In the third grade of junior high school, Bian Shoutan’s leg was affected again.
That year, he was working for a farmer in the town, earning eight yuan a day.
The rainy days made the road slippery, and his injured leg failed to hold him up.
He and the sacks rolled down the slope and landed on the stone-filled ditch edge.
When the villagers carried him back, his left leg was swollen to an enormous size, with bruises all over it.
He couldn’t even move.
Zhao Guiying stayed by his bed, making “ah ah” sounds with her throat, gesturing with her hands, and her tears didn’t dry all night.
But there was no money at home.
Seeing a doctor cost money, buying medicine cost money, even the fare to the town had to be borrowed piecemeal.
Bian Feifei received the message on Friday afternoon.
A neighbor brought a sentence: “Your father fell, your mother wants you to come back.”
She threw her schoolbag onto her shoulder and ran fifteen miles back home, running all the way.
Pushing open the drafty door, she saw her father lying on the bed, his face emaciated and distorted, with sweat all over his forehead.
Guiying crouched in front of the stove, using a lamp to count the few eggs they had left one by one – those were saved to sell for medicine.
“Father.” She crouched by the bed, her voice trembling.
“Back.
” Bian Shoutan forced a smile and said, “It’s okay.
Bian Feifei didn’t say anything.
She looked at her father’s swollen leg and then at the bowl of clear porridge on the stove, the part of her heart that was there felt heavy and heavy.
The next morning, before dawn, she got off the bed.
The five acres of land needed watering.
She rolled up her pants, picked up the shovel, and went to the field.
The water in the ditch was cold, and it hurt her legs.
She picked up the shovel, one shovelful at a time, and led the water to the field.
A fifteen-year-old girl, with little strength, each shovelful took three strokes, and as she dug, her arms trembled like the grass in the wind.
She worked all day.
In the evening, after finishing work, she sat on the threshold, spreading her palm.
On her palm, two blisters had formed, bulging and pressing hard when touched.
She stared at the blisters for a long time, not crying.
She thought of her mother’s hands making the shoe soles and her father’s hands with the cuts, both of which were more serious than this, but they never cried out in pain.
At night, Guiying made a fire in the stove and pulled her hand, gently pricking the blisters with a needle tip, squeezing out the water and applying some purple medicine from a neighbor.
Her mother’s movements were very gentle, afraid of hurting her, with her rough hands cupping her palm, saying something in her throat, like she was feeling sorry or silently saying: “Poor child.”
Bian Feifei’s tears welled up all at once.
That night, she wrote in her diary:
“My hands have blisters.
My father needs money for treatment, and my mother needs money for medicine.
I don’t want to miss anymore.
I want to go to work to earn money.
But when I think of Fang Teacher’s words ‘Don’t lose heart,’ I can’t bear to.
What should I do?
How should I handle this?”
After writing the last line, she closed the notebook but couldn’t fall asleep.
Outside, the April wind blew in gusts, making the broken house’s door creak.
She lay in the darkness, opening her eyes, for the first time, she felt clearly that this family was about to collapse.
And she was only fifteen years old.
With her hands, apart from digging water and writing, what else could she do?
She didn’t know.
Before dawn, she made a decision that she herself was afraid of.