Cultivate a black technology god

Chapter 211 Ariel's past (14)

There is a coffin in the big house.They're about to haul it away.

It's almost one o'clock in the afternoon.

Through the kitchen window, Ariel saw people at the funeral home bringing folding chairs into the house for the funeral.

"Go back to your house,"

Her mother told her.

"We'll call you to the funeral when we're ready."

So her mother gave her a lollipop to lick while she waited.

She was lying on the bed playing with a lollipop, and she could still hear voices downstairs.After a while, nothing was heard.

Suddenly, her father looked down on her.

"Come on, the burial ceremony is over. You can go to the cemetery with us."

They forgot about her.She had promised her to come down to the funeral, but their words didn't count.

She is nine years old.

The funeral was held at home.

But they kept her upstairs and coaxed her with a lollipop and treated her like a baby.

She couldn't and would never forgive her parents.

She put on her coat, toque, and plaid scarf, and went downstairs, passing people without a word, onto the pavement.

"You take this car, Ariel," said the priest.

Her Uncle Roger and Aunt Heidi were already in the car.

Here's another Heidi she doesn't like.

Her uncle and her father look very much alike, so the Marshal put her together with her "father".She is very upset.

Another reason for her displeasure was that the deceased was her grandmother, and she had been neglected and manipulated by her parents and all.

This is not fair.

Tears filled the eyes and became cold.

She never cried out loud.

The car stopped.

They were walking along the cemetery path towards the Dorsets' grave in the village where her grandfather had been born.

Her grandfather was the first white man born in the county.

Walking here, Ariel thought of death.

The pastor in the church once said that death is a new beginning.

She can't understand.Her grandmother once told her:

One day Jesus will come and raise those who love him from the grave.

The grandmother also said that she and Ariel would be together forever in the new land.

Uncle Roger and Aunt Heidi led Ariel to where the family stood.

Mother and father, Aunt Clara and her husband, Anita and two-year-old Ella, and of course grandfather, all stood together, about ten feet from the grave.

No one spoke.

Overhead were overcast skies over Wisconsin.

It was a windy and cold day in April.

A gray metal coffin has been placed beside the grave.

There are piles of flowers on the coffin lid.

The priest stood nearby.

"I saw a new heaven and a new earth..." he began,
“And I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband… There will be no more death, nor mourning, nor crying, nor pain…, sitting on the throne said, Behold, I have made all things new."

What Ariel saw was not the metal coffin, the pile of flowers or the people.

What she saw was Mary, a Canadian grandmother who was married to a native of Willow Corners and lived in his town.

She was a stranger to her husband's congregation, and was compelled everywhere to submit to his teachings.

She liked to read, but he forbade it with these words:

"In addition to the truth, everything is false." He believes that only religious books are truth.

Ariel could see her grandmother in a long dress, her high heels, her white hair, her small blue eyes, her tender smile.

What Ariel heard was not the pastor's eulogy, but the grandmother saying softly:

"It's all right, Heidi." This was in response to her mother's following: "Ariel, you're not allowed to jump around on grandma's bed."

Her grandmother's big bed was very high and very soft.Ariel jumped around on the bed as she pleased.

With grandma, there is nothing to complain about.And the home downstairs seems to be thousands of miles away.

Ariel would show her drawings to her grandmother, who would admire them and hang them on the wall.

Her grandmother had a big trunk by the window.

There are many magazines and newspapers in the box, and the children's editions are all reserved for Ariel.

She asked Ariel to paint.Ariel is very quick at coloring within the lines.Her grandmother loved her work.

Her grandmother let Ariel arrange the tableware, but she didn't say that she made all the mistakes and was useless.

Ariel did something wrong and her grandmother didn't get angry.

Ariel could tell her many things and beg her:

"Don't tell my mother, okay?"

Her grandmother would say, "I'll never tell Heidi what you told me." She kept her word.

Ariel and her grandmother were going for a walk by the river through a flowering woodland, and now what was the receiver saying:
“As it pleased God Almighty to grant our sister Mary Dorset her final rest, we lovingly laid her body in the earth…”

Sleeping, her grandmother is sleeping.They could no longer walk along the river together.

It's just that the flowers are still there, and her grandmother isn't there, and neither is Ariel.

"...ashes to ashes and dust to dust, with the hope of her joyous resurrection, through Jesus Christ, our God."

The wind howled over Ariel's father and Uncle Roger, who were in unaccountable grief, over Aunt Clara who was rubbing her hands and whimpering nervously, over the sobbing grandfather.

Ariel's throat tightened, her chest became heavier and heavier, her fingers were numb and painful, but her eyes were dry and without tears.Only she doesn't cry.

It's so cold.

If it has color, it is the light blue of ice cubes, with brown flecks.

Anything that is cold is not love.

Love is warm.

Love is grandmother.

Love, has been placed in the ground.

The metal coffin shimmered in a ray of sunlight.

The coffin was in the hands of several men.

They are doing a terrible thing.

They lifted the coffin and began to lower it inch by inch.

They were lowering her grandmother deeper and deeper into the ground.

They are burying love.

Everyone was crying, but Ariel still had no tears.

Her eyes were dry, as dry as the barren world before her, the world that no one wanted to hear when she wanted to talk, the world without love.

The raging emotions turned into motivation, and Ariel moved forward, slowly at first, one step, two steps, and then faster and faster, towards the pile of flowers on the coffin lid.She was already on the edge of the grave, ready to jump in, to be with her grandmother forever.

Then suddenly the hand seized her arm and jerked her away from the grave.leave grandma.

The wind howled.It was getting darker.

That extremely strong hand was still holding her arm, so tight that it was embedded in her flesh.Her arm ached from the sharp tug of the hand.

Ariel turned to see who it was who was pulling her away.

Is it Uncle Roger?Is it her father?nobody!

There are no graves here.

There are no piles of flowers.

There is no wind.

There is no sky.

Father and Mother, Uncle Roger and Aunt Hattie, Aunt Clara and the rich old man she married, the Vicar and all the others are not here!
In place of a grave is a school desk.

In place of the pile of flowers is a blackboard.

Instead of the sky is the ceiling.

The priest was replaced by a teacher.

The teacher is tall and thin.There are not a few words in each sentence, and they are spoken extremely fast.

She was not Miss Thurston, Ariel's teacher.

Her teacher should be Miss Thurston, who teaches the third grade. She is of medium height, relatively fat, and speaks slowly.The teacher in front of me was Miss Henderson.

Ariel knew that she taught the fifth grade.

How is this going?

Ariel knew it was not a dream.

This primary school is where she attended after leaving kindergarten.There was nothing unusual about this classroom, except that it wasn't her classroom.The windows of the third grade classroom face west, while the windows of this classroom face east.She knows all the classrooms in the elementary school.And this one, she knew, was the fifth grade classroom.

Somehow, she got into this fifth-grade classroom.

She made a terrible mistake.

Must go out, must go back to the third-grade classroom, or Miss Thurston will mark her as absent.

She had to apologize to Miss Henderson for coming here, and explain to Miss Circus for not being there.But how to explain it?
She began to pay attention to other children.

Betsy Bush was on the other side of the aisle.

Henry von Hoffmann was ahead of her.

And Stanley, Stuart, Jim, Caroline Schultz, and the rest of the class.

Oh, all the third graders are here.

Most of her classmates went to kindergarten with her.

She knows them well.

They were still the same, but a little different from the last time she saw them.

The clothes they wear are different from what they wear in the third grade classroom.

They were larger than the ones she'd seen before her grandmother's funeral.How is this possible?
How could these children all grow up in an instant?
Betsy Bush, who was always so confident, swaggered as usual to answer the teacher's questions.

She acted as if she had always been here.

So did the other kids.

No one seems to feel that there is anything wrong with being here.

If Miss Henderson was not Betsy's teacher, why should Betsy answer questions?

Ariel turned her gaze to the notebook open on her desk, trying to focus on it and forget about the stupid things.

But no, because she couldn't understand what was written in the notebook at all.

I remember a lot of notes, but she didn't write them down.There was plenty of homework done, but she didn't do it.

She found that the homework was graded all As.

As much as she tried to make it a big deal, she was growing more and more frightened.

She closed her eyes desperately, not to look at the teacher who had nothing to do with her, not to look at the classroom whose windows should not face east, not to look at those classmates who suddenly swelled up, and not to look at the things on them that had never been seen before. Strange clothes worn.

But she can't.

Ariel felt a strange urge to study herself.

What about her own clothes?

Has she grown in size herself?

Her eyes fell on her clothes.

It was made of yellow voile embroidered with green and purple flowers. It was also like the clothes worn by my classmates, and I had never seen it before.

She didn't have such a dress at all, and she didn't remember her mother buying a similar dress for her, let alone wearing it.

All in all, she was wearing a dress that didn't belong to her, and she was sitting in a classroom that didn't belong to her.

No one seemed to notice anything unusual.

The third graders have been answering questions.As for the content of these questions, she had never studied with her classmates and did not understand them at all.

She looked at the clock on the teacher's desk, it was two minutes to twelve.

Immediately the bell will ring, and she will be saved immediately.She waited in panic.

Then, the bell rang.She heard the teacher's high-pitched voice shout:
"get out of class."

Ariel sat motionless.

She dared not move, and dared not go home immediately.

But the classmates laughed and shouted, and rushed to the clothes storage hall like crazy.

The boys elbowed and jostled to get in front of the girl.

Ariel watched them leave the locker room quickly.She was sure they grabbed their coats and ran in disorder.

Children's actions are always worrying and frightening, making people feel at a loss.

Ariel was already nervous, but now she looked at them and became even more nervous.

Miss Thurston was good at keeping order.

The crazy scene just now couldn't have happened in the grade she taught.

But Ariel often heard that Miss Henderson couldn't handle a grade.So maybe it was the grade Henderson was teaching.

One thing after another flashed through her mind, preventing her from thinking about it and making a wise move—going home.

When she looked up, everyone in the classroom was gone.

She stood up slowly and walked slowly towards the cloakroom.

As soon as she entered the clothes storage room, she realized that there were other people here.

It was Miss Henderson, putting on her coat.

It was too late to turn around and walk away now.

This locker room is exactly the same as the one in the third grade, except it is located at the other end of the corridor.

All classrooms and cloakrooms are similar.This cloakroom is quite familiar.

Only one coat still hung on the wall now, a plaid coat like she had never seen before.

But she still walked over to watch carefully.

She was looking for a strip of tape with her name on it.

Miss Thurston always made it a rule that the pupils of the year write their names on two strips of tape, and stick one to their clothes and the other under the coat hook.

But now there is no tape with his name written on his clothes or under the coat hooks.

"Ariel," said Miss Henderson to her as she was leaving,
"Why don't you put on your coat? What's the matter? Why don't you go home for lunch?"

Ariel didn't answer.

Still staring at the strange coat, she thought to herself:
It was no surprise that Miss Henderson knew her name.

In the small town of Willow Corners, everyone knows everyone.

Miss Henderson asked again:
"Why don't you go home for lunch?"

Under Miss Henderson's watchful eye, Ariel finally put on her coat.

It fits well.

Miss Henderson was gone.

Ariel still dawdled for a while, and only left when she was sure that the teacher had gone far away and would not meet her on the stairs.

Ariel walked out of the red brick building slowly.

There is a big house on the corner across the road.

This is her home.

Before crossing the road, she looked back and forth to see if anyone was coming towards her.

She crossed the road when she was sure no one was looking at her.

Top, the dog, barked at her twice in welcome on the front steps.

She quickly hugged the dog's neck and hurried through the door.

She was anxious to be in familiar surroundings, to let the turmoil of this morning's school fade away in her own home.

However, as soon as she entered the door, her wish came to naught.

When she hung up the plaid coat in the hall closet, she found that the clothes she remembered were gone.

Unfamiliar red, green and yellow clothes leaped into view.

She twisted away from the closet to go to the downstairs bedroom.

This is the room her grandmother lived in by her grandfather and grandmother when she was dying.

The side door to the bedroom was plastered.

It's strange how quickly they build.

In the living room, she found her parents' furniture in addition to her grandmother's.

Grandma had just been buried and the family had rearranged their arrangements, which was a little too soon.

What's on the big cupboard?A radio!

Her parents were hesitant to buy it because her grandfather said the radio was made by the devil.

Mother called from the kitchen:
"Is that you, Peggy? You came home too late."

It's that nickname again.

Her mother didn't like the name Ariel, so she invented Peggy Louisiana.

If she was funny or cute, her mother called her Peggy Luisiana, Peggy Lou, Peggy Ann, or just Peggy.

Calling her Peggy now means her mother likes her today.

Ariel was taken aback.

The walls of the kitchen had turned a tender green.It was originally white.

"I like white kitchens," Ariel said.

Her mother replied: "We changed the color last year."

last year?

Her father was in the sunroom, reading an architecture magazine while he waited for lunch.

Ariel walked over, wanting to talk to him.

Her playroom is also in the corner of this sunroom.

She kept the doll on the windowsill.

The doll is still there now.

But more than before.

Where did that big, beautiful doll with blond hair, a smiling face, and white teeth come from?It's not hers.

Her father looked up at her and said:
"Ariel, are you coming home late?"

"Daddy," she blurted out,

"What's the matter with this doll, the big doll?"

"Are you joking?" he replied.

"It's Nancy Jean. You won it in a contest. You were so excited about it."

Ariel was speechless.

There were four sets of cutlery on the dining room table instead of three.What is this fourth set of utensils for?

There seemed to be no one else at home.

But this time, Ariel didn't ask any more.

She was already embarrassed about the Nancy Jean doll.

Boom, boom, boom, the familiar sound of wooden legs hitting the ground always interrupted her visits to her grandmother and always frightened her.

This was her grandfather, fully six feet tall, with a goatee and a bald head.What is he doing here?
Why did he come to sit at their table.

Grandparents' quarters, whether upstairs or downstairs, were always separate from the Ariel's.

Each family eats its own food, and does not break into other people's world.

This is the rule established by her grandmother.

The rule broke as soon as my grandmother died.

Her father led everyone in a prayer of thanksgiving before the meal.

Her mother passed food around.

The fried potatoes have been turned twice and there is still some left.

Her father took the plate and said to his father:
"Dad, here are some potatoes."

(End of this chapter)