A Weed growing on the foot of a wall -A Story of a Chinese Orphan(Part 2)

Messege from translator: This short story is originally post in X media on March 21 2024(https://twitter.com/WHlamei/status/1770760113558606022).It is written in Mandarin with a button of "translation post" at the end .I clicked it and a English translation was immediately generated and presented although it is not readable or comprehensible for anyone who understand English. So I can not help myself not translate it into a comprehensible one because the story dictated by the the protagonist is so movable and real and I really want to share it with you with my effort as a Chinese translator. Also gret thanks for the author of the story because I also can not show you a real China without her/his contribution!

(Continuted)

Now Wu Meimei and my step sister live in a new building with natural gas heating system in the town, but my father cannot live in together because he is disliked for being old and his body odor caused by his uroclepsia and dysuria so he can only live alone in an old house with cracks on the walls in the village.

My relatives all advised me to take him into my home to support him, for reasons such as : a person should not forget his/her roots, parents’ kindness and debt in having and raising up children should be repaid because it is more significant than the blessing from Gods in heaven, etc.- Maybe it was because no one taught me how to be a good person when I was a child, so I rejected their persuasion.

Every time on the days of going back to parents' house as a married daughter, I still choose to go back to my Aunt San's house to see her. She is also old, but every time while sending me out with her waist bent, she always says to me: "Go and see your father because old people are very pitiful!"

When I was entering the house, I found my father sitting on the broken steps of the old house, coughing violently. I thought he was a little excited to see me back, so I raised my hand pounding his back to relieve his cough.

But my father threw away my arm: “You wouldn't come to me if you hadn't something to ask of me. I know what you are thinking in your mind. You come to recognize me as your father just because you heard that I will receive compensation for my two old house to be demolished, don’t you?! Now I can tell you that they have nothing to do with you."

I understand that they have regarded me as a burden to them since the day they divorced. I also know why I don’t even know what my mother has become in those days because my mother lives in Lijia Hutong in the county town far away from us. But what I don't understand is: there is only a hundred meters between my father's home and my home, but the one he loves deeply is Wu Meimei's daughter rather than me.

Now he is still afraid that I am coaxing him so I can snatch away his daughter’s things.

Now I am a mother too. My son is always followed by one of his classmate from a single-parent family. I treat him as my own child just like Aunt San did to me before by teaching him to pick vegetables and wash dishes.

When I was teaching him, I realized that Aunt San didn't really mean that she wanted me to do the farm work for her when she took me to do farm work- she just wanted me to be able to eat her food confidently without the grievance of being dependent on someone else.

What she was feeling at that time is sympathetic not only toward me but also toward herself as a fellow sufferer.

People in this world must think carefully before deciding to have a child, because you really are unworthy of being a parent if you give birth to a child without raising up him/her.