Chapter 7

It’s actually not much use.

They say the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

But only if your mother loves you enough.

If the love you can get is just a tiny bit, then no matter how loudly you cry, all you’ll get is an extra piece of candy at most.

But life is complicated, and human nature is never simply black or white.

Mothers have their own hardships too.

My uncles and two aunts had all settled in the city.

That year during the New Year, my youngest aunt invited our family to have a meal in the city.

She specifically reminded my mother: “Sister-in-law, you should get yourself a new outfit. If you dress too shabbily, the restaurants in the city won’t let you in.”

My mother rarely bought me any clothes.

Likewise, she was even less willing to buy anything for herself.

In the end, she claimed to be ill and didn’t go to the dinner.

That night, her eyes red, she said to me:

“All your father’s relatives look down on me.

Only if I help your brother succeed, if he makes something of himself, can I hold my head up.

What about me? I can make you proud too.”

My mother paused, then said softly, “You’re a girl, and not as smart as your brother…”

“Don’t blame Mom, this is all I’m capable of.”

Not smart, and a girl.

Maybe I should just accept my fate.

No matter how many times I recited my textbooks, I could never remember them. Even simple homework took me until nine or ten at night to finish.

Someone like me.

Couldn’t possibly amount to anything.

But Shasha encouraged me: “If we give up, we really will become hopeless mud at the bottom of the pond, beyond saving.”

If you try, at least there’s a sliver of hope.

If you give up, you’ll just fade into the crowd.

Shasha and I worked hard in different ways.

I had to spend more time and energy to digest knowledge.

She, on the other hand, had to withstand the tremendous pressure from Uncle Zhao and Aunt Zhao, who didn’t want her to study.

As time passed, my aunts and uncles in the city had their own troubles too.

State-owned enterprises were collapsing one after another, and they were laid off after buying out their years of service.

Not even forty years old, they had to start finding their own way.

And their children weren’t nearly as smart as my brother.

The year I entered junior high, my brother was admitted to No. 1 Middle School.

My mother was so happy she was in tears: “When your brother gets into a good university, let’s see if your father’s relatives still dare to look down on me!”

“Studying changes your fate”-this was a belief deeply ingrained in people at the bottom of society in those days.

Shasha was a year ahead of me.

At last, I was reunited with her in junior high.

Every morning, before six o’clock, she would be waiting for me at my door.

She would take me to the junior high five kilometers away on her brother’s old discarded bicycle.

On the way, she’d help me memorize vocabulary, quiz me on texts, ask me math formulas…

In the biting cold, our breath turned into clouds of warm mist.

The moon still lingered on the horizon, and the old bicycle’s parts clattered and rang.

Occasionally, an early bird would call out.

Going uphill, Shasha would straighten her back and pedal hard, while correcting my mistakes as I recited.

I forgot to mention, Shasha was even smarter than my brother, with an almost photographic memory. There were many subjects in junior high, and Shasha was even more patient than our teachers.

But the way smart people think is probably different from ordinary people.

When she taught me how to solve problems, the thing she said most often was: “This question is almost the same as the one you got wrong before. How can you still not get it…?”

In the midterm exam of the first year, I only ranked in the twenties in my class.

In the whole grade, I was outside the top hundred.

I was especially discouraged.

I was probably the hardest-working student in the whole class, maybe even the whole grade, but this was all I could achieve.

The harder I worked, the more I felt like a joke.

I told Shasha, “Maybe my mom is right, maybe I’m just not cut out for this…”