Sheng Ning didn't have many belongings with her. After getting on the bus, she squeezed her way into a small corner, and the people on board started staring at her.
"Who is this lady? She's really good-looking!" a middle-aged woman exclaimed.
"Hey!" Someone from the same village as Sheng Ning recognized her right away. "Isn't she the girl from Sheng Third's family? Didn't you join the General Union Song and Dance Ensemble? Why are you back here? Were you kicked out of the ensemble? Hmph… then again, I think someone like you deserves to be kicked out."
Sheng Ning kept her head lowered the entire time in order to avoid being recognized by her neighbors, but when she heard the woman's vicious words, she turned around, her bright eyes blazing with anger.
"Excuse me, Auntie. That's slander!"
"What did you just say? How dare you call me Auntie!" The woman who spoke was still relatively young, and looked like she was barely in her thirties. Judging by the color of her skin, which was a few shades lighter than an ordinary villager's, she probably didn't spend much time out in the farm.
"Am I wrong? Why shouldn't I call you Auntie?" Sheng Ning turned back around and blinked her eyes innocently as she looked at everyone around her.
The crowd murmured in agreement. "Yeah! That's true!" they said. "Zhang, you're already in your thirties. The young girl is calling you Auntie out of respect."
"Exactly! She wasn't wrong in calling you that!"
The middle-aged woman hated being reminded of her age. Wasn't Sheng Ning insinuating that she was old and unsophisticated by calling her Auntie? Now, as she looked around at the crowd, who was taking Sheng Ning's side, she had to suppress the urge to roll up her sleeves and grab the girl by her hair.
"You cheap sl*t! How dare you show your face here again! I'm going to tear your mouth off!"
"Auntie, please watch yourself. We're in public." Sheng Ning finally recalled who this woman was. She was none other than Widow Zhang, who lived in the east end of the village!
This widow was hardly ever seen doing farm work, and anyone with a brain could guess the reason why.
Rumor had it that even the village head would rush to do her farm work for her!
"That's right! Zhang, you can't hit her." They were, after all, in public.
Before Widow Zhang could make her way to Sheng Ning's side, the bus jolted, and she was almost thrown onto the ground. The bus was also crowded, which prevented her from reaching Sheng Ning, so the only thing she could do was insult her.
"How dare you! You b*tch! Just because you left the village for six months, you think you're better than everyone else? A girl like you will bring ruin and disaster wherever you go…" Widow Zhang continued to viciously insult her, repeating every ugly rumor she had ever heard about Sheng Ning, with an extra dash of salt. The stories included Sheng Ning seducing wild men at a tender age, sleeping with her teacher instead of studying hard, and having an abortion at fourteen!
The countryside in China in the 1980s was traditional and conservative. Rumors alone were enough to utterly destroy a person's reputation.
Passengers on the bus who didn't know Sheng Ning began to cast strange looks in her direction.
They started muttering among themselves, and the few harsh words Sheng Ning overhead them say pierced her heart like a knife.
What on earth had she done wrong? Was it only because her mother ran off with another man that she had to carry such an embarrassing reputation since childhood?
"Hmph… feeling guilty now? Not so confident anymore, are you?" Widow Zhang felt a perverse sense of satisfaction at Sheng Ning's silence.
Sheng Ning suppressed the hatred that burned within her and took a deep breath. She calmed herself down and looked at Widow Zhang with pity in her eyes. Seemingly helpless, she said, "Auntie, back in the village I never dared to say anything because you had our village head protecting you. But I believe that a day will come when the wife of the village head and the wife of the village director will find out what you've been doing with their husbands."