Chapter 27

Zhao Donglin took out the posture of eating in the army. After eating breakfast in three bites, he took Yingbao from Jiahui so that she could free up her hands to eat her own breakfast.

Sitting at a table, Zhao Donglin’s behaviour naturally failed to escape the eyes of the whole family. Zhang Qiaoer quietly pursed her mouth and smiled. Her slow-witted son also knew how to take care of his wife.

Zheng Yuefen, who was sitting opposite Jiahui, glanced obliquely at her husband, Zhao Donghe, after seeing her brother-in-law’s move. They are brothers from the same family. One knows how to help his wife take care of the children. Her own family’s man was just stuffing cakes with a big mouth.

Dong Jiahui picked up her bowl of half-warm porridge. She took a corn cake and began her first breakfast in the Zhao family.

The Zhao family’s breakfast was very similar to the Dong family. Both were cooking rice porridge with less rice and more soup. The difference is that the Dong family often adds sweet potatoes to the porridge, while the Zhao family adds corn to the porridge.

In this era where hybrid rice has not been bred, mechanized planting is not popular, it is not easy for farmers to plant. The hard work of a year to grow the grain has to be turned over to the state, to supply the livelihood of urban residents.

Under such circumstances, every family can barely fill their stomachs. It is unrealistic to openly drink rice porridge. The Zhao family was already considered a family with good conditions in the village. The porridge was only half soup, but they also added corn kernels, both to save fine grains, but also to add a sense of satiation.

“Mom, do I have to go with you to the field today?”

Dong Jiahui didn’t go down to the ground when she was in the Dong family, because she was a married daughter. In the countryside, a daughter who was going to be married was found to have spilt water. Her food matters have been transferred to her husband’s family. This is the truth of the so-called “Obey your father at home and obey your husband after getting married”.

Even if you go back to your mother after the divorce, you can’t be counted as a person on the production team.

In addition to the distribution of food rations, there is also a cash dividend at the end of the year. The money is calculated according to the total work points and the total number of hours worked per person, deducting the production costs and various retentions from the total income of the team for the whole year.

In theory, if more people work, they will have to pay more dividends. Naturally, others will get less, which will also infringe on the interests of other members.

But now the situation is different. She married Zhao Donglin and has been a member of the Zhao family since then. Naturally, she should work.

When Dong Jiahui asked this, her sister-in-law Zheng Yuefen was also curious. She looked at her mother-in-law, Zhang Qiaoer. When she was married to Zhao Donghe, three days after the marriage, she came to the field to work. She was curious about how her mother-in-law would manage this new sister-in-law.

Zhang Qiao’er froze. She did not expect Dong Jiahui would take the initiative to ask about going to work. She thought about it and said, “Not today. Stay at home to take care of Yingbao, and then cook lunch. Later, I will tell you how our family cooks, and how much was enough. As for you to work, wait until I ask the captain.”

 Dong Jiahui nodded her head after hearing this and had no problem with this arrangement. Zheng Yuefen looked at Dong Jiahui and saw that she was holding a bowl of porridge with her head down, and her eyebrows had an indefinable charm.

Dong Jiahui’s eyebrows were good looking. They are very good-looking fallen leaf eyebrows without any modification. Her bangs were divided into both sides. In fact, this kind of split bang is very hard to make you appear good, but Dong Jiahui combed it very well. Maybe because she has a small face and a melon seed face, she can wear any kind of hairstyle.

The reason why Zhang Qiaoer said to ask the captain again is that she really needs to mention it to the captain. All the work on the team is divided by the captain. On the other hand, Zhang Qiaoer sees that her new daughter-in-law’s body does not have a lot of meat. She was afraid that she could not do any hard work, so she wanted to go see the captain to talk and to arrange a job for Jiahui that was not too hard.

After eating breakfast and going out, the matter of cleaning up pots and bowls was left to Dong Jiahui.

Now the village is preparing for the planting of winter wheat, ploughing and fertilizing the land, and when the preparations are complete, the wheat seeds will be planted.

Zhang Qiaoer took Heidan away. Before leaving Dong Jiahui, she asked Heidan if he wanted to stay home. Heidan ignored her and ran away in a flash.

“His actions, don’t take them to heart. Heidan is a child at heart. In a couple of days, I will find him to talk to.”

When washing dishes, Zhao Donglin came to the kitchen to tell her this. Dong Jiahui stopped moving and turned around. Looking at his serious face, her heart was a little sweet.

“I know, I didn’t take it to heart.”

When Zhao Donglin saw that her expression did not look like she said it with reluctance, he was relieved.

The two looked at each other for a few seconds. Dong Jiahui was the first to look away. His eyes were too deep. Seeing him reminded her of last night. She was really a bit embarrassed.

Zhao Donglin coughed. Obviously, like Dong Jiahui, he was haunted by what happened last night.

“Well… I’ll go to the village committee right away and come back for lunch. If you have anything to do, you can go to the field to find a mother or go to the village committee to find me.”

Zhao Donglin works for the village committee. As long as there is no meeting in the commune, he normally works in the village.

Dong Jiahui said yes and thought it was only half a day. He will come back for lunch at noon. What kind of thing did she need to do that required him?

“Then I’ll go. Pay more attention at home.”

Dong Jiahui nodded, “I know, you can rest assured.”

Zhao Donglin also felt that he talked a little too much. He walked out of the kitchen step by step, patted Yingbao, who was eating sugar on the walker and pushed his bike out of the yard.

Hearing the sound of the courtyard door ringing, Dong Jiahui looked out through the window and saw that he had left, so the shame in her heart was lessened.

After washing the pots and pans, and putting the kitchen items in the order and sweeping the floor, Dong Jiahui went out.

“Yingbao, what are you doing? Are you feeding the hens?”

The chickens in the chicken pen were released by Zhang Qiao’er early in the morning, and the whole yard was their strolling place, while Yingbao was scattering corn cakes into small pieces on the ground, and several hens were pecking in the open space in front of Yingbao.

Dong Jiahui patted Yingbao’s clothes, which were already stained with dirt on the chest and could not be removed by hand.

She picked up Yingbao from the stroller and brought her back inside, ready to find a piece of cloth to make two bibs for Yingbao, so that she would not be afraid of getting her clothes dirty.

“Yingbao, sit still and I’ll make two bibs for you, okay?”

Dong Jiahui put Yingbao on the wooden sofa and took a piece of fruit candy to give to Yingbao. She was afraid that Yingbao would accidentally get choked, so she broke the fruit candy into two small pieces.

Seeing the delicious fruit candy, Yingbao stretched out her chubby little hand. She grabbed one of the pieces and put it into her mouth. The familiar sweet taste pleased her, and she clapped her hands happily and said a few syllables that Dong Jiahui did not understand well.

 Dong Jiahui brought a lot of fabric with her. Before the wedding, Zhao Donglin bought several pieces for her, and her relatives from her mother’s side also gave her some, as well as the leftover trimmings from making clothes for others.

Dong Jiahui found a few pieces of fabric from the pile of clothes that was trimmed. She was ready to make two patchwork bibs for Yingbao.

She took out the clothes that covered the sewing machine. Dong Jiahui threaded the needle, scratched the edges, and then stepped up and down to make the bibs.

“Yingbao, try it and see if it fits. It looks good, doesn’t it?

When talking to Yingbao and Heidan, Dong Jiahui never claimed to be their mother or anything else. She knows that the children couldn’t accept her at once. Even Dong Jiahui herself couldn’t directly call herself “your mother” when talking to them. She also felt a little ashamed.

“Yingbao looks so pretty in her bib, and she’s not afraid to get her clothes dirty.”

Yingbao looked down at the extra lab coat on her body and was obviously very interested in the red apple on her chest.

“Yingbao, do you know what this is? This is an apple, a particularly delicious fruit.”

Now that she belongs to the era of the planned economy, and there is no well-connected transportation network, there is not enough fruit supply in the market. Anyway, when Dong Jiahui came here for more than half a year, she only ate oranges, bananas and apples bought in the town, except local jujubes, persimmons, peaches and pomegranates.

Yingbao was just a kid. She probably had never seen an apple in her life.

After the first one fit, Dong Jiahui went back and made two more, some with vests and some with sleeves, just in time to use up all the trimmings.

After making the bibs, Dong Jiahui cleaned up her closet. Yesterday, she was in a hurry and didn’t have time to organize many things.

When she took out the watch that Zhao Donglin bought for her from the box, Dong Jiahui compared it to her wrist. The new-coloured strap and delicate small dial made it look delicate and chic on her wrist.

“It’s a pity that there’s no need to wear this for my daily chores at home.”

Do you need to wear a watch for washing and cooking? Do you need to wear a watch to work in the field? It’s a waste of a watch.

The watch was given to her privately by Zhao Donglin, and Dong Jiahui told Chen Guixiang about it after the Zhao family left that day, and Chen Guixiang kept praising Zhao Donglin’s actions.

“I’ve never seen a young man as open-minded as him. How much did he really buy it for you? Look at him adding the watch to the bride’s price. How good would it look on the Zhao family’s face? “

And Zhao Donglin’s bike, which he bought after returning to his hometown. He has only been riding it for two months, no different from a new one. If he wants to face it, it’s not too much to say it’s a bride price, but people just don’t want this false name. It can be seen how down-to-earth and low-key he is.

Thinking about this and Zhao Donglin’s performance in the past two days, Dong Jiahui’s perception of him was refreshed little by little, not getting worse, but getting better and better.

At ten o’clock, Dong Jiahui began to prepare lunch. Zhang Qiaoer told her roughly what to do before going to the ground.

The family still has a lot of dishes leftover from yesterday’s banquet, so let her pick a few meat dishes to heat up, and then choose two vegetables from the vegetable patch to stir-fry.

Dong Jiahui herself was not a fan of leftovers. Modern people pay attention to a healthy diet. Leftovers contain excessive nitrite amine, which is easy to cause cancer. Moreover, the taste of leftovers is not right. It must not be as delicious as freshly cooked meals.

But this was the 1970s, and it was shameful to waste food. Dong Jiahui followed her mother-in-law’s instructions and heated up a few meat dishes. She cut the leeks and a basket of greens from the ground, and then packed them up and fried them separately, as she was going to eat both for this meal.

Dong Jiahui’s meal was just about ready when the Zhao family came out of the field. Zhao Meixiang could see at once the bib Yingbao was wearing was newly made by her sister-in-law.