Chapter 509: Chapter 38: Cotton Peasant Family (Part 2)
After carefully separating the dust-covered and clean pastries, she placed the walnuts and raisins on the clean portion, handing them to Abudan. "Eat up, they’re really tasty."
Abudan took the pastries and, like a little dog, first sniffed them under his nose, then licked one, his small mouth spreading into a smile, "Sister, you eat too."
The little girl only had some dirty pastry crumbs left in her hand, but she still poured them into her mouth. Just as she was about to savor the deliciousness of the Baklava, she heard a "crack" — she had bitten into a stone.
Abudan looked at his sister nervously. The little girl shook her hand, "It’s a particularly large piece of walnut."
"The door, left ajar, was pushed open and a woman came out. Her whole face looked flat, perhaps from eating too much Xinjiang bread; she had small eyes, thick lips, and a sunken nose, bearing not the slightest resemblance to the beauty of a Uighur woman.
"Aunt Jiva, what are you doing at my house again? My dad said last time, you’re not allowed to think about kidnapping Abudan," in Ulucosa Town, actually only sixty percent of the population are permanent residents. The other forty percent, without cotton fields or just too lazy to work them, have rented their fields to Ahmat and generally live off the rent or by picking cotton during the harvest season to make money.
Now, it’s not the cotton-picking season yet, so some people are up to no good, selling children from the town, especially clever-looking little boys, for a high price elsewhere.
The woman known to the siblings as Aunt Jiva was one of those people.
She had some blood relation to their Uighur mother, Guli Azha, and seeing their poor family circumstances, she repeatedly came to persuade them to sell the children. Each time she came, the father and daughter chased her out with a broom, and yet today she found an opportunity when the girl and the man of the house were not home, to come over again.
"Ts, ts, how can you talk like that, Pali Dan? I came to help your family. Everyone knows you are poor, all the children in the town go to school, yet you and your brother still hide at home. Your aunt and your mom agreed, I won’t sell your brother, I’ll just take him out to beg." When Aunt Jiva said the word "beg," there wasn’t a hint of embarrassment in her.
"What did you say? Abudan won’t go begging with you, my dad would never agree to such a shameful thing," the little girl, frightened, hid her brother behind her, but she was already petite and wasn’t much taller than her own brother.
"Who says begging is shameful? Having no money is what’s shameful. I give your family five thousand a year, and when there’s a need for more, I can also give him some treats. It’s much better than you two hardly tasting Baklava even a few times a year. Go on, what do children know. Your mom agreed, now get out of the way," Aunt Jiva, like a hungry wolf, lunged to take the little boy and leave. The little girl desperately clung to Jiva’s arm, trying to rescue her brother from her grip.
The little boy looked petrified, unable to cry or shout.
How could Aunt Jiva let the little girl drag her down? If she hesitated any longer, the father would come back; she had timed her visit precisely when Zhou Qi would be busy in his almost dead cotton field. The siblings’ mother, frail and often ill, lamented their poverty and the hardship on the two children, but having one of them go out to see the world was a good thing, she thought.
"Don’t let my brother become a beggar, I’ll go with you. I can wash dishes, scrub pots, cook, I can sew buttons for you, I’ll go with you, I can earn a lot of money," the little girl yelled in Uighur, shouting toward the bungalow as she spoke. But she didn’t have enough strength, and she was thrown to the ground like a speck of dust by Aunt Jiva, whose forearm was thicker than her waist.
Dust covered her face, leaving only despair in her eyes.
"Hey! Help! Murder!" The wicked woman Jiva let out a heartbreaking scream just as she was about to drag the little boy away when a sudden blow from behind took her by surprise. Her wrists were grabbed, and then her arms were twisted behind her back.
The twisted arm was contorted like a rope, and the bread-faced woman’s head violently hit the ground. Before she could make another sound, her mouth was shoved into the dirt, "Mmmph, Mmmph," choking on a mouthful of mud.
The little girl quickly pulled her brother back, and upon seeing who had subdued Aunt Jiva, she froze on the spot.
The commotion startled the ill Uighur woman lying in the bungalow, the mother of the two siblings. She leaned on the door and came out, seeing a strange young man standing at the doorstep with her daughter and son standing beside him; one with slight redness around her eyes showing unease, the other’s eyes shimmering with admiration.
Aunt Jiva’s flowery rhetoric had temporarily swayed the mother’s heart. The family was poor; her body was weak; her husband had a stubborn personality, refusing to plant any crops other than cotton.
Seeing that this year’s cotton harvest was still poor, the mother could only think of ways to scrounge up some money for the family, giving in to Aunt Jiva’s rotten idea in a moment of weakness.
But just as she stepped out the door, the mother’s heart began to ache. Her children were her heart and soul. The words her daughter was shouting outside were clearly meant for her to hear, and she heard every word. The pang in the mother’s heart grew sour.
And then she thought about sending her child out to beg—a loss of dignity. Her husband, in all his dealings, valued dignity above all else. If he found out his son was rented out for "child rent" money of five thousand a year, it would probably kill him with fury.
Zhou Ziang looked up at the three people standing under the bungalow, and at Aunt Jiva, still grunting, "I came to repay the money for the Baklava."
**
This week, with full 10 fans, there will be three updates; normally this week there will be two updates, at 00:28 in the early morning and 15:28 in the afternoon.
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