Chapter 8: Window
Xiahou Ming came down from the rooftop with unsteady steps.
As soon as she jumped down from the maintenance ladder, she saw a figure standing there.
It was Ling Yicai.
She had actually been waiting for him here.
“Xiao Ming, are you okay?” She grabbed Xiahou Ming’s arm and looked her up and down, her eyes full of anxiety.
“That woman… didn’t do anything excessive to you, right?”
Xiahou Ming looked at her, moved his lips, but said nothing.
Something excessive?
The feeling of Yu Yuhui’s cold fingertips sliding across her lips and neck flashed through her mind.
“…Nothing.” She finally answered vaguely, her eyes avoiding, not daring to look Ling Yicai in the eye.
“Nothing?
But your face is pale.” Ling Yicai didn’t believe it.
She pulled her hand, her tone pleading, “Xiao Ming, what happened?
That tape, and her… what does she want you to do?”
Looking at Ling Yicai’s big eyes filled with worry, a thought popped up uncontrollably in Xiahou Ming’s mind.
Do you want to… talk to her?
She knew that as long as she told her, no matter how ridiculous the reason was, Ling Yicai would definitely help her.
That was just the kind of person she was.
But…
What should she say?
“Hey, Ling Yicai, can you… help me get a skirt?
Because a weirdo threatened me that if I don’t wear a skirt to school, she will play the recording of me licking your recorder in the classroom to the whole school.”
How is that possible?
Just thinking about this scene in her mind made her want to kill herself by hitting herself with a piece of tofu.
No.
Absolutely not.
This is her last pathetic bit of dignity as “Xiahou Ming”.
“I said, it’s nothing.” She shook off Ling Yicai’s hand, her tone becoming stiff and impatient, “Don’t meddle in my affairs anymore.”
After saying that, she no longer looked at Ling Yicai’s hurt expression and ran away without looking back.
After school, Xiahou Ming did not go home immediately.
She was alone, wandering aimlessly on the streets of the small town like a lonely ghost.
Yu Yuhui’s order was like a stone, weighing heavily on her heart.
Skirt.
A nicer skirt.
She walked along the most fashionable street in the town, where several clothing stores were located.
In the small town in 1995, this place had become synonymous with “trend”.
She stopped in front of a clothing store called “Dream Paris” for some unknown reason.
She didn’t know which direction Paris was in, nor how far it was from Wu Port County.
However, since it’s a “dream”, it’s probably a better place than this.
Through the huge glass display window, she saw the plastic mannequins inside, wearing beautiful dresses.
They were heavily made up and struck stiff poses, and the dresses they wore, though Xiahou Ming considered them “garish,” were still a hundred times more pleasing to the eye than the one in her mother’s suitcase.
She saw the price tag on one of the dresses.
88 yuan.
Xiahou Ming converted it in her mind.
During her most tiring days at the construction site, she could earn 12 yuan a day carrying cement bags.
She would wash dishes in the kitchen of a small restaurant all day, and if the boss was in a good mood, he would give her 8 yuan.
This means that she needs to work on the construction site for more than a week without food or water, or stand by a greasy sink for ten days, in exchange for such a piece of rag that she herself doesn’t even know whether it looks good or not.
Where can I get the money to buy a dress like this…
She smiled self-deprecatingly.
Then she thought of her current weak body.
Forget carrying a bag of cement.
Even unscrewing the cap of a new bottle of soy sauce now required some effort.
The feeling of despair, like a tide, overwhelmed her again.
She didn’t look at the clothing store again, but turned and walked in another direction—the vegetable market.
The rice jar at home is almost empty.
She and her mother had been eating leftovers for two days, and this couldn’t go on any longer.
Her mother’s body needed nutrition.
At the vegetable market, it was getting dark and not many people were around.
Xiahou Ming skillfully moved between the stalls, finally stopping at a tofu stand.
She looked at the little piece of tofu left on the chopping board, then looked at the pork hanging on the meat stall next to her, and hesitated for a long time.
Finally, she bought a block of tofu for fifty cents, and then bought a handful of wilted greens from a vegetable farmer for thirty cents.
Carrying this pitiful “trophy”, she set out on the road home, with only four dollars and forty cents left in her pocket.
This was the only “living money” she had left.
Tofu and vegetables in her hands, and the skirt in her mind.
One is the cold reality that must be faced.
The other is an equally cold task that must be completed.
Both require money.
And she had nothing.
When she got home, it was dark.
As soon as she entered the room, she saw her mother sitting at the dining table, on which were neatly arranged three or four empty white plates and two sets of bowls and chopsticks.
“Xiaoya, are you back?
Go wash your hands and get ready for dinner.” When her mother saw her, she immediately smiled.
Xiahou Ming’s throat seemed to be blocked by something.
She walked into the kitchen silently and quickly stir-fried two dishes with the tofu and some vegetables.
She knew that there was no rice in her mother’s “dinner”.
She filled two bowls of rice and walked out of the kitchen carrying two plates of steaming, real food.
“Mom, let’s eat.” She put the dishes on the table.
“Oh, child, you spend money recklessly again.” The mother complained, but still picked up a piece of tofu with chopsticks and started eating.
At the dinner table, Xiahou Ming pretended to eat the “braised pork” in the empty plate, and pushed all the dishes she cooked in front of her mother.
“Xiaoya, why don’t you eat fish?
The fish I bought today is very fresh.” The mother said, pointing to another empty plate.
“…Yeah, delicious.” Xiahou Ming responded vaguely and took a big mouthful of rice.
Only after her mother finished her meal and went back to her room contentedly to watch her small black and white TV did Xiahou Ming return to the dinner table.
She looked at the tofu and vegetables with soup left by her mother, picked up the plate, and began to eat it with rice, gobbling it up.
After finishing her meal and clearing away the dishes, she was about to go back to her room.
At this time, she saw her mother sitting by the bed in the room, stroking the locked old wooden box and sighing softly.
“This dress… does Xiaoya not like it?”
Xiahou Ming’s heart seemed to be tugged by something.
She knew that her mother still remembered the unpleasant “dressing-up” experience before.
Anyway, you have to face it sooner or later.
She walked over and sat down beside her mother’s bed without saying a word.
This action seemed to give the mother great encouragement.
She suddenly raised her head, and her eyes lit up instantly, like two lit light bulbs.
“Xiaoya!” She grabbed her hand in surprise.
“You… have you figured it out?
Mom knows it all.
My Xiaoya is the best!”
She fumbled for the key, opened the old wooden box that smelled of mothballs, and took out the old-fashioned floral dress again.
“Come on, let’s try again?” There was a hint of tentative expectation in her cautious tone.
Xiahou Ming looked at the skirt, then looked at her mother’s face which was full of desire.
She silently took the funny dress and returned to her room without saying a word.
In the light of the street lamp coming through the window, she picked up the skirt and tried it on herself.
The Dacron fabric felt very hard, and the small floral patterns on it looked like a bunch of densely packed insects in the dim light.
Is this good looking?
She fell into a long silence, looking at the small, crooked mirror on the wall that she used to fix her appearance.
The mirror was so small that it could only reflect her face and half of her skirt.
It shouldn’t… count, right?
She thought of the skirts Ling Yicai usually wore.
Although she couldn’t pinpoint the exact style, it felt completely different from the one before her.
Ling Yicai’s skirt always fluttered gently as she moved, like a cloud.
The one in her hand, on the other hand, was stiff, like a piece of flowered curtain fabric.
Will that guy be satisfied if I use this to get the job done?
Is this the “good looks” that Yu Yuhui wants?
She threw her skirt onto the bed in annoyance.
I don’t understand at all.
I don’t understand anything.
She suddenly felt ridiculous.
What am I insisting on?
If I insist on not wearing my mother’s old skirt, then tomorrow I will have to wear this even more ridiculous boys’ school uniform and face Yu Yuhui’s “punishment”?
Or should I put on this skirt and complete that weirdo’s task to satisfy her?
No.
Both options sound like sh*t.
A simple and crude thought belonging to the past Xiahou Ming finally emerged in her mind.
Yes, she needed a skirt.
A “nicer” skirt.
She couldn’t afford it, nor did she want to ask for it.
Then, there is only one answer left.
She dug out a tattered notebook from under her bed.
It was her old account book, with names and numbers scribbled on it in ballpoint pen.
She used a pen to cross out the line “Li Ji Restaurant, 8 yuan/day”.
Then, her gaze stopped at the line “Back street of No. 3 Middle School, Fatty Wang, you can squat”, and she put a heavy question mark behind it.
Finally, she turned to a new page.
Wrote a line of words.
Girls’ dormitory, clothes drying yard, looking for a skirt.