My father’s voice on the recorder sounded as if it were drifting over from somewhere very far away.
“Nian Nian, the debt has been paid off. It was paid off three years ago.”
I crouched in my father’s room, my hand trembling as I held the voice recorder. Outside the window, the temperature was forty degrees Celsius. The air inside the room was stuffy, like a ball of wet cotton blocking my chest.
But all I could feel was cold.
“Xiulan kept saying it wasn’t paid off, saying we still had to pay the interest. Every month, the money Nian Nian brought home, she told me she used it to repay the debt. But I knew she was lying to me.”
A violent coughing fit came from the recording.
My father gasped for breath for a long time before continuing.
“Nian Nian, after I’m gone, go find Lawyer Zhao. I’ve left the house and all the savings to you. Don’t let her deceive you anymore. Don’t let her bully you anymore. In this family, you are the only one who has treated me right.”
The recording ended there.
I crouched on the floor, and the tears finally fell, hitting the kraft-paper envelope in my hand and soaking into it, leaving behind a small dark stain.
Ten years.
I thought the debt hadn’t been paid off.
I thought my father had died still owing a huge amount of money.
I thought the hard-earned money I brought home every month was really being used to fill the hole in our family’s finances.
It turned out it had already been paid off long ago.
It turned out she had been lying to me all along.
It turned out my father knew.
But he couldn’t say it out loud.
All he could do was secretly record it.
I pressed the voice recorder against my chest and cried for a very long time.
The winter when I was fourteen came back to me again.
My first job was washing dishes at a small restaurant behind the school.
In winter, the water from the faucet was like ice blades. After washing dishes for an entire night, my hands were covered in cracks. When they soaked in the dishwashing water, the pain felt like being pricked by needles.
The owner felt sorry for me and let me take a portion of the customers’ leftovers home every day.
I was afraid my sisters would see me, so I would crouch at the entrance of an alley and eat it before going home.
Once, Su Yao saw me.
She stood at the entrance of the alley, carrying her new schoolbag, looking at me crouched on the ground eating leftovers.
There was no sympathy in her eyes.
Only disgust.
“Big Sister, why are you eating here? It’s so embarrassing.”
Back then, I actually apologized to her.
Later, I changed jobs many times.
Frying dough sticks at a breakfast shop.
Making skewers at the night market.
Cutting loose threads at a clothing factory.
Stocking shelves at a supermarket.
In my final year of junior high school, I fainted during math class because of long-term lack of sleep.
My homeroom teacher advised me to just drop out, saying,
“With the way you are now, you won’t get into any good school anyway.”
I didn’t drop out.
I forced myself to get into a vocational school because vocational schools didn’t charge tuition and even provided meal subsidies.
During those three years of vocational school, I slept only four or five hours a day.
While other people took their lunch breaks, I worked in the cafeteria.
While other people were dating, I handed out flyers on the pedestrian street.
While other people discussed graduation trips, I was thinking about where next month’s money would come from.
My mother always had a reason.
“Your sister needs to pay for her tutoring.”
“Your sister’s school wants them to buy new uniforms.”
“Your sister said she wants to learn the piano, so Mom signed her up for lessons.”
Every time I couldn’t come up with the money, she would sit beside my bed, shed tears, hold my hand, and cry.
“Nian Nian, you’re the older sister. They’re still young. If you don’t help them, who will? Your father is like this, and Mom isn’t capable either. Our family is counting on you.”
I believed her.
I gave every penny I earned to her.
I wore old clothes that my classmates no longer wanted.
I ate free rice with pickles from the school cafeteria.
One winter, my only down jacket got a hole in it. White feathers kept sticking out, so I covered the hole with tape and wore it for the entire winter.
The year Su Xue was born, I was twelve.
She was the youngest and most spoiled child in the family.
She had never seen the hardest days our family had gone through.
From the moment she could remember things, she had only one understanding:
Big Sister earns money.
Big Sister supports the family.
Big Sister deserves it.
Last Spring Festival, the six of us ate together.
I had received my year-end bonus. I bought Mom a down jacket and gave each of my four younger sisters a 500-yuan red envelope.
By the time it was my turn, there was already no food left on the table.
I served myself a bowl of plain rice, poured some soy sauce over it, and quietly sat there eating.
No one thought anything was wrong.
Including me.
Early the next morning, I went to the bank.
Using my ID card, I obtained the transfer records under my name from the past ten years.
A thick stack of papers.
Densely packed with numbers.
From the age of fourteen until today, every single figure felt like a slap across my face.
What made it hardest for me to breathe was the dates on the transaction records.
The debt had been paid off three years ago.
Yet during those three years, I had continued transferring money every month.
Zhou Xiulan continued to pretend we were poor.
She continued saying,
“The interest hasn’t been paid off yet.”
“The creditors are pressuring us.”
I believed her.
She took my money and transferred it to a man named Wang Jianguo.
I investigated Wang Jianguo.
Neighbors loved gossiping and would tell everyone everything.
I made one phone call, and the auntie who lived across from us told me everything.
“Wang Jianguo? Your mother met him at the mahjong table. They’re very close. Tsk, tsk. During those years when your father was bedridden, he often came to your house… Your mother even bought him clothes before. A shiny leather jacket. He would wear it around and show off.”
After hanging up the phone, I crouched on the steps outside the bank and vomited.
My stomach churned.
All that came out was stomach acid.
Pedestrians passing by kept turning their heads.
A woman in her forties whispered,
“Young lady, don’t drink something cold on an empty stomach.”
I smiled and waved at her.
I’m fine.
I just couldn’t understand what these ten years were supposed to mean.
When I returned home in the evening, Zhou Xiulan was sitting in the living room watching television with my four younger sisters.
Su Xue had her feet propped up on the coffee table, eating the apples I had bought yesterday.
When Su Yao saw me, she softly called,
“Sis.”
Then she lowered her head again.
I slammed a bank transfer record onto the coffee table.
The apple core fell from Su Xue’s hand and rolled toward my feet.
“Mom, 100,000 yuan. Transferred to Wang Jianguo. This happened three days before Dad died.”
Zhou Xiulan’s face turned livid.
She stared at the document for five or six seconds.
Then she suddenly snatched it up and tore it into pieces in two motions.
“You checked my accounts! You actually checked my accounts!”
She stood up and pointed at me, her finger almost touching the tip of my nose.
“Su Nian, I raised you all these years! What’s wrong with spending some of your money? I worked so hard to raise all five of you. Your father lay in bed doing nothing, and I was the only one holding this family together! Now that your father is gone, you’re starting to keep accounts with me? Do you have any conscience?”
I watched the scraps of paper fall from between her fingers onto my feet.
“Mom, I went out to work when I was fourteen. It has been twelve full years now. I haven’t taken a single month off.”
“Whether you took time off or not has anything to do with me! Who told you to work so hard? You chose to do it yourself!”
Those words were like a nail driven straight into my heart.
I stared into her eyes and spoke word by word.
“Who was it that knelt in front of me back then and begged me to go out and make money?”
Zhou Xiulan froze for a moment.
Then she began crying and wailing at the top of her lungs.
“My life is so miserable! The daughter I raised with so much hardship is turning against me now! Your father just died, and you’re already bullying your mother!”
Su Xue also jumped up.
“Su Nian! How dare you talk to Mom like that! You only spent a little of your money! What’s so great about that?”
Su Lin grabbed the corner of my clothes, her eyes red.
“Sis, don’t be like this. Mom isn’t in good health…”
I lowered my head and looked at Su Lin.
Then I asked her,
“Have you ever asked whether I’m in good health?”
She said nothing.
I turned to Su Yao.
She was sitting at the very edge of the sofa, clutching her phone.
Her knuckles were white.
There was no expression on her face.
“Yao Yao,” I called her.
“Tell me. Did you know that the debt was paid off three years ago?”
Su Yao raised her head.
Her face instantly turned pale.
She didn’t answer.
But I already knew the answer.
At that moment, the living room was so quiet that I could hear the laughter from the variety show playing on the television.
The host was laughing loudly.
The audience was applauding.
For a moment, I felt as if I were watching someone else’s farce.
I turned around and went back to my room.
After closing the door, the first thing I did was open the old account book my father had left behind.
The handwriting in the account book was crooked and uneven.
Every transaction was recorded clearly.
Three years and two months ago, the debt had been fully paid off.
The amount was zero.
Beside it, my father had written a small line:
“Finally, we don’t owe anything anymore. Nian Nian has suffered too much. Don’t let her send money home anymore.”
But I had continued sending money for three years.
Because Zhou Xiulan said there was still interest.
Because she said the creditors had come looking for us again.
Because she said my sisters were still young and had their whole lives ahead of them.
I closed the account book.
I put it, together with the voice recorder and the letter, into my old suitcase and locked it.
The suitcase was small.
I had bought it for twenty yuan at the night market when I was fourteen.
Two of its wheels had fallen off, and the zipper was almost broken.
Ten years had passed.
All my belongings still fit inside this one suitcase.
Outside the window came Su Xue’s shouting voice.
“Sis! Mom said you have to move out tomorrow! Hurry up!”
I sat on the empty bed, staring at the vacant air-conditioner hole in the wall.
Suddenly, I remembered something.
Last summer, it was extremely hot.
I had a high fever and wanted to turn on the air conditioner in my room for a while.
My mother stood at the doorway and directly switched off the circuit breaker.
“The air conditioner uses too much electricity. Just endure it. Your sister’s room is cool. Let her study properly.”
That night, I slept in a room that was forty degrees Celsius, sweating through the entire bedsheet.
The next morning, I was dizzy and could barely see clearly, but I still got up and went to work.
And today, it was forty degrees again.
I buried my head into the suitcase and held the voice recorder tightly, as if I were holding onto the only lifeline I had left from these twelve years.
Dad, I won’t let them bully me anymore.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMWWYCPBpgV
and then Add to home screen.