Shu Yao quickly took back what she had said,
This little thing isn’t cute at all!
Go ahead and cry. If Old Mother could outlast Sha Ha back then, she can definitely outlast you now!
Shu Yao sat cross-legged on the bed, watching the Little Ancestor bawl with his mouth wide open. From her angle, she could even see the Little Brat’s trembling little tongue clearly.
Mm, a little ugly.
“No, what exactly do you want?”
“You’ve eaten, you haven’t pooped or peed, and I even massaged your stomach the way your grandmother taught me,”
“What exactly did I fail to do? Tell me!”
“Weren’t you very well-behaved yesterday? You didn’t cry or fuss. Why can’t you manage it today?”
“Stop crying, or I’ll throw you out!”
“Waaah, waaah, waaah…”
“Ah!”
Shu Yao grabbed her hair in despair,
“Can you stop crying? I’m begging you. It’s the middle of the night—you’re disturbing everyone.”
The Little Brat had been crying for twenty minutes, until his voice was hoarse. Holding and coaxing him did no good, and no one knew what he wanted.
“Cui Fang, go take a look. That baby is making a terrible racket.”
In the main room, the male head of the household, Wang Youguo, nudged Cai Cuifang.
“All right, I’ll go have a look. If he keeps carrying on like this, he’ll damage his throat.”
Cai Cuifang got up, threw on a coat, and walked outside.
Anyone who had raised children could not bear to hear that sound.
“Comrade Shu, Comrade Shu, what’s wrong with the child?”
While hurriedly pulling off the Disposable diaper and tossing it into the Storage Space, Shu Yao said softly:
“See? Didn’t I tell you he was disturbing everyone?”
“Maybe tomorrow, the two of us will have to clean up our bundles and leave.”
“Auntie Cai, I don’t know what’s going on either. He just keeps fussing.”
Shu Yao opened the door, ran a hand through her sweat-dampened hair, and immediately began apologizing,
“I’m sorry. Did we disturb your sleep?”
“Not at all, not at all. It’s still early, and tomorrow is Sunday. Old Wang and the children are resting too.”
Cai Cuifang walked to the bedside and expertly picked up the child. She first felt his bottom, then his tiny hands and feet,
“Comrade Shu, you weren’t the one who used to put this child to sleep, were you?”
“Ah, yes. His grandmother used to do it, and later his father did it for a while too,”
“Could a child this young already have started recognizing people?”
Shu Yao guessed, somewhat incredulously.
“Don’t underestimate children just because they can’t speak. They’re actually very clever.”
Cai Cuifang placed Shen Huaiyu into Shu Yao’s arms and adjusted his position,
“You have to do it like this. Pat him gently. That’s right, stroke his back.”
“When a child suddenly changes environments, he may feel a little uncomfortable. Since you weren’t the one putting him to sleep before, he’s fussing a bit,”
“But your child is very well-behaved. Two or three days should be enough for him to adjust.”
“These next few days, you have to hold him while he sleeps, then put him down after he’s sound asleep.”
After being patted for a while, the Little Brat had stopped crying. His eyelids were fighting to close, but he stubbornly opened them again after each blink to look at Shu Yao, then closed and reopened them to look at her once more.
Cai Cuifang found it amusing,
“He’s afraid you’ll disappear.”
“Auntie Cai, thank you. I really wouldn’t have known what to do otherwise.”
“You’re too polite, Comrade Shu.”
Cai Cuifang waved her hand.
“Auntie, you can call me Yaoyao.”
Being called Comrade Shu sounded distant, but her surname was genuinely awkward. She couldn’t exactly let people call her “Younger Uncle.”
“All right, Yaoyao.”
This Comrade Shu seemed easy to get along with, and Cai Cuifang was pleased.
“Your child is really handsome. Thick eyebrows, big eyes, a high nose, and fair skin too. He looks like you.”
“Really?”
Shu Yao inexplicably beamed until she could hardly close her mouth, taking it entirely as a compliment,
“I thought his eyebrows were rather light.”
“They aren’t light. Haven’t you seen other children? These already count as thick eyebrows.”
Seeing that the child was gradually sleeping peacefully, Cai Cuifang straightened her clothes and went back.
A child weighing around ten pounds felt heavy in her arms. Seeing him sleep so soundly, Shu Yao wanted to put him back on the bed,
But just as he touched the bedboard, the Little Brat uneasily whimpered twice,
frightening Shu Yao into immediately picking him back up,
“All right, all right. Fine, fine. I won’t put you down.”
By the dim lamplight, Shu Yao carefully examined the little person in her arms,
Mm, he was just as cute as Sha Ha had been as a puppy. This was the first time she had realized that a hairless creature could rival a fluffy one.
“Little Brat, do you miss your grandmother and father?”
“For the sake of how cute you are, and for the sake of the money, I’ll ask around about where they were forcibly relocated when the time comes. I’ll do my best to let them both come back alive to see you.”
The next day, Shu Yao was awakened by Shen Huaiyu. The instant she saw the baby, she sprang up,
“You didn’t have night feeding last night, did you?”
“Oh no, oh no. You weren’t starved sick, were you?”
She immediately mixed a full bottle of milk and pushed it toward him,
Drink a little more this time. That should be fine too, right?
Shen Huaiyu was clearly more reliable than this mother. He gulped the milk down, drinking only a little more than usual.
Shu Yao yawned and finally had time to check the hour. It was not yet six,
but Auntie Cai was already up, squatting in the courtyard and washing clothes.
The clothes Shu Yao had changed out of yesterday had actually already been washed in the washing machine and dried, but after thinking it over, she still put them in a basin and took them outside to rinse once more.
Sigh, living with other people really was inconvenient.
After hanging up the clothes, she went back and gnawed on a piece of bread, drank a cup of oat cereal, and prepared to browse Xikuamen Market,
It was still early, and the place was not far away. She borrowed a vegetable basket from Auntie Cai, hung Shen Huaiyu against her chest with a baby sling, and strolled over.
It wasn’t that she wanted to bring the baby. The Little Brat was practically possessed; whenever she took even one step outside, his little mouth would turn downward, looking as if he were about to cry,
and Shu Yao was truly afraid of him by now.
Forget it. Back when she took Sha Ha out, whenever it flopped onto the ground halfway there, she had carried it back the same way.
The Xikuamen Market of that era already had the rudimentary form of the markets of later generations: an indoor market, with tall vegetable racks placed against both walls, a narrow passage between the racks and the counters, and vendors in sanitary uniforms moving through it.
A long line had formed in front of the butcher shop on the western side. Shu Yao glanced over from a distance. At eight mao per pound, the price was cheap enough, but everyone had a ration quota, and no one was allowed to choose. Whatever piece the vendor handed over was the piece they got,
On the eastern side was a cooked-meat stall selling sauced donkey meat and braised pig head meat. No ration coupons were needed, but the price was high. The living standards of the Capital City’s people were clearly quite good; the cooked-meat stall already had a sold-out sign hanging up.
With the baby in tow, Shu Yao did not squeeze into the butcher stalls. She chose only two cucumbers, one pound of tomatoes, some odds and ends of ginger, scallions, and garlic, and fifteen eggs. Altogether, it cost less than one yuan,
“They’re parading someone! The parade is starting!”
A shout suddenly rang out at the entrance.
In an instant, everyone surged outside.