Cultivate a black technology god

Chapter 212 Ariel's past (15)

Her mother pointedly:
"It's been passed around twice."

"He'll hear." Her father grimaced.

"He'll hear." Her mother imitated him.

"He can't hear at all. He's deaf, deaf. You know that."

In fact, her grandfather did not hear.

He had been babbling on in a frighteningly loud voice.

Her mother changes the subject:
"Willard, I got a letter from Anita today."

"What did she say in the letter?" her father asked.At this moment, he turned to Ariel and said:
"I'll never forget how you took care of Anita's little Ella when they lived here for a few weeks after Grandma's funeral, so we grown-ups could have nothing to worry about."

How many weeks after the funeral?Taking care of Ella?What did he say?She definitely did nothing for Ella.

And she didn't know the weeks after the funeral.

She was confused.When was the funeral?Isn't it just held recently?Ariel stared at her mother and made a risky attempt.

"Mother," she asked,

"What grade am I in now?"

"What grade am I in now?" her mother asked imitating.

"That's nonsense."

They didn't tell her, didn't understand how important it was to her.

They don't seem to care at all.

What can she tell them?

Even if she wanted to say it, she didn't know where to start.

Her mother turned to her and asked:
"What's wrong with you today? You talk so little, which is different from usual."

Her father got up to go. "I told Mrs. Kramer I was back at the store at one thirty."

After the Ariel family went bankrupt in the Great Depression, they went to the farm to save money.

After returning to town from the farm, Ariel's father worked in a hardware store.

Ariel and her mother came back first, so that she could go to nursery.

Her father then went to work in Mrs. Kramer's hardware store.

They lived in the old house again.Her grandparents lived upstairs.

It now appears that the grandfather lived with them.

Her grandfather got up to go back to his own room.

"Cheer up, Ariel," he said:

"Life isn't gloomy if you're smiling and jovial," he bumped against the corner of the dining table.

"Clumsy hands and feet," said her mother:
"He's banging all over the place. He's banging on that shelf by the door too, knocking it all off the plaster."

Ariel remained silent.Here she is stalling.

"I don't know what's the matter with you today," said her mother:

"It's like a different person."

Ariel went to the closet.

She was also looking for a red wool coat she had worn before, which she was looking for in the school locker room.

Her mother followed her to the closet.

"By the way, I want you to go find Mrs. Schwarzbard after school. She has a package for me."

"Who is this Mrs. Schwarzbard?" Ariel asked.

"You know exactly who she is," replied her mother.

Ariel had never heard of this name before, but she didn't dare ask again.She just looked at all these costumes she had never seen before with fear.

"What are you waiting for?" her mother asked:

"Miss Henderson will be mad at you if you're late."

Miss Henderson?So her mother knew she was in Miss Henderson's class!

"Just wear the plaid coat you wore this morning," said her mother.

Ariel did as she was told.

Ariel had just walked out of the house when she saw Caroline Schulz and Henry von Hoffmann on the sidewalk across the street.

She waited until after they had entered the school before starting.

After she entered the school herself, she couldn't decide whether to go to the third grade classroom or the fifth grade classroom.

Her mother knew her teacher was Miss Henderson, but Ariel thought of herself as a third-grader.

So, she went to the third grade classroom to try first.

Miss Thurston was sitting at the desk, sorting out the papers.

"It's so kind of you to come and see me." She said when she saw Ariel:

"I like my girls come back and see me."

return?Ariel made her way to the fifth grade classroom, deciding to take the seat she had taken this morning.

The first class is arithmetic.

Practicing counting fractions.

But Ariel doesn't know how to calculate common fractions or complex fractions.

The next step is to learn decimals.

Neither does Ariel.

Miss Henderson talked about multiplication.

Ariel still won't.

The teacher wiped the blackboard, wrote some new multiplication problems, and handed out blank paper to practice for the next day's test.

Ariel stared at the white paper in front of her eyes, then turned her eyes to the blackboard, and finally turned her eyes back again.

Miss Henderson stared at her for a moment, then stepped behind Ariel and looked down.

"You haven't written a word," said Miss Henderson angrily:

"Hurry up and do the math."

Ariel didn't move, which made the teacher even angrier.

She pointed to the blackboard and said:

"What is this? And this?"

Ariel just shook her head. "Hello, Ariel," the teacher asked her,

"What's the answer?" The students laughed.

Caroline Schultz snickered.

"Ariel," the teacher refused to give in.

"Tell me what the answer is?"

"I don't know. I don't know." Ariel's voice was hoarse.

Miss Henderson turned to her. "But you've been an A student. I don't know what's wrong with you." The teacher was fuming.

"Miss, you should pay close attention to your studies. Maybe you are playing tricks on me?"

This question originally did not require an answer, but as expected there was no answer.

The baffled instructor looked back as he walked toward the blackboard:
"You understood quite well yesterday."

yesterday?Ariel was silent.

She now begins to understand:
For her, there is no yesterday.She seemed to have done something that she had not done.She seemed to have learned some lessons that she had not learned.

This happened.

But this cannot be said to be entirely new.

Her time seemed to have been erased before, as Miss Henderson had erased the numbers on the blackboard.

But this time it seemed to be much longer.

Much more happened in between than Ariel could comprehend.

She had never told anyone about this strange feeling.

This is a secret, she dare not tell it.

But how much time has passed like this?

She doesn't know yet.

She's in fifth grade now, but doesn't remember fourth grade.

Never has so much time been erased.

Something happened that she had no idea about.

"What's got you confused?" Miss Henderson had returned to the desk.

"No, no," Ariel replied with an air of admission.

"But I won't count."

"You were here yesterday," Miss Henderson repeated coldly.

Nothing yesterday.Ariel doesn't remember anything since the funeral at the cemetery.

She didn't understand why people didn't know she didn't know, and Miss Henderson kept talking about what happened yesterday, as if she had been sitting at this desk.But she has never sat here.

Yesterday was blank.

During recess, the children hurried to the playground.

Both boys and girls have their own baseball and softball teams.

They were picking players, and in the end Ariel stood there alone, not picked.

It's a new, scary feeling.

In the past, the children never left her out of anything they did, and she didn't understand why they did it now.

After class, Ariel waited until the last child was far away before starting home.

If she didn't go to Mrs. Schwarzbard for the package, her mother would lose her temper.

There was nothing she could do except to be scolded.

Always like this.

In the school hall, Danny Martin called Ariel.

Danny is a year older than her and is her best friend.

They had many a long conversation on the front steps of the white house with the black shutters.

She could tell Danny more.

He also attended his grandmother's funeral.

Maybe she should ask him what had happened since then.

But if he tells the whole story, he will take her for a fool, and she has to find some way to find out by herself.

They crossed the street together and sat on her front steps chatting.

One of the things he said was:

"Mrs. Engel died within the week. Elaine and I took the flowers from the funeral and sent them to the disabled and bedridden, just as you and I went together to send flowers to your grandmother after her death."

When Danny said this, Ariel vaguely remembered it, as if in a dream:
A girl called Ariel (but she's not Ariel) joins Danny Martin in bringing flowers from her grandmother's funeral to the sick and poor of town.

She still remembered staring at this other Ariel, as if in a dream.It was as if she was walking side by side with this other Ariel.

She couldn't tell if this was a dream.Although she knows a lot of time has passed (since the funeral), this is the only memory she can retrieve.

Besides, there was an empty space, a huge void.

From the moment a hand grabbed her arm on the graveyard to the moment she found herself sitting in a fifth-grade classroom, there was a vast void.

Was it a dream about the girl and those flowers, or was it real?

If it was a dream, how could it be consistent with what Danny said?she does not know.

There was a lot going on in this cold, pale blue, unreachable void, and she didn't know it at all.

To forget is to be shameful.

She is ashamed.

A vague memory of the girl who delivered the flowers encouraged Ariel to ask Danny about all the things that were different.

Some houses have already been built.The store has changed owners.

The town changed.

Ariel knew she could ask Danny all these questions.

"Why did the Green family live in the miners' home?" Ariel asked.

"They moved there last summer," Danny replied.

"Who's the baby in the handcart that Susie Anne is pushing?"

"That's Suzy Anne's little sister," Danny explained,

"She was born last spring."

"Who is Mrs. Schwarzbard?"

"That was the tailor who came to town a year ago."

Danny would never ask her why she didn't know.

Apart from her grandmother, Ariel was at her most free with Danny Martin.

This feeling of freedom began in the spring, summer and autumn of 1934.

During this period, because of the teasing of time, Ariel covered herself with immature loneliness and reinforced her taciturn barrier with a layer of armor.

Danny becomes the antidote to the loneliness and vulnerability Ariel feels as she "enters" fifth grade.

In the past, she had lost friends for no apparent reason.

Her father's cold exhortations also pained her:
"You should be able to talk to people and face the world." Her mother repeated the old tune:

"I have never known what your temperament is or what kind of person you will become."

With Danny, her pain was less intense.

Without Danny, Ariel knew she wouldn't have been able to endure the humiliation and embarrassment caused by her falling math score.

Without Danny, Ariel couldn't bear her mother's cold accusations:

"You already know the multiplication table. You've been familiar with it for a long time. You're pretending not to remember. You're a bad girl, really bad."

Without Danny, Ariel would not have been able to contain her mother's rage over the loss of her daughter's name from the school's honor roll.

As a rule, this honor roll was published in the "Konas Courier" for the whole town to see.

"You were always on the list," her mother lamented:
"If I had a stupid kid, I don't know what to do. But you're so smart. You just hurt me this way. Bad, bad!"

Even though Ariel didn't tell Danny every single one of these things, she felt that Danny somehow understood.

Ariel felt so close to Danny that on several occasions she even wanted to tell him that the timing was so "odd" and that she was eleven years and two months old when in fact she was only ten. he.

But in the end it was too painful to even tell Danny.

In addition, the reason why she did not want to talk more and more was because she remembered that she had revealed this idea to her mother a few years ago, and Heidi laughed sarcastically and scolded her:

"Looking at the ground, why can't you be like other young people?"

Anyway, it doesn't matter if her mother teased her or Ariel didn't dare to tell Danny, the time is weird anyway.

There were times, however, when Ariel completely forgot about the question, when she was sitting on the front steps talking to Danny, when they were playing in the sunroom.

Danny makes Shakespearean costumes for her dolls in the sunroom, turning Patty Ann into Portia, Norma into Rosalind, and an unnamed male doll from Night of No. 12. fool.

Danny can turn the tea party from an abomination to a delight.

All the tea parties she had attended in the past, those she had reluctantly attended due to her mother's nagging, were completely forgotten, and all the tea parties she had attended with Danny could never be forgotten.

(End of this chapter)