With You

(No.293—No.297)

No.293

That night, I took the last bus home at ten o'clock by myself, leaning my head on the grilled window, and leaning on for too long, the hat was frozen on the frost and almost couldn't be pulled off.

In the bus without lights, the neon lights and car lights were distorted by the window grilles and reflected on the roof in a strange way, as if it was not going to take me home, but to take me away.

I'm no longer the first girl who handed the driver fifty dollars so that he could drive farther.

No.294

The next morning, I was packing my luggage at home and was going to go to Beijing with my parents on the evening plane.

I can't remember how long our family of three have not stayed together.

I have four school exams in Beijing, so I asked Zhang Ping for a two-week vacation. It seems that my birthday will be spent in Beijing.

Before boarding the plane, I received a text message from Yu Huai with only three words: "I'm sorry."

It's me who should say "I'm sorry". I'm too anxious to make you happy, and even more anxious to be someone who can walk into your heart. I'm eager to tear through your hard-working disguise. Kind of selfishness.

I spent half an hour arranging words and sentences, but I didn’t get a complete text message. In the end, I only replied with three words: "It’s okay."

Hello, thank you, sorry, goodbye, please, it doesn't matter, how many lives have been saved by polite words.

My mother drove downstairs to my dad's house and parked the car in our community. The three of us took a taxi to the airport.

I don’t know if I have negotiated to give me the most relaxed atmosphere for exam preparation. After they met, they have been friendly and did not quarrel.

It's very good as if we are still a family.

This is the third time our family has gone to Beijing together. I was very happy the first two times. I don't know what will happen this time.

It was seven o'clock in the evening when we arrived in Beijing, and we waited in line for 20 minutes to get into the car. The hotel is near the Drum Tower. My mother and I live in one room, and my dad lives in one room. We ate the roast duck after putting down our things and returned to the hotel before nine o'clock, because we had to rush to the registration meeting of the two schools early the next morning.

After washing, I lay in a daze in bed. My dad didn't let me bring any review materials on mathematics, physics and chemistry to Beijing. He said that the child was too tired to relax for two weeks and could not die.

My mother came over, wiping her hair, and got into the bed and hugged me. I closed my eyes and pretended to be dead, and my head was full of emotions. I was afraid that when I opened my eyes, they would all rush out of my eye sockets.

"How about going to the Reclining Buddha Temple before we go home?" My mother said suddenly.

"Not going."

"When you were young, once your grandmother took you to worship Buddha, and a master gave you a fortune-telling. I think it's quite accurate. Why don't you go and worship."

What does it mean? Feel that your daughter can't count on it anymore, and start to count on the Buddha? I was smirked by my mother.

"What did the fortune teller say?" I asked.

My mother thought for a while: "He said that you will be a uniform in the future, maybe a teacher or a civil servant, and you are handsome but not a general."

I frowned: "What do you mean by handsome and general?"

My mother doesn’t actually know these things very well, but as an intellectual woman, she still tried to bludgeon it: “You will be under the commander. The general is helping the emperor to fight the world, so you are a commander, not only It's just a fate to help run errands. This fate must be good."

I know she talked about these things to prevent me from getting nervous about the exam during this period. When I have no confidence in myself, she wants to tell me that your destiny is determined by God, don't be afraid, just verify them one by one.

"Marriage is a bit difficult," my mother continued. "The marriage came later, but the end result is good. Can have a son."

I just sat up to drink water and almost sprayed my mother's face when I heard the last four words.

No.295

The entrance to the film academy is crowded with people, and most of them are dressed up for the performance department. I didn't think much about it, but my parents stood together and began to judge the passing students.

"It only recruits a few people in a year. How small is the admission ratio." My dad sighed.

"Star dreams," my mother shook her head, "this society is like a pyramid, and anyone who hasn't sharpened their heads wants to flow to the upper level."

"Isn't it? At that time, many industries were not regulated, and heroes were born in troubled times. When they came to their generation, the life was not as easy as ours, the pressure was heavy, the rules were many, and it was pitiful." My dad sighed.

I quickly walked aside two steps, pretending that I didn't know these two party newspaper current affairs commentators, but accidentally stepped on the feet of the girl in front of me.

The round-faced girl accepted my apology and smiled and said, "It's okay." We chatted and learned that she was from Shandong, named Cheng Qiaozhen, who came to the Department of Drama and Literature, and went to another school to sign up tomorrow.

We had a very good temper, and within a few minutes, we explained our respective wealth.

"I'm going to take an exam for the Department of Directing, but I don't even know how to draw the shots until now," I shrugged. "The result of temporarily holding the Buddha's feet was being kicked by the Buddha."

The little girl was amused by me, her round eyes narrowed into two crescents, very cute.

"By the way, do you still have to take the exam for Chinese opera?" The little girl tilted her head to look at me, "I have the exam questions for the Chinese opera for the past few years. You can learn from it. The Buddha is compassionate and won't kick you every time. Maybe I will carry it this time!"

"That's great," I laughed. "Will you let me have a look? Can I make a copy later?"

She smiled enthusiastically and nodded.

After the registration, she took me and my parents to take the bus. My mother learned that she was going to the South Fourth Ring Road. She almost fainted after going back three times on the bus, so she raised her hand to hire a car.

Cheng Qiaozhen was very embarrassed because of this, and thanked her again and again, saying that she lived far away and that it would cost a lot to take a taxi.

My dad sat in the co-pilot position and said back to her that it’s okay. Thank you for sharing the review materials with our family.

I got goose bumps from the cold. As soon as my dad put on a cordial posture of a civil servant, I felt particularly maladjusted. Cheng Qiaozhen and I leaned together. We looked at the scenery passing by the window together. She suddenly said, "Do you think Beijing is weird?"

Cheng Qiaozhen's speech has a little Shan Dongfang dialect, which reminds me of my grandma.

"What's weird?" I asked.

"I went to Qianmen with my mother some time ago. Many of the roads there are wide, beautiful and clean, making people feel very small. But if you just turn a few turns, you can turn into a small alley. Dirty and messy, just like where I live now, like a rural village. It's really strange."

This world is strange at first.

I think of the pyramid that my parents talked about while standing at the registration venue. Cheng Qiaozhen and I, all of us who were squeezed and crowded at the registration site, and those who immersed themselves in their hometown classrooms, how many are really interested in what they are doing?

Some want to break through to the upper level of themselves, some do not want to fall to the next level, as if the dark tide surging in the golden pyramid, is it called desire?

No.296

Cheng Qiaozhen is right. Beijing is a very strange place. Outside the South Fourth Ring Road is a countryside full of chickens and ducks. We occasionally pass a vegetable field, where mules and donkeys are resting quietly on the side of the road. My mother's expression is getting more and more weird, probably because she is afraid of being deceived. Cheng Qiaozhen didn't realize it, and showed the driver the way at every intersection.

After arriving at the destination, my dad waited in the car and asked the driver to check the meter. He was afraid that the driver would leave by himself-then our family of three could be folded here.

We got out of the car and followed Cheng Qiaozhen to the yard. Cheng Qiaozhen lives in a farmer's yard. There are many bricks on the asbestos tile roof. I don't know if it was something that was scraped away during the sandstorm. There seemed to be four rooms. It was only half past nine when we entered. Several residents just got up, all dressed in down jackets, standing in front of the water pipes in the yard, brushing their teeth and washing their faces.

The only furniture in Cheng Qiaozhen's house is a bed made of bricks and a few long wooden boards. My mother frowned when she saw it, and asked her, "You live by yourself? How unsafe this night! Who is living next to them, do you know them?"

Cheng Qiaozhen was squatting on the ground and flipping out the materials from her large schoolbag. When she heard the question of concern from my mother, she smiled very sweetly when she looked up.

"It's okay. They are all art students and come to the art exam. I will start to register in the Academy of Fine Arts in a few days. I came here in the fall and came to class. I have lived with them for almost two months. Everyone I know. Nothing except the old lady of the landlord who is very stingy and cuts off the power."

My mother walked over and pressed the bedboard: "This is so thin that I sleep too much at night."

"I didn't panic, but sometimes I didn't sleep in the middle, and the board suddenly turned up, which shocked me a lot in the middle of the night."

She laughed as if talking about something particularly funny. My mother and Yan Yue were chatting with her. I stood aside like a stunned child, looking at the paper on the wall, feeling at a loss.

Cheng Qiaozhen gave me a huge amount of information.

"Where can I copy around here?" I asked a question that I felt stupid.

Cheng Qiaozhen didn't laugh at me: "You just take it away. I'll just help you see this. It's useless. It's a pity to throw it away. I don't know if it's useful for you. I just said it casually. Send me back..."

She can talk lively for a long time by herself.

My mother's expression is very complicated, and her eyes are full of pity and entanglement. When Cheng Qiaozhen sent us out, my mother suddenly asked her: "You will go home after the exam? Then there will be more than two weeks?"

"Yes."

"If you can trust your uncles and aunts, you might as well move things near where we live. Let's find a better guest house or a quick hotel for you. Auntie pays. The wilderness is too unsafe. You go out. You have to ride that far."

I immediately became happy and looked at her with a smile: "Yes, it is convenient to live closer to the school."

Cheng Qiaozhen was very moved, but she still refused. My mother persuaded, but did not force it. We left each other's mobile phone numbers, and she smiled and waved to see us in the car.

After getting in the car, my mother and I did not speak for a long time. The car dropped its head, the dirt road was very narrow, and the driver drove very carefully. There were often donkey carts passing by outside the window. The donkey buried its head and sprinkled donkey dung eggs all the way, while pulling a cart of briquettes, wearily and slowly brushed past our cart.

No.297

Two weeks passed quickly.

The written tests were good and bad. I tried my best not to leave any questions blank, and I almost vomited. I couldn't help but admire the simple classmates of liberal arts students.

The small rural courtyard that Cheng Qiaozhen lives in often comes to mind, with uneven walls, yellowed newspapers, plain and big flowered mattresses, a faucet with a dirty rubber tube in the courtyard, and then rubber The exhausted art students and their parents brushing their teeth...

Cheng Qiaozhen sometimes sends text messages to wish me success in the exam, and I often ask her about the exam. Before leaving Beijing, I texted her, saying that one day I would see her name on the big screen of the cinema.

She replied that it was certain.

She said, I wish you find your way as soon as possible.

Strange, how did she know that I was lost?

I remember that on the way back to the hotel from the small courtyard where Cheng Qiaozhen was renting, my mother was sitting in the back of the taxi and holding my shoulders, sighing. I thought I had already passed the childish age of watching inspirational stories, but when I saw Cheng Qiaozhen, I understood how fragile and hypocritical my maturity was.

The last night in Beijing happened to be my birthday. My parents took me to "Lao Mo" for dinner. I saw this restaurant in Wang Shuo's novels. Later, I watched a TV series called "Blood Romance" with Aunt Qi at home. The young people in it often gather here. This is the identity and western style of that era.

"Are we entering the Great Hall of the People?" I looked up at the high dome, and my dad was amused.

They allowed me to drink a little red wine, but they didn't know that my daughter was so drunk a year and a half ago. Just like they didn’t know that their daughter had abused their trust, insisted on studying science, forced themselves to this dead end, and came to Beijing, causing them to take such a long time off. It would hurt the people and money, but it was very likely that they would lose money. .

Thinking about it this way, I also have a lot of things they don't understand.

I laughed mockingly. I always felt that I was the most pitiful before, but this time I came to Beijing and I learned a lot. Although I can't say it, I was brewing in my heart that some chanting pictures are going to break through the ground, but I don't know what kind of flowers will bloom.

My dad smiled and said, "It's okay if you don't pass the exam. If you are growing up, it's good to be able to learn."

My mother, a pragmatist, did not refute him for the first time.

Maybe she can't be realistic about her children.