BXBX NOVEL Chapter 242 - 233: Just Not Leaving
Xiao Qian’s house in the Urban Village seemed to have evoked memories for Lily Tang, as she smiled slightly at the comers of her mouth.
“Come on, let’s have some fruit.” Jia Xiufang brought in a plate of fruit and her eyes darted towards Lily Tang.
“What is this?” Lily Tang was intrigued by the plate brought over by Jia Xiufang. She was from the south and had never seen the unique fruits of the northern winter.
“Frozen pears, and frozen persimmons. Haven’t you ever had them?” Jia Xiufang asked curiously.
“No…” Lily Tang looked at the dark-colored frozen pears, swallowing her saliva. Could she eat this? A black pear!
Oh dear, this poor child.” Jia Xiufang saw how thin she was and imagined she must come from a very difficult family. Could they not even afford fruit at home?
She quickly pushed the fruit plate closer, showing off her newfound wealth and extravagant hospitality.
“Dear girl, help yourself. Make yourself at home when you’re at Auntie’s. Don’t be shy.”
“Mom, are you done with your work? Aren’t you busy?” Xiao Qian could tell that Jia Xiufang had misunderstood.
Treating the daughter of the nation’s top five richest families as a refugee who couldn’t afford fruit, her mom was something else.
“I’m not busy, I have time.” Jia Xiufang sat down with a carefree demeanor, looking at Lily Tang and shaking her head.
“This young lady is so pretty, but why so thin? This little face, oh my, too skinny.”
Jia Xiufang thought that Xiao Qian was the kind of girl who couldn’t gain weight. She wished she could put a few pounds on Xiao Qian by force-feeding her like feeding a pig. But when she saw Lily Tang sitting next to Xiao Qian, she felt her own daughter was actually quite well-proportioned.
A homemaker’s instinct, to feel overflowing with motherly love when seeing a thin young girl.
“Actually, it’s not too bad…” Lily Tang had never interacted with a menopausal woman from a normal family before, and no one had ever looked at her with such a pitiful yet simple look as Jia Xiufang’s.
Those who approached her had ulterior motives, aiming for her father and wanting to please her in order to curry favor with her father. The sensitive child had long seen through everything, so she found it hard to relate to Jia Xiufang’s innocence. But she didn’t dislike her, instead, she felt more shy. “Dear girl, what do your parents do for a living? I don’t think I’ve seen you around here,” Jia Xiufang had the gossiping habit of all housewives, not feeling it was inappropriate to ask about other people’s personal details. All the women in this neighborhood were like that.
“My father.Js a street vendor. He’s a very stupid man. My mother passed away when I was little, she got sick and even after selling the house and borrowing a lot of money, it wasn’t enough. During the day, he would work and then try to make some extra money at night to pay off the debts. At first, he took me to the Night Market to sell chive dumplings. The chives were too spicy, and he couldn’t make them well. We froze all night, only to be scolded after selling just one. It was so cold that day, I even got a cold. We had no money left, and when the landlord came to collect the rent, he locked the door and told me not to speak, pretending there was no one at home.”
“Oh my, poor thing!” Jia Xiufang couldn’t stand to hear this and wiped away a tear.
Xiao Qian listened quietly. It took a lot of effort for her to get Lily Tang to share these stories in her previous life. It wasn’t until they had been in therapy for about three months that the girl finally opened up her heart.
But her menopausal mother only took a few minutes to coax out these stories.
It was probably her pure and innocent gaze that touched Lily Tang.
“Auntie, why are you crying?” Lily Tang felt embarrassed to see Jia Xiufang wiping her tears.
Jia Xiufang wiped her tears and said,
“We’re all just struggling folks, life is hard. My family also runs a small business, this laundry shop. The first couple of years were not easy, too, with hardly any business. My husband was not doing anything productive, I had to take care of the shop and two kids at the same time.”
“Mom, stop it. She’s not like our family. Go do your work!” Her mother was overestimating the situation by comparing the daughter of the fifth richest family in the country to their own.
“You brat! I’m not going anywhere!” Jia Xiufang glared at her daughter and squeezed Xiao Qian to the side with her hips, sitting next to Lily Tang and asking with concern.
“Dear girl, has your family managed to pay the rent now?”
“Yes, Auntie, that was a long time ago.”
“It’s so sad. Life is not easy, just look at how skinny this child is. In the future, you can come to Auntie’s house for dinner. Xiao Qian doesn’t have many friends and she doesn’t invite people over. It’s just us three in our family. Don’t leave tonight, stay at Auntie’s for dinner!”
Jia Xiufang had now imagined Lily Tang as a poor child who couldn’t even afford a meal.
“Dear girl, tell Auntie about your family’s chive dumpling business, and I’ll try to help your father figure out a solution. The chive dumplings are too spicy, maybe it’s because the chives weren’t chosen well, or the preparation method was wrong. I’ll write down the correct way to make chive dumplings later, and you can tell your father when you go back.”
“He’s not in that business anymore…but I’d rather he was still a small vendor pushing a tricycle.” Lily Tang said wistfully.
“What happened to the chive dumplings in the end?”
Jia Xiufang was still worried about this. A housewife’s concerns were a bit different from a normal person’s.
Thinking of the chive dumplings, Lily Tang broke into laughter, “He couldn’t bear to throw them away or sell them, so he tried to improve them for me. When we went back home, he added more oil, saying that processing them with oil would make them taste better. It gave me diarrhea. I was probably 4 or 5 years old at the time…”
‘Oh, what a sin!” Jia Xiufang couldn’t help exclaiming. What a terrible father, not only wasting food but also guiding his child poorly.
“It’s not just that. When he fried chive dumplings, there were black residues in the oil, and he didn’t even filter it. And he fried fish for me, too. He didn’t even remove the fish’s bitter gallbladder. It was black and very bitter. My mom wasn’t around, and he didn’t know how to cook at all.”
“What nonsense?!” Jia Xiufang was shocked as if she had heard an unforgivable sin. There were people in this world who didn’t remove the fish’s gallbladder?
This was the greatest insult to a kitchen!
“The fish was inedible, but he was afraid to waste it. We couldn’t afford anything else, so he coaxed me into eating it, saying that only the smartest kids in the world are qualified to eat such fish. So I ate it all, it was so bitter…” “What’s your father’s phone number? I want to talk to him. How could he do this to a child? When a meal is a failure, it should be eaten as a punishment. How could he let a child eat it? Oh heavens! You’re still growing. Look at what he s done to the child.” As a parent, Jia Xiufang couldn’t bear to hear these things.
Xiao Qian pushed Jia Xiufang out of the room.
“Mom, go fry your meat. You can’t bear to throw away that oil after using it a few times. Hurry up, go! Bye!” She slammed the door shut.
Jia Xiufang was still shouting from behind the door.
“Dear girl, don’t leave for dinner. I’ll fry some meat for you, and I can fry fish too. It won’t be bitter at all!”
Xiao Qian helplessly spread her hands, “That’s my mom, always jabbering on and on. She’d latch onto anyone and just keep talking.”
Jia Xiufang knocked on the door again, “Dear girl, do you like yellow croaker or small mixed fish?”
See, she said it. Her mom was always being nosy!
“I really envy you. Your mom is so nice.” Lily Tang mumbled to herself..