Chapter 9 six

On both sides of South Airport's Kenan Street, there are vendors selling watermelon, and the ground is full of leftover watermelon rind and watermelon seeds.The rotten and bright red watermelon flesh, here and there, attracts many buzzing flies.Baked in the sun, those rotten red watermelon skins are emitting a fermented sweet and greasy smell.The house where my mother lived was in a slum at the bottom of the Rue Kernan.It was a very strange building, a two-story cement house left over from the Japanese occupation era, with thick walls and no windows, only small black holes. The whole house was gray and bare, like a The broken bunker is said to be used by the Japanese garrison.When I entered the house, a spiral concrete staircase climbed up and stretched out into the invisible darkness.It was gloomy inside, filled with a damp musty smell in a bomb shelter.I don't know how many families lived in one building, there was a lot of voices inside, adults shouting and cursing, children crying, but because of the darkness, only black shadows could be seen, but people's faces could not be seen clearly.I held on to the concrete railing, groped, and climbed to the top of the second floor, to the door of the house where my mother lived.The door was open, and an old woman was sitting on a low stool by the door, nodding her head and dozing off.The old woman was wearing an open-necked sweater of yellow and white linen, and the wrinkled flesh on her neck was drooping like chicken skin; a small bun hung on the back of her head, but all the hair on her forehead fell out. , a large pink hair scar invaded her eyebrows, as if the scalp on her forehead had been peeled off, revealing bright red tender flesh.

Abasan, is Huang Lixia there?I took off my sunglasses and greeted her. Um?who?The old woman opened her eyes and asked in a quack voice. Huang Lixia, Ali. The old woman didn't answer, she cleared her throat, spit a mouthful of thick phlegm on the ground, looked at me hard, and then pointed to a room inside with her hand twice.I walked in and walked through a brick alley, and the room at the bottom of the alley had a yellow cloth curtain hanging on the door.I pulled back the curtain, the room was dark, I couldn't see anything, only a gloomy sunlight shot in through the crack of the curtain.I explored and walked into the room. It was stuffy and hot inside, and there was a stench of fishy smell, like the rotten smell of dead chickens and cats.

Mom, I called out quietly. I stood there for a while, and after my eyes gradually got used to the darkness in the room, I vaguely saw a bed with a square tent in the room, and it looked like a person was lying on the bed.I walked over, stood by the bed, and called again: Mom, it's me, Ah Qing. Ah Qing? It was the mother's voice, shrill and trembling, faintly transmitted from the darkness.There was a sound of groping, and with a snap, a faint yellow electric light by the bed was switched on.The mother was lying on the bed hunched over on her side, wrapped in a black wool coat, and wrapped in a cotton quilt covering her lower body.Her head sank deeply into the pillow, and there was a thick stack of rough yellow toilet paper beside the pillow; the square tent covering the bed was black and dirty, as if it was pieced together from old rags , covered with patches.I went to her bedside, she turned her face away, I was shocked, her face completely changed.On her original round baby face, the flesh on her cheeks seemed to have been dug out, deeply sunken in, her cheekbones raised bonyly, and her two big eyes sank completely, turning into two big eyes. Black holes, black and blue eyes, like two bruises, sallow cheeks, two thumb-sized black plasters on both temples, and long hair sleeping into messy lumps.Her two hands were clasped tightly, like a pair of curled chicken feet. Her originally very petite body was wrapped in layers of clothes and buried on the bed. Looking at it suddenly, she looked like a shriveled old man. baby girl.She stretched out her chicken-claw-like hand, grabbed my wrist, screamed her shrill voice, and shouted urgently:

You came just in time, Ah Qing.Quick, quick, pick up your mother, there is a spittoon in front of the bed, do you see it? I lifted the quilt and lifted my mother from the bed. Her body was so emaciated that only a handful of bones remained. I held her back with one hand, and I could feel the hard bones protruding from her back.There was a pungent smell of medicine and sweat on her body.I put her on the spittoon, and the spittoon was already half full of yellow turbid urine. When I came in, I could smell the strange fishy smell, which was coming from there.The mother sat on the spittoon, bent her body, and said bitterly:

I broke my throat just now and no one paid me any attention. That old woman is pretending to be deaf!When they saw your mother was too sick to move, they all came to bully me.She dared to stand at the door of my room and say to her son: That investigation is useless, why should I still treat her?The mother sneered twice, she took the back test, but your mother couldn't die, so she procrastinated here every day! After my mother finished urinating, she wiped it off with a few pieces of rough yellow toilet paper.I picked her up from the spittoon and put her back on the bed. I'm afraid of the cold, Ah Qing, cover me with the quilt.Mother cried in a trembling voice.I quickly wrapped the blanket around her.The windows of her room were tightly shut and thick curtains were drawn, and my back was dripping with sweat.

do you know?Ah Qing, they are all waiting for me to die!Mother lowered her voice, and she showed me her thin, black right hand with only a pair of muscles and bones left. On her ring finger, there was still a worn red gold ring loosely wrapped around it.They will come and take off my golden ring as soon as I die.Don't be a fucking dream!If I swallow it in my stomach, I won't give those two young lives!But Ah Qing, your mother is so poor that even if she wants to eat a slice of watermelon, she has no money to buy it. As my mother said, she sized me up with her deep-set eyes, and suddenly smiled and said:

Hehe, you are quite beautifully dressed, have you made a fortune, Ah Qing?Good boy, would you like some money to buy something for your mother?I've been hungry for a whole day, and what they brought was bran for feeding pigs, where would anyone eat it? I took out the two hundred yuan left over from yesterday, and distributed a one hundred yuan bill to my mother. Mother's hands, as thin as chicken feet, held the bill and trembled.Her face, which had become ugly and tattered, burst open, smiling like a little girl.She hurriedly stuffed the banknote under the pillow, for fear that others would snatch it away if they saw it.She hid the money, patted the pillow, lay down on her back, and let out a long sigh of relief.

The doctor said that the poison had gone to the bones, and the mother drew a picture on her lower body with her hand, and both legs were to be amputated. It costs 7,000 yuan to amputate one leg!Don't say I don't have money, I don't saw if I have money!The doctor said that the poison had dissipated, and he would die if he attacked his heart.Death is not death, why is a woman like me still alive? Mother suddenly stood up tremblingly, her big sunken eyes shone brightly, Ah Qing, can you promise your mother one thing?Grandma never begged you, so why don't you just do this for your grandma?

OKI agree. Your grandmother will not live long, and if your grandmother is dead, you go to the temple and offer a stick of incense for your grandmother, any temple will do.You go and kneel in front of the Buddha, and intercede to the Buddha for your mother.Your aunt has committed many sins in her life. You beg the Buddha to be reborn and let your aunt be spared, so that your aunt will not suffer down here.The sins of your mother's life can't be burnt to ashes!Your mother is not afraid of death, but she is afraid that the following crimes will be unbearable As the mother spoke, two lines of tears burst out of her deep-holed eye sockets and flowed down her sunken cheeks.I handed her two stacks of thick yellow toilet paper on the bedside.She took it, wiped away the tears on her face, and blew her nose before lying down on the bed again.After a while, she let out a long breath and sighed:

Your father, in fact, he is not bad to me.just, just She frowned and smacked her lips.Suddenly, she curled her mouth, smiled frivolously, and asked me: What's the matter?How is the old man?Do you still drink every day? I don't know, I shook my head, I haven't seen him for more than three months, mother, and I also left home. Is it?Is it?Mother excitedly blinked her sunken eyes.Then she stretched out her hand, patted the back of my hand, nodded, and sighed: You ran out too, Ah Qing. It was Abba who kicked me out, I said. oh yeah Mother murmured, her big eyes staring at me silently, her hand resting on the back of mine.For a moment, I felt that my mother and I were, after all, very similar in some respects.My mother had been fleeing, wandering, and searching all her life, and finally she was paralyzed on this bed filled with sweaty quilts, covered in a dirty tent, infected with poison, and waiting to die.After all, I am also the flesh and blood of her body full of sins and diseases, and I followed in her footsteps, fleeing, wandering, and searching.At that moment, I felt very close to my mother.

So, now only the younger brother is left with your father?Mother's trembling voice became sour. Mom, I feel like my throat is blocked and I can't make a sound. Ah Qing, my brother is your own flesh and blood after all, you are very good to him Grandmother, my brother died, I finally said it out loud, as if a lump of blood in my chest was vomited out all at once.My mother stared at me blankly, as if she didn’t understand what I said. My younger brother has been dead for more than three months. I sat next to my mother's head, tightly holding on to her thin hands and claws, my palms were sweating coldly, my teeth were trembling, I bent down, and poured out to my mother eagerly.I told her: My younger brother died of pneumonia.Dr. Wu from Kangfu Hospital on Changchun Road said he had a bad cold and only gave him a fever-reducing injection.On the third day, Diwa fell into a coma.He coughed all night, and his whole body was burning hot.We sent him to National Taiwan University Hospital for emergency treatment.They put him on oxygen, and Diwa gasped for the whole night with his neck straight, and he died at dawn.When he died, I hugged him.The people in the hospital are going to take my baby brother away.I kicked them hard so they wouldn't touch him.Later, my father pulled me away, and the people in the hospital covered my baby with a white cloth and carried me away.Mother listened quietly without making a sound. After I finished speaking, we faced each other in silence for a long time.Suddenly, my mother struggled to break free from my hand, sat up from the bed stiffly, pointed at me with a trembling hand, and shouted sharply: You killed my white boy! Grandmother.I stood up. pneumonia?What pneumonia?I don't understand?You killed my white boy. Mother's deep pit eyes flashed as if they were about to jump out, and her thin face twisted, like crying and laughing at the same time.I know, it must be you, you unscrupulous person, you killed my white boy, and you came here to coax me and tell me what kind of pneumonia she died of.You killed my white boy, I want you to pay for it The mother's chicken-claw-like hands clenched her fists and beat the bed up, crying out loudly, each sound getting louder and more tragic.The old woman outside ran in, waved her hands, and shouted: crazy!crazy! I took a few steps back, ran out of my mother's room, stumbled, and ran down the dark and convoluted concrete stairs, my mother's shrill and miserable howls chased me down the stairs.I fled outside the house, running non-stop.The sun was scorching outside, and it was so white that I felt dizzy for a while, and cold sweat poured down from my head like water.I ran for a while before stopping, gasping for breath, looking back, the concrete building like a bunker, standing gray and bare under the scorching sun, the walls were covered with small black holes, like a big prison like.