They Say I Can Curse People (1)

Chapter 32

A week after Yun Song applied for her stationing, Tang Chao and Tong Jin arrived.

A section of the main highway leading into Tonglin Town happened to be under construction. Consequently, the two of them had to walk four kilometers to reach the streets of Tonglin Town, carrying large backpacks and dragging suitcases behind them.

Fortunately, both were police officers and possessed the physical stamina to handle it. Although exhausted, it wasn’t a major issue. When they spotted Yun Song on the street, they immediately waved. “Sister Song!”

Yun Song was surprised to see them. “Why are you here?”

The story behind it was actually quite… short.

The two had met up over the weekend, and Tong Jin mentioned that Yun Song was staying behind in Tonglin Town.

“To be honest, I want to stay there too. Even if the conditions are a bit poor, the three of us could share a dormitory. It would be just like back in university.”

Tong Jin recalled the days when the three of them shared a room and could chat late into the night.

“Yeah,” Tang Chao agreed.

“I actually miss Old Lady Zhang a bit. I wonder how her gambling son is doing. The reward from that last bank case was 500 yuan; I hope her son hasn’t stolen her money again.”

“Yeah.”

“And the Liao couple. They’re currently in the detention center, and I don’t know what the situation is at their home. I’m a bit worried about their family, sigh-“

“Yeah.”

“And then there’s Changgui and Chunfeng. I wonder if the Sun family is still giving them trouble…”

“Yeah.”

Tong Jin finally snapped. “Can you stop saying ‘yeah’?”

“Let’s apply to be stationed in Tonglin Town too.”

“Huh?” Tong Jin was stunned for a moment, but then she realized it was a great idea.

The two of them applied the next day, and naturally, the request was easily approved.

So, at this moment, Yun Song looked at her two teammates and realized they were also here to stay. Seeing them flushed red with exhaustion, Yun Song finally understood the sentiment behind Tonglin Town’s simple and honest hospitality.

“You must be hungry. I’ll go boil some brown sugar eggs for you first. Once you’ve finished unpacking, we’ll have dinner.”

“Huh?”

“It’s the hospitality I learned! I have a sudden, overwhelming urge to boil brown sugar eggs for you!”

Having like-minded colleagues was, regardless of the circumstances, a happy thing.

The people of Tonglin Town had not yet developed the habit of seeking out the police. After all, the previous two cases the officers had handled involved deaths.

In small places, people believed in keeping family scandals private. They preferred to resolve issues internally. If there was a conflict in the town, most people went to the town government compound to find a leader to mediate. In the various villages, conflicts large and small were handled by village cadres. For instance, when Liao Shanchun’s Pressure Cooker went missing, she had gone to see the Village Party Secretary.

Therefore, for the first two days, the three of them did nothing but organize the demographic files provided by the town government. Not a single person came to see them.

Yun Song didn’t intend to replace the old ways. After all, there were only three of them, and they were short-staffed. Her goal was to handle matters that the village cadres couldn’t manage.

The census data for Tonglin Town was several years old, so the three decided to start by getting to know the town.

Tonglin Town belonged to the southern district of Pingcheng, located in the northern part of that district. To the east lay the direction of Xiangjin Town, bordering Baihe Town, while Yulan Town lay to the west.

According to government statistics, as of the end of 1998, the registered population of Tonglin Town was 15,963.

Tonglin Town administered one community, which was the Tonglin Town Street Community. Beyond that, there were nine administrative villages: Sanli Village where Mei Yue lived, Wanshan Village where Liao Shanchun lived, as well as Wenchang Village, Wuli Village, Huangjia Village, Jinshan Village, Ping’an Village, Xiren Village, and Laoma Village.

The three of them gained a general understanding from the files and then began visiting the villages one by one.

The goal wasn’t to meet all fifteen thousand people, as that would be too difficult. The main objective was to let those fifteen thousand people know that there were now police stationed in the town. If there were issues the village couldn’t solve, they could come to the town to find the police.

Naturally, they started with the more distant villages. The villages closer to the street community often came down for the market days, and most of them already knew about the police.

But the further villages, like Laoma Village, were a different story. Although it belonged to Tonglin Town, it was so far away that the villagers didn’t attend the Tonglin Town market on the even-numbered days. Instead, they went to the neighboring Baihe Town’s market on the odd-numbered days.

So, Yun Song and the others headed to Laoma Village first.

Laoma Village was truly far.

At first, the three of them would encounter people carrying baskets on the road. Later, there were only mountains – endless mountains, mountains that never seemed to end, one after another.

By the time they reached the top, their throats were parched. Finally, they saw Laoma Village perched on the mountain summit.

In Laoma Village, sixteen-year-old Chang Fang spotted the three strangers immediately. Her first thought was how strange they looked. Why were these three so tall? She wondered what they had eaten growing up to get that big.

Driven by curiosity, she couldn’t help but stare at the three newcomers.

One of the strangers saw her and waved. “Hello there! We are Tong Jin and the other officers stationed in Tonglin Town…”

Chang Fang only heard one word: police.

The younger sister beside her was still excited. “Sister, they’re the police!”

As soon as Tong Jin finished her greeting, the girl who had seemed somewhat interested in them immediately dropped her basket. A large basket full of firewood was abandoned by the roadside. She then scooped up the little girl who was carrying a smaller basket, put her on her back, and bolted.

What?

Tong Jin began to question her life choices. “Do I look that scary? She didn’t even want her firewood anymore.”

Yun Song also found it strange. It probably wasn’t a personal issue. That girl had been carrying her wood and staring at them until Tong Jin mentioned the police. Then she had fled.

It was odd. The three entered the village, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Like any other village, the adults were working in the fields and the children were playing in front of their houses.

Soon, however, they noticed that some children would run away as soon as they saw them.

At first, they thought the kids were just afraid of strangers.

But they quickly realized something was wrong because one of the little girls was saying-

“The police are here! Quick, hide!”

The three officers were experiencing this kind of treatment for the first time. They were police officers, not bandits!

Was it possible that the parents here scared their children every day by saying, “If you don’t behave, the police will come and take you away”?

“Something’s wrong! Something is definitely wrong!” Tong Jin couldn’t help but say.

“Why would little kids be afraid of Sister Song and me? I’m so friendly, and Sister Song looks like a good person at first glance…”

The three of them soon found the Village Party Secretary to understand the village’s situation and brought up the matter of the children.

The village official explained with a smile, “The children are young and ignorant; they’re just shy around strangers. In a rural area like ours, kids haven’t seen much of the world. When they hear someone is a police officer, they’re afraid of being arrested. It’s nothing more than that.”

The three took a walk around the village but found nothing suspicious. It really seemed like the children just wanted to avoid them; none of the children were being locked up. If it were a case of human trafficking, the children should have run toward the police upon hearing who they were, not away from them.

On their way back, they passed Maotou Mountain and happened to encounter an elderly couple living there alone.

“Officer comrades! Where are you coming from? Quick, come in and sit, have some water.”

The three of them needed a place to rest their feet, so they thanked the couple and went inside.

“We went to Laoma Village,” Yun Song said after a moment of thought. “Are you two familiar with that area?”

“Laoma Village? That’s quite a distance. Are you there to investigate a case?”

“No, just checking on things,” Tong Jin said. “Old folks, why are the children over there a bit afraid of the police? When we arrived, several children saw us and ran off without stopping.”

This was something outsiders wouldn’t know, but locals certainly did.

Normally, people wouldn’t air their neighbors’ dirty laundry to outsiders.

But this couple was different. In their minds, Yun Song, who had helped them, was one of their own, while the people of Laoma Village were outsiders.

“It’s all because of the sins committed by those kids’ parents. The ones you saw were all girls, weren’t they?”

“That’s right!” The three of them recalled, and it was true!

“Why?” Tong Jin truly couldn’t understand.

“Because they are Black Households¹,” the old man said. “Some people around here favor boys over girls. When a girl is born, they don’t register her for a household permit. They secretly send her to a relative’s house to be raised in hiding.”

“Heavens, then how do they go to school?”

“The village school doesn’t look at that. They study at the village school for two years until they can write their names and count, and that’s considered enough.”

The three police officers sat by the fire pit and fell into silence.

On the other side in Laoma Village, by a similar fire pit, Chang Fang sat staring blankly at the dancing flames.

“You’re sixteen years old already, yet you sit there with a wooden head² every day. I don’t know what’s going on in that brain of yours from morning to night. How many times have I called you? The water for the pig feed is boiling, hurry up and add the corn flour!”

Hearing her aunt’s words, Chang Fang hurriedly went to fetch the corn flour and opened the large pot on the stove. She began adding the flour to the boiling water and stirring.

Her aunt continued to nag beside her: “If I’d known you were this stupid, I would have agreed when your mother wanted to throw you away back then.”

Chang Fang remained silent. She knew that her aunt’s current anger stemmed from her refusal to marry the village’s Wang Mazi³.

Chang Fang stirred the pig feed and sat before the stove, continuing to tend the fire.

Once it boiled again, she fetched the pig feed bucket and ladled the mixture out. Her younger sister, Huanhuan, hurried to grab the kerosene lamp to light the way for her.

The sisters carried the load to the pigsty, preparing to feed the pigs.

She was very careful because the sow had recently given birth. Yesterday, she had accidentally stepped on a piglet when she went inside. The piglet had squealed, and the sow had lunged at her and gored her hard. It still hurt quite a bit.

She was very attentive today as she poured the feed into the trough. She had added a lot of corn flour today, and the pigs were eating more heartily than usual.

When she came out, her sister asked her, “Sister, when are we going home? I heard Auntie say that Mama is about to give birth to a little brother.”

Chang Fang said, “We’ll go back tomorrow.”

“But didn’t Auntie say we’re going to stay at Second Aunt’s house tomorrow?”

“Auntie was lying to us. We’re going back to our own home tomorrow.”

Sixteen-year-old Chang Fang had made a decision. On her seventeenth birthday, she would return to her hometown, see her parents, share a meal with them, and see the big black dog at the neighbor’s house.

And finally, she would hang herself at her family’s front door.

A sixteen-year-old girl who, since the age of two, had moved from her eldest aunt’s house to her second aunt’s house, then to her third aunt’s house, and her fourth uncle’s house. No matter where she was, she was constantly reminded that she should have died in the first place.

Her aunt didn’t understand why she was always staring into space.

Oh, that was because a sentence couldn’t help but pop up in her mind: “Why aren’t you dead yet!”

It happened when she was a child studying with the other children and the teacher asked about her household registration. It happened when she tried every possible way to go back to her own home, only for her mother to say, “Just be a bit more obedient, Mama doesn’t have it easy either.”

It happened when her grandmother said it was all because of her. She was the first girl of this generation; because she had led the way, a whole bunch of girls had followed into the Zhang family.

At those times, she would lose the ability to hear others speak. Her brain was a bit like the broken gramophone at the Village Chief’s house, which could only shrilly and incessantly repeat: “Chang Fang, why aren’t you dead yet!”

Even when her second aunt was kind to her, or when the Chinese teacher praised her essays for being full of soul, before she even had time to be happy, a tiny voice would appear in some corner of her mind.

Why aren’t you dead yet?

Only when she was staring blankly did everything go away.

So, she liked to stare blankly.

Translator’s Notes