“Dead brats, come eat! Woo-lay woo-lay woo-lay~”
Clad in an apron, Cui Guiying held a bowl in her left hand and a ladle in her right. As she shouted, she knocked the edge of the porridge vat for emphasis.
Li Weihan, who was seated nearby packing tobacco into a water pipe, kicked his wife on the rear and snapped, “What’s gotten into you? Calling the piglets?”
Cui Guiying shot her husband a glare, slapped a stack of bowls down in front of him, and spat, “Pah, pigs are quieter and eat less than them!”
At her call, a swarm of kids burst in from outside—seven boys and four girls, the oldest around sixteen, the youngest barely three.
Li Weihan and his wife had raised four sons and one daughter. The kids were all grown and had split off into their own households. Normally, only the eldest would drop off his twin toddlers here to be raised.
But come summer vacation—whether for convenience or out of a sense of missing out on the grandparents’ generosity—every household sent their kids over.
Once the eldest’s twins were in, the others couldn’t very well hold back. In no time, the house had turned into a makeshift schoolroom.
The sweetness of a house full of grandkids hadn’t even settled in before the rice jar at home started running dangerously low.
As the saying went, a half-grown boy can eat his father poor. Girls included, they were all in their prime growing years—bottomless pits, each of them. At mealtime, they had to dish out the staple food from a vat. Even one vat wasn’t enough—another pot stayed warm on the stove.Though already blessed with a brood of grandchildren, the couple wasn’t all that old. And in rural custom, unless bedridden or too frail to work, no matter your age, if you could still go down to the fields, you had no right to expect your children to feed you.
“No shoving! Line up! You all reincarnated from starving ghosts or what?”
The children came forward with bowls. Cui Guiying ladled out the porridge.
Last in line was a ten-year-old boy. He wore denim overalls and trendy sandals, his skin pale and tender, with a shy look on his face.
He didn’t quite match the grubby, snot-nosed chaos of the other kids.
“Little Yuanhou, here, you can sit here to eat.”
“Thank you, Grandma.”
Cui Guiying smiled and patted his head. He was the only maternal grandson among all her grandkids, though not anymore.
His name was Li Zhuiyuan. His mother was Cui Guiying’s youngest daughter and the first university student in Siyuan Village’s history.
The girl had been accepted into a university in Beijing. After graduating, she stayed in the capital for work. She brought her boyfriend home once before the wedding—a pale, delicate, and soft-spoken city man.
They couldn’t remember his face clearly now. That day, Cui Guiying and her husband had been so uptight in front of their son-in-law they didn’t dare look closely.
Later, their daughter got pregnant and gave birth to a son. The long distance and busy job kept her from coming home. But since she started working, she never missed sending money back each month.
Before the wedding, the money she sent was all saved. Even when their four sons got married, they gritted their teeth and didn’t touch a single cent. When the daughter brought her fiancé home, Li Weihan even shoved back the bride price and returned all her remittances.
They had meant to chip in some extra too, but with four sons marrying before her, no matter how tightly they tightened their belts, they couldn’t squeeze out another drop.
This always left the couple feeling guilty. Returning the money their daughter sent meant that as parents, they’d contributed nothing when marrying her off. A real embarrassment.
As for the money she sent after the wedding, they saved that too. Their sons, egged on by their wives, came sniffing around with all kinds of excuses to dip into that fund—Li Weihan chased them off with curses every time.
Half a month ago, their daughter sent over her son through a soldier friend, along with a letter and some money. The letter said she’d gotten divorced and had some recent job changes, so she had to entrust the boy to her parents for a while.
She also mentioned that after the divorce, she changed the boy’s surname to match hers—turning their maternal grandson into a full-fledged grandson.
Li Zhuiyuan adapted quickly to the countryside, not the least bit out of place. He spent all day happily running around the village with his cousins.
The staple food today was sweet potato porridge. It had a pleasant sweetness but wasn’t filling, digested fast. Even after stuffing several bowls to the brim, their round bellies didn’t stay full long. A short romp outside and they’d be hungry again.
Eat too much of it—sweet potato porridge and sweet potato strips—and it’d wear your stomach out. You’d feel queasy just looking at it when you weren’t hungry.
But Li Zhuiyuan wasn’t sick of it yet. He actually enjoyed the “communal canteen” vibe, and especially loved the salty pickles and sauces Cui Guiying made.
“Grandma, why aren’t we going to Uncle Beard’s today for a banquet?” asked Huzi, the second uncle’s nine-year-old son.
Cui Guiying flicked the end of her chopsticks at Huzi’s head and scolded, “Dead brat, that was for his mother’s funeral. You think people throw a banquet every day?”
Huzi rubbed his head and mumbled, “Why not? That’d be nice.”
“Listen to this crap! Even if they wanted to, where would they find enough people dying every day to throw daily feasts?”
“Whack!” Li Weihan slammed his chopsticks on the table and barked, “You’re a grown woman talking nonsense to little kids?”
Realizing she’d slipped, Cui Guiying didn’t snap back at her husband. Instead, she scooped out a spoonful of salty sauce and dropped it into Li Zhuiyuan’s porridge. The sauce had crushed peanuts and minced meat—there was a piece of meat in that spoonful.
Li Zhuiyuan stirred it with his chopsticks. The sauce thinned out, and pale meat chunks floated up on the surface.
The kids’ eyes were sharp—and fairness was their obsession. Huzi immediately called out, “Grandma, I want meat too! Like what Yuanhou got!”
“Me too, Grandma!”
“Me three!”
The others chimed in at once.
“Shoo, shoo!” Cui Guiying barked at them. “Little ones fussing is one thing, but you older ones—Pan’er, Lei’er, Ying’er—you’re supposed to be the older siblings. You should know better! Everything you’re eating today was bought with money sent by Little Yuanhou’s mom. Your parents didn’t chip in a single grain. And you still have the nerve to snatch food from him?”
Pan’er, Lei’er, and Ying’er lowered their heads sheepishly. The younger ones just exchanged giggles and let it slide.
Grandma had hinted at this before. They’d passed it along to their parents too, but their parents told them to play dumb.
Just then, eight-year-old Shitou from the third uncle’s house asked, “Is Little Oriole still around?”
Cui Guiying asked, “Who’s Little Oriole?”
Huzi replied, “Grandma, Little Oriole is the one who sang and danced at Uncle Beard’s house yesterday. She sang really well, and her dancing was amazing.”
“Is that so.” Cui Guiying had spent yesterday washing dishes in the back kitchen. She’d been too busy to even sit down, let alone catch the mourning troupe’s performance out front.
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