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墨書 Inktalez
There are many children in the courtyard, and the adults are busy with many things. We are almost like wild grass, taking care of our own growth.
Crossing the threshold of one year old, I bid farewell to crawling, and running around the courtyard became my daily task. Especially in the summer, my tender little feet, stepping in the sun-warmed soil, feel so comfortable. The risk is always present, with overgrown weeds in the open spaces around the house, occasional bites from centipedes and mosquitoes, and the occasional pain from gravel and thorns. But none of this can stop my running, the pain is only temporary, and the joy lies ahead.
Horses also stumble. One afternoon while galloping, I stepped on a piece of broken glass. Because I was running fast and stepped heavily, the glass deeply pierced the sole of my foot. At first, I didn't feel the pain, but after a few more steps, I realized that my foot hurt deeply when it touched the ground, and my muddy foot was oozing with blood.
My grandmother, who was making straw shoes in the house, heard me crying. She picked up my foot and placed it on her lap, blowing away the dirt with her mouth. She found the sharp glass and immediately tried to pull it out by pinching the exposed tip with her fingers. However, there was too little exposed and it was too deep. Every time she tried to pull it out, my foot would involuntarily move between pain and itching, and after several attempts, she was unsuccessful.
fifth Grandma heard the commotion and ran over. One of them grabbed my foot, and the other tried to pull it out forcefully, but it still didn't work.
"Try using my eyebrow tweezers," fifth Grandma said as she walked into the front hall. After spending some time in the house, she ran out with a small, yellow crescent moon in her hand. She asked Grandma to hold my foot firmly, carefully opened the tweezers' teeth, and slightly inserted them into the flesh along the wound. Using the small moon's teeth to grip both sides of the glass, she forcefully pulled out the broken glass. Grandma carried me to the water tank, scooped up a ladle of water, and rinsed the wound twice before sprinkling some cigarette ash on it. Just as she placed me on a stool, I ran towards the door. As I ran, I grew to be two or three years old.
One evening, I was quietly staying at home, not running around as usual. My grandmother was happy to see her grandson unusually quiet, not knowing that I was seriously ill. When my mother returned from work, she found me lying on the muddy ground at home, my face red and my eyes tightly closed. After shaking and calling out to me several times, I weakly moved a little.
Seeing that it was getting dark, my mother, despite her fear, carried me on her back to the health center in the nearby commune, about four or five miles away.
Breathless, my mother arrived at the health center, but many doctors had already left for the day. A young doctor flipped my half-closed eyelids, felt my burning forehead, and without giving me any injections or medication, bluntly told my mother, "This child is beyond saving. Take him back and bury him!"
My mother was so desperate that she couldn't help but shed tears, pleading with the doctor to think of a solution. The doctor, unable to spare any more time, told my mother, "We really can't do anything. Why don't you take him back, lay him flat in the ditch, paste some water grass from the well on his navel, and rub his body with water grass to see if he can be saved..."
After my mother heard, she immediately carried me back. It was already completely dark, and on the way home, we passed through a desolate mountain, which was a chaotic burial ground for the deceased. In our courtyard, there was a cousin who was two or three years older than me. He had recently fallen seriously ill, and even though he went to the clinic, the doctor did not prescribe any medicine or give him injections. He passed away on the way home at this place.
My mother was both scared and anxious, fearing that I would be captured by some "little ghost." Unfortunately, at that moment, I woke up from my daze and kept pounding on my mother's back, saying, "Don't go there, there are ghosts there..."
At that time, there were many children in the countryside, and the adults had no time to take care of them. Coupled with poor medical conditions, many like me, the "wild grass," were crushed before they could grow tall. In our courtyard, from the 1940s to the 1980s, at least twenty children died young. Not far from the yard, on the hillside, there was a small mound specifically for burying these deceased children. The adults always warned us: don't go there, lest you be possessed by the "little ghosts"!
The reasons for the high child mortality rate were mainly illness and drowning. Among them were three of my father's brothers—two older than him and one a couple of years younger—who often fought over food together. According to my grandmother, they all died young due to illness. Additionally, one of my cousins, the eldest daughter of my uncle, drowned in a pond during my college years in the 1980s.
Fortunately, I was not destined to die young. Just when my mother was in a state of panic, my grandfather arrived with a lantern to take us both home.
After returning home, my grandfather and mother, with the idea of "trying every possible means to save a dying horse," really put me in the icy ditch and rubbed my body with water grass, and then pasted my navel with water grass. In the middle of the night, I came back to life again. At the age of five, the god of death lightly touched my tender shoulder once again. It was a hot summer, and I went to herd cattle with Uncle Wan in the evening. I followed behind the cattle team.
As the cattle and people crossed the channel, an accident occurred. Due to the swift current, I was knocked over while wading through the water and sank to the bottom after bubbling for a couple of seconds. Everyone else was focused on driving the cattle, stirring up the muddy bottom of the channel and making the entire surface murky, so no one noticed that I had disappeared. The platoon crossed the canal as usual and climbed up the small hill on the other side.
After sinking to the bottom, I was swept downstream for about twenty or thirty meters. I was caught by a mound of dirt and some weeds at a bend. As the sun shone down, I slowly opened my eyes and realized that I felt completely weak. I lay there for a while before managing to recover enough to slowly search for the herd.
The entire afternoon, I felt extremely cold. Even though it was a hot summer day, I still shivered, my teeth chattering from the chill. Even after sneaking two sweet potatoes from the hard ground with everyone else, my stomach continued to grumble.
When I was six years old, the Grim Reaper took a small blade of grass from my side.
On a clear early winter day, the production team had little farm work to do, so the adults went deep into the mountains, seven or eight miles away, to chop firewood in preparation for the New Year and winter.
The group going to chop firewood was quite large; almost all the adults in the courtyard went, including Second Uncle and his wife. They had a two-year-old daughter who was left at home without anyone to take care of her, so they brought her to our house.
As dawn broke, the adults set off. My mother had started a small charcoal fire at home and placed an old-fashioned fire bucket inside, where she stuffed us four children. Facing the warm glow of the charcoal, my siblings and I played while occasionally glancing at the door. Whenever my siblings tried to climb out of the fire bucket, I would quickly grab them back, not allowing them to step outside.
By two or three in the afternoon, my siblings were all quite hungry, but the adults still hadn't returned. My cousin had already fussed several times about wanting to find our mother. Each time she slipped out of my sight, she would climb out of the fire bucket, and despite my repeated attempts to pull her back, I couldn't shake her determination.
Feeling both tired and hungry, I decided to check if the adults were on their way back. I reminded my siblings to stay put in the fire bucket and not wander off before I jogged out of the house.
Although I was panting and my legs were shaking as I ran, the adults did not appear as I had hoped. When I ran back home, my cousin was already gone. My brother said she had gone to find our second aunt. I immediately went along the route she usually took, but I didn't see anything.
I don't know how long passed, but suddenly I heard someone outside say that my cousin had fallen into the water pit in front of the yard. I thought this was bad, and I didn't dare to inquire about the situation, fearing that I would be beaten and scolded when the adults returned. In a hurry, I hid inside the big stove used to cook pig feed.
I don't know how noisy the people outside were, how the adults pulled my poor cousin out of the water pit, or how they futilely used pots and pans and even rode on the back of a cow to control the water. I only knew that I cowered in the stove, not daring to make a sound.
Mom is not very worried about my safety. My little brother has already told them, "Big brother is very scared and has hidden." After comforting my aunt and uncle, she still needs to prepare dinner and feed the pigs. When she was making a fire, Mom couldn't get the firewood into the stove door, and that's when she noticed my face covered in soot from the stove.
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