Cry Me A Sad River

13

Yi Yao cleared the bowls from the table.

Her mother sat on the sofa watching the boring television shows on television. Beside her was a plate of sunflower seeds; she ate it as she watched television, a large pile of sunflower seed sh.e.l.ls laid by her feet.

Yi Yao brought out the broom after watching the dishes, pondering about how she should ask her mother for money. “I want money. Give me money.” Words like that equated to declaring war in this household.

As she swept by her feet, her mother lifted her feet in annoyance as if Yi Yao disturbed her watching television.

Yi Yao swept a bit before taking a deep breath and saying: “Ma, is there any extra money at home……”

“What do you mean extra money, no money is extra.” Standard tone of Lin Huafeng. Ridiculing. Mocking. Sarcastic and spiteful.

Yi Yao suppressed the anger in her heart. Some of the sunflower seed sh.e.l.ls were stuck in the s.p.a.ce between the foot of the tea table and cracks on the ground, no matter how much Yi Yao swept, they would not come out.

“Can’t you eat properly? Dropping everywhere, at least you’re not the one sweeping, can’t you place the sh.e.l.ls on the table?”

“Is it difficult for you to sweep the floor? Oh yo, am I making things hard for you? Do you really think you’re something? Taking care of you for nothing, I can even make you lick the ground without fault, let alone sweep it.”

“Let’s make things clear, how are you taking care of me for nothing?” Yi Yao tossed the broom aside, “Dad is paying my school fees, he gives you an allowance every month, also, I cook and do everything for you, even if you get a domestic helper you’d need to pay her, I……” Before she finished her sentence, a load of sunflower seeds were thrown at her face. The sh.e.l.ls fell onto her hair and clothes.

Although they were small and light, feeling as if nothing had hit her face. Yet, somewhere in her body, the pain was real.

Yi Yao dusted the sh.e.l.ls away from her hair and said: “Just tell me if there’s any extra money, if there is then give it to me, if there isn’t then pretend I never asked.”

“Just drag whatever you think costs something and sell it! Meanwhile sell me as well!”

Yi Yao scoffed before walking back to her room, the moment before she slammed the door shut, she said to Lin Huafeng: “Haven’t you always been selling yourself?”

The door slammed shut.

A cup smashed on the door before falling to the ground in pieces.

People turned weak in the darkness. They become angered easily, they trembled easily.

At this moment, Lin Huafeng was weak and angry and trembling.

The room with the closed door had no sound. The whole house was dead silent.

She got up from the sofa and pushed the few strands of grey hair back in place. She walked silently towards her room. Reaching her hand out to turn the doork.n.o.b, her tears fell onto the back of her hand.

Burning hotter than any other time in her memory.

As if a knife was stuck in her heart. Someone was holding the handle in the darkness, stabbing deeply and shallowly through her chest.

A pain so strong she could stop breathing.

What allowance. What school fees. Your d.a.m.ned father had abandoned us long ago.

Lin Huafeng’s hand was trembling. They trembled a lot more these few years than before.

“Haven’t you always been selling yourself?”

Yes, always selling herself.

Yet the things she thought of when she laid under a man’s body was that, Yi Yao, this is enough for your school fees, I owe you nothing now.

And those lies she told about her father, even she herself didn’t know if it was to deceive Yi Yao or herself.

She didn’t turn on the light.

The light from outside the window shone into the room so the silhouettes of everything in the room could be seen.

She opened the door of the closet and reaches for a bag, there was five hundred and eighty dollars in it.

Deducting the water and electricity bills. Deducting the living expenses. There was an extra three hundred and fifty.

She grabbed three of the one hundred dollar bills and closed the door of the closet.

“Open the door”, she knocked roughly on Yi Yao’s door, “Open!”

Yi Yao opened it from inside, before she could see what her mother wanted to do, three of the one hundred dollar bills slapped into her face. “Take it, the debt I owed you in my past life!”

Yi Yao bends down slowly and picks up the three notes, “You do not owe me, you owe me nothing.”

Yi Yao smacks the money back onto her mother’s face before slamming the door shut.

In the darkness, neither could see each other’s tears.

Outside the door, her mother stands unmoving in the darkness like a marionette with its strings cut off.

All action and sound disappeared. Only burning tears were left, unstoppable as they rolled down her face.

One day when Yi Yao was on her way home, standing parallel to the entrance of the longtang, she saw Lin Huafeng standing in front of a small stall, fingering a dress for a long while before putting it back with a sigh.

The “everything $20” sign on the stall sears Yi Yao’s eyes under the setting sun.

That evening during dinner, Yi Yao didn’t tell Lin Huafeng that the school had scheduled a spring trip the next day, every student had to pay $50. The next morning, Yi Yao went to school early with her backpack on her bag like any other day.

The school was empty. Under the skylight of early winter, the school looked like an abandoned hospital. Clean but deadly silent.

Yi Yao sat on the large steps at the side of the sports field, lifting her head; she looked up at the light grey clouds of her sixteen year old.

All schools were the breeding ground of gossip and rumours.

Rumours spread at the speed of light, and as they spread, as if they all went through a nuclear explosion, they mutate in to the most hideous appearances.

The break after the second period in the morning was the longest, even after the broadcast gymnastics; there was still fifteen minutes for students to waste away.

Qi Ming heard two guys talking in the next cubicle when he went to the toilet.

“Do you know the Yi Yao in our cla.s.s?”

“Heard of her before, that very arrogant girl?”

“Arrogant my a.s.s, she’s just a prost.i.tute in a uniform, have you heard it yet, she’s in need of money recently, one hundred and you can bed her for one night, she can also help you use……” The voice had lowered intentionally, yet the slander and smearing of the words couldn’t be pressed down.

Qi Ming pulled open the door of the cubicle and saw You Kai from his cla.s.s and a guy from another cla.s.s peeing; You Kai turned and saw Qi Ming before keeping quiet. He finished up before tugging the other guy away.

Qi Ming washed his hands expressionlessly, rubbing hard until his hands were bright red.

The air pressure outside the window was low today. The clouds moved slowly.

The branches intersect as they reached towards the sky.

“Just like countless hungry ghosts reaching up begging for food” was what Yi Yao once described them as.

As usual, it was the driest air of winter; the skin on his face was like low quality

whitewashed walls, a little nudge and a thick layer of whitewash could fall.

Qi Ming scribbled on his paper, all kinds of numbers, a few diagrams, some English words, he writes ‘b.i.t.c.h’ accidentally, the pen poking through the paper under ‘h’ because he used too much force. It pierced through a few pages, the ink smearing.

The pain in his heart then was like the layers of torn paper.

b.i.t.c.h.

The handwash basin behind the canteen was, as usual, empty.

Yi Yao and Qi Ming each washed their own lunch boxes. Above their heads were the slow moving lead grey clouds.

It was going to rain soon.

“Uh,” Turning off the tap, Qi Ming put the lid on his lunch box, “I have a question to ask you.”

“Then ask.” Yi Yao poured the detergent from a small bottle she had brought along. Many bubbles formed in the lunch box.

“You really need money recently right……”

“Why ask when you already know.” Yi Yao didn’t raise her head.

“Are you willing to do anything for money?” His voice shook.

Turning off the tap, Yi Yao straightened up and stared at Qi Ming, “Saying something like this, what do you mean?”

“I don’t mean anything, I’m just asking.”

“What do you mean?” Her hand that held on to the lunch box was steady.

Qi Ming wasn’t the only one who heard the rumours, Yi Yao heard them too. She just didn’t care.

Even if Qi Ming heard it, she didn’t care.

Yet, what she cared was that, not only did Qi Ming hear it, but he believed it.

“I mean……”

“You don’t have to say anything anymore. I understand.” After saying that, Yi Yao turned to leave.

Two steps out, she turned back and poured the water in her lunch box towards QI Ming’s face.

“You think I’m exactly the same as my mom!”

There is a girl like this in your heart.

You’re willing to give her the milk for you in the mornings.

You’re willing to ride a bicycle for over an hour to buy her a pregnancy test.

You’re willing to copy notes for her and deliver it to her house daily.

Yet, at the same time, you’re willing to believe a stranger instead of her.

Yet, the content of what you believe in is that she is a b.i.t.c.h.

Yi Yao pushed her bicycle home.

The air of the prosperous and the marketplace along the road mixed together and rolled behind her like a scene from a movie.

As if standing on the travelator at the airport, being carried forward by the ground.

Her fingers were white from clenching the bicycle too hard.

Yi Yao suddenly remember the words her mother often said to her, “Why don’t you die earlier”, “Why aren’t you dying yet”, things like that, if they came true, it could only be liberation. It was that, now, before she died, she had to shoulder a reputation like her mother. This point pressed down in Yi Yao’s heart, like a s...o...b..ll, becoming bigger and bigger while pressing down heavily on her heart until it almost stopped beating.

The blood couldn’t flow towards her heart.

As if her body was floating in the air from the lack of oxygen. It couldn’t come down. It couldn’t hand for her to be grounded. All her joints had shiny strings attacked to them. Like a marionette being controlled, she walked forward numbly.

Tears fell constantly from her eyes, as if someone turned on a switch. As if all the water content flowed cleanly out of her body in the form of tears.

It was only until she pushed the bicycle to the mouth of the longtang and she saw Qi Ming sitting on the side of the road in the darkness did the switch be turned off again.

Her tears stopped abruptly.

Qi Ming stood before her. The street light at the mouth of the longtang shone in his face. He rubbed his red-rimmed eyes. He said, Yi Yao, I don’t believe their words. I don’t believe it.

As if someone pressed the switch again in the darkness, tears flowed with no effort.

Yi Yao said nothing as she grabbed the bag from the basket on her bicycle and threw it towards Qi Ming.

Pencil case, textbook, notebook, handsome, everything fell out from her bag and hit Qi Ming. A pen sliced across his face, a line of blood appeared almost instantly.

Qi Ming did not move.

Smashed again.

She smashed her bag against him again and again. An empty bag of cotton hits weakly against him. Qi Ming stood without moving, yet it hurts more than before.

Over and over again, she hits him with her bag.

Yet it was as if someone made a small hole on her body, her strength draining from that hole. As if being sucked of all her blood, Yi Yao fell to the ground, even her tears were silent now, only the heaving of her shoulders could be seen.

Qi Ming crouches down and embraces her, tugging her forcefully into his arms.

As if embracing an empty puppet.

“Buy me, give me money……I’ll sleep with you.”

“I’ll go to bed with you, as long as you give me money.”

Every sentence was laced with tears, all like sharp daggers, digging deeply into Qi Ming’s chest.

She said, “I’m not like my mother! Don’t treat me like I’m her!”

“I’m not like my mother!”

Qi Ming nodded forcefully.

Under the streetlight, the youth’s black uniform was like the colour of the night smeared in the surroundings. The blood had clotted on his handsome face.

Scatted on the floor was the pencil box, pen, books, as if accessories that had been taken apart.

Did someone destroy a puppet?

In the longtang, Lin Huafeng stood unmoving in the darkness.

Every single time she heard “I’m not like my mom”, the air around her was drawn away a bit more.

She clutched her chest, as if someone rubbed a handful of ice shards into her chest, so cold it was painful.

As if suddenly biting off a chunk of a popsicle in summer, so cold that you could only spit it out in the end.

But, the ice rubbed into a heart, how do you spit that out?

The same way.

Just as his keys entered the lock, the door was drawn open.

Qi Ming brushed off his mother’s nagging with “stayed behind to ask the teacher a few questions I didn’t understand.”

Three sets of cutlery were placed on the table.

“Dad’s back?”

“Yes, your dad just got back as well, he’s showering how, when he’s done showering…..Ai ya! What happened to your face?”

“Nothing,” Qi Ming turned his face away, “Accidentally hurt it on my way home.”

“This will not do! Such a long cut!” His mother was still wailing, “Wait for me as I get the first aid box.”

His mother walked into the bedroom and overturned the room.

The sound of splattering water was loud as his father took a shower in the bathroom.

His mother was searching for disinfecting alcohol and gauze in the bedroom.

On the table, his father’s wallet sat there quietly. A stack of notes could be seen clearly in the wallet.