有钱能使鬼推磨
/part ii
part i
Cruelty comes in all shapes and sizes, in the form of adults and in the form of children. With adults, it's all carefully calculated and well-placed; everyone does something for a reason, there's a solution to every question. With children, nothing is as cut and dry. Not being as properly fashioned or as smoothly refined, the youngest years are the most painful as emotions and actions are pushed past their limit.
I entered school in the middle of the year, which was a cause of curiosity for the other students. My uniform was a little bit smaller than the rest of the children, whom were still able to afford the cleanliness provided by a middle-class family. As the teacher introduced me, I stood there shakily and bowed stiffly.
I barely talked to anyone; no one seemed all that worth it. It may have been arrogant of me to say so, but the girls that had given me a spare, passing glance simply retreated back to their little prepackaged social circles after seeing that I wasn't that responsive. Compared to this, I wanted to be with my loom. At least I could still do something there; despite the massive injuries that I would retain, it made me feel like I was worth something, at least.
School passed like this for a couple of weeks. I continued struggling to catch up with my peers, but they seemed to push further ahead, laughing and studying to their heart's content.
The only class I seemed to be mildly good at was English, due to my prior knowledge of the language back in England. I didn't tell anyone of this, not even my teacher, who looked surprised when I revealed that I could read the English letters on the board just fine. The embarrassment of having the whole class stare at me as I recited a poem was almost unbearable; it was like they were judging me with their eyes. This little girl, smaller than our pinky and obviously somewhat retarded from her lack of speech, had been a hidden genius all along.
Except I wasn't a genius. To be honest, I believe myself to be one the stupidest people I'd ever met.
It started out as small things. My shoes missing from my gym locker. My desk being moved. People ignoring me as I tried to hand out worksheets or notebooks. My lunch money being stolen.
Nothing irked me as much as my money being taken, for I knew how hard it was to earn that and the fact that someone would pitter all that hard work to nothing made me incredibly mad. I kept my money in my pocket at all times after that, and some thought I didn't even bring it anymore - mostly because I didn't buy lunch. They were expensive and it was a waste.
Through the nights spent at home, my books were my comfort. While my mother took hers in sleeping and my brother took his in singing wishful melodies, I read. I read and read and read. I read of princes and queens, majestic horses and mischievous wizards. Through both the words of English and Chinese, I built myself an empire on which I was the reigning monarch. In that world, things ran my way.
In that little world, I continued to live. I detached myself from the simple happiness of reality and became delusional in my happily ever afters.
I put myself into inanimate things, distant things. Music with blaring beats and inordinate amounts of words, emotions that I was too young to feel - still tender from the beginning of my roller coaster, still budding and not yet a watered seed.
Most of my life back then passed by in a blur. I didn't understand most of my childhood, the hidden looks between adults and the coveted giggles of my fellow classmates, the inner workings of the human mind. I didn't want to. I didn't want to think at all. I was afraid of what I would think about.
"I'm sorry a lot of the kids treat you this way," one of the boys said to me after I sat down in the classroom during lunch period. He offered me a piece of his packed lunch and opened up a math textbook. "I dunno if you're nice but I feel really bad, you know? Like no one even bothered to get to know you before they started judging."
How do I respond?
He frowned, seeing that I wasn't taking his offer. "It's rude to not accept a gift. C'mon, my mom owns a sushi shop. Take some!"
Sushi is half-Japanese. His mom is a kind, nice woman who likes to yell at him a lot for tracking in mud everywhere in the restaurant, because they live in a restaurant-house duplex on a corner of some street and his shop is really famous because it's apparently authentic. Sushi likes Chinese Literature the best and hates math, even though he's the worst at Chinese (because he can't remember any of the characters and idioms properly, no matter how much he tries) and he's the best at math (because it's apparently really easy to understand, but really, really boring). I sat next to him on the bus, in class, walked with him the way home, spoke to him in ways I only ever really spoke to people on paper.
He didn't seem to mind.
The thing about Sushi, however, is that he doesn't know how to look you in the eye.
My things were still stolen. Over and over, it was a vicious cycle my classmates decided to play on me. I had nowhere to go, nowhere to turn, and the missing shadows of my things began to disappear. I had not a single wall to hide behind, and left out in the open, I was decidedly vulnerable to the rest of the people around me. I hated it. I loathed it. My words failed me, on those days, when I'd tremble in place with no one else to help me stop. And all I'd wanted - all I'd wanted - was for it to stop.
Please, stop.
Please.
(please)
It didn't.
Sushi never stood up to help me.
I stopped expecting him to.
/
In my castle, I was queen, and everyone I loved never left me.
My subjects were the clouds in the sky, the plants on the ground, the dirt in between my fingers. My guards, the rocks heavily laden in streams and rivers. My mages? The breathing flowers that came each season, opening in rich colors of red and orange and yellow. My hero? My hero was myself, my castle walls, built so high that even I couldn't see beyond them.
I'd often imagine my brother there, laughing with me, his hands moving all around while pushing me around, face twisted in pretend annoyance. My mother, her smiles no longer tired, her face joyful. My dad's fading eyes, his hands pointed at the sky, whispering baobei look, look at the stars there can you see them? those stars are for you baobei, my sweet daughter, my sweet summer.
(your father died in the summer, in the sweltering heat, did he ever see the stars again - )
My sisters played with my hair, my family half forgotten as the shadows appeared and suddenly made the empty hole in me feel full.
Sometimes I saw Sushi there too. I saw him smiling at me, laughing, sharing his lunch, utter joy written in the lines of his face to see me walking up the steps to our school. Somewhere in my head, he was labeled as my first friend - as my only friend - and although that should have been saddening, it really wasn't.
I don't know why I expected him to be a hero. The only hero I ever had was myself, and Sushi was always too fast to comply, his head bowed, his eyes downward toward the earth. Sometimes I'd never see them at all.
I expected him to look at me one day, to see me. Just for a minute. Somedays I think it may have happened, but I'm mostly sure that it never did.
/
Years later, Sushi is still my friend, I'm still on top of my castle tower, and the world is still a world where nothing else except my dreams exist. No hurt, no sneers, no sad, pitying looks.
Years later, years, years later, I'll look back at this moment and wish it had never come, that I would still be on top of my castle, still the queen, still in control of what's mine.
Sushi presses his mouth to mine when it's barely winter, and there's this terrible ache - my brother is gone, he's gone? gone and there's no one and it's so cold i hate the winter i hate winter i hate winter - but for a moment it's warm, and I like it.
It feels quite like falling.
I like it a lot.
/
Sushi was a tiny boy at first, and that was okay, because I was a tiny girl. He and I, we fit together like the pieces of a puzzle that I didn't knew existed. First it was sitting next to each other in our classes, then holding hands, then resting heads on shoulders in the bus. My mother met him, my sister's approved of him; he had a thin scar on his lower jaw and smiled rarely, thin hair flopping into his eyes.
I thought he was one of the greatest people I'd ever met.
Often, he'd hold a hand on the back of my neck, fingers curled around my pulse, brushing against my chin. I'd lean into him, into his warmth, watch as he grew taller and thinner and paler, watch as the dark irises of his stare farther into space. It was our hesitantly intimate moment - we weren't old enough yet, barely fifteen and still learning how to breathe, to understand these kind of things. We weren't anything at this point except for a couple of kids finding solace in each other, maybe.
He and I, we were so lonely, and then we were lonely together.
I'd sit in his family's shop and watch as he worked behind the counter, pushing at his apron and fumbling with the straws. It was the only time I'd smile. Sushi would sit next to me after an hour or two, after his mother would give me one of her affectionate looks, and I would cover his hand with mine; finger to finger, pressing the letters of a, b, and c so he would remember them. They were easy for me - they were a story I'd just begun to tell, and deserted, my mind often thought them up without my express permission.
I didn't mind much. Sushi would curl his hand around my neck again, and then everything was okay.
"Do you think," he began one day, as we waiting for the bus stop with our hands linked loosely, "that we'll be together in the future?"
"I hope so," I told him, and I really did. He was safe, and warm, and comfortable. Sushi was my best friend, and somewhere I think maybe - maybe I loved him. Maybe I still do.
He said "hmm", and his hand tightened in mine.
It was months, months before I heard from my brother. At this point, me and mama lived in our home quietly, having my younger sisters shipped off to my grandmother's house. It was too much for us, too much to handle.
He sent a letter, even though he had a phone and he knew my number.
Little sis, I miss you.
(liar,) my brain would whisper, but I always ignored it and grinned widely, waving the letter to show to Sushi whenever he'd come by. He'd give me that little half smile of his, laughing when I'd squawk indignantly at my brother's written teasing, and he'd flitter hands over the paper and make silent comments. It made them better, sometimes.
/
My brother, we don't know exactly when he was born - between autumn or winter? Was he brought before the sun came down on us, or when it rose high in the sky? These things, they're so blurry to me, and mama doesn't remember. I don't think she even tries to.
But I always trace over the image of his pale face, staring up at me with his guileless eyes, and I always thought this will be my best friend someday.
Someday.
/
He was. He was the greatest - and only - friend I ever had, sometimes.
/
My brother, he found his calling in singing, in murmuring soft lullabies to himself and to me when he thought I was asleep. His voice was soothing, a little scratchy, still high with the fading essence of boyhood. When I'd be upset or sad, I'd beg him to sing for me, tug on his sleeve until he sighed in fake annoyance and tapped out a rhythm on the table, humming quietly.
I'd do it when he was upset too - when his auditions went wrong, when the other kids didn't understand why he liked the stage (why he loved the feeling of accomplishment, of worth) - I'd ask him to sing for me, and he would, like my own songbird. Only, when I'd leave a few moments later, he'd still be singing, singing like it was the only thing he liked to do in the world.
/
- (worthless worthless worthless) -
- (how do you live with yourself sometimes, how do you live when you know every breath is stolen, you're a thief, a thief and a liar, a liar, a liar liar liar liarliarliarliar) -
/
It was halfway into my school year, maybe in early April or May, when I was trading in my shoes for warm school ones. And then, then I'd go into my classroom and see notes scribbled on my desk, filled with messages and long lines of hatred, of despise, of - of -
I'd trace them with my fingers in class, marvelling over the beauty of their shapes, of their letters. Of the long strokes of Chinese, boxes and curves and promises of stories behind their connected dots. I thought of how people take them for granted, how they're suddenly used for something so useless and petty and ugly.
And then, then I realized that was me. They - they, they as in the collective faceless person of my youth - managed to capture my entire essence in a few mean words scrawled across my desk: useless, petty, and ugly.
I had never felt so numb in my life.
/
A week later, maybe two, maybe four? I was walking down the stairs when I tripped - conveniently - over a nameless person's foot. I broke my arm on the way down.
I couldn't write anything for days.
/
I remember that pain. I remember the pain of laying there, unable to help myself up, jolts of electricity flooding through my arm - through my muscles, begging me to stop moving, to just stop for a second. And then there was the snickers, echoes of murmured noises behind me, and I thought - thought for a second, how can people be so cruel? how can you stand there and watch?
People are cruel because the world is cruel. It took away my father, and with that it took away my happiness and my security right underneath my feet. It forced me into a box I couldn't get out of, into my crumbling kingdom, and with each passing day I began to fall with it, recede from the world and into myself. That only caused to ostracize me further, for them to push harder, and for me to sink farther. It was a vicious, never ending cycle.
My mother had said nothing, gave me one of her tired looks, as if I didn't understand, as if I never could understand.
Sushi, he kissed my cheek and held my cast-wrapped hand, staring at his shoes as we waited for the bus home.