sunk into the earth

Chapter 22 I don't know what to call this chapter

There are only a few rows of buildings in the family courtyard of Sangang. In the past few years, it was still full of people living in it. In recent years, people are rushing to other places like a flood that has been opened to release the flood. The people in the courtyard are getting fewer and fewer, but the building is getting darker. From time to time, a few ugly words that were painted out on the wall appeared on the wall.

Many years ago, when Li Xiaoyun came home in the middle of the night, she met a sneaky and thin man. He was carrying a bucket of black paint, and he was painting the wall of the previous building with a brush: I am more than Huang Li.Li Xiaoyun knew that Huang Li was beaten by her alcoholic husband every day after giving birth to her daughter, but her husband was not the strange man in front of her who was painting.

This incident caused quite a disturbance at the time, and it didn't take long for the woman named Huang Li to be overwhelmed by the rumors and commit suicide by lying on the train, leaving a daughter who was only in primary school to continue to suffer.

Since then, painting the walls has become a popular humiliating method.This is normal. If everyone has no job, they need to pass the time that is too rich in drastic ways—either hurting themselves and their families, or insulting others for fun.

The only strange thing is that no man's name has ever appeared on it. Those men who eat, drink, whore and gamble no matter what they do, no one blames them, and they even get together without shame to laugh at each other for all the evil they have done.Li Xiaoyun noticed this, and then she realized that it is much easier to let a woman die than a man, so whenever she passed by these rows of buildings, she was terrified, for fear that one day her name would appear on them .

Today, she was invited by Grandma Cheng Sheng to a restaurant to talk about something. On the way home, she saw a few bright red characters on the right wall of her apartment building, which looked like they were sprayed with paint.She still had Grandma Qian Chengsheng's suggestion in her mind for half an hour, and she was stunned by the bright colors on the wall for a moment, and when she tried to read it carefully, she found that it said - Li Xiaoyun's son is gay, disgusting.

These words had been passed through Li Xiaoyun's mind hundreds of times in different forms in the past few days, but when they turned bright red and pierced her eyes, she still felt ashamed of being stripped naked and thrown into the square.

But fortunately, this line of hot words only appeared today, and her son who had run away from home for a few days did not have the chance to see it, which made Li Xiaoyun heave a sigh of relief.She came home slowly, poured water, and was in a daze.After a while, she dialed Cheng Sheng's grandma's phone again, and when the old man's voice sounded, she said calmly, "When can we start the matter we just talked about?"

They talked for a short time, and most of the time Li Xiaoyun was repeatedly checking whether Grandma Cheng Sheng's promise could be done, such as "How soon can Zhang Chen pass by?", "Will people in big cities look down on Midway The transfer student who came here", "What if the household registration is not completed", Grandma Li assured her there, saying that this matter is safe, as long as Zhang Chen leaves, the two children will never see each other for the rest of their lives.

This call reassured Li Xiaoyun a lot. She didn't care whether Cheng Sheng and Zhang Chen would meet again in the future. She just had her own selfish intentions and tried her best to push her son out of this hopeless town and never come back for the rest of her life.

She hasn't studied for a few years, but she has seen a lot of people coming and going, and knows that people and the city are symbiotic.But when she looked at Cheng Sheng and his grandma, she didn't even need to look carefully, she could smell the rich ink on the grandparents and grandchildren with just a few sniffs.Li Xiaoyun longed for this kind of taste. She thought in her heart that Zhang Chen shouldn't be shrouded in the gray fog of Yuncheng, and should stand out like a child like Cheng Sheng, and separate himself from a family like her own.

Finally, Li Xiaoyun said to Grandma Cheng Sheng on the other end of the phone: "Our family owes you a great favor."

After the phone call ended, Li Xiaoyun started to pack her things, cleaned the house completely, and then found a piece of loose-leaf paper from Zhang Chen's desk, wrote a few lines on it carefully, folded it carefully and pressed it under the pillow.

After doing all this, Li Xiaoyun felt unprecedented relief. She wiped off the sweat from her forehead, rested for a while, and realized that it was time for her to go out to find her child.

***

These days, the weather in Yuncheng is abnormal. One second, it was still a poisonous sun, and the next second it turned into a torrential rain. The raindrops poured down like a shower.On the way Cheng Sheng went to the department store, the sky was still clear, but by the time he arrived at Zhang Chen's house, it had already started to drizzle.He didn't open an umbrella, and he didn't pay much attention to it. He just walked into the old community carefully protecting the gift he just bought from a department store in his arms.

When he reached the building of Zhang Chen's house, he stopped suddenly.The few Miao people who walked past him were still making jokes, but when they saw him, they stopped talking and walked past him in silence.

On the gray building in front, there are bright red characters that are eye-catching, sprayed with paint, and written on the gray wall-Li Xiaoyun's son is gay, disgusting.

The three words "gay" were also doubled. I don't know if it was the deliberate revenge of the original woman in the sunglasses or some uneasy and kind person sprayed it on purpose.

The rain continued, neither too heavy nor too small, and the words that had dried up on the wall could not be wiped off.But what if it was wiped off, the bright red words were soaked by the rain, like bleeding, and it was even more embarrassing.

Cheng Sheng just looked up and gritted his teeth before running out.

The people around were startled by him, they avoided him like the plague, and took the initiative to avoid him.They still have a bit of morality, so they won't speak ill of people in person, but after that day, all the families warned their children to avoid them, homosexuals are sick, AIDS or other unspeakable diseases, who knows Whether that thing can be contagious, if it is infected, it will last a lifetime, and it can't be cured by treatment.

Cheng Sheng ran to the grocery store outside and asked the boss for a bottle of black spray paint.The boss, who was listening to the radio, glanced at him sideways, carefully twirling the money he put on the table with a ballpoint pen, as if he was afraid of catching some disease if he touched him, with a vigilant look on his face.

Cheng Sheng didn't care about the boss's actions, took the black paint and ran back, ran to the front of the building with bright red and eye-catching big characters, took apart the black paint he just bought, and sprayed it on the whole building as if venting his anger.

The black paint turned into ink-colored water in the rain, flowing down the wall.Trembling, Cheng Sheng sprayed upwards, trying to cover all these dirty words, but the scarlet words on the wall were too big, and the paint was used up after covering only half of it.

What will Zhang Chen do when he sees these words, blame him for hating him?Cheng Sheng didn't dare to continue thinking about it, because he was afraid that Zhang Chen wouldn't even bother to hate him, so he just passed him lightly.

As soon as he thought of this, Cheng Sheng felt that someone was coming behind him. Instead of avoiding him like others, that person walked slowly behind him and stopped.

The shirt on Cheng Sheng's body was drenched, and he was holding an empty can that had been sprayed in his hand, looking embarrassed.He was startled by the sudden movement behind him, turned around and found that it was Li Xiaoyun who was patting him on the shoulder.Her expression was indifferent, without the vigor of "I hate you to death" in grandma's mouth, and she didn't look at the half-covered words on the wall, but asked him in her usual tone: "Why are you here?"

Cheng Sheng was already planning to ask someone to beat him out with a broom, but Li Xiaoyun didn't show any hostility. In a panic, he held the gift in his arms and showed it to her, and hurriedly apologized: "Auntie, last time I'm the one with the cheapest mouth, and I'm going to bite everyone when I go crazy, I'm sorry."

All he answered was a flat "It's okay."

The rain in the sky became irritable in just a few seconds. It was still a drizzle at first, but it turned into a bomb and poured down in an instant.Li Xiaoyun wiped the water from her face and looked at this boy who was much taller than her. She turned a corner when she originally wanted to go out to find her son, and said to him gently: "The rain is getting heavier, don't stay outside Come on, come home with me."

Cheng Sheng followed her upstairs, clutching his wet cuffs, and kept saying "I'm sorry" all the way, but Li Xiaoyun didn't respond any more.

There was no one at home, so Li Xiaoyun brought Cheng Sheng a dry towel and asked him to wipe it off.Then he turned around and went to the top of the closet to take down a photo album box, sat down beside the bed covered in moisture, and beckoned Cheng Sheng to come over and watch together, "Let's go after the rain stops, first look at the photos to pass the time."

The first photo album was in 1979. It was a black and white photo. Li Xiaoyun and Zhang Licheng were drinking a cup of wine in skirts.

Then turn to 1980, and the baby who is a few months old is staring at the camera and laughing.Li Xiaoyun pointed to this photo and said to Cheng Sheng: "People say that boys look like their mothers and girls look like their fathers. Zhang Chen looks like me. It would be terrible if he looked like his father."

The next few pages are all about Zhang Chen in his childhood, with a clever face, the most eye-catching one among the group of children.Cheng Sheng put his wet fingers on the photo and rubbed it several times. He didn't know that Zhang Chen had so many expressions in the past.

"Zhang Chen should have a younger sister." Li Xiaoyun turned her fingers, and slowly talked about the past: "In [-], I was pregnant again. People said it was a girl. There was a boy and a girl in the family. What a happy child, but at that time the birth was not allowed. The family planning director took me to the hospital to induce labor, and the child who was already several months old was induced. I don’t know if it was because of this incident, and the family became worse after that. Yuncheng is also getting worse day by day, those who have connections and are brave enough to go to the south to do business, and those of us who are timid and only know how to craft are staying here, and we can live every day."

Speaking of this, Li Xiaoyun laughed again: "My family is considered strong. Zhang Chen has good grades since he was a child, and No. [-] Middle School is the best middle school in our country. We all point to him to get ahead. At least there is something to look forward to." After she finished speaking, she didn't know what to think , asked Cheng Sheng: "Where is your high school? Is it also your No. [-] middle school?"

Cheng Sheng was fascinated by the sound, and after a while he said, "No, it's the High School Affiliated to the National People's Congress."

Li Xiaoyun didn't know which corner middle school this was, but she just patted the back of Cheng Sheng's hand gently, as if treating him as her own child.

The lights were not turned on in the room, and as the outside gradually darkened, Cheng Sheng looked sideways at Li Xiaoyun's pale face, and suddenly said, "Auntie, you look bad, let me help you put on some lipstick."

Cheng Sheng rustled out a lipstick from the gift box he had just bought, unscrewed the cap clumsily, twisted out a piece of unfamiliar paste, and carefully applied it to Li Xiaoyun.

There was thunder and lightning outside, and a flash of lightning brightened the room. Cheng Sheng saw Li Xiaoyun's radiant face clearly in this gap. He couldn't hold back, stroked a few scattered white hairs on her temples, and said softly: "Everything will be fine." of."

Li Xiaoyun didn't look in the mirror. She couldn't understand how she put on lipstick. She just put away the stack of photo albums scattered on the bed, stood up, put them on the top of the closet, and turned around to pick up a handful from the door. Hei Shan walked towards the gate, turned his back to Cheng Sheng and said, "Zhang Chen is not at home these days, and I don't know where he is going. Auntie has to find him quickly. You can stay at home until the rain stops. Go back to your grandma."

There was the sound of the iron door closing, and Cheng Sheng also stood up, picked up an umbrella next to her, followed her footsteps, and chased after her, "I'll go too, I'll look in another direction."