The junior high school in the town was fifteen miles away from home.
On the first day of school, Bian Shou Tian carried a basket on his back to deliver her.
In the front basket was an old quilt, the quilt cover washed to be so dirty; in the back basket was a bag of wheat, beneath which was a jar of pickles, on top of which was a packet of six pancakes that Gui Ying had baked overnight.
Bian Shou Tian dragged his injured leg along the dirt road, and the basket rose and fell with him, creaking and groaning.
“Father, I’ll carry it myself,” Bian Feifei reached out to take it.
“You can’t carry it.
” Bian Shou Tian gasped, “At the school, study well.
Don’t think about the family matters.”
At the school gate, he put down the basket and took out a handkerchief bag from his pocket, layer by layer opening it, inside were several crumpled banknotes.
“Use them sparingly,” he stuffed them into her pocket and turned to leave, then turned back and added, “Are you hungry?
The pancakes are at the bottom.”
He opened his mouth, as if he wanted to say something else, but in the end, he only lifted the empty basket on the top of the basket and threw it over his shoulder.
The basket was empty, showing its lightness, but his steps didn’t quicken at all.
She nodded.
She watched her father walk away limping, his figure slowly shrinking into a black dot.
She clenched the handkerchief bag and stood for a long time.
At the school gate, there were people coming and going.
Some were parents from the city, carrying suitcases, buying new quilt covers with patterns.
Feifei held the old quilt in her arms and stood at the wall base, waiting until most of the hustle and bustle had died down before slowly walking towards the dormitory.
The quilt was heavy, and she struggled to carry it, taking a few steps and resting, the quilt corner dragging to the ground and getting a layer of dust.
She bent down and patted it one by one.
The dormitory was a large bunk bed, lined up against the wall, with ten or so girls sleeping.
Bian Feifei laid her bedding in the corner closest to the wall, close to the wall.
The wall plaster was damp, leaving an imprint when pressed.
She reached out to touch the wall, cool and wet, and when she pressed it, the wall plaster deflated, leaving a small depression, like someone’s crying eye socket.
She unfolded the quilt and a faint smell of old sunbeams filled the room, it was the smell of the sun that her mother had spread out to dry on a sunny day last month.
The girls got used to each other the first night.
They took things out of their bags, like a competition.
Someone took out a雪花膏, unscrewing the cap, a fragrance spread out, they sniffed it hard against their noses; someone pulled out a polyester shirt, shaking it out, saying “This is from my aunt in the county.”; someone rolled up their sleeves, revealing a red headband bracelet woven on their wrist.
“Feifei, do you have雪花膏?” A round-faced girl asked her.
Bian Feifei shook her head.
“Then what do you use to wipe your face?”
water.”
The girls were stunned for a moment, someone “puffed” out a laugh and quickly suppressed it, with malicious sympathy on their faces.
At night, someone whispered in the bed.
Bian Feifei buried her face in the old quilt.
The quilt had the smell of sun exposure and her mother’s faint soap smell.
She reached under the pillow for the jar of pickles, unscrewed it, and dipped a fingertip in a little bit, putting it in her mouth.
It was salty, but there was the smell of home in it.
The next morning, after she returned from the classroom, she found something on her bedding – half a bar of soap, wrapped in grass paper.
She didn’t know who put it there.
She looked around, the girls were all busy with their own things, no one looked at her.
She put the soap under the pillow, not daring to use it.
At night, she lay on the bed, with the light leaking in from the corridor, writing a line on a piece of paper: “The soap is fragrant, I don’t want to use it.
When I have money in the future, I’ll buy a bar for my mother.” She folded it and stuffed it into her pocket.
What she didn’t know was that this half bar of soap would be kept under her pillow for a whole semester.
And she didn’t know that it was this dormitory that would make her taste the first time in her life, that kind of shame that she wished to crawl into the cracks of the earth.
That incident came without any warning.