Chapter 507: Chapter 38: Selling Children (Part 2)
After carefully separating the dust-covered and clean pastries, she placed all the walnuts and raisins on the clean side and handed them to Abudan. "Eat up, they’re delicious."
Abudan took the pastries and, like a little puppy, sniffed them before taking a lick. His little mouth beamed with joy. "Sister, you eat too."
The little girl only had some dirty crumbs left in her hands, but she still poured them into her mouth. As she was about to savor the taste of the Baklava, her teeth crunched against a stone.
Abudan looked anxiously at his sister. The girl shook her hand, "It’s just a particularly large piece of walnut."
The half-closed door was pushed open as a woman emerged. Her flat face, possibly from eating too much Uighur bread, lacked any trace of a Uighur woman’s beauty, with small eyes, thick lips, and a sunken nose.
"Aunt Jiva, what are you doing here again? Last time my father said you’re not allowed to get any ideas about abducting Abudan," In Ulucosa Town, only sixty percent of the inhabitants were permanent residents. The remaining forty percent, either without cotton fields or due to their laziness, leased their land to Ahmat and made money by either collecting rent or picking cotton during the farming season.
It wasn’t yet the season for picking cotton, and so some people started harboring bad intents, selling especially clever-looking boys from the town for a high price elsewhere.
The woman referred to as Aunt Jiva by the siblings was one of those people.
Having some blood relation with their Uighur mother Guli Azha, and seeing their poor living conditions, she repeatedly came to persuade them to sell the children. In the past visits, she had been chased away with a broom by the father and daughter. Unexpectedly, she came again today while the little girl and the man of the house were out.
"Tsks, Pali Dan, how can you speak like that? I came to help your family. Everyone knows you’re poor. All the kids in town go to school, yet you and your brother are still hiding at home. Your aunt has agreed with your mom, I won’t sell your brother, I’ll just take him to beg." When mentioning begging, not a hint of shame was shown from Aunt Jiva.
"What did you say? Abudan will not go begging with you, my father would never agree to such a shameful thing," the little girl hid her brother behind her in fear, but she was small and only slightly taller than her little brother.
"Who said begging is shameful? Being penniless is. I can give your family five thousand yuan a year, and even more when needed. And he’ll get to eat something nice. It’s much better than gnawing on Baklava only a few times a year. Go on, child, what do you know? Your mother has agreed, get out of my way," Aunt Jiva, like a hungry wolf, lunged for the little boy, trying to take him away. The little girl desperately clung to Aunt Jiva’s arm, trying to rescue her brother.
The little boy stood there as if petrified, unable to even cry out.
Aunt Jiva couldn’t let the girl drag her any longer, fearing the child’s father would return soon. She knew that at this time of the day, Zhou Qizheng would be busy working in his dying cotton fields. Their mother was frail and often lamented about the household’s poverty, which made the children suffer. Having one of them go out and see the world seemed like a good idea.
"Don’t make my brother beg, I’ll go with you. I can wash dishes, cook, and sew buttons. I’ll go, and I’ll earn a lot of money," the girl’s pleading came out in Uighur as she shouted towards the bungalow. But, with her strength insufficient, she was brushed off like a speck of dust by Aunt Jiva, whose arms were thicker than the girl’s waist, and fell to the ground covered in dust.
In her eyes was nothing but despair.
"Hey, help, somebody’s dying here!" The wicked woman Aunt Jiva let out a blood-curdling scream. Just as she was about to drag the little boy away, a sudden, strange gust from behind saw her wrist seized, and then her arms were twisted behind her back.
That foul arm was twisted like rope, and her flat-bread face was violently slammed onto the ground. Before she could make another sound, her mouth was pushed into the earth, muttering and eating a mouthful of dirt.
The little girl quickly pulled her brother back and stood frozen when she saw the person who had subdued Aunt Jiva.
Such a commotion alarmed the Uighur woman bedridden inside the bungalow, the mother of the siblings.
She propped herself against the door, stepping out to see a strange young man standing in front of her house. Her daughter and son stood next to him; one with slightly red eyes and a hint of anxiety, the other’s eyes filled with admiration.
A moment ago, Aunt Jiva’s sweet talk convinced their mother, who struggled with poverty and her ill health while the children’s father, stubborn as a bull, refused to grow anything but cotton.
With this year’s cotton harvest looking grim again, the mother could only think of ways to scrape together some money for the household, hence her momentary lapse in judgment agreeing to Aunt Jiva’s rancid suggestion.
Yet, just as she stepped out of the house, the mother felt a wrenching pain in her chest. Her children were part of her, and her daughter’s cries outside were clearly directed at her. She heard everything, and as a mother, her heart ached.
Thinking of letting her child go out to beg, an act that stripped away dignity, was intolerable. Her husband valued dignity above all else in his work and life; if he found out that she agreed to rent their son out for "child rent," earning only five thousand yuan a year, he might drop dead from anger.
Zhou Ziang looked up at the three people under the bungalow and the moaning wicked woman, "I came to pay back the money for the Baklava." (To be continued. If you like this work, please come to Qidian () to cast your recommendation ticket and monthly ticket. Your support is my greatest motivation.)