After all the playing around, Wen Xi had easily worked her way into the good graces of the older women and children of Huangni Village.
As dusk deepened, it was time for everyone to head home, find their families, have dinner, and get ready for bed.
Once the little twin girl had become familiar with Wen Xi, she became the boldest of all the children. She even tugged on Wen Xi’s clothes and coquettishly asked,
“Pretty Big Sister, can I sleep with you tonight?”
Her twin brother wasn’t quite as direct as his sister, but he silently grabbed the hem of her clothes too, clearly wearing the expression of If she’s going, I’m going too.
The children were only five or six years old and weighed barely a few dozen pounds each, but Wen Xi didn’t want her already-not-very-spacious bed to bear such an unnecessary burden.
So she could only gently refuse.
“Xiaohua, be a good girl. Your mother is waiting for you at home. I can’t steal you away from her.”
The little girl’s grandmother understood Wen Xi’s polite refusal and joined in.
“Xiaohua, Xiaohua, come on, let’s go home with Grandma. Your mother made some fragrant, soft roasted sweet potatoes today.”
“If you two don’t come home, I’ll eat them all by myself.”
“Your mother is really good at roasting sweet potatoes. That’s not just me praising her. Back then, I took a liking to her precisely because of her cooking…”
Before the old woman could finish, the twins had already surrendered to the temptation of roasted sweet potatoes.
“Pretty Big Sister, can we come play with you again sometime?”
Wen Xi readily agreed.
“Of course you can.”
By the time dusk had completely enveloped the sky, there were no longer any lively figures or stools beneath the locust tree.
Back home, at Wen Xi’s strong insistence, dinner consisted of sweet potato porridge and pickled vegetables.
Perhaps it was the variety of sweet potato, or perhaps it was the soil here, but the sweet potatoes grown in Huangni Village were unusually large, incredibly soft, fragrant, and sweet.
For the dinner shared by Wen Xi and Grandma, they only needed to cut up half a sweet potato. Even the porridge had a faint sweetness to it.
As for Grandma’s homemade pickled vegetables, they amazed Wen Xi even more.
She had no idea what Grandma used to pickle them, but the radishes were wonderfully crisp, pleasantly sour, and incredibly refreshing.
Grandma chopped the pickled vegetables into tiny cubes.
Wen Xi popped them into her mouth one after another, enjoying the satisfying crunch. She kept nodding her head as she praised Grandma’s pickling skills over and over.
The wrinkles around Grandma’s eyes deepened with her smile.
“All right, all right. Stop flattering your grandmother with that sweet mouth of yours.”
“If you don’t eat, the porridge will get cold. Cold sweet potatoes turn hard, and then they won’t taste nearly as good.”
Only then did Wen Xi stop showering her grandmother with endless compliments.
She ate a small spoonful of diced radish, followed it with a large gulp of porridge, and before long, the entire bowl was empty.
Because she loved the pickled radish so much, Wen Xi even had half a bowl more.
Then she rubbed her stuffed stomach and sighed.
“I’m so full.”
As Grandma cleared the bowls and chopsticks, she reminded her,
“Porridge digests quickly. It’s fine to eat a little more.”
“You might just have to get up a couple of extra times during the night to use the bathroom.”
Wen Xi refused to believe it.
“Really? But I never get up in the middle of the night. I always sleep straight through until morning.”
Grandma couldn’t help sighing.
“Young people really do sleep well.”
“At my age, I can’t sleep at night, and then I wake up early during the day.”
Hearing that Grandma wasn’t sleeping well, Wen Xi immediately forgot about her full stomach and became concerned.
“Grandma, do you often have trouble sleeping?”
“How about I make you a little sachet to help you sleep?”
“Or maybe you’d rather listen to a bedtime story and have someone coax you to sleep?”
Grandma immediately gave her a sideways look.
“You little rascal. Now you’re making fun of your own grandmother?”
…
After laughing and teasing each other for a while, grandmother and granddaughter finally returned to their rooms to rest.
The next morning, Wen Xi was having breakfast with Grandma when the voice of another elderly village woman came from outside.
“Teacher Li! My daughter-in-law got sweat in her eye while harvesting wheat. Her eye hurt so badly that she accidentally cut her hand. Could you come help us finish harvesting the rest of the wheat?”
Grandma put down her bowl and immediately headed for the door.
This time, Wen Xi had no intention of staying home.
She wanted to help harvest the wheat too.
And so, what had originally been one person helping became two—Grandma and Wen Xi.
The wheat fields before the summer solstice looked like waves of molten gold. Driven by the summer breeze, they rippled in dense, rolling patterns.
Wen Xi crouched beneath the small tree along the edge of the field, where the sunlight filtering through the leaves left coin-sized patches of light on the back of her neck.
Grandma’s slightly hunched figure appeared and disappeared among the golden sea of wheat. Dark sweat stains had soaked through the back of her blue cotton shirt, making her seem to merge with the faded posters on the walls of the old house.
In the field, two more figures wearing pointed straw hats moved up and down between the rows of wheat.
Uncle Zhang hooked the fingers of his left hand around the wheat stalk about three inches below the ears. With his right hand, he lightly swept the sickle around the stems.
The full ears of wheat obediently fell into the bamboo basket.
Milky sap seeped from the freshly cut ends, hardening in the sunlight into amber-colored beads.
The remaining stalks stood upright and straight, looking almost like a golden wire mesh woven across the field.
Another elderly woman, however, cut the wheat stalks directly from the roots.
Wen Xi remembered an old saying:
“Leave three inches of wheat stubble, and next year’s fields will be three parts richer.”
While she moved closer to fan her grandmother and give her some relief from the heat, Wen Xi quietly asked,
“Why does Uncle Zhang only cut the wheat ears, while Auntie cuts the stalks and ears together?”
Grandma wiped her face with a sweat towel, sending bits of wheat husk trapped in her wrinkles fluttering down.
“That old Zhang…”
She suddenly lowered her voice, a sly little smile appearing at the corners of her eyes.
“He must be thinking about the Kitchen God. Wheat straw makes excellent fuel. It burns slowly and steadily, so you can roast sweet potatoes or fry soybeans without worrying about scorching the bottom of the pot.”
As if to prove her point, Wen Xi seemed to catch the faint aroma of fried beans carried on the breeze.
Suddenly, a loud rustling erupted from the wheat field to the west, like a heavy rain pounding against an oilcloth umbrella.
Wen Xi turned her head.
Seven or eight bare-chested men had formed a line like a flock of geese, their sickles sweeping horizontally just above the ground.
The entire wheat plants fell in unison.
The wheat ears and stalks were bundled together with hemp rope into small mounds, casting jagged shadows along the edge of the field.
“This is what it looks like when everyone is racing against the rain,” Grandma explained.
She spat into her palm and put more strength into her work.
“They’re bringing the stalks and ears home together. Tonight, they’ll light kerosene lamps at the threshing ground, and the flails will be pounding so hard they could practically shake the moon apart.”
Suddenly, the elderly woman beside them slapped her thigh in panic.
“Oh no! We’ve been so focused on harvesting the wheat that I forgot our flail at home is broken. We still need to find someone to borrow one from!”
Before Wen Xi could even process what was happening, a warm brass key was suddenly placed into her palm.
Black, shiny grime was embedded in the grooves of the key, clear evidence of how often Grandma had handled it over the years.
“Xiaoxi, my legs aren’t as nimble as yours, and it’s too hot out here. Go home and get the flail and the large cloth sacks for the wheat ready. I’ll come get them later.”
As she spoke, Grandma gently urged Wen Xi toward the edge of the field.
“The big blue floral-print cloth sack for the wheat is in the north corner of the woodshed. You’ll find it wrapped in blue printed fabric.”
Following Grandma’s guidance, Wen Xi made her way to the field’s edge.
She didn’t waste any time.
The moment she reached the path, she took off running.
Grandma immediately frowned and shouted after her,
“Xiaoxi, slow down! Don’t fall!”
Wen Xi called back loudly that she understood, but her feet didn’t slow down in the slightest.