Chapter 178: Arguing Above
Chapter 178: Defense
Teacher Wu was not satisfied with the attitude of this student who simply echoed others’ words, but he didn’t refute. Instead, he called upon Jiang Mengyu: "All you’ve said is hearsay. Do you also believe in rumors? Jiang Mengyu, you answer him!"
All the students looked at Mengyu, waiting for her response.
Mengyu hadn’t expected Teacher Wu to believe in her so much, and moreover, he had given her a chance to defend herself in front of the whole class.
She stood up again: "Yes, teacher.
Firstly, Cai Yingdi said that I was saved by Jiang Huaiyu’s parents - whether this is the fact.
The truth is, Jiang Huaiyu’s mom, Li Chunhua, was infertile for three years after her marriage. When she consulted the fortune-teller, she was advised that adopting a child would bring her own children.
By coincidence, my birth mother had me, but my birth father who favored boys over girls despised me for being a daughter and sold me to Li Chunhua, so he could bring back another woman’s son to pass off as my mother’s own child, for my mom to raise.
Therefore, Jiang Huaiyu’s parents did not save me. On the contrary, they bought me from my birth father; they took me away from my birth mother and caused us sixteen years of separation."
Upon hearing this, all the classmates looked at Mengyu with sympathy: So this was the truth.
If Mengyu had indeed been abandoned and then picked up by Jiang Huaiyu’s parents, then they would indeed owe her a debt of gratitude. But taking her away from her birth mother is not gratefulness, it’s enmity.
After all, who would want to be taken away from their birth mother? Hasn’t it always been said that a child with a mother is treasured, while one without is like a grass?
Mengyu continued: "Secondly, Cai Yingdi said that Jiang Huaiyu’s parents raised me, and I feel there are some discrepancies in that statement.
Because, everyone in our village knows, while other children were not yet steady on their feet at three years old, I was already working by then. By the age of five, I had taken on most of the household chores: washing clothes, cooking, feeding the chickens, looking after the younger siblings, and so on.
So, at most, they raised me until I was five. From the age of five, I was nominally a member of the Jiang Family, but in reality, I held the status of a Servant. If I didn’t do something well, I would be beaten and scolded, and often not given food to eat.
Once, when I had no food, I picked a basket of pigweed for the aunt downstairs to exchange for a bowl of rice. My foster mother found out, knocked over my rice, hanged me up, and gave me a thorough beating. Afterwards, "gathering pigweed" was added to my list of chores.
If I didn’t do something well, it wasn’t just being denied food, at times, I wasn’t even allowed to come home to sleep.
I’ve slept in the production team’s duck pen and pig pen, but more often than not, I climbed into the team’s storage room through the window to sleep.
Have you ever eaten insects? I have. I’ve eaten grasshoppers, bean weevils, borers - any insect I knew wasn’t poisonous and could fill my stomach, I would roast and eat.
Have you ever eaten a raw duck egg? I have. Sometimes when driven out by my foster mother, while sleeping in the production team’s duck pen, I’d steal freshly laid duck eggs to eat. Because they were stolen, I dared not cook them, so I had to eat them raw.
And have you ever eaten raw grain? I have! Because, sleeping in the production team’s warehouse, when I was terribly hungry, I could only grab raw grains and eat them uncooked.
I’m only a year older than Jiang Huaiyu, but from childhood, I played with her, consoled her when she cried, scolded her, washed her clothes; she ate the meals I cooked at home, and even the water for her to wash her face in the morning is fetched by me!
Even after getting to high school, her dirty clothes are still washed by me. I believe this point can be seen by the classmates who share a dormitory with us."
The classmates didn’t expect Mengyu’s life in the Jiang Family to be like this.
Where was this being an adopted daughter? It was clearly the buying of a Servant.
Wait, not even the landlord’s Servant had it this tough, right?