Yaxiang Street

On the 29th day of the year, Wu Tingfang drove to Yuanjiayong to pick up the lamp.Now there are only a few lamp-making masters in the town. If you want to make lights in time for the first lunar month, you need to make an appointment with him several months in advance.Those born at the end of the year are not guaranteed to be booked—there are thousands of male babies born in this town every year, and the master is really overwhelmed with less than three lamps for one baby.

Chen's eldest son, An An, was born in early April, and it is eight months old in the first month of the lunar year. He spoke early enough to be called father and mother.I can't crawl on all fours, so I just stick my belly to the ground, and I crawl happily every day.

Wu Tingfang parked the car outside the alley, and when he got out of the car, he found sparse rain foam floating. He thought it was a bad time, and the lights couldn't get wet from the rain.

It was cloudy this morning, but the clouds were white and black, and the air didn't smell too humid. He thought it wouldn't rain, so he didn't bring an umbrella.

He estimated the distance from the alley to Master Deng's house, about 200 meters.He thinks it should be ok, it won't get wet under such light rain.

The lamp master I had made an appointment with earlier on the phone was not there, and there was a dilapidated old brick building at No. [-], Tenth Lane, and the wooden gate that was set back a step inside was locked with a rusty copper lock.A small piece of the door panel was rotten, and the dark room could be seen filled with large and small colored lanterns.

The place is right, people do not know where to go.

He called the lamp master again, and the other party said that he was eating at home and would come out in a while.

Wu Tingfang had no choice but to squat under the weed-grown wall to smoke, while avoiding the rain that tended to intensify. Looking at his watch, it was already [-]:[-].

He didn't eat either, and as soon as he got home from the night shift, his mother asked him to come over to pick up the lamp.My sister and brother-in-law took their son to the fortune-telling place on Yaxiang Street. They said that the lights would be turned on tomorrow, and they didn't understand some details, so they went to ask.

It was around 12:30 when Huimin called to urge him to go back to eat. Wu Tingfang told her to come from the new house after Master Deng had eaten. Let's eat first."

Ting Hua and her husband Chen Qing eat at home all year round.Chen Qing is from Xi'anfang in the same village. His mother passed away early, and his father is now working as a guard in a factory.Ever since he married Ting Hua, Chen Qing's three meals a day were settled at Wu's house, especially after Chen An'an was born. Except for going home to sleep at night, he basically stayed at Wu's house.

Huimin already expressed her dissatisfaction with this matter yesterday, since the Chinese New Year was approaching, it was troublesome, and the matter of Chen Anan turning on the lights made the Wu family go crazy, and this should have been something that the Chen family was worried about: yesterday It's lunch time at noon, and there is no dinner at home.Hui Min vomited all morning and was so hungry at noon that she called her mother-in-law and said that she took An An and Ting Hua to buy oil lamps and paper candles.

Since the call was answered while on duty, and there was a very special patient waiting for him to see at that time, Ting Fang could only tell her to wait, this matter will pass.

Huimin is also a doctor, and Ting Fang said that there were patients waiting, so she stopped talking at that time.Just say that we can talk about it when he comes back from get off work.

After get off work, the car didn't drive in, but was sent out again.Huimin probably heard the sound of his car, and was already standing on the balcony on the second floor looking down, only to see what her mother-in-law said to her husband, and Wu Tingfang drove the car away again.

Hui Min, who was pregnant, seldom got up, let alone went to the balcony. She was anxious to wait.

Ting Fangzu waited until one o'clock, and the rain had almost stopped, before Master Lantern came over from the alley.Wearing presbyopic glasses tied with strings and a blue tunic suit, he went straight to open the rusty brass lock without even looking at Ting Fang.

Ting Fang followed into the house, it was an old house, only the windows were open, and the day was as dark as night.The lamp master switched on an incandescent lamp, and the colorful lanterns on the chairs and chairs on the ground could be seen clearly.The court reported Chen Qing's name, and the lamp master gave him three lamps, the largest of which was one meter high.

The six-sided paper lanterns on the bamboo frame are painted with pictures of different themes, such as the fairy girl delivering a child, the Eight Immortals crossing the sea, and some allusions that he can't tell.

When he was about to leave, the lamp master finally took the initiative to greet him: "I didn't give you the rest of the money."

After giving the remaining 200 yuan, Tinghua thought about how to move the lamp to the car: such a big lamp, even if Yanhua was free, he couldn't take it, and the whole family only had a car driven by Tingfang.

He moved the lamp to the car twice. The headlight could not be placed in the trunk of the car, but could only be placed in the back seat. When entering the car door, the lamp touched it, and the paper lantern was cracked by a centimeter.

Ting Fang thought that such a small crack should be fine, but he felt a little annoyed.

Ting Fang parked the car outside the door, had an operation in the middle of the night, and went to a specialist clinic in the morning. He was already very tired.After the car stopped, there was some rain, and when he wanted to move the lamp out of the car, he heard Ting Hua's voice from the gate: "Brother, wait, be careful not to get wet!"

Tinghua was holding an umbrella, and Zhe Tingfang moved the lamp into the house. After putting down the lamp, she checked it carefully, and finally said: "What's wrong here? Brother, didn't you check it?"

"I broke it."

Hui Min, who was drinking soup in the dining room, put the bowl away, and said unhurriedly, "Ting Fang, are you hungry? Come and eat, if you don't eat, there will be no leftovers."

Ting Hua couldn't say anything, just muttered: "It's broken so easily, the paper is really brittle."

Huimin had already finished her meal, but she was sitting with Tingfang to eat, Tingfang told her to lie down, she shook her head.

"Go and lie down." Ting Fang was anxious and urged her to go up.

If he was at home, he wouldn't let Hui Min go downstairs and bring the food to her bed.He was not at home, so naturally he couldn't bother others to do this, but he told Huimin that he must lie down instead of standing up.

"Don't go, I have something to tell you."

"I'll go up after dinner."

Wu Tingfang and Huimin moved back to live 12 years after their marriage, that is, the year before last.The house was rebuilt with money from the court.His parents are locals, they are honest, they don’t make a living, they work part-time in the factory, but they used to share a house from their ancestors. It is not big, more than 50 square meters. It was originally a two-story building, and the second floor directly raised a roof. , leaking rain and sand inside, close to dilapidated buildings.Tingfang felt that the house was too old and might be in danger of collapsing, so he used the money to rebuild it a few years ago, and because of this, he had a quarrel with Huimin.Their money was intended to buy a house in the city.

At that time, Wu Tingfang thought of a way to have the best of both worlds: after the house was built, he would come back to live, so that his mother could take care of Hui Min.He believes that the reason why the first two test-tube babies were not saved was that Huimin was not taken care of in the rented house in the city.

Huimin was finally persuaded by him.

Naturally, eating at home is better than going out. When the two lived together, even if Huimin cooked, the taste was very mediocre. After get off work late, there was no time to make soup, and often he didn't drink soup once a week.The first two miscarriages were even closer to disaster. She lay in bed and ordered takeaway three meals a day, and had food poisoning once—the second miscarried shortly after that.

In the first year of living here, there were no conflicts. Huimin and Tingfang were busy with work and didn't have much time at home.Since Tinghua got married, Huimin became more and more unhappy. Her mother-in-law spent too much time and energy on her daughter and grandson, and Tinghua and Chen Qing's uninvited doves took over Nestle made her even more uncomfortable. .

Ting Fang estimated that what she was going to talk about was this matter.But he didn't expect that when he went up to the second floor, he saw Hui Min lying on the bed, tears soaked the pillow cover like a faucet turned on.

Ting Fang was taken aback, and asked: "What's wrong with you?" He held her in his arms.

Huimin shook his head.

"Don't think too much about it."

She didn't say anything, just kept crying.

"You can't cry. Think about the one in your stomach. It's been ten weeks. Hold on."

Ten weeks, I have never been pregnant with this number of weeks before.In the first three spontaneous abortions, no fetal heart rate could be seen each time, and the last two were around seven or eight weeks.

Hui Min finally choked up: "Wu Tingfang, why is it your problem, but I am the one who suffers?"

How about going to Yaxiang Street to do the math?!

Something his mother had said a few weeks ago had somehow slipped into his head.

This Yaxiang Street is not the one that is heavily supported and repaired, selling expensive spices.This is a water town, dozens of kilometers away from that street.The street is about [-] meters long, on one side, beside the river, there are shops selling worship supplies, most of which sell everything: sandalwood, oil candles, oil lamps, burnt paper lacquer buckets, paper lanterns, shrines, shrines , even paper lotus flowers, paper houses, paper money, gold and silver ingots.The old pavement, the uniform blue brick wall, and two red stones under the gate, the gate is narrow, and the inside is dim and dark, and lights are lit during the day.

Only a shop at the end of the street does not sell sandalwood.

Sandalwood is used to worship Buddha, and over time, sandalwood is used to worship gods and ancestors.This shop has been around for dozens of years, and it doesn't sell anything else, only white wood incense.This scent is different from sandalwood, neither strong nor pungent, and Wu Tingfang can't tell what it is.It sells incense sticks, tower incense, incense powder, and incense slices.There are even wooden blocks.

However, this shop is famous not for its incense, but for the fortune teller inside.

This fortune teller came here 20 years ago. He seemed to be only fifteen or sixteen years old at the time. He was a distant relative of the owner of the shop. The woman looked and looked, and finally told her, "A son is coming for you."

The woman was 42 years old at the time and had not been pregnant for seven years. At that time, she just thought the boy was ignorant, teased her, and left angrily.But in the second month she was actually pregnant.This matter spread quietly after she hid in other places, gave birth to this son, and entrusted her relationship with her to complete her household registration.

Someone came to visit secretly, but the gentleman just refused to say.There was a flower farm owner in the village, who had plenty of money, three daughters, and only one son was missing. He brought his wife to the door to dump the money. The gentleman looked at him for a long time, asked for his birth date, and finally approved two words: fifth daughter.

The owner of the flower farm did not believe in evil, and after his wife gave birth to a daughter, he was dubious.The fifth child took a private ultrasound and is still a daughter.

The owner of the flower farm is not afraid of not being able to afford it, but he always thinks that there will be another child after the birth, so it is unlikely that he will have five daughters.

Wu Tingfang knew the outcome of this incident: when the wife of the owner of Huachang gave birth to her fifth daughter, the placenta implanted and she suffered a lot of bleeding, so she cut off her uterus to save her life.At that time, he had just entered medical school in Guangzhou, and the owner of the flower farm called him for help. He asked his brother for help, and took care of the wife of the flower farm owner who was urgently transferred to the affiliated hospital.

Fortune tellers are famous, and there is something disturbing about this method of counting children.Afterwards, the owner of the flower farm asked someone to ask the fortune teller if he had done anything to anger the gods, and the latter only replied: fate.

The number of fortune-tellers at Baimuxiang shop has increased, but the village chief has learned a lesson, and most of them ask men and women as soon as they are pregnant.Some people didn't care when they heard it was a daughter, and continued to conceive. Some people had more daughters and couldn't afford the fine. They still didn't believe it. Finally, they went to the B-ultrasound of a black clinic to see that it was a daughter, so they directly had an abortion.If this is the case alone, there is no need to come here to calculate, just go to a B-ultrasound to see it.The most important thing is for a woman who can't get a child, come here and ask if she has the life to have a son.

There is also a so-called anti-pregnancy medicine in this store. Pregnant women must come by themselves, and if they have a chance, they can buy it.

Because of these things, Wu Tingfang, who is an obstetrician and gynecologist, always has strange thoughts about the fortune teller in this shop. the mr.

So that afternoon, although Wu Tingfang thought about it, he walked to the entrance of Yaxiang Street, but he never made it.