On that day, my grandmother and I went to the woods to gather firewood. The April sunshine made my heart wild, and I ran around like a rabbit. I chased a flower butterfly into a bush, but didn't catch it, instead tripped over a branch on the ground. As I fell, I suddenly smelled a unique fragrance of plants, and looked around but didn't see any other flowers or grasses. Oh, the fragrance was from the shrub leaves next to me. I picked a leaf and smelled it; it had some of the richness of roses and some of the fragrance of herbs. There were several lush clusters here, full of sweet orange trees from southern Jiangxi. So, I grabbed a handful of leaves and took them to my grandmother. She said, "These are the leaves of the jelly tree, which can be used to make jelly. Take me to see."
We carried baskets and picked a full basket of jelly leaves, happily returning home. Grandma washed the leaves clean, put them in a bucket, scalded them with boiling water, and stirred hard. After the leaves were stirred into green soup, we filtered it with gauze, threw away the residue, and added a little alkali to the remaining green soup in the basin. When the green soup cooled down, the green and shiny leaf jelly was ready. Grandma pounded a few cloves of garlic, poured pickled vegetable soup and salt over it, and the taste was excellent. In those days, life was very tough, and vegetables were rarely eaten, so leaf jelly became a delicious dish on our dining table. The several clusters of jelly trees grew new leaves again after a few days, and I almost went to check every day, hoping the leaves would grow quickly so we could enjoy another meal of leaf jelly. Wherever there were jelly trees, grandma wouldn't let me tell anyone, for fear they would come to pick.
Over time, our frequent eating of leaf jelly was discovered by Auntie next door. She asked me, "Where did you pick the leaves?" I was about to say when grandma's gaze stopped me.
More than thirty years have passed, and no one would have thought that the story of leaf jelly would have a sad sequel.
In the early 1970s, life was very difficult in our area. The food distributed by the production team wasn't enough, and people often went out to dig for wild vegetables, such as thistle roots, wild onions, and wild yams - among these, leaf jelly tasted better than wild onions and wild yams, but this kind of shrub was rare.
My neighbor's sister's birth mother had died, and her stepmother abused her. That year, the sister fell ill, and not only did the stepmother not give her medicine, she also didn't give her enough food. I saw the sister sitting outside the threshold, weakly leaning against the mud wall, with a few wild yam balls in the bowl already dried into black hard balls. I came up with an idea and secretly went to the "secret" place to pick half a basket of leaves. Taking advantage of the adults going to work in the fields, I followed grandma's method and made a bowl of leaf jelly for the sister, even specially adding a few drops of rapeseed oil, making the flavor even better. I brought the jelly to the sister's mouth, though she couldn't eat anything, the smooth jelly slid into her throat, and after just a few bites, the sister suddenly closed her mouth and struggled to say, "Sister, this jelly is really good, but I won't live long, eating it is wasteful, leave it for yourself to eat." I said, "Sister, don't be afraid, there's still a lot left," and then I told her the "secret" place. She reluctantly ate the bowl of jelly. At this moment, the sister's yellowish and thin face showed a smile, and her eyes were filled with tears. Then, she also ate a few boiled potatoes that I brought.
The warm April sun shone on us. We sisters leaned on each other, sitting by the broken wall. The sister rested her head on my shoulder and gratefully said, "Sister, probably only you care about me the most in this world, but I'm going to die, to find my birth mother."
"Don't talk nonsense, you'll get better, we will still herd cattle and dig wild vegetables together," I cried.
As the sister could eat something, her spirit improved. Every day when the adults went to work, I secretly gave her leftovers, and often made leaf jelly for her to eat. I don't know if the leaf jelly really had medicinal effects or because of something else, anyway, the sister's illness got better. From then on, our sisterhood deepened, and we herded cattle, gathered firewood, and dug wild vegetables together.
The secret of making leaf jelly for the neighbor's sister was something I dared not tell anyone, until now. But my poor sister died two years ago, drowned in a puddle during an episode.
Nowadays, I who am tired of rice and white flour, often remember the taste of the leaf jelly deep in the past. Thinking of that poor neighbor's sister, tears blur my eyes.