how to wipe it with her sleeves. She doesn't talk to people. Of course, if the older elders call her "melon girl", she will hum it out of her nose. When she is not talking, her mouth is always trembling, as if talking to herself, but there is no sound. Sometimes she would yell at the cows that turned and ran out of the cowshed and the pigs that arched pigs ate out of the pigsty, and even heard the pigs being beaten by her with a stick.

Her old mother is a famous and capable old lady in the village. In my impression, she has always been a healthy old lady in her seventies and eighties. She is Sun Jia Village's great-grandmother, and our children call her great-grandmother. She is also the only woman in the village with her feet wrapped. My grandmother is a few years younger than her, and her feet are no longer wrapped in the middle. Of course, this is related to historical changes. Grandma likes to sit on the stool at the door and bask in the sun. Her gray hair was neatly tied in a bun at the back of her head, and she wore a hairpin through it. It is smart and beautiful. She seems to love us school girls very much. She often takes a little melon seeds and peanuts out of her pocket and puts them in our little hands, and then smiles and lets us play. Of course, I later learned something about my mother when she was young from her generation. Grandmother and grandfather were landlords in the village at that time. Almost everyone in the village has worked for their family, and my grandparents are long-term workers who work hard for them all the year round. They just gave their grandparents' children a meal without oil or salt. Of course, the landlord was suppressed later, but as others said, the thin camel is bigger than the horse, and there are some old days left in their family.

Gua girl is grandma's only daughter and the youngest child. There are several brothers on the melon girl, all of whom are stupid and can't live. In the end, only the melon girl and two brothers were left. Eldest brother, almost 50 years old, has never married a wife, which is related to his landlord family background, no ears and not very bright brain. The younger brother has two children, raised a circle of cattle and sheep, and planted the most land. His home is the best in several villages in Fiona Fang.

In a blink of an eye, I went from senior one to junior high school. I used to chase and call her "melon girl" like other friends, but now it won't be so rude. But she was chased and shouted by her brothers and sisters.

The melon girl should be forty. She is still often beaten and scolded by her old mother and two brothers. For example, when she feeds pigs, she doesn't cut pig grass, and when it thunders, she hides in the cowshed and fights with cows. She doesn't cry at ordinary times, but she looks at her old mother with fierce eyes and sometimes turns to scold her. I really knew her that summer, at the end of our senior high school entrance examination. I played with some companions and passed by her cowshed. I heard her crying loudly in the bullpen, mixed with shouts of "damn it, damn it". Out of curiosity, we stopped in front of the cowshed.

Friends are shouting at the door, melon girl, melon girl. As soon as she listened, she scolded us for leaving. It suddenly occurred to me that she is still our aunt in terms of seniority. So I walked in and whispered to my aunt.

She didn't speak, just groaned in pain.

The cowshed is an old black soil house that is about to collapse, and it is the house where their family once lived. Obviously, all the slates on the roof were removed, and only thick corn stalks and wheat stalks were covered. Several cows are eating grass and fighting flies and mosquitoes. When their tails fall, most of them lie on wet straw and doze off. Only when flies lie on their eyes will they move their eyelids.

The melon girl, that is, the woman I should call aunt, leans against a big hole in the wall at the corner of the bed. It is not so much a bed as a rectangular board pressed on straw. This board is her bed, and the cotton in the black mattress hangs outside the edge of the bed. Seeing me come in, she called my real name and motioned me to sit next to her. Of course I won't sit in such a dirty place, I just stand and talk to her.

She looked very tired and miserable and groaned feebly "Ouch Ouch".

"What's the matter with you, crying so hard?" This is the first time I talked to her. From that hole, I saw the jujube trees outside flourishing.

She pointed her finger behind her shoulder and turned her back slowly. I know what she means. I gently lifted her clothes, thick gray clothes, the same clothes as grandma and them, and the buttons were small circles supported by cloth like the number eight. The wet back is full of strip marks, one is deeper than the other, and one is pressing on the other, and a lot of blood flows out at the intersection. I don't know if ordinary people can bear it. Suddenly she cried, cried. She also showed me her arm. There are red marks on her arms, just like the blood on her back.

She cried so loudly that the cows on the other side of the stick were barking through the high yard. I was so scared that I whispered to her not to cry, or I would leave. She repeated that "all are cruel and heartless", which should refer to the person who hit her.

I asked her, "Why did you hit me?"

"Xiaoqiu is dying." She wiped her tears with her sleeve.

"You must be in trouble." I pointed to the cow next to me, thinking that she must have something wrong with her work.

"The cow runs so fast, do you think he can catch up?" It should mean her mother or her little brother. She continued, "Just a few mouthfuls, just a few mouthfuls."

"Did that cow go to other people's fields and eat other people's wheat or vegetables?" I know, something must have happened here.

She just nodded. Then I began to wipe my tears. I wiped my hair off my face. I saw her face up close for the first time.

I can't say what's ugly about that face, but at my age, it's really not surprising. Round, white, or like other aunts' faces, it is a female face. It's just that her eyes are always squinting, her mouth is a little crooked and her mouth is drooling.

But she is still different from other women. She gave off a stench, mixed with the smell of cowshed, and suddenly a louse jumped out of the broken quilt and got into my neck. Suddenly my stomach churned, and I rushed out of the cowshed, covering my mouth.

I stood at the door of the cowshed, trying to spit out the air sucked into my nose and breathe in the fresh smell. I stepped on the stones in the pool at the entrance of the cowshed and ran home quickly.

In the winter of sophomore year, a melon girl in her forties got married. The man named Zhang Dumb, in his thirties, lives in a village not far from us. The mute can't talk, and his brain is so stupid that he can't even cut wheat, a simple farm job. However, as the only child in the family, he is very loved by his mother and sisters. This marriage was initiated by Zhang's dumb sister. It is said that one day Zhang's dumb sister met a melon girl who was cutting pig grass by the river with a bamboo basket. She saw blood on the melon girl's ass, so she followed the melon girl and her grandmother to be matchmakers. It turned out that Zhang Dumb's sister thought Gua Girl was a woman who could have children, and wanted to leave her brother a son and a half, thus realizing her parents' wish of having no grandchildren. I heard that Gua Girl happily followed her brother on the wedding day, wearing cotton-padded clothes and trousers bought by her sister-in-law and became the daughter-in-law of the Zhang family. Gua girl went to Zhang Dumb's house. Besides not being able to cook, she helps her mother-in-law cut pig grass, collect firewood and do some simple farm work every day. I heard that the old lady is very rare for this melon daughter-in-law, and she will let her daughter-in-law eat some good dishes on the table every holiday.

Half a year later, the melon girl was sent back and said that she didn't want children. The most important thing is not whether she will have children, but when summer comes, they smell an unpleasant smell on the melon girl. Others told Mrs. Zhang that the smell of melon seeds is hereditary, and even if a child is born, it is a smelly fetus, which makes the old lady angry. If she gave birth to a smelly fetus, she would never be laughed at by the villagers for the rest of her life. I'm sorry for her dead ancestors. Mrs. Zhang said directly. In fact, Zhang Ya is very kind to Gua girl. He often smiles at the melon girl, and sometimes picks some fruits from the mountain and gives them to the melon girl. I heard that Gua Girl has been gone for two days, and Zhang Dumb still wants a wife who doesn't eat or drink, and she is anxious to make gestures with her old mother. Others joked that Zhang Dumb likes melon girl and likes that smelly melon girl.

She used to be a melon girl, but later people began to call her smelly melon girl.

Grandma was so angry that she beat the melon girl again. This time, the melon girl didn't shout and didn't leave the bullpen for three days. Everyone thought she was dead, but her nose was still angry, but she was given half a bowl of rice soup to drink, and she came back to life. Grandma was so angry that she only scolded her ancestors for their lack of virtue that she dragged herself into such a daughter. Hungry for three days, she didn't die. It seems that the melon girl is fatal, and grandma ruined the hope of marrying the melon girl. She wants the melon girl to do more work and less loitering in front of her eyes, but the melon girl's health is not as good as before, and she can't let go of the cows. She can only cut some pig grass and do some simple farm work. The melon girl also ate less, so my brother and mother ate a bowl of leftovers, and the days of baking a potato or burning a few corn kernels without a fire passed. It's just that the wax gourd girl often cries at night, and sometimes she can hear what she is shouting. She stays in the cowshed every day except that her old mother and brother let her work.

One day my companion told me that he saw the melon girl taking a bath through the hole in the wall. She was really bathing herself with honey locust, washing and washing, smelling and smelling, and finally she couldn't smell anything, but she couldn't smell the smell in the cowshed.

She was still beaten by her old mother, scolded by her brother and sister-in-law, scolded by her nephew and niece, and regarded her as a thorn in her side. Sometimes naughty children call her a melon girl, and she doesn't take any notice, but whoever calls her a smelly girl, she looks at them viciously and even grabs a stone and hits them. Of course, she didn't really dare to hit those children and wouldn't throw stones at them.

One weekend when I came home, I happened to meet a group of hairy children putting stones in her basket, but she couldn't move it without knowing it. I shouted at the child to help her take out the stones from the pig grass. She looked at me and left with a basket on her back.

I still remember that look, as plain as a bowl of water that won't spill. I don't know if she is too old to recognize me, or if she never remembers anyone.

Suddenly one day, the villagers told her that her daughter was getting married. That night, she took out a lot of soap feet to wash herself, and found a suit and a small red cloth bag from a small wooden box. She stuck her head out of the hole in the wall. She smiled for the first time, and the jujube tree outside the wall shook its branches in response to her.

It turns out that Gua girl was married once in her twenties. He is also the son of the landlord. When he was in his forties, he couldn't marry a daughter-in-law, so grandma gave the melon girl to someone else. But the melon girl was sent back after giving birth to her daughter. Although that family is a landlord, the man is smart and capable, and he just wants a melon girl to have a baby. The melon girl cried all the way home. From then on, the melon girl lived in the cowshed and was often beaten by her mother and brother. She is getting older every day.

The early melon girl didn't go to the fields. She crossed a canyon and came to the village across the river from us. Although the two villages can hear each other's shouts, it takes some effort to walk.

The melon girl went to the river with a basket on her back and cut down some fresh water plants. Then she hid the basket behind a big stone. She climbed the road to the next village. She is looking for a good place to watch her daughter get married. However, she hid behind a tree for a long time. At noon, she was sweating all over and still didn't see the wedding reception. She stared at the house and everything on the road, but after a few hours, she was hungry and still nothing happened.

At this moment, she heard a woman who was washing clothes and having a rest talking: "Today, the Meng family woman got married. As a result, people realized that Xianger was a smelly baby. Now that she doesn't want it, she is divorced. "

The fat woman put her clothes on the slate by the roadside and said, that woman is good-looking, but everyone nearby knows that it seems that she can only get married far away.

"You said his father here don't stink, just born woman smelly. I heard that this is all hereditary. "

The fat woman said, "That is, women have been bullied a lot because of this since they were young, and they have been scolded behind their backs. In the end, she couldn't even read the book. Finally, it is still yellow. "

"Do you know her mother? I heard that her mother is a melon seed. I haven't been to your village for a few years and I don't know much about it. " The fat woman said, "Actually, I also heard my mother-in-law say that her mother is a melon girl in the village across the ditch. When the Meng family was excluded, the landlord wanted melon seeds because he could not marry a daughter-in-law. I heard that a baby was born a year later, and the old lady of Meng family drove her away. I don't know if she is dead or alive now. "

The fat woman said, "In this way, Meng Xiang's baby is suffering, which seems to be the bad smell inherited by her melon seed mother." The other shook his head with a basket and said, "Guazi Niang did a terrible thing to women, a terrible thing."

The melon girl hiding behind the big tree gnashed her teeth when she heard the truth. She squatted on the ground and burst into tears. Guapo cried enough, ran to the river and squatted on the stone and began to cry again. She knelt on the stone slab, folded her hands, begged God for something, and suddenly beat her chest. She tugged at the grass and threw stones. Suddenly she stopped and took out a small red cloth bag from her body, touched it with rough hands and stuffed it into the pig grass. She took off her clothes. She squatted in a pool covered with branches and leaves. She washed herself with sand and rubbed hard. She sniffed at her armpit. This is the first time she has smelled such an unpleasant smell. She washed hard, washed for a long time, and smelled it again, but after a while it seemed to smell that smell again. She tugged at her hair and scraped it clean with a stone. Suddenly, she picked up the sickle for cutting grass.

The next day, the body of the melon girl was found. Women washing clothes in the river saw it, and it also came from Sun Jia village. Gua girl's brother found several people to carry her back. They didn't know how she died, but then they saw two holes in her armpit, very big holes. People found this bag in her pig grass basket, which contained very old China Gleditsia sinensis, and divided Mao Mao's money and copper coins.

It is said that when Guapo's body was carried to her companion, someone accidentally slipped and Guapo's body fell into the river ditch. They all went down to look for it, but they couldn't find it for a long time.

The melon girl left, and no one lamented that the melon girl passed like a gust of wind. Her daughter has left, too. I heard that she has started a business in other places. I heard that no one smells her anymore. A few years later, Meng Xiang came back with a man and a beautiful boy to visit her grandmother's grave. It happened to be summer, and many women and former classmates tried to smell her, but it was just a fragrance. She left and waved to the villagers. Many people want to know why they can't smell the bad smell of Meng Xiang. Some women think that there is something wrong with their noses, that they are seriously ill, and some even lie on the toilet and smell it. After a long time, they really can't smell the toilet anymore.