Trip to Guiyang--A Symphony of Three Generations Part III 1
It was March 1, 2008, 24 lunar days into the Year of the Rat, and we could still
catch a few occasions when firecrackers were set off at distance. These were reminders of how people in Guiyang got crazy to celebrate the New Year with firework. It is quite understandable, as Guiyang was one of the cities for which the
ban of firework on individuals was lifted the first time in years. But some were carried by this new freedom so far as to let firecrackers off at the stairs inside their apartment buildings! If the noises and the smoke weren't startling enough, a very thick layer of red found laid on each step of the stairs the next
morning would petrify anyone trying to walk down on these little cylinders that
contained burned or unburned gunpowder. Thank God we didn't get burned alive while everyone was sound asleep!
It was also the day when we said goodbye to babysitting my youngest cousin, who
just spent with us a long winter holiday from kindergarten. Every day in the past eight weeks the boy was sent in at 8 o'clock in the morning and driven home around eight in the evening. He was a mart little boy with everything about him
that would make everyone think he was older than five. He was as tall as an eight-year-old; he had an adult appetite; and he spoke sometimes like a scamp who listened to no one but himself and other times like a grown-up who knew exactly what to say to please people he thought useful. For example, "Sister, would you
please teach me some English? I really like English" was his first greeting to me on the very first day of his winter vacation. It soon turned out, however, that he had much greater interest in either arguing with me or watching cartoons than learning English. And before too long, he began to chant things like "I can
't have freedom till you're gone" and "You are not welcomed in my city" or even
something harsher, "I don't want to be with someone without hands!" I would surely have kicked him as I did to my other cousins many years ago, had I been seven years younger, but now, much amused by his behaviors, all I did was turn around and walk away with a comforting thought that he was just a five year old who
would not stay with us for too long.
Brotherhood or sisterhood has always been a mystery to me and to each of my cousins, and this is certainly not something we desired to have while being singularly raised to have a great deal of cleverness, cunning, and selfishness at a young age.
"Do you want a sister?" Mother asked me when I was little.
"No!" was my reply.
"Or a brother?"
"No."
"They can play with you, and look after you when you grow older."
"Okay then...."
But I kept my parents too busy to have another child.
The same conversation went between my two younger cousins and their mothers, and
their replies were a bit more sophisticated as it is always the case with a younger generation.
"No way! I'd kill him if you dared to have one!" The older boy said, sulkily.
"No! You look out for my fists if you try." The younger boy said matter-of-factly with his little index finger pointing threateningly at his mom.
"Man's nature at birth is good," as a Chinese ancient sage put in his work that
has come down from history for hundreds and thousands of years. But apparently
he forgot to ask opinion of his child whether or not he wanted a sibling before
writing down that famous line.
Or is it that what we are forced to experience usually change who we are?
Throughout the past eight weeks, as both a curious onlooker and an insider of how blood-related people interacted with each other, I often caught myself surprised at the fact that Mother, although closely tied to and raised up into her teens by the same old couple, was almost so completely different from her siblings that, in one of the few occasions when everyone came for dinner, it was painful to watch her being singled out while her brother and sisters snuggled in the opposite sofa, engaged in happy conversations.
"Try to join them." I encouraged her.
"How? Their lives are so alien to me." Mother sighed, throwing the wiper into
the sink.
People feel most miserable not for what they do not have but for what they have
lost. Lost in my mother's life was not only the intimacy she longed to have with her siblings; there was also something gone missing since years ago when she made the choice to leave her family, that hurt her even more.
"Why on earth did I come here, burning thousands of RMB along the way? I don't
belong to them! I don't belong to anybody!” Mother said in tears after a particularly sad event in which my old granny was thought again to fail in balancing
the bowl of love.
Then came in shocking news: the youngest sister was sent to the hospital by an
ambulance for vertigo.
When the brother sent us there, the elder sister, who had just helped her go through the CAT check-up, was standing by her side and waiting in line for otologic
check-up. I'd never seen sadness on the face of my youngest aunt, who had an admiring ability to make everyone laugh. But just when she saw her brother and sisters arrived, she wept silently under the quilt. The elder sister was quicker
to realize what was happening and, without a word, handed her a tissue. "Too excited that we were all here." She said with a wink.
The next few hours saw the brother and the sisters hurrying themselves to help with medical procedures, push the wheeled bed, get the prescription, send the pills along with water to the patient's mouth, and get her a bed where she could lie down to have her first dose of intravenous injection.
By the time my poor aunt finally got her intravenous drip in the crammed hospital, my eldest aunt, who just had a phyma-removal operation herself, missed her graduate classes, skipped lunch, and allowed her 12-year-old son to prepare the supper alone at home.
"Trouble always finds you." Mother said to her when everything was settled.
"Don't say that! That's what sisters are for!" She replied with a tired smile.
This only left Mother feeling more regret for her wrong choice she made many years ago with a blind desire for "freedom".
Not much was discussed of why she left for the Wild West at such a young age, but from the fragments of her complaint I gave my bold deduction that her decision
back then was affected by, among other reasons and excuses, pressure from her siblings. Being the second eldest child in the family, she had long known what was like to be both obedient to her brother and responsible for her younger sisters. It is natural for wanting to get out of this suffocating environment in an
unawareness of what might happen later.
To be continued...
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