Chapter 4: Inventory of Assets

It was windy at night, and the sound of the trees shaking outside could be heard in the room. Wen Jiajia, who had no concept of time without a mobile phone, lay on the bed, planning her future life over and over again.

A very real question: how could she survive in this era with her two children?

It was about survival, not just life.

Life was too hard, but survival was a bit easier.

First of all, the Wen family’s savings. She had just calculated a total of 89.6 yuan, less than three digits.

The second is grain. There isn’t much, but it should be enough to last for the rest of the year.

Finally, there are other economic exchanges. Wen Jiajia learned from a notebook in the original owner’s parents’ room that the Wen family still had two outstanding debts.

One is to the brigade, owing 50 catties of coarse grain and 10 catties of fine grain. The second is to “Fang Baoguo,” owing 20 yuan.

She still had to ask who Fang Baoguo was. Since she had inherited the family’s assets, it was time to repay the debts.

After thinking about it, Wen Jiajia realized that the best way to solve the current predicament was to become a worker.

This is the golden age of workers, and it’s not an exaggeration to say that one worker can support three generations of their family.

As long as she became a worker, housing, medical care, and education would be fully covered by the unit. If she found a way, even these two sisters might not need money to go to school.

But becoming a worker was hard, and she needed to think it through. Anyway, the original owner had finished high school, so there were always some opportunities.

Thinking about it, sleepiness swelled up, her eyes slightly closed. The fragrance of straw was on her pillow, and listening to the breathing of the two sisters, Wen Jiajia gradually fell asleep.

In the dream, she didn’t cross over. She still lived in her large apartment, sleeping on her Hästens bed^[1]is a handcrafted mattress using all natural filling materials.. It was just that the air conditioner was turned too low, and it was a little freezing. When she wondered if the air conditioner was broken, a sudden heat rushed to her legs.

What was it? Milk tea spilled on the bed?

No, she hadn’t ordered milk tea today. She turned over and pulled her newly bought pea pod pillow, but it felt strange in her hand.

“Woo woo woo …”

In the dark, Wen Jiajia suddenly opened her eyes, waking up instantly.

“Holy!”

I’m leaning on it, I’m leaning on it!

Wen Jiajia woke up instantly, so excited that she almost jumped out of bed like a catapult!

Her heart pounded, feeling the wet and sticky sensation on her legs. Wen Jiajia was stunned and felt like she was about to go crazy.

The deliberately suppressed whimpering continued. After several seconds, Wen Jiajia, who was standing on the ground, finally reacted.

What’s wrong? She didn’t know which one wet the bed.

Wen Jiajia’s mouth opened and closed, and finally, she closed her eyes and completely accepted her fate.

When anger reaches its limit and touches the threshold of the body, the body’s self-protection mechanism kicks in, making a person calm down.

Okay, isn’t it just bedwetting?

But! Can a three-year-old still wet the bed?

Wen Jiajia silently shouted, waving her arms to vent her emotions. Then she took a few deep breaths, ripped open her pants with stiff hands, and groped her way to the table to light the kerosene lamp.

When the light dispelled the darkness in the room, she realized that it was Wen Chun who had wet the bed.

Wen Chun had already woken up and was shrinking his body and trembling, not daring to look at Wen Jiajia.

Wen Jiajia covered her head and said bitterly, “Chun’er, get up. Auntie will change your pants.”

As she spoke, she went to the bamboo cabinet in the upper room to get his pants, then went to the kitchen to get the towels that were hanging to dry.

It was early morning, and the thin towel was semi-dry. The water in the pot was still a little warm, so she scooped a ladle of water, poured it on the towel, and then wrung it out.

When she returned, she saw Wen Chun crying silently, with tears streaming down her face. Wen Jiajia dragged her up, wiped her face a few times, then untied her trouser belt, pulled it down, and helped her dry her buttocks and legs.

“Can you put on your pants by yourself?” Wen Jiajia asked.

Wen Chun’s moist eyes were full of panic and nervousness, and he nodded quickly.

“Yes, I’m sorry, Auntie,” she muttered.

Wen Jiajia thought to herself, Aren’t you sorry for me! For the first time in my life, I’ve helped someone with their pants peeing.

But the child was sensitive, so she didn’t say that. After all, it was a three-year-old who had just lost her father and grandmother, so she wouldn’t vent her emotions on her.

She is really a kind person, Wen Jiajia thought. It’s just that good people don’t always get good rewards. But she had to make the best of this situation.

Wen Chun put on his pants and sat on the side obediently while Wen Jiajia cleaned herself up and changed her pants.

After taking out her dirty pants and the dirty towel, she came back in to find Wen Xuan still asleep.

Wen Xuan’s heart was big, but Wen Jiajia didn’t dare to be too relaxed.

Wen Chun wetting the bed didn’t mean that Wen Xuan wouldn’t.

She supported Wen Chun and said, “Wake up your sister. Let her get up and go to the toilet, then go back to bed.”

She might as well make the bed.

Wen Chun agreed, and after a while, Wen Xuan was woken up. When she was still groggy, Wen Chun took her out of bed and to the corner of the room. Wen Chun skillfully untied her sister’s trouser belt and pressed her down, and soon Wen Jiajia heard the sound of relief.

Wen Jiajia was worried about the bed. What should she do?

The straw mat couldn’t be slept on for now, but that didn’t matter. She could go upstairs and bring down the mat from the original owner’s second sister’s room. She had seen that the two mats were the same size.

But what about the straw mats? They were wet, too.

The original owner’s second sister’s room naturally had a straw mat, but it was heavy. At this time, straw didn’t cost much, and the mat made for sleepability was more than ten centimeters thick. It was manageable to take a mat, but she really couldn’t take a straw mat.

Wen Chun helped her sister put on her pants, and seeing her aunt looking at the wet marks on the mat with a solemn face, she mustered up her courage, twisted her cuffs, and blushed as she said, “Auntie, I wet the bed yesterday, and my mother used hay to change the wet place.”

Yesterday? It was normal for children to be confused about time. Wen Jiajia understood what Wen Chun meant, and Wen Chun was referring to the past.

“Where’s the hay?” she asked.

Wen Chun pointed to the upper room. “There.”

Wen Jiajia understood. Those dry straws were used as diapers.

Thanks to being a rural blogger for a while, she wasn’t so helpless when it came to replacing straw. Under Wen Chun’s vague guidance, it was quickly replaced. She went upstairs, took the straw mat, and laid it out.

“Okay!” She clapped her hands proudly. “Go to sleep. We have to get up early tomorrow.”

After a tiring day, the three of them quickly fell asleep again. It’s just that this room is too tight, not only airtight but also light-tight, so I didn’t honor my words about getting up early, and when Wen Jiajia woke up, it was almost eight o’clock in the morning.

At this time, the early morning in the countryside was very lively because she had to arrange for work, and the shouting spread far and wide, and her family could hear it, waking Wen Jiajia up. She got up, felt the wall to the window, opened the window, and opened the small door that connected to the hall.

In an instant, the bright sunlight shone in. It was sunny again.

Wen Jiajia faced the sun, took a deep breath, and felt that the air at this time was really good. She couldn’t imagine how cheerful she could have been breathing this air with bronchitis in her previous life.

She stretched and started cooking. She lit the fire, boiled the water, and began steaming the rice. To be honest, at this time, the peasants were already able to eat until they were sixty percent full, at least the local farmers could reach sixty percent full. In the past two or three years, the local weather had been smooth, and even the lonely and widowed elderly people in the team could have a bite to eat.

However, if you wanted to eat pure rice and meat and eggs, this was still impossible for the time being, and in my memory, even in the city, you might not eat pure rice once a month. As for the meat, you also had to save up for tickets, and you could save for two or three months to have a delicious meal.

So this morning, Wen Jiajia steamed the sweet potato rice that the locals ate most often, and the half sweet potato, half rice mixture was slightly more luxurious than the seven-part sweet potato, three-part rice mixture that the locals often ate.

In the era when there were no rice cookers, steaming rice was harder than stir-frying. First, you had to boil the raw rice in a pot until the rice soup turned white. When the white rice was fried and bloomed, the rice could be fished out and put into the retort. The retort is a wooden barrel for steaming rice, but this barrel has no bottom, only a grate made of bamboo strips. When you want to steam rice, you put the grate in the bucket, place the bucket in the pot, and when the water in the pot is boiling and bubbling, the water vapor can cook the rice in the wooden barrel.

Wen Jiajia was glad that she did her own work in the media and didn’t rely on the team. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have known how to use this thing. When the retort was put in the pot, she threw the peeled sweet potatoes into the bucket and steamed them together.

As for the dishes, she had to wait until the rice was steamed before cooking. Cooking was so troublesome. Although there were two pots on the stovetop, there was only one pot. As long as you were cooking, you couldn’t cook another dish simultaneously.

Wen Jiajia pondered that she needed to make another pot or get a stove. But if you used a stove, you had to replace the retort with an aluminum one so the stove could be used to steam rice. But now, aluminum lunch boxes had to be bought with industrial tickets, not to mention aluminum retorts, whether this item was even available.

While the rice was still steaming, Wen Jiajia went to the vegetable garden to pick vegetables. The vegetable garden was in the backyard, and there was a slope next to the toilet in the backyard. From the slope, there was a vegetable patch.

This vegetable field was only about 60 square meters, and it was full of various vegetables, which showed that the Wen family was really hardworking. If she had to say what she was most satisfied with about this home, it would be this vegetable field.

Because the vegetable field was at the foot of the mountain, with a house on one side and a cliff on the other, no one in the village could spy on the vegetable field unless they came up from her backyard.

At this moment, the sun was in full bloom, and Wen Jiajia also found that there was mountain spring water dripping down the cliff. When she got closer, she saw there was a stone trough on the ground, and the stone trough was collecting the mountain spring water.

The mountain spring water overflowed from the stone trough, slowly flowing along a small ditch to the edge of the vegetable field, then along the slope of the vegetable field to the back of the toilet, finally leaving the Wen family’s backyard and flowing into a stream a few hundred meters away.

Wen Jiajia thought to herself: Isn’t this the best water source? Why does the Wen family still have to carry water every day? But after thinking about it carefully, it was clear that the mountain water wasn’t sufficient year-round, and during the dry season, there would naturally not be much water dripping from the mountain wall.

In addition, this small amount of water was not enough, and it was better for the Wen family to spend more than ten minutes picking up a few loads of water. So they only used this mountain spring water to water the vegetable patch and wash vegetables.

Wen Jiajia approached, picked up a handful of water, splashed it on her face, rubbed it a few times, and washed her face.

She didn’t stay long in the vegetable garden, picking the vegetables she was going to eat today, washing them, and going home.

The two sisters seemed to be awake, and she heard movement in the room. Wen Jiajia shouted into the room, “Chun’er, Xuan’er, get up and eat.”

After a while, a weak voice came from the room: “Okay, Auntie.”

After a while, the two girls came to the kitchen in crooked clothes, one after the other, and their hair was messier than yesterday. Wen Jiajia looked at them and thought their hair looked like a chicken nest.