Chapter 6

Chapter 6

As time continued to rewind, I finally remembered that at the moment I jumped, when I was utterly despondent, the word on my lips was:

“Mama.”

Ironically, I had long since forgotten who my mother was, and I had forgotten her face.

The last memory she left me was the shape of a person beneath a sheet of white linen.

She had been dead for so long that sometimes, waking from a dream in the middle of the night, I thought she had never existed at all.

In truth, at the beginning, I went to sweep her grave every year.

But within two years of my stepmother marrying into the family, she became unwilling to spend money on joss paper for a dead first wife.

Gradually, the family reached a silent understanding: when preparing sacrificial offerings, they would cut one portion.

From then on, whenever I passed the small hillside where my mother was buried, I could only gaze at it from a distance.

Year after year passed, until that lonely grave was completely swallowed by wild grass.

Memory is like a silted river; through desperate digging, I only managed to unearth fragments of my mother’s life:

My maternal grandfather was a barefoot doctor. When he encountered people who couldn’t afford to pay, he would only ask for a bowl of corn wine, drinking as he walked.

But in the second year after my mother passed away, my grandfather died as well.

I didn’t have many memories of my grandparents; I only remembered my eldest uncle saying they both doted on me.

Moreover, my uncle said that my grandfather died of a broken heart because of my mother’s death-the white-haired burying the black-haired.

In the past, I believed this without question.

But as I scrutinized my memories over and over, a new doubt bloomed in my heart:

If my mother had such deep ties with her maiden family, why did even my uncles stop visiting her grave later on?

I realized that for twenty-six years, I had been living in a story compiled by others.

The only truth lay on the day my mother died.

Time continued to flow backward, arriving at the day I received my university admission notice.

Since I was the first in the village to get into a key university-and ranked first in the entire county-the village held a special celebratory banquet. Many officials from the town and county level attended.

The ancient, solemn ancestral hall, usually strictly guarded, opened its doors for me as an exception.

Chen Youfang was beaming with pride, boastfully recounting his wise past decisions:

“When Chen Ran was five, she could already recite the multiplication tables. So, I took her straight to enroll in the first grade. They said they were afraid she wouldn’t keep up and didn’t want to take her.

“And the result? She ranked first every year. Now she’s only sixteen and has been accepted into university. It’s all thanks to my decision back then!”

But standing here in my hometown, looking at the familiar surroundings, my memories began to stir restlessly:

In the second grade, I struggled with the multiplication tables; no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t pass the test.

Every time I failed to recite them, the teacher would lash my palms several times with a switch, then make me stand under the sun until I was ready to try again.

This went on for several days, lasting until dark every evening. By the time I finally managed to pass, my palms were swollen and raw, and my tongue was chafed and bleeding.

The teacher had pointed the switch at my forehead and cursed:

“You stupid pig! Why are you even in school? You should just go home and herd cattle!”

Yet, once I grew up, everyone changed their tune, and I became the “legend” in their mouths.

My thoughts drifted back to the present. The eldest grand-uncle, the highest-ranking elder in the clan, was chanting something in the ancestral hall.

The genealogy book lay on the altar, and he was about to put brush to paper.

But as if to make the scene more solemn, he added a bit of impromptu drama, telling me to kneel to welcome the moment my name was recorded in the clan history.

Hearing this, Chen Youfang smiled and pressed down on my shoulders, trying to force me to kneel.

I remained motionless. I turned my head to look at him and asked out of the blue:

“How did my mother die?”

He was struck dumb.

Because in his timeline, this was the first time I had ever asked this question-and in such a setting, no less.

I remembered how he had lectured me since I was a child: if I mentioned my mother, my stepmother would be unhappy, and if she was unhappy, the family would not be harmonious.

So, to be a good child who kept the peace, I never mentioned her.

I repeated the question. The crowd snapped out of it and turned their eyes toward him.

Chen Youfang had been drinking, but he was far from drunk.

Yet now, his hands were actually trembling.

I silently picked up my admission notice, turned, walked out the door, and ran toward that small hillside outside the village.

The midday sun scorched everything in the mountains. Relying on my childhood memories, I used my bare hands to clear away the waist-high weeds, uncovering the grave that had been abandoned for years.

The moment the small mound of earth was revealed, I froze completely.

This was it?

My mother was lying beneath this unremarkable pile of yellow soil?

What was her name? Did she love me? Would she have been proud of me, too?

The questions in my heart found no echo; even my memories seemed to stall.

I slumped into the grass, feeling lost, until I heard rustling from down the hill as people followed me up.

It was actually the neighborhood aunties. They carried sickles and began cutting the grass as soon as they arrived.

Soon, the small grave was fully exposed. Others used hoes to bring fresh soil to repair the collapsed sections.

Everyone was drenched in sweat from the exertion.

I suddenly realized that, like my mother, they had all married into this village from elsewhere.

Perhaps they, too, remembered that young wife who had died so early?

During a break, they chatted while looking at the desolate mound.

Their expressions were somber.

“Your mother suffered a serious illness.”

After a long silence, someone finally continued:

“The year you were five, she was pregnant with another child, but she couldn’t keep it.

“During that time, she didn’t leave the house or see anyone all day. She must have been utterly heartbroken.”

I was stunned.

This was something I had never known.

So, was my mother’s death caused by a miscarriage?

If that was the case, then my family’s tendency to gloss over the details finally had a relatively logical explanation.