The 17-year-old brother still sleeps in the same bed as his mother

1.

"Mom, when did you let your younger brother sleep alone?" While the family of four was sitting around the dining table at lunch, I raised the topic again, "He is 15 years old, and outsiders know that you still sleep in the same bed, so you want to gossip ".

"Who would gossip? Aunt Wang next door is sleeping in the same bed with her 18-year-old son," the mother retorted.

"After all, it's a boy, so it's inconvenient anyway," the father chimed in.

"We sleep in the same bed, but it's not inconvenient for him to cover his quilt and I to cover mine." My mother didn't want to talk any more.

Once again, my father and I failed to rescue my younger brother.

The mother's control over the younger brother suffocates the whole family. The younger brother goes to and from school, and the mother personally picks up the younger brother's clothes; the younger brother's clothes, the mother personally chooses; the younger brother's extracurricular books, the mother personally controls. The most exaggerated is the three meals a day she arranged for her brother, just like the king’s recipe: there must be eggs for breakfast, meat for lunch, some tea in the afternoon, hot milk before going to bed, one meal a day, one meal less Not even a bite. In order to ensure the effective implementation of this recipe, she has three meals a day, and meals are delivered to school.

Countless times, my father and I fought for my brother's freedom at this dinner table, but we were all defeated.

I bought extracurricular books for my younger brother, but my mother locked the book in the cabinet after she found out, and replaced it with Huanggang exam papers; my younger brother couldn’t drink cucumber soup, and my father said, “Forget it.” After all, the bottom of the bowl of soup came to an end; the younger brother proposed to ride a bicycle to and from school, but before the words finished, the mother gave him a look, "This is impossible", she has her own theory, "I can do a few questions in the time of cycling" My mother insisted on sharing the same bed with my 15-year-old brother. My father and I got angry, quarreled, and pissed off all kinds of means, but in exchange for my mother's prevarication, "look after the high school entrance examination."

Finally, my younger brother passed the high school entrance examination.

Seeing his younger brother's good grades, his father took the opportunity to propose that he send his younger brother to an international school in the city for high school. Staying in a key high school in the district, my younger brother had to study hard for another three years, and then crowded the single-plank bridge for the college entrance examination with thousands of people. However, the international high school learning model is in line with the West, and the pressure is low on weekdays. The college entrance examination also includes the way of studying abroad.

The latter is obviously a better choice. Of course, for me and my father, this choice has another big advantage: it keeps my brother away from my mother.

My mother knew our plan as soon as she heard it, and repeatedly evaded it, "the school spirit of the international school is too bad" and "the tuition is expensive";

"Don't read it again, don't waste that time", she refused.

"Just feel the atmosphere", my father and I were soft-spoken, "Listen to the lectures, don't sign up".

She twitched for a while, complained endlessly, got up reluctantly, and took her brother out.

2.

In fact, I can completely understand why the mother controls the younger brother.

Brother is not easy to come by. My mother had a junior high school degree, and after graduation, she found a job as a nurse in a public health service based on family connections. She married her father at the age of 22, became pregnant at the age of 23, and was always looking forward to a boy, but at the age of 24, I came. Disappointed, she discussed with her father about having a second child. The father refused at first. At that time, he was a small clerk in the bank, and he was under a lot of pressure due to lack of money, but the mother insisted, "I am also happy to have a son and in-laws", and the father agreed with hesitation.

In 2003, the mother finally conceived a second child. At this time, the "family planning" policy was in full swing across the country, and many parents who had exceeded their births were expelled from their work units, fined, forced to have abortions by the Family Planning Commission, and put on rings. The mother secretly asked someone to have a B-ultrasound, and after learning that there was a boy in the belly, she took the father's hand and was so determined that she must give birth to this child.

She first begged her father to send someone to forge a fake household registration; then relied on three bottles of high-end liquor to obtain a birth certificate with the new household registration; in order to prevent prosecution and conceal her pregnancy, she quit her job as a nurse in a public hospital and hid at home all day.

Even so, the news of the mother's pregnancy could not be hidden from the neighbors. Once, the street family planning committee held a meeting for residents, and the leader named his father on the stage and threatened viciously, "Don't think I don't know about your family! Be careful of your wife's stomach."

That night, the frightened mother packed her luggage overnight and hid in her natal house alone as if fleeing a refugee. A few months later, I met her in the delivery room of the hospital. That day, relatives and friends gathered around her bed, taking turns hugging her younger brother and praising him for being cute, while her mother was lying on the bed, laughing openly.

She won the battle.

Naturally enjoy the fruits of this victory with peace of mind.

She has the privilege of being in her hometown. In my big family, my grandfather loves his son very much, my grandmother gave birth to two children, and my uncle and father are both sons. The uncle's family first had a daughter, and then a son. Since then, his status in the family has soared. He often teases others when he speaks, and no one dares to get angry. Now, the mother has a younger brother who is younger than her cousin, and also has the right to be defiant. The New Year's Eve dinner at ten o'clock in the morning on the first day of the lunar new year, she procrastinated to get up at twelve o'clock, the whole family was waiting for her, she just said, "I want to take care of my brother to sleep", no one said more.

At the New Year's dinner, my grandfather was full of praise for her. While persuading the relatives who only had one daughter in the family, "You should have a son like her", he gave me and my brother a red envelope. 1000 yuan for my younger brother and 500 yuan for me.

She has no job, and her brother is her career. She sent him to learn table tennis, calligraphy, English, and Mathematical Olympiad, and he was very busy. My younger brother is also smart, playing table tennis and winning the district championship; he has never been in the top five of his class in exams. "Your son is really outstanding!" "Look at you, how good at educating children!" The compliments poured in, and she confirmed her own life value from her younger brother's achievements.

We happened to be traveling in Yunnan on the day my younger brother passed the exam. On the rickety bus, my mother was so excited that she called her relatives and friends one by one to announce the good news. It took several pages of call records to finish the call.

"Your son's grades have always been good, as expected!"

"It's still related to your education!"

She only called to get compliments, and she was hypocritical and modest, "Where is it! It's up to him to work hard", the voice was so loud that the entire bus could hear it.

It seemed that she was the one who got good grades in the exam.

3.

Before my mother had a boy, I was that boy.

For seven full years, she wouldn't let me grow long hair, or wear hair accessories, or buy me dresses. Passing by the store, I saw the dress I liked and couldn’t move my feet. She murmured "You look ugly in this", took my hand and hurried away; Locked in a cupboard. When I was a child, I had short short hair with visible stubble, wore a T-shirt, khaki slacks, and white socks sneakers. I mixed with the boys in the neighborhood, smoking, fighting, and swearing. I tried to provoke her and was disappointed to find that she tolerated masculine behavior above anything tainted by femininity, even if it was unseemly.

After my brother came, she no longer needed to deceive herself with me.

My younger brother was often ill when he was one year old, and there were many people registered in the hospital. She sent me, who was eight years old, to walk two kilometers to the hospital to reserve a seat for my younger brother in advance. However, once I had acute gastroenteritis and vomited five times at school, I endured the pain and went home. Asked her to take me to the hospital, but she refused, "You know the hospital very well, my brother will wake up later, I don't worry if there is no one at home."

My younger brother is four years old, and I am thirteen years old, in junior high school. When the national flag is raised every Monday, all staff must wear school uniforms, and those who violate the rules will be fined to stand. One Monday, I forgot to wear my school uniform, so I borrowed a classmate's mobile phone to call her and asked her to deliver it. She said yes. In the winter morning, the sky was gray, I squatted under the tree, blowing the cold wind and snow, waiting for her while counting the fallen leaves. Counting and counting, the footsteps of queuing up came, the national anthem came, the bell for the end of morning exercises came, but she didn't come.

I called her to ask her the reason, and she said, "My brother just woke up, I want to put him to sleep before sending it to you."

"You are partial brother", I hung up the phone and went back to the classroom.

Ten minutes later, she appeared in the classroom, stood on the podium, and threw the school uniform in my face in front of the whole class, "I need a school uniform!"

My younger brother grew up slowly, and the most she said to me was "You are an older sister, you should give it up to my younger brother", snacks, remote controls, toys, discs, music players... as long as my younger brother likes it, I must give it up unconditionally.

One day, I couldn't bear it anymore, "Why should I let it go?"

"Because you are big."

"Why do you have to give up? Did I choose to come to this world first? When you gave birth to me, did you ask for my consent?" I yelled.

She slapped me on the face with a "slap", "Have you learned to talk back?"

The left side of the face was in burning pain, then numb and lost consciousness. I covered my face, not letting the tears flow, looked at her, and said word by word, "When I become a mother in the future, I must not be a mother who is such a failure like you."

After that, I escaped to university, went north to work, and went to Hong Kong to study and work in graduate school. I was farther and farther away from home, more and more busy at work, and had less and less contact with her. For a long time, I thought that I was mature enough to no longer care about being ignored by her, until my younger brother finished his high school entrance examination and my father invited me to travel with the whole family to Yunnan. I was crushed again.

On the Erhai sightseeing ferry, birds fly over Cangshan Mountain, the clear water reflects the white clouds, the scenery is very beautiful, the mother was so happy that she asked her younger brother to take a picture of her. My younger brother clicked a few times to hand in the job. I couldn't stand it anymore, so I turned on the camera and pointed it at her, adjusted the angle, composition, exposure, focus, color correction, and added filters.

After a lot of tossing, I showed her the repaired photo, and she frowned, "Hey, why did you make me so fat?" Then she said to my brother's photo that wasn't even in focus, "It's still Brother did a good job."

I got angry, and deleted the photos I just took one by one from the phone, "Anyway, I am not good, and my brother is good."

At that moment, I realized a cruel fact. As long as I go home and stay with my mother and brother, the grievances that have been accumulated for decades will come like a tide. I was like a beggar begging my mother to love me more, and her gesture of comforting me was full of charity, sympathy and pity.

4.

"What's your name?" The female teacher asked softly.

"His name is H", the younger brother was about to answer, but the mother snatched Bai. She stopped her younger brother behind her, folded her hands on her chest, and looked up and down the female teacher with hostile eyes, as if a hen was protecting a chick that was being watched by an eagle.

Seeing this, the female teacher bypassed her mother and stepped beside her younger brother, "How old are you this year?"

"15 years old", the mother snatched the younger brother's words. The younger brother lowered his head even deeper, with his hands clasped behind his back, and his two index fingers clasped tightly, rubbing them non-stop.

The female teacher also lowered her head and looked at her younger brother, "Then what subject do you like?"

"He doesn't prefer subjects, and he doesn't particularly like subjects," my mother rushed to answer again.

I couldn't take it anymore, "Mom, it's not like my brother can't talk, can you let him talk by himself?"

When my mother heard my fierceness, she yelled, "Okay, okay, I think I talk too much! Tell me, tell me!" She strode to the corner, found a chair, slammed it down, and sat down without saying a word.

The sound of footsteps coming and going in the hall and the sound of reading books were suddenly quiet. Dozens of pairs of eyes shot from all directions like cold guns. The female teacher, father, brother and I who stayed in place, carried the embarrassment of the whole room.

Seeing his mother getting angry, the younger brother felt that the female teacher was not a good person, so he never said a word to her again. In the next half an hour, the female teacher invited many colleagues to communicate with her younger brother, but all of them were turned away.

I had predicted that the visit to this international school would not go well, but I never thought that it would end so quickly and violently.

5.

After coming out of the international school, the family of four all had dark faces, and no one spoke when they got in the car. The atmosphere in the car was as cold as an ice cellar, and I felt suffocated. I opened the rear window to breathe, and the wind poured in. Outside the window, the road back to the town is spacious and lonely, and only a car roars by in ten minutes, and the residual trees pass by the field of vision one by one until they disappear.

"Mom, don't worry about your brother anymore", I couldn't hold back after all.

"I don't care about him, can he be admitted to a key high school? What did I do wrong?" She sat in the co-pilot, her tone became more and more anxious as she spoke, "I get up at five every day to send him to school, cook for him at noon, and wait for him at ten o'clock in the evening." Is it not enough to pick him up in the north wind and stay up late in the morning to do homework with him? Do you know how tired I am? You go cook! You do the laundry! You go mop the floor!"

She felt pitiful, sobbed first, then cried loudly, and finally howled hysterically, "If you send him to an international school again, you are forcing me to die!"

At that moment, my disgust reached its peak, and I couldn't stand her ugly posture of "death" forcing her, seemingly subdued, but in fact controlled, and stabbed her coldly with the most vicious and hurtful words I could think of.

"My brother is not your dog, my brother is a person".

"You still sleep in the same bed with him, are you a pervert?"

"You don't let him go to an international school, is it for him or for yourself?"

"It's a good thing you don't love me, otherwise I would be like my younger brother, unable to even talk when I go out."

"You know, the reason why I study hard and work hard is to leave you."

She was completely defeated, and she slapped herself, once and again, faster and harder, and yelled at her father, "Just drive me to death! Drive us all to death."

"If you die, you die, I want to live, I not only want to live, but also live better than you", my tone was indifferent, the wind from the rear window blew across my body, inexplicably, I was extremely happy.

"Is this how you talk to your mother?" The father who had been silent all this time was angry. He gripped the steering wheel tightly, the veins in his wrists appeared, and the speed of the car increased uncontrollably.

My younger brother, who was sitting next to me, also started to sob.

When his mother heard him crying, she turned her head and took his hand, "Don't cry!"

The younger brother quickly wiped away the tears.

6.

When they got home, everyone locked themselves in their rooms and didn't say anything all night.

That night, I wrote a long letter to my brother.

"Dear brother:

From your birth to the present, as a sister, I have always lacked concern for you, sorry.

The conflict between me and my mother has nothing to do with you. To be honest, I still feel that my mother loves you more than me, and I would find it unfair, but I never feel that you are not worthy of being loved by my mother.

Instead, you are so worth it.

On the contrary, I also love you much more than you think.

You are sensible, well-behaved, and even to the point of obedience, you will persist in doing things you don't want to do, which is amazing. As a sister, I have seen too many qualities in you that I don't have, and I feel ashamed.

To be honest, I don't really care if you go to an international school or not. What I care about is that your mother is blocking your way to better opportunities.

While your mother loves you, it also puts great pressure and coercion on you.

At the moment when my mother was almost crazy, she loved you so much, but she couldn't love you so much.

Mom expresses love with words like, "You're all driving me to die," but no one feels love at that moment. At that moment I just felt tremendous pressure.

At that moment, rather than saying that she loves you, it is better to say that she loves herself.

At that moment, I felt that she opened a valve—everything she wanted you and your dad to do in the future can be obtained by such extreme means, by hurting yourself and hurting others’ compassion for her. .

this is too scary.

She is a mother, the mother who loves you the most, of course she wishes you well, but the way she treats you is limited by her vision.

I'm not trying to instigate you not to listen to your mother, I just want you to understand that there are many moments when you feel painful, especially when your family makes you feel painful, it's not that people don't love you, but that people don't know how to love you. This is everyone's problem, not yours.

I just want you to understand that while listening to your mother, you must plan your future, think about the meaning of life, think about who I am, why I am alive, where I am going, and what I am going to do.

I just want you to understand that education about love is missing in this family. You have to learn to distinguish who is loving yourself and who is loving you, how we should love ourselves, and how we should love others.

What really determines whether a person is happy or not is never his achievements, but whether he is happy or not. The amazing thing is that whether a person is happy or not depends fundamentally on how to give and receive love.

If there is anything else to say, it is probably that my sister will always love you.

Also, if you encounter any unhappiness in the future, it is not your fault, but the fault of your father, mother, sister, and the world. "

After writing the letter, I thought, I am powerless to make any changes.

The next day, I carried my suitcase and returned to Hong Kong.

After returning to Hong Kong, I never took the initiative to call home. But every Saturday at noon, my parents always send me the video on time. In the video, the father, mother and younger brother ate around the table where countless quarrels took place, countless tears were shed, and they finally forgave everything. The father still talks less, the mother is still strong, and the younger brother still eats the meals and dishes arranged by his mother with his head down. He is already a sophomore in high school and still sleeps in the same bed with his mother.