They need to constantly reflect on their mistakes. Even if they were beaten, scolded, or bullied, they must never talk back, nor fight back.
In this place, they were the people with the lowest status and the least dignity. Even the little hooligans who were despised and scorned in the village could come to their place to smash and destroy things when they were in a bad mood.
There was even one time when Old Lady Xia was almost bullied.
If her husband had not protected her desperately, she might have met with an accident.
Even so, this incident still became a permanent shadow in her heart.
For this reason, her husband fought with the gangsters and broke his ankle. After a hasty treatment, he was lame for life and would feel pain when walking.
What Old Lady Xia could not accept the most and felt very scared was:
After years of reform and labor, she even had some thoughts in her heart. If she had reported her husband back then, would she not have to suffer these hardships now?
When she realized that she had these thoughts, she collapsed and even felt ashamed to face her husband.
At the same time, the guilt for her husband was also deeply tormenting her.
In Old Lady Xia’s eyes, if she had not brought her husband back to Xia Country, he would still be free in abroad right now……
Under various pressures, resentment and pain, Old Lady Xia’s state of mind has changed a lot.
She was no longer the gentle little girl who only pursued romance. She was depressed and collapsed every day.
Among all the sufferings she has experienced, what she hated most was not the villagers who beat and scolded her, the Red Soldiers, or the gangster who almost bullied her, but Shijianwu‘s grandparents.
In Old Lady Xia’s eyes, all the tragedies of her and her husband were caused by the report of Shijianwu‘s grandfather.
The people who should have accepted all this pain and been sent to the cowshed to be criticized were Shijianwu‘s grandparents, not them.
Old Lady Xia and her husband stayed in the countryside for nearly seven years.
In the early and mid-1970s, more and more intellectuals who had been sent down to the countryside were rehabilitated and returned to their hometowns and their names were rectified.
After enduring for years, Old Lady Xia and her husband finally got the news in 1974 that they could be rehabilitated and return to the city.
This news was indeed a great thing for the couple, and it was also their wish and expectation for so many years.
But it was too late for Old Lady Xia’s husband.
After so many years of hard work and criticism, he had already suffered too much and his body was broken.
His ankle was lame, his fingers were broken, and half of his ear was cut off by a sharp piece of glass.
Even the joints of all sizes in his body were in unbearable pain on winter or rainy days.
At that time, Old Lady Xia’s husband was sick and very weak, and he was ready to die in the countryside.
When he learned that he could return to the city, he was very sad.
One night, the sick man took his wife’s rough hand and stroked her face:
‘Xiao Xia, I… can’t hold on until that time, let’s get a divorce certificate in the countryside so that you can return to the city with ease.’
‘You are still young in your 30s, and your family is rich. If you take good care of yourself, you can meet a good man and live a stable life. I don’t want to drag you down.’
Old Lady Xia cried heartbreakingly and refused to do so.
But life and health cannot be changed by people’s wishes.
She could feel her husband’s vitality slipping away every day.
Looking at her husband’s gradually graying temples and thin face, Old Lady Xia made a decision:
She would not divorce.
She wanted a child of her own and her husband, and to live like this for the rest of her life.
One year later, the formalities for the return trip were completed.
But the only people who set out on the journey back to the city were Old Lady Xia, who was more than five months pregnant, and the urn in her arms.
This scared the family members who came to welcome her.
At the same time, it also made the brother and sister-in-law at home unhappy.
Before Old Lady Xia returned to the city, her brother and sister-in-law had sent her many telegrams, repeatedly emphasizing that she should divorce her husband, saying that after returning to the city, they would introduce her to a colleague who was remarried and had good character, so that the two families could take care of each other in the future.
Originally, her brother and sister-in-law thought that Old Lady Xia would definitely do so, and they had already arranged a suitable candidate near their home, and scheduled a time for the two parties to meet after Old Lady Xia returned.
Who would have thought that the sister would come back, but with a big belly and holding an urn, it was impossible to hide it, and it was impossible to have an abortion at such an advanced stage.
Now the family that the sister-in-law had agreed to get along with also got angry, thinking that the Xia Family deliberately tricked them.
Because of Old Lady Xia’s experience and her dead husband, some gossipy neighbors began to gossip;
They said that Old Lady Xia’s husband was dead, and they didn’t know whose child it was.
The gossip spread more and more, reaching the ears of her brother and sister-in-law, making them even more unhappy, thinking that the sister had brought shame to the family.
Old Lady Xia had been away from home for so many years, and the family property had long been passed on to her brother. The two old people could only help her a little in life.
Despite this, when Old Lady Xia was about to give birth, her sister-in-law still found an excellent hospital in the city for her to give birth.
In this hospital, Old Lady Xia met her enemy again after nearly 10 years.
Shijianwu‘s grandmother was pregnant with her second child and was about to give birth in the same hospital.
Unlike their family, Shijianwu‘s grandfather successfully survived that storm, and with the help of his family, he rose rapidly. Now he lived better and better, rich and powerful.
Their eldest son was already six years old and was about to go to elementary school.
When she saw Old Lady Xia, Shijianwu‘s grandmother also recognized her.
Originally, the other party was due to give birth in a few days and had to wait in the hospital.
After recognizing the old friend, she was nervous and ashamed for a while, and she even had an attack in advance and gave birth prematurely.
The two pregnant women were pushed into the delivery room one after the other, and the birth time of the children was only more than half an hour apart.
In the mid-1970s, it was not popular to set up obstetrics and gynecology departments in hospitals, and even if there were, the equipment was not complete enough.
Although the hospital where Old Lady Xia and Shijianwu‘s grandmother was the largest hospital in the area, the obstetrics and gynecology department here was just a large flat floor.
There were only 20 beds, two to three beds in each ward, and the tools were only simple equipment such as wooden barrels, hot water kettles, porcelain washbasins, etc.
After Old Lady Xia gave birth, the nurses in the hospital used warm water to treat the blood stains on the child’s body, and then wrapped the child in a red swaddling cloth and placed it next to her.
The wounds on her body still hurt, and her brain was dizzy, but she couldn’t close her eyes.
Her mind was full of Shijianwu‘s grandmother, whom she had seen not long ago.
They were both in their 30s, and the other was a mother of a child, but when the two stood together, she was more than 10 years older.
She heard that the bastard who once reported her husband, Shijianwu‘s grandfather, is now the head of a department, with a good monthly salary, and various subsidies.
But what about her and her husband? They have suffered torture and cold eyes.
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