You stay in my heart

chapter twelve

Xu Bai for a few days, are playing outside with classmates, the high school entrance exam has ended, everyone is very relaxed.

Xu Bai wasted her time recklessly. Whenever she returned home in the evening, the sky was dark.

The alley was quiet and the courtyard was empty. She walked straight into the door, dare not look at Xie Pingchuan's home, eyes always fall in front, without an inch of deviation.

She could not help but recall that just a few days ago, Xie Pingchuan still lived next door. When they could still talk together, and he gave her a candy...

Her thoughts were interrupted by the noise of the living room.

Mother stood in the middle of the living room, her face as white as a sheet of paper.

The tap in the kitchen was left on and the sound of the water echoed, the living room was eerily quiet, and my father sat on the sofa smoking.

"Don't think about it," said the father hoarsely. "It's not what it seems."

Fragments of the vase were scattered on the floor, and Xu Bai's mother crouched down slowly to pick them up one by one.

"It's not what I saw, and you don't even bother to explain it," Xu Bai's mother said, lowering her voice and calling her by her first name. "Xu Lihui, I married you back then, and now I regret it."

Her husband heard this and snuffed out his cigarette in the ashtray.

The living room smelled of smoke, and the cat was lying in the corner, sneezing.

Xu Bai's father came closer and brought a stronger cigarette stimulus: "You can't think nonsense, I didn't do anything wrong to you."

What do you mean by "sorry about what happened to you"?

Xu Bai, standing in the entrance, was confused in his mind.

The father did not pay attention to her, still talking to himself: "That woman is my second uncle's cousin, she came to Beijing for two days, the second uncle entrusted me to take care of..."

Xu Bai's mother did not directly refute, she smashed another enamel vase.

The vase fell to the ground and cracked with a bang.

"You have no conscience, you are shameless, you are immoral," Xu Bai's mother said, "and now you are making up lies."

She was so angry that the fragments of the vase cut her palm and she felt no pain at all. The blood of the whole body is concentrated in the brain, the moment of breathing seems to be taking drugs, she seems to have endless strength, and it seems that even standing is not stable.

No one spoke, and the living room was eerily silent.

And she held the wall and said one word at a time: "Xu Lihui, you are a forty-year-old person, will you open a room with your cousin?"

She took off the picture on the wall and threw it on the floor.

The picture on the wall is her own hand-drawn wedding photo. At that time, she was only twenty-two years old, and she was willing to marry Xu Bai's father, and how much sweetness was in her heart when she drew, and how much tenderness was in the moment of writing.

But now, when the mounted glass breaks, the bits and pieces of the past, all turned into sharp steel knives, without pause, without pity, hard inserted into her heart.

"I'm really disappointed," she said. "I didn't expect you to do this. Have you thought about your family, your wife and children?"

Xu Bai's father was silent.

He was very good at explaining things, and Xu Bai rarely kept silent.

Once the father is silent, it is probably silent honesty, helpless acknowledgement.

He seemed to be trying to save it: "Wife, I promise you, I made a mistake, during that time you were always busy painting, I could not see your people when I went home, I was out socializing, drinking too much wine..."

He seemed to have something to say, which he would not say at the moment. So the sentence stops there, and he lights another cigarette.

Enveloped in smoke, steaming like clouds on the horizon, Xu Bai heard his father humble, his voice hoarse: "I apologize, you don't divorce me."

You're not divorcing me.

As soon as these six words came out, Xu Bai leaned his back against the wall and slumped down on the ground.

She lacked the strength to stand up.

My mind is so messed up, I can't find the source.

She sat alone in the hallway for a long time until her parents were tired of Shouting. Her mother went to the bedroom to collect things, her father was in the study making phone calls, and the cat in the living room was barking uneasily. Xu Baicai finally got up and took the cat into her arms.

Xu Bai hoped that this was a nightmare, and when she woke up the next day, everything would be back to normal.

But the next morning, just like last night.

June into the summer, seven or eight points of the sun is also very dazzling, shining on the windowsill, like a layer of new paint.

Xu Bai got up from bed, but the mood fell to the bottom.

The noise of the parents' arguments came into the bedroom, and her father nearly said in a high voice, "I apologized to you and promised not to contact her again, can't you give me a chance?" Nobody's perfect. Who doesn't make mistakes sometimes?"

"Please keep your voice down," Xu Bai's mother interrupted. "Xu Bai is still sleeping. Don't let your daughter know the dirty things you've done."

But she already knew.

Xu Bai lay on the bed and covered his ears with a quilt.

The conflict between the parents lasted three days, until the fourth day, Xu Bai's grandmother came to the rescue, and the family could smash almost all the things.

The old woman is seventy years old and very healthy. Although she has lived in the country all year round, she has lived in the city when she was young.

Xu Bai's father was her only son, and Xu Bai was her favorite granddaughter. On the first day she came to their home, she touched Xu Bai's little face and said, "Your quarrels are quarrels. Don't starve my precious granddaughter."

Xu Bai doesn't talk much these days.

She could sit there all day holding the cat by herself.

Grandma distressed unceasingly: "Look at you, more than forty people, the home is not a home, the children are like this, you still only care about yourself?"

She did not care about what her son had done, and came up to accuse Xu Bai's mother: "Not that I said you, which woman is not so over, for the family, for the children, how hard you work, count me as a mother please."

After that, Grandma held Xu Bai's mother's hand: "Mom knows you are wronged, but the home can not be scattered."

Family must not part. Family must not part.

But who wants to leave? Who doesn't want to live?

No one cleaned the room for a few days, and Xu Bai cleaned the room alone that afternoon. She cleared out a few bags of debris, and as she passed the study, she heard her mother crying again.

In the eyes of many children, parents carry a day - they will not be weak, will not collapse, and will not shed tears.

However, Xu Bai's sky may have fallen.

In just a few days, she heard her father swear, saw her mother cry alone, and refused to let anyone near her.

Xu Bai finished cleaning, went to cook a pot of porridge. She filled a large bowl of porridge and served it to her mother with chopsticks.

"Mom," said Xu Bai, "you haven't eaten today."

The corner of the study was a mess, and the palette was turned upside down on the carpet in absurd hues.

A lot of drawing paper was torn up, albums were scattered around, and photos fell out of them.

Xu Bai glanced down and saw a picture of her as a child - she saw her father holding her high, her mother smiling, the sun shining brightly to her eyes, the world spotless.

Now, mother hushed and said to her: "Little white, mother only you."

Xu Bai gently "um" a sound, but the tears pattered down.

She held the rice bowl high to stop the tears, but in doing so her clothes got wet.

The most relaxed summer vacation of his peers in junior high school covered the most difficult moment of Xu Baiyou's life.

Her mother had her boundaries, and her husband's infidelity was one of them. Her mother insisted on divorcing her father, but Xu Bai's grandmother could not persuade her, and finally she gave in and said, "OK, OK, you leave."

When Xu Bai's parents were in trouble for a few days, the "shameless woman" in her mother's mouth once visited her.

But she did not dare to go to the front door, she met Xu Bai's father in the backyard.

That day Xu Bai was looking for the cat in the backyard, and when she found the cat, she also saw her father and the third party who intervened.

Neither of the adults noticed her.

Xu Bai's father seemed to have aged ten years in the past month, and his hair was gray at the temples. But because he has a good foundation, he still looks good.

While lighting a cigarette, he opened his mouth and said, "Tao Juan, are you finished?"

The woman named Tao Juan is a straight looking woman in her early twenties. Her skin color is dark, the corners of her eyes are slender, even if Xu Bai's father is impatient, Tao Juan's eyes are still smiling.

"Husband," she called affectionately, "I haven't seen you in ages."

Xu Bai stood in the corner, eavesdropping on their conversation, heard Tao Juan that sound "husband", she suddenly felt a nausea.

Why is that?

She really can't figure out why her father would cheat on her.

Xu Bai did not know before that reality could be so grotesque.

Before this, whenever Xu Bai watched TV, saw the family mediation program, playing the picture of her husband cheating and his wife crying, Xu Bai was faced with the mentality of a bystander, and responded to his wife with a sigh and sympathy.

Today, she can't watch. She's an insider.

On the other side of the corner, Xu Bai's father flicked away the soot: "Tao Juan, I didn't understand what I said last time, or do you not understand Chinese?"

He took a drag on his cigarette and then asked, "Who gave you the address and how do you know where I live?"

In high summer, vegetation flourishes.

Tao Juan stood leaning against the wall, her thin legs in silk stockings tickled by long strips of thatch.

She crouched down and scratched her legs before answering, "I went to find your buddy because I had it in my stomach. Your friend helped me and he didn't want to hurt your baby."

Tao Juan paused for a moment and said with a smile: "I feel like a boy, your daughter is so lovely, and you are going to add a son, how happy you are."