Chapter 66 - Her hand hurt. She shouldn't have hit him so hard earlier. (1)
Everybody knew everybody in this compound and there had never been previous incidents where women’s clothing were stolen or peeping toms. As such, that idea hadn’t occurred to anyone.
Once Tong Xuelu had brought it up, things didn’t seem fine anymore.
A creep in the compound would mean a lot of troubles in the future.
Old Mrs. Lin jumped up and shouted, “We don’t even need to speculate it. He has to be the culprit! None of us had ever lost an article of clothing before and it happened right after his arrival. Who else could it be?”
Mother Xu, for once, saw eye to eye with Old Mrs. Lin, “You are right. I’m sure he was retaliating after we had beaten him up yesterday!”
That made a lot of sense to everyone.
“We can’t just let this go. We must go to the police!”
“And report it up to the leaders and have the entire Tong family sent back to where they came from!”
Tong Xuelu put on a look of disbelief, “I don’t think that’s the case. My cousin Tong Yanliang might have groped some woman’s butt but he already knew that that was unbecoming. I’m sure it wasn’t him!”
Mother Xu said, “Aiyo, we had almost forgotten all about that had you not brought it up. If that *&(@ could do such a thing, then for sure he was the one who stole our underwear!”
Tong Xuelu looked a little nervous, “No, no. Listen to me, everyone. My cousin Tong Yanliang is not someone like that……”
Aunty Cai said, “Xuelu, I know that you are a kind one but you need to learn to read people better.
“Ever since those came from your hometown, they had been bossing you around like a landlord back in the old society. I will need to reflect that to our leaders at the factory as well!”
The others all agreed with Aunty Cai.
“They are either eating meat and fish everyday or going to the government-operated restaurant. That’s exactly like a landlord!”
“Exactly. And they are spending Tong Dajun and his wife’s death benefits. They didn’t care to spend them all but none of the children got anything out of it!”
The more they talked about it, the angrier they became. They quickly talked about who would go and report that to the leaders at the factory and who would go to the cops.
The efficiency of the old aunties was nothing to sneer at. They immediately carried out their assignments once they had divided up the labor.
Tong Xuelu made an erkang hand, “No, don’t go, aunties. Please listen to me……”
Photo: erkanghand
Source: memes.tw
Aunty Cai waved her hand at Tong Xuelu. “Go and get some rest, Xuelu. We will take care of this.”
Having said that, she turned and left without looking back.
The two little dimples crept on Tong Xuelu’s cheeks after everybody left.
Yep, go head and make a scene. The bigger the scene, the better.
***
A bunch of rowdy women arrived in his office and the president of the union got a headache from their noise level alone. “Could you have mistaken? I heard that that child was just 14 years old. I don’t think he had the guts to do that.”
“Oh, he has a lot of guts!” Aunty Cai yelled loudly. “Four of the families in our compound had their underwear stolen. This had never happened before he came!”
The union president’s lips twitched violently when he heard “underwear”. “Alright, alright. Stop with the ruckus. I will have a couple of workers follow you back.”
When the two administrative staff from the union and the cops arrived at the compound, the Tong family from the old town was just coming back from having breakfast at the government-operated restaurant.
The group walked inside rubbing their bellies like they were some rich men.
Sun Guilan was picking her teeth with a toothpick. “Mom, that meat bun today was so good. Let’ go again tomorrow.”
Tong Erzhu, however, said, “It gets tiring having meat buns every day. Let’s have dumplings tomorrow.”
Jie Jinhua said generously, “What’s there to talk about? We can just order both!”
Tong Xuelu would flow her more money once they ran out anyway.
Besides, she was about to get 2,000 yuan. Jie Jinhua felt that she did not need to tighten up her belt like she used to.
Truth was, Tong Dajun and his wife had been spending half of their income home every month and the Tong family’s standard of living had always been better than the others on the production team.
Unfortunately, greed knows no limit. They had always been unhappy about Tong Dajun and his wife not giving up their positions to them.
These words, fallen upon the ears of those in the compound, turned into proofs that they were very corrupted people!