Chapter 21: Parental reassurance

Before I could finish the bland congee, my father came in, glanced at my mother, and asked, “When did you wake up? Did you take your medicine?”

“He’s been awake for twenty minutes. I’ve given him his medicine, and now I’m giving him some porridge. After he’s eaten, I’ll give him his after-dinner medicine.” My mother answered while feeding me porridge. I saw my father trembling, and even his porridge-eating became a bit more nimble. I was afraid that my father would find a reason to scold me.

My mother sat down by my bed, looking as if she wanted to say something, but quickly said, “You can tell me what you want to say after I feed him his meal.”

She was afraid that I wouldn’t dare to eat if my father interrogated me.

After eating the porridge with trepidation, my father coughed twice and cleared his throat, and sure enough, he began: “Sanwa, why did you burn Liu Chunyan’s hair?”

“I… didn’t do it for any reason. I didn’t want to burn it. I just wanted to play with it, and it just caught fire.” I carefully answered my father’s question. I was afraid to lie. If I usually did something wrong, it was okay to admit it. But if I lied, my father wouldn’t mind beating me all over the yard.

“You think you can burn someone’s hair just for fun? If I want to have fun, do I have to burn your hair too?” My father was angry, and his voice suddenly rose three points. My two older sisters are beautiful and sensible, and they are the pride of our village. He just couldn’t understand how his only son, me, could become a typical example of a “negative role model” in the village. He was always too proud to lose face, and he often felt that I was too ashamed of him.

I was so scared that I couldn’t speak, and at that moment my mother desperately grabbed my father’s clothes, as if to remind him of something.

After my mother reminded him, my father finally reacted, saying, “If there is another time, you will be bald for a year, and you won’t be able to grow a single hair on your head.”

After saying this, my father’s face softened, and he didn’t mention Liu Chunyan’s hair again. Instead, he fell silent, as if he was thinking about what to say.

I didn’t think about it too much at the time, I was just happy that I had escaped another disaster. My father rarely stopped beating me, unless it was too severe. What was even more rare was that my father accepted the stop so obediently.

Haha, the sun is going to rise in the west. What can I do? Would I ask why and then shove it back to the east? I wouldn’t be so stupid.

As soon as he let go of me, and after eating something warm, I started to feel sleepy again, but my father started talking again: “Sanwa, what did you do last night? Tell me in detail.”

Is he going to start asking about what happened last night? I felt a chill run down my spine and quickly replied, “Nothing much. I was walking around, got hungry, picked three ears of corn, went to the bamboo forest to cook them, then went to sleep.

When I think about what happened yesterday, I feel a lump in my throat, and I realize that I can’t explain the whole story in detail. I can’t go on when I see my father’s increasingly serious expression.

Who knew that my father didn’t care about where I got the corn, and didn’t pursue my intention to run away from home at all. Instead, he tried to soften his facial lines and said very gently, “Then what happened? Tell me.”

“Then I don’t know what happened, I just walked to the cemetery. I… I felt… I walked there with my eyes closed.” It was rare for my father to be so gentle, so I quickly said it. Besides, this matter was also blocking my heart, and I hoped to get a reasonable explanation from the adults.

My father’s face completely sank, and even my mother’s face looked very ugly. I didn’t know what was wrong with this section, making my parents so serious. Even if I got the fifth lowest score on the final exam last semester, they didn’t act like this.

I felt a little scared, looking at them helplessly. Strangely, my father didn’t seem to be angry at all. Instead, he stood up, paced around the room, and then took out his cigarettes from his pocket, intending to roll one and smoke it. He looked at me, but then went out again.

My mother’s eyes became very strange, and she just touched my head without saying anything. Her expression was clearly very worried.

I didn’t know what was going on, but I always felt that my parents had something on their minds, something big.

After a while, my father came in, smelling of smoke. I guessed he had just gone out to smoke. As soon as he came in, he sat down next to me and put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Sanwa, you have to tell your father honestly what you were crying about yesterday and what you were afraid of. The more detailed you are, the better. No matter what it is, your father believes you.”

At this time, my father’s eyes were firm and full of trust, and the hand on my shoulder also gave a sense of strength between men. I could even sense this feeling, and for a moment I had great courage. I told him everything that happened last night, including the inexplicable dream of the light spot, the house, the person in the shroud, and the bright light on my chest, as well as the faint roar of a tiger.

I only left out the last part, where I saw a red dot following me, because I was not sure about it.

The more I listened, the more my father’s face turned ugly. In the end, he simply hugged me in his arms and kept touching my head, hard. I don’t know what he was trying to express, but it made me all goosebumps, because my father had almost never been so mushy with me.

As for my mother, she actually shed tears, but I don’t know why.

After a long time, the strange atmosphere in the room finally dissipated. My father finally patted my head and said, “Good son, good boy, you didn’t pee your pants yesterday.”

Hearing my father’s praise, I was very pleased and quickly said, “I wasn’t scared at first. It was only when the man was about to hit me that I was scared! If I hadn’t noticed that they were wearing such scary clothes, I wouldn’t have cried…”

It was true. My father didn’t contradict me for the first time, but just touched my head again and kept saying, “Good son, good son…”

I had never been praised like that since I could remember, and the repeated “good son” made me feel uncomfortable. I was about to die of my father’s mushy words, so I quickly changed the subject: “Dad, what happened yesterday?”

What happened yesterday? My father was stunned by my question and for a moment he just touched my head and fell silent. On the contrary, my mother wiped her tears and said loudly, “What happened? You caught a cold in the bamboo forest yesterday and had a fever, so you were confused.”

Sometimes, men are not as quick-witted as women. In this case, my father’s response was obviously not as quick as my mother’s.

But because of the haste of the answer, my mother’s answer was not satisfactory to me, who was full of curiosity about everything. I looked at my father with some doubt, and my father also reacted at this time, saying with an unnatural expression on his face, “You are sleepwalking. People who sleepwalk, cough… are like dreaming. The fact that your eyes are not open is the best proof. Coupled with your fever, your mind is a little unclear.”

I knew about sleepwalking. A classmate once told me that his brother sleepwalked and woke up in the middle of the night to catch chickens in the yard. After he was beaten awake, he didn’t know anything…

I thought it was amazing, but I never thought it would happen to me.

Well, I could accept my father’s explanation of sleepwalking. For a moment, I felt extremely relieved and stopped thinking about it. Gradually, I felt sleepy and fell asleep in bed.

When I woke up again, it was my eldest sister who woke me up by pinching my face. When I opened my eyes, I saw my eldest sister’s angry expression and my second sister’s gentle smile.

My two sisters have very different personalities. My eldest sister is called Chen Xia, and she really has a heroic (homophonic with Xia) temperament. She is also very straightforward and has a typical Sichuan temper.

My second sister is Chen Xiaojuan, gentle and soft-spoken.

When I was a child, I was closer to my second sister than to my eldest sister. If I was naughty, my eldest sister would get angry and beat me, but my second sister would never do that. At most, she would get red in the face and gently scold me, but she would never even scold me.

When my eldest sister pinched my face, I dared not struggle, so I could only force a smile and ask, “Eldest sister, why did you come back so early?”