Chapter 24 Prequel Twenty-Three Queenie

I was baptized as Victoria.Baston.My mother wanted me to be baptized Queenie, but the vicar said: No, Mrs Baston.The name Queenie is probably too common. No way!My mother replied, how can it be common?It's the Queen's name. 】.The vicar then preached extemporaneously while my mother, father, and invited guests listened from the stone baptismal font of the local gloomy church.The parish priest went on to detail that the princes and the royal family all had decent names, such as Edward, George, and Elizabeth, and everyone was wearing the best shoes they had when they went to church.The vicar finally explained: Mrs. Baston, in the case of our former queen, her name was not Queenie, but Victoria.

That's why me, Waverley and Lily.The Bastons' eldest daughter would be baptized in Victoria's name on a thunderous August day in a church near Mansfield, wearing a stiff ancestral baptismal white robe (which didn't quite fit around the neck), but Forever called Queenie. My mother Lily was an English rose.Light yellow hair, milk-like complexion, pink cheeks with a slight halo, the tip of the nose is raised, showing a perfect triangular nostril.She is the daughter of a farmer, her hands can be clasped like a devil, her arms are as strong as a bear, her buttocks are getting fatter year by year, and finally even the elders in the village's public green space unanimously agree that she is pregnant.

My father, Waverley, was a butcher.He was the butcher's son, the butcher's grandson, the butcher's great-grandson.My father was ten years older than my mother, and not very good-looking.Some people said that he was lucky, and he won the hearts of girls as soon as he pursued him.The girl had once won the village girl competition in the village, and when the father found out, he was so surprised that he had a deceiving expression on his face.The hair on my father's forehead was cursed by the bull's tongue, which means that it forms a whirlpool of wanton coils on his forehead every day.His fat, bulbous hands were like slices of ham, broad, pink, and fat, with stubby fingers stuck to them.He wears sharpening belts on both wrists to protect his hands from the sharp butcher knife.I think those straps are for holding the hands on the ends of the arms.The three-inch-wide piece of leather he only takes off every other Saturday night when he's taking a bath in front of the kitchen stove.I had to run hot water over it, like mud on a wall, to wash the dirt off his skin, and the strap lay on the floor, still in shape around the wrist, like a blackened handcuff, frayed , beaten, bloodstained.I never looked at his frontal view when he was in the shower, so as not to see the prosthetics on his fat ham hands.

We have a slaughterhouse on our small farm.Go out from the back door, cross the yard and make a small circle, which is where my father slaughters.Small trolleys came from the cold shop, and the drivers were all young men, with a pungent smell like vinegar made from rotting meat, and blood splattered on their aprons.They drove into the yard and dumped the carcasses of the slaughtered cattle, sheep, and pigs, while their father carried them into the slaughter shed on his shoulder.In the sound of grinding, cutting, chopping, splashing, and grunting, cattle become hind leg meat, rump meat, upper loin meat, prime rib meat, shoulder meat, tendon meat, breast meat, and silver-side three-pointed meat; Ham, loin, neck ribs, neck, brisket, ham, loin, ribs, shoulder; and pigs fed every morning on bad food boiled in a pot, from sniffing Pink mud piglets, turned into heads, feet, hind legs, loins, hooves, loins, bellies, flank steaks, shoulder blades, or salted, cured, smoked in the outhouse, waiting to be made into bacon.Unnamed meat slices are squeezed into the skin of the sausage, squeezed and twisted into Baston's refined sausage.Liver, kidney, heart and other internal organs are packed one by one and served on the plate. The fatty ones are put into a large boiler to become lard lumps, and the rest are put into a meat grinder.What falls on the table is the best ground beef, what is swept off the floor is not good meat.My father has always dreamed of having a son, a son who can sharpen, cut, slash, and carry, and can replace the sons of those stupid boys.All he employs now are stupid boys who think he's not paying attention and steal pieces of meat and hide them in the bottom of their hats or under their shirts.

When I was born, the midwife came out of the upstairs back bedroom, wiped her hands and said: Well, Mr. Baston, congratulations on the birth of a lovely daughter. When the father heard this, he patted his forehead, sat down in the stairwell and moaned: Oh my God, this is my end. A mother wants her daughter, a helper, as she helps her mother.She wakes up at 4 a.m. every morning to spread dough around the kitchen table and prepare hot water pie crust for her signature pork pie.She rolls the batter on a clean wooden table, beats it into shape, the pie is the color of a baby's buttocks under her knuckles, presses until the dough is stretched and elastic, adds a little more flour, beats to elongate into a stick, and then Dropped onto the tin griddle, ready to receive the pork her father bucketed and delivered to her every morning.The baked pie is steaming golden yellow, and the nutritious pork bone soup is poured into the hole at the top of the pie crust, and the meat jelly becomes clear and crystal clear.

Mother can make pies without looking down at her hands, and she has time to watch the sleepy girls who come from the village to help.She can guide them to turn on the oven more quickly, to wash the pans more cleanly, and to get her the flour faster without wasting any time.No matter how fast the sleepy schoolgirls move, Mom says every morning: Come on, I'm going to put the top crust on these pies.The brewed tea is for father and those stupid boys.Dad walks in and wipes his bloody hands on his apron before holding the old chipped mug.After two cups of tea with sugar, my father directed the loading of all the things into the pickup truck.He and his mother run a shop selling a variety of products from our small farm.Pies, meats, sausages, and bacon were all shipped in, and my parents were there all day long to serve hard-nosed customers.

A few years before I was born, there was an envelope stuck in the crack of the door of the store, and it was written Weaver.Baston, with a child's handwriting and misspelled words.Father thought someone was going to pay the bill.The customers owed him all the money, since most of them were on credit and paid off on weekends.His mother said he was soft-hearted, but he liked to think that he knew his guests.He said that if he didn't offer credit, customers would go elsewhere.Father opened the envelope carelessly, and a white feather fell out, circling around and gently falling to the ground.

He was alone in the store, but someone watched him.It never occurred to him to go to war.He is a butcher.If he goes to war, who will supply the meat?The war seemed so far away that he had nothing to do with it, just the names in the newspapers, the pictures of young people.The store lacks the right people to help.But his customers apparently thought that a fat butcher's hand like his would do more to strangle German soldiers.A top customer for the sirloin on Sunday and the ham and turkey for Christmas?Or a miner who eats mutton neck and pig's head? His mother complained that the two boys he had hired to replace him when he left home to join the army were thin and sickly.Too young to help in the kitchen, too young to help with anything.

Father went south.Three weeks later, there was a knock at the back door of the farm.Mother opened the door and saw father standing outside.The army doesn't want me.he told his mother.It turned out that he was too old and had a bad heart.Had three bouts of rheumatic fever as a child, causing heart murmurs.My rotten physique is not good enough to be shot.He made a fuss.That night, the mother prayed that if she had a son, he would get rheumatic fever too, thinking it might save him some years of life. My mother packed the sausages, cut the bacon, cleaned up the blood on the counter, and chatted with customers over a pound of black pudding, and I was looked after by many younger sisters.These little girls are the daughters of miners, come to work for only a few weeks, argue with their mothers about unfinished work or missing things, and then pack up and walk to hire another one.These little girls would wake me up, pull me out of bed, feed me with warm milk and biscuits, wipe my face with a damp cloth, and dress me.One of them used to twist my arm just because he liked hearing me scream.The other refuses to wipe my ass after I get pussy.A little girl with spots and squints used to hit me when I laughed and pinch me when I cried.A little girl with big breasts like stuffed cushions, who used to make me shudder with stories of little boys whose father cut them up into eight pieces in the slaughterhouse.I never remember the names of these little girls.They are just miners' daughters.Mother told me.She always called them little sister, but they were so stupid that they never noticed.

I was six years old when my mother became pregnant again.She delays the annoying birth by breastfeeding until I'm old enough to ask her mother if I can't drink milk from a cup.Otherwise, she cleans it herself with water and vinegar.Using an old rubber bag that looked like a cow's udder, she injected the vinegar water into her body.However, one day, she couldn't stand the smell of the pork she made, saying that the ingredients of the aspic looked like dirt stuck on the top of the drainpipe. The midwife came out of the back bedroom and told her father with great joy: "Mr. Baston, you have a son."

But my father only said: Damn it should be too. The following year, the mother gave birth to two more sons.twin. This time, let the father complain to the midwife: twins!Damn it!These two would have me castrated. Now have three sons: Billy, Harry, Jim.At the age of twelve, I was already my mother's little helper, helping to make pie fillings and scoop jelly, so that my mother was in a hurry to say, "Hurry up, I want to put the top pie crust on these pies."After making the pie, I woke up my three younger brothers, wiped their faces with a cloth, fed them warm milk, wiped their buttocks, combed their hair with water, and licked the hair from the cow's tongue (all inherited from my father) ) one by one.Then I changed the sheets that Jim Jr. seemed to wet his bed every night, and hit all three of them over the heads so as not to wrong Jim Jr.One morning I went to wake up little Jim and found that the sheets were wet, but it wasn't his usual pee marks, it was sweat. Mother's wish came true.The doctor announced it was rheumatic fever.Little Jim turned blood red and complained of pain in his wrist.When the younger brother's body was carried out of the room in a wooden box, the mother screamed: I didn't mean it! He is buried in the churchyard.The coffin was lowered into the earth, and his twin brother Harry called out, Queenie, we can't leave Jim down there, it's dark there, and Jim doesn't like it dark. I told him: Don't be stupid, he's dead. The doctor brought the bills for the three visits and the death certificate to my father. When my father saw the bills, he patted his forehead and moaned: We will be living in the slums by Christmas. From the first day I entered Boxi Primary School, I knew that my aptitude was far higher than that of a miner's child.The miner's child has a snotty nose and a dirty face that hasn't been washed for a long time. It takes a whole night to soak in a bucket to wash it off.Many children don't even have shoes to wear.Reginald.Wiggins came to school in women's boots stuffed with paper instead of socks.There is another boy, Wei Furui.Okeke, whose father died in a mine accident, was clearly sad, and it took him days to find his body as he faced the loss of his father.When I joined, the kids sympathized with him and patted him on the back during games, but I couldn't see how he could put on his late father's old football boots right away, with the studs removed. These miners' kids used to follow me around the playground, wondering if I'd brought Mommy's pie for dinner.I have it, and I show them the brown crust and pink aspic.I twirled the pie in the air, took a bite, licked the crust with my lips, and said, "Oh, it's really delicious."I like to watch them all automatically chew along as I eat, closing their teeth for air.They'll beg for a bite.All right, Queenie, give us a bite, all right.Be your best friend.Seeing my soft-hearted brother Harry sharing a pie with Waverly wearing his dead father's shoes, I hit him on the head and told him not to do it again next time.Harry whimpered: But he's hungry, Queenie, he's hungry. The teacher's name is Miss Cao Qi.It's only behind her back that we call her Miss Early Riser.Early risers beat their children because of poor grooming or messy homework.She hits the back of the hand twice with a ruler for the child wandering in the air; three times for the child with eyes open when praying.She shakes children who are lazy or don't know the multiplication table; she scratches the heads of students who talk out of context; There are neat rows of dark wooden desks in classrooms; there are often rows of colorful steaming wet boots in front of the charcoal fire that keeps the room warm.The early lady leaves everything to me.I'm the tallest student in my class and the butcher's daughter.I get the point list from the principal, and I will take it back after the early lady ticks off the names of the attendees.I handed out pens, nibs, filled ink bottles with thin blue-black ink, and lined up at dinner and game time.It was also I who went to the village store to fetch wool when the Early Lady asked us to weave blankets and scarves for the missionaries and hungry black children.The twitching finger of Miss Morning always told me to come out when it was necessary to send word to the headmaster. She would say Queenie.Baston, you are a sensible girl, and then you gave me the folded paper with the words to be passed on.Sometimes I spend almost the whole day doing wrong sums, copying blackboard writing, grammar, spelling, and even brain-struggling exam time. There's work to be done here, what are our girls doing at school?Three weeks after my father said this to my mother, I left Boxi Elementary School and worked as a maid on the family farm, serving as the grand slam girl in the infield and outfield.I had big boobs when I was fourteen and my brother Billy was always yelling Ouch when I was in the bath.I know how to read and write, add, subtract, multiply and divide, but honestly, pretty much nothing else. When my father and mother arranged for me to do errands on the farm, all my previous fun disappeared.The younger brother would still go to the slaughter shed and beg the slaughter workers for pig bladders.They blow into the pig's bladder, kick it around like a ball, and watch it plop down all over the yard.After the geese have plucked their feathers, they will jump around in the pile of goose feathers, or run into the pasture when they are chasing, concentrating, or slaughtering livestock. Lured out of the tree, or followed the hide-and-seek people everywhere and laughed: grow a beard, grow a beard, silly, you can't join the army? But I am no longer a child.I'm a poultry maid in a battered apron, ragged turban, scraper and bucket.While the other girls were busy brushing their hair and admiring the shape of their lips in the mirror, I was near flocks of poultry with a bucket and spatula.Fat chickens glanced up at me while sitting and quacking, pecking at the ground or knocking on wood.Feathers, sawdust, compost.I scrape the feces pan to remove the disgusting black and white lumps these birds leave behind.I was instructed to scrape the poop pan clean, sprinkle with sawdust and change the water in the pen.While other girls watched love stories and dreamed of their soulmates, I had to go find the eggs, those perfect, detailed, white ovals, sitting in the middle of the mess. I hatch the brooder eggs into fluffy chicks.They are wobbly and curious when they first arrive under the lights of the incubator, but the first few staggering steps are enough to cause them to fall off as ghosts.I separate the little one from the beak: the slender rooster is pushed aside to be fattened up for Christmas; the hen is ready to hatch and start the process all over again.I'm glad they got chicken plague that year.That's a different thing.The shriveled dead chickens with their swollen blind eyes had to be gathered up and thrown into carts and taken to the boiler room to be burned.Even if I wake up some mornings and find that my eyes are stinging and sealed with pus, and no one takes me to the kitchen to soak my eyes in warm water, at least most of the chickens are dead, and there are fewer eggs to find , and fewer chicks to separate. Queenie, watch out for those miners.My father warned me about this every morning. The miners came to the farm gate and bought half a dozen eggs to hatch.They didn't overpay for eggs to hatch.Eating eggs is cheaper than hatching, but I can tell by the way they take them away.Small children are generally sent to buy eggs for food, but grown men and women come our way with an empty warm-lined bag and rob us of the Bastons' livelihood.They would hatch our table eggs, keep their own chickens, pick up eggs in their backyards, and stop visiting our farms.But the father quickly stopped the theft.He gave me another job: prodding freshly laid eggs with a sewing needle.Just let them hatch those eggs.Father told me. Even when the miners stole our eggs, Father still let them buy Sunday meat on credit.Some bills have piled up beyond pay.During demonstrations or when the timing is bad, little kids (like the ones I used to go to school with) would come to our back door to ask if there was any leftovers.Tiny, dirty kids with sunken eyes and skin as gray as a February sky, begging for food from me.I would chase them away, several times.I would say: go, go.And they gave me the same pitiful look when I wolfed down my mother's pork pie on the school playground. Mother told me: They're hungry, Queenie, they're hungry.After speaking, he handed over another chore to the coolie maid.I have to make soup.On the stove was the rancid pot for the pigs, and I had to boil the bones and vegetables.I made soup for unemployed people who shuffled to the door in dirty, collarless shirts.They cowered in the cold, stamping their feet up and down the yard, blowing heat into their hands.Or just keep your head down and wait without saying a word.A man stood in front of me and started to eat, the greasy juice splashed down his chin.Some women came up and said: God bless you, girl, and bless your parents.But most of them send children.Little children without shoes, carefully carrying full coffee mugs and jars, walked back along the gravel road.The Waverly in the late father's boots showed up and handed me the jar, grinning so I could see his yellow-stained teeth, crooked.He said: How about you, Queenie?He even has the face to ask me if I want to go out with him.Don't think about it in your life.Guys who want to hang out with me have to court me, have collars and ties on their clothes, have their necks scoured, and have some money. I was supposed to go dancing and keep Clark.Man with Gable hairstyle having fun.They'll whisper in my ear that I'm as pretty as an English rose.My legs should be caressed in stockings, showing pointy toes and delicate heels as I step out of the car door.I should smell of lily of the valley, my hair billowing, my face powdered and ceramic perfect.I'm supposed to be a lady, but I'm stuck on a stinking farm.Compost, compost.Every day.Until one day my mother said: Queenie, go to the slaughterhouse and get your father. I said to my mother: No, let those boys go.I never went into my father's slaughterhouse.The slaughter shed that grinds, cuts, chops, splashes, grunts in the air.I haven't been there since the busty little girl made me cry with stories about little boys being hacked into pink poutine.My father and those stupid boys always go in clean and come out covered in blood, so whenever I get close to that place, I close my eyes and cover my ears.After all, that's not the place for ladies to go. But mother wants me to go.She said: Don't close your eyes and cover your ears, you have grown up and you should know what is going on inside.Remember you are part of the Baston family. Before I could smell the sweet vinegar of flesh and blood, I heard the roaring sound.I opened my eyes and saw that my father's back was as broad and strong as a wardrobe.Beside him was a little boy, none other than his brother Harry.Both of them wore boots, bloody boots, and stood amidst the sticky gore.On a thick chopping board, an animal's head hangs with its mouth open, alone, mutilated, its feet separated from its body, revealing a skinned body of red meat and yellowed clumps of fat, torn apart by the chopping Roll to the floor.The broken blue and white bones were almost beautiful, piled up in a horrible pile.There was the father, swinging the knife like a dagger.He was going to kill Harry.Slashed the knife at his head and tore him in two.I screamed.The father turned around suddenly, almost cutting off his own hand.The belt saved his hand, deflecting the blade away from skin and bone.The two of them stared at me, and my father said something angry, and Harry's eyes widened.That's when I threw up all over the floor and the last thing I remember is my father running towards me, butcher knife still in hand. That's how my father started calling me Empress Ba.He likes to tell everyone about Queen Ba passing out at the sight of blood in the slaughterhouse.A weak girl, my father said to my mother, how did you raise such a weak girl? After that, I became a vegetarian.who?Father yelling at the dinner table, who is this mess?Who ever heard of such a thing?The butcher's daughter doesn't eat meat?Nonsense little carrot head.They tried everything they could to get me to stuff a little bacon and eat a chicken breast.Acting again, Queenie?But I don't want to give in.Not even the pork that Billy threw spinning in the air, the brown pie crust and the pink aspic. Our meat is not good enough for Queen Ba.The father almost yelled at the meal, and even slammed his fist on the table, and the palm of his hand, which was delivered to dinner, slid down the wall.He hit me on the head the day I threw the apple core into the fire.There are also livestock outside to feed.he cried, flicking the smoldering pits to the hearth. I swear, when I looked up at him and told him I didn't give a shit, I heard the angels sing a heavenly note. Aunt Dorothy came to visit long after I had yelled at my shocked father.It was my mother's fashionable sister in London, and she breathed with a wistful voice, even if she didn't breathe.She came and told me with a wink that she was going to take me out of here and give me a better makeover.