Chapter 389
Under the extreme hardship of life, people dare to do anything.
Wu Xiaoping and her mom weren’t men and didn’t have the guts to stop and rob*, the only way they could think of was to sell*, but whore* wasn’t a job that anyone could do.
They couldn’t find a building that would take them, because her mom was too old and Wu Xiaoping wasn’t buff enough. Although she was young, she had been starving for too long and doing hard labor for too long, and she had lost her maidenly grace early on, becoming decrepit and unkempt.
Even if it is just in the streets and alleys as a wild prostitute can not, mother and daughter will not be able to distinguish what kind of man is a guest, what kind of hooligan.
In the end, they could only pick up garbage, begging for food from door to door, and then hanging out in front of various charitable organizations that might give out food, like churches, temples, nunneries, hospitals, and such places.
Zhu Yuyan was stunned to hear this, and realized that she had made a big mistake in her work. Despite doing charity, she did not have a shiny facade to use as a charity signboard. The few charity spots she had set up in the city also did not have food distribution every day, maybe only once a week. She also gave out food and medicine regularly at several orphanages and charity homes in the city.
She had thought that she had already done a lot, but now she realized that people like Wu Xiaoping’s mother and daughter who had no shelter at all and could only roam the streets would not be able to receive her help.
There must be many people like Wu Xiaoping and her daughter.
They lost their original jobs, no money to rent a room, and no way to find a stable job, and finally became beggars and vagabonds on the street.
Zhu Yuyan held Wu Xiaoping’s arm and asked her softly: “Then why did you come to me? Your mom and brother?”
Wu Xiaoping opened her eyes,not shedding tears, but her eyes were extraordinarily empty, looking at her hopefully, as if longing for her to give her a better answer.
“Mom told me to come to Missy, saying that she would let me come to be a maid, and that I was young enough to be a maid. Mom took my younger brother with her and they disappeared.”
What Wu Xiaoping said was a little unclear, but Zhu Yuyan understood, she didn’t think that Wu Xiaoping’s mom had abandoned her, she knew that Wu Xiaoping was thinking the same as her.
Wu Xiaoping’s mom took that little son and committed suicide.
In order not to drag her daughter down.
Her mom thought that if her daughter was the only one by herself, she could survive.
Coming to the Zhu family as a maid was a good way out. But even if Wu Xiaoping became a maid, whether she was in the Zhu family or not, if she still had a mother and a brother to support, it would be a very heavy burden for her.
It might also be a heavy burden for her mom to live. She had no choice, two children plus herself, she couldn’t think of a way to keep all three alive.
And she couldn’t do it by abandoning two children to live alone.
Or just one?
She couldn’t do that either.
Maybe this torture of the mind had been going on all along, and she had been thinking about it, weighing it.
In the end she did nothing.
And she didn’t have a chance to do it.
She let her daughter go, hoping that she would have a good outcome.
Then she took her son away and quietly killed herself.
The security team picks up a lot of bodies on their daily patrols, including those who died of disease, starvation, murder*, and suicide.
There are adults, old people, women, and children.
The security team wouldn’t check what cause of death all these people were, they would just search them for any money they had on them, and then they would be shipped off to be burned.
Wu Xiaoping’s mom might just be one of the inconspicuous ones, even though there might be a child lying beside her.
Zhu Yuyan held Wu Xiaoping’s hand and said, “Your mom and your brother must still be fine, I will try to find a way to look for them, don’t worry.”
Wu Xiaoping nodded vigorously.
Zhu Yuyan stood up, “You rest, you will stay in this room. Rest well first, I will let you do your work tomorrow.”
Wu Xiaoping hurriedly stood up and bounded behind her, seemingly wanting to serve her as a maid but not knowing what to do.
Zhu Yuyan patted her arm, “It’s fine, you rest.”
She closed the door and saw a guard standing in the opposite corridor, she was relieved by this, it would be fine with a guard watching over her.
She went to look for Su Chunjun and saw Xiao Fang as well.
Xiao Fang: “Second Miss.”
Su Chunjun said, “Sit down, has Wu Xiaoping settled in? How is she? Should we get a doctor to take a look at her.”
Zhu Yuyan sat down and sighed, “Tomorrow. She should be in need of some tests, she’s been wandering for at least two years, to see if she has any contagious diseases.” She asked, “Surely you must have had someone investigate as well?”
Su Chunjun glanced at Xiao Fang and said, “The investigation was very incomplete, it only looked into what happened when her father was still around, after her father was gone, Wu Xiaoping and her mother they lost track of her, they should have never been able to find a suitable job or rent an apartment.”
Xiao Fang said, “I have investigated the place where Wu Xiaoping’s family used to live, her father has always been related to the casino, he helped the casino to do the accounts to offset his own gambling debts, and the loan sharks, he and the loan sharks are a gang, I heard that it was the loan sharks who used the tactics to lure him into the gang. It shouldn’t be a day or two since he wanted to run.”
Zhu Yuyan: “Did he steal the money from the loan sharks to run away?”
Wu Xiaoping said that her father had borrowed from the loan sharks, but after listening to what Xiao Fang said, she felt that it should not be borrowing, but stealing.
Xiao Fang nodded, “Yes. He helped the loan sharks and casinos with their accounts, and he stole from the casinos and loan sharks before he had to run away, and didn’t bring his wife and children with him should also be afraid that they would drag his feet. He checked out of the room and told his wife and children that he borrowed money from the loan sharks to prevent them from running back to be caught by the loan sharks.”
Zhu Yuyan sneered. A little bit of unnoticeable “conscience”. But hasn’t he thought about it? Wife with three underage children, no job, no place to live, not a penny, how are they going to survive?
Maybe he thought about it, but he thought it was none of his business.
Xiaofang: “I also went to check the place where Wu Xiaoping’s mother and daughter washed their clothes, and the people there do remember them.”
Su Chunjun said, “Keep investigating.”
He glanced at Zhu Yuyan, knowing that she would definitely leave Wu Xiaoping behind.
When Xiao Fang left, Zhu Yuyan said, “I will think about sending her to the right place.”
For example, there were job opportunities to help women there in the church as well, or else in the factories.
It was impossible to really let her stay as a maid, where would she use a maid now?
Su Chunjun said, “Don’t worry too much, this matter doesn’t seem that complicated to me. It should just be that she happened to come to the door, and since she did, we’ll just find a way to save her life.”
Zhu Yuyan: “I think I may still need an office space.”
Su Chunjun: “You can also work here.”
Zhu Yuyan shook her head and said, “I thought of it after I heard about Wu Xiaoping’s family, I need to have a place where people who need help can find me.” Even if she could do little, she still needed to have this place.
Otherwise, how else could beggars run to the official residence? This street in front of the official residence was all free for idlers to enter.
Su Chunjun wanted to say that you can’t help all the people, and then he wanted to say that you’ve helped enough people, but what he ended up saying was, “Fine, if you want to do it, go ahead and do it.”
Zhu Yuyan then set about doing this. The place she needed couldn’t be in the bustling Ten Mile Ocean Park, but should be within people’s reach, in places like vegetable farms and garbage dumps.
She needed a place where she could provide aid on a continuous basis, the house should be large, the facilities didn’t have to be too new, plain or old would do, it should avoid being occupied by hooligans, and it should be possible for the homeless to stay, either to get a meal, or to be given a simple bit of medicine.
She wrote a plan, demarcated the area, and sent people out to look for houses.
And Xiaofang continued to report in the next day.
Xiaofang: “Wu Xiaoping’s little brother is not missing, but fell to his death there at the dump.”
All Wu Xiaoping knew was that her little brother had been abducted, probably because her mom hadn’t told her the truth.
Xiaofang: “This is the last place where we can find any trace of them, we can’t inquire about them next. They wandered around without a fixed abode.”
Su Chunjun: “Her mother and brother may be dead, check the bodies.”
Xiaofang: “Okay.”
Zhu Yuyan went to see Wu Xiaoping, the doctor had already been here, drew her blood, looked at her teeth, did some tests, and said that at the moment, only malnutrition and anemia could be seen, and that she would have to hold off for a while before taking the worming medicine.
Doctor: “Her teeth are almost finished, alas, young people ah, see the teeth are fast becoming sixty or seventy people.”
Zhu Yuyan: “She needs to recuperate, do you think it is possible for her to recover?”
Doctor: “It is indeed possible to recuperate slowly. But it’s impossible to say, in this world, can we still let her recuperate slowly like holding a lady, let’s do our best and listen to God’s fate. By the way, her stomach is not good, for the time being, only let her drink rice porridge, eat some noodles, meat can’t be eaten, oil can’t be eaten, green vegetables are also eaten sparingly, I’m afraid that the stalks of the green vegetables can’t be digested by her.”
Zhu Yuyan: “Good, I’ll make a note of it.”
In order to give Wu Xiaoping something to do, Zhu Yuyan began to play the role of a teacher, she used the reason that “my girl has to read the newspaper for me, so she has to be literate” to start teaching Wu Xiaoping language, math and English, and gave her copying assignments.
On the fourth day, Xiao Fang found the bodies of Wu Xiaoping’s mother and brother, because the security team had been patrolling the area by piece, and Wu Xiaoping’s mother and brother had been dead for five or six days before they arrived at the area and found them.
Xiao Fang was very competent, hired an old pallbearer to draw down the faces of the dead people according to their features and brought them back to Wu Xiaoping for confirmation.
In fact, it is not recognized can also be seen, the portrait is a brush drawing, the shape and spirit, and Wu Xiaoping is a mold carved out of the same like.
The old pallbearer followed along, looked at Wu Xiaoping and said, “It’s a family, the bones look the same, that ears and nose are the same, the little girl and the woman is the eyebrow bone eyes like, and the little boy is the jaw like, absolutely is a family.”
Su Chunjun confirmed that Wu Xiaoping’s origin is basically no problem before he reluctantly put down his heart, and said to Zhu Yuyan, “You happen to be doing something right now, why don’t you let Wu Xiaoping go and give you a hand, and you can let her go to work in the relief office you run.”
Zhu Yuyan said, “Good.”
This was also really a good idea.