Chapter 2
Chapter 2
I carefully closed the door, too terrified to go back to the bathroom.
As a result, I wet the bed.
Heaven knows how desperate I felt when I woke up.
My Adoptive Mother already disliked me. On my very first day, I had soiled the fragrant, soft sheets and bedding; she would surely want nothing more than to sweep me out of the house immediately.
At five in the morning, I crept out of bed and carried the sheets to the bathroom.
I soaked them in a large bucket and stepped inside with my bare feet to scrub them.
After treading on them for a short while, a cold voice came from behind me: “What are you doing?”
I jolted in fear, my body leaning back until I fell flat on my bottom.
The bucket tipped over, drenching me in water.
My Adoptive Mother reached out toward me.
Subconsciously, I covered my head, trembling uncontrollably. “Dad, please don’t hit me, don’t hit me! I won’t ever wet the bed again!”
After a long silence, a cold hand pulled me up from the floor. “That bucket is for washing the mop.”
Huh?
But it was cleaner than the buckets I used to carry water with in the countryside.
“Clothes and sheets can be washed in the washing machine.”
It was a Little Swan twin-tub washing machine, and I had no idea how to use it.
My Adoptive Mother taught me step-by-step, then said, “From now on, all the laundry in this house is your responsibility.”
This was much easier than washing clothes in the river.
But I still managed to cause trouble.
I mixed the dark clothes with the light ones, and my Adoptive Mother’s white dress ended up stained a muddy color.
She was furious. “Do you have any idea how much this dress cost? I waited two months before I finally bought it, and I’ve only worn it once!”
“You can’t even handle a simple task like this.”
My Adoptive Father stepped in to play peacemaker. “Xiao Jue didn’t do it on purpose. Just buy a new one.”
This only made my Adoptive Mother angrier. “Easy for you to say. This dress was expensive.”
My Adoptive Father wasn’t just talking, though.
That very night, he bought an identical one and brought it home.
He even pulled me aside into the hallway and handed me a lollipop the size of a fist that he’d been hiding.
“This is the biggest candy in the whole supermarket. Eat up.”
“Your auntie goes around with a long face all day, but she’s a paper tiger. She has a good heart, so don’t be afraid of her.”
My Adoptive Mother didn’t sound like a paper tiger, though, because she let out a lion’s roar.
“This candy costs eight yuan! Eight yuan could buy two pounds of meat! Chu Anbang, what on earth is going on in that head of yours?”
“And this dress-I could have bleached it back to white with some 84 disinfectant! Was the money burning a hole in your pocket?”
…
Back then, my adoptive parents were always fighting over things like that.
I didn’t understand it at the time, but I realized the truth as I grew older.
My Adoptive Father was a painter. He was kind by nature, a romantic to his core.
Even if he only had twenty yuan in his pocket, he would spend it all to buy my Adoptive Mother a large bouquet of beautiful but useless roses.
Whenever inspiration struck, he would hop on his motorcycle and head out to find scenery.
He was a handsome, wandering artist with many artistic soulmates.
All the trivial burdens of daily life fell onto my Adoptive Mother’s shoulders.
It was a collision between realism and romanticism.
It was hard to say who was right or wrong.
My Adoptive Father wasn’t exactly a ‘good man,’ but he certainly wasn’t a bad one!
Consequently, my Adoptive Mother both loathed and loved him, remaining irritable all day long.
Because of that, she never had a smile for me, either.
I later gave that giant lollipop to Chu Qi.
He took it and immediately slammed it onto the ground, looking at me with resentment. “I don’t want your candy!”
My Adoptive Father was someone who couldn’t stay in one place for long.
This time, because of me, he stayed home for over a month.
Once my school enrollment procedures were finished, on a gloomy evening, he left a letter, got on his motorcycle, and set off on another wandering journey.
My Adoptive Mother was enraged. She tore the letter to shreds, grabbed my arm, and shoved me out the door.
“Get out, get out, get out! He’s gone, so you can leave too!”
“He expects me to take good care of you? In his dreams!”
…
The late September night was slightly chilly.
The light in the stairwell was broken, so I huddled under the window with my arms wrapped around myself, watching the hazy moon obscured by dark clouds.
This was my world, I suppose.
Even if there was a moon…
It was only a tiny, blurred glimmer of light.
I don’t know how long I crouched there.
I was almost asleep when the door creaked open.
My Adoptive Mother stood over me, her expression cold and laced with disgust. “Come in.”
A steaming bowl of egg noodles sat on the dining table, with my dedicated set of chopsticks laid out beside it.
My Adoptive Mother had already slammed the door to the master bedroom shut.
My stomach growled loudly, and I carefully finished the bowl of noodles.
My Adoptive Father would call twice a week to ask how I was doing and if everything was alright.
He would tell me about what he saw on his travels.
A flower with a strange color, a particularly clever local dog, or the most magnificent sunrise he’d ever seen.
He would also listen patiently as I shared the little things from my daily life.
At the end of every call, he always said, “Xiao Jue, when Uncle returns from his trip, I’ll bring you a mysterious surprise!”
Whenever he finished talking to me and handed the phone to my Adoptive Mother, her tone was always harsh. “Before she was here, we wouldn’t hear from you for ten days or even half a month.”
“What, are the two of us combined not as important as her?”
…
My Adoptive Mother was always cold toward me.
My brother was also very hostile.
We went to the same school.
Every day we walked to school together, but I only dared to follow him from a distance.
His classmates would tease him every time: “Chu Qi, is this your new sister?”