The boy suddenly asked, "Mom, why do you have to undress for n to see?"
The woman froze, and the tears that had built up in her eyes began to fall, one by one.
"Ah Bao mustn’t ask Mom such questions! You mustn’t!" Ah Yun’s mother cried.
"Enough! Everyone get inside! You’re making a spectacle!" A Zhao family woman yanked the boy away with one hand and dragged the woman towards the house.
"Ah Yun! Ah Yun!" Ah Yun’s mother clung to her daughter, refusing to let go.
Several won erged from nowhere, all hands and feet, they pulled the mother and daughter apart. The woman called Ah Yun didn’t struggle or resist; she was as numb as a corpse, allowing them to carry her into the house.
The door slamd shut.
Without the spectacle to watch, the villagers were left with nothing but idle gossip, talking about how shaless Ah Yun was, how she couldn’t live without a man, how she beca promiscuous without a man by her side. So even took delight in the disaster, mocking the impotence of the Zhao family n, bluntly gossiping about how one day, in so place, Ah Yun had wrapped her arms around him and made him touch her breasts...
Enraged, Ah Yun’s mother picked up a carrying pole and struck out, cursing him for talking nonsense and wishing him a lineage cut short.
The man ran off laughing, "You can’t even talk about Ah Yun being a slut!"
The crowd just chuckled and dispersed, leaving Ah Yun’s mother to throw down the pole and sit on the ground, crying.
The scorching sun of the hot months fiercely baked the earth, hot enough to sizzle an egg on the ground.
Tu Hengsha stepped forward, calling her ’Auntie’, helped her up to a shaded place, and handed her his unopened bottle of mineral water.
After crying and cursing for the entire morning, and begging as well, she was truly exhausted and thirsty. She took the water and gulped it down, finishing the bottle, then resud wiping away her tears.
"Auntie, what exactly happened?" Tu Hengsha ventured to ask.
The woman, perhaps having bottled it up for too long with no one to share her worries and now on the verge of an emotional breakdown, began to cry and said, "Everyone says my daughter is a bad woman, but who knows her suffering? Yes, she is not good, she did wrong, but as her mother, not so outsider, I always feel pain for her..."
It turned out that Ah Yun’s maiden na was Ge, and when she married into the Zhao family, Zhao Jun’s, she too had a happy ti. After all, they had courted each other, married out of genuine affection. Though not wealthy, the couple was hardworking and realistic, the in-laws were agreeable people, and life was peaceful and sweet.
Ah Yun’s father-in-law and Zhao Jun both worked in the mines, like many n from the village. Back then, everyone regarded it as a decent way to make a living; working in the mines ant not having to go elsewhere to find jobs. At least it seed good until a few years ago when people in the village started getting sick. By that ti, Ah Yun was pregnant.
During the month Ah Yun was giving birth, her father-in-law was diagnosed with pneumoconiosis. Their world collapsed. Soon after, Zhao Jun was diagnosed as well.
A family, not affluent to begin with, plunged into imnse panic. Money flowed like water into the bottomless pit of pneumoconiosis treatnt, and Ah Yun’s postpartum care was neglected.
From then on, the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law beca the main laborers in the family, working tirelessly day and night to earn money. Every penny earned was saved for treatnt. Even Ah Bao, now grown so big, had hardly ever drunk milk. What was most despairing was that despite all the money spent, the disease showed no sign of improvent; it continued to worsen. Two years ago, the father-in-law passed away, crushing the family’s last hope...
"It’s incurable! No matter how much money you spend, it can’t be cured... but who could say to stop the treatnt? These are living lives! My family is in the sa situation, and we don’t know how long Ah Yun’s brother can live... The sick suffer, and those around them suffer too... Even though I know continuing the treatnt leads to death, if I could keep him alive for one more day, I, as a mother, would give my life willingly..." Aunt Ge sobbed uncontrollably, "Ah Yun made a mistake, I know, but I also know she didn’t want to keep suffering. She is still young, with a whole life ahead of her to live properly! But she did make a mistake, so I don’t bla the in-laws. Their suffering is the sa suffering I’m experiencing now... I only bla... I only bla Heaven for creating such a disease, making it impossible for us all to go on living..."
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