One Day(Provisional Title) - Chapter 2
Filename: wm02.html
© 1998 Wai Lun Mo
Length: 1576 words
Genre: Fiction (humour/drama)
Description:
This second chapter lets you get to know the main character.
Weekend
Click here to go to Chapter 1
2.
I was seven when I first moved house. I sat on the kerb, carefully smoothing down my lemon-yellow dress and watching the pasty-faced removal men grunt as they lifted a tattered two-seated sofa into my new home. My mother was very jittery that day. You can tell when she is excited because she begins to wave her arms erratically as if conducting a secret orchestra. So I sat and watched her wave her invisible baton at the removal men, nodding her solemn approval at each item of furniture and dancing in and out of the doorway like a New Year's dragon. To others it must have looked quite comical, but to me, it was just my mother. My father was very subdued, sitting in the kitchen and quietly rustling his newspaper amidst acres of stainless steel. Chairs and photographs and books and boxes marched past him with military precision but Father continued to read thoughtfully to himself. For once, Mother was too preoccupied to be annoyed at his silence.
I moved my attention to the street. It was a long, quiet road that curved gently uphill. I remember seeing faces gawping from behind fogged windows either side of me, making me feel very self-conscious. I squinted upwards and watched the plump grey pigeons nestling on the rooftops, cooing with contentment. There were some sparrows too, hopping on the ground, but they were nothing like the pigeons. They fidgeted and fussed over the last of the breadcrumbs on the pavement, elbowing and shoving like scrapping schoolchildren.
My mother's voice cut through the air like steel.
"Careful, careful!" she squawked at the man unloading our battered black and white television set from the van. I could see his eyes narrow but he said nothing. I felt sorry for the man, for I knew what it was like.
A small group of boys, teenagers, had been kicking a ball back and forth across the empty road. They now stopped to stare at me. Ignoring them, I moved my gaze to the long, narrow alleyway that snaked behind one of the terraced blocks.
I have always been a mouse. I was never one of those children who love to scale mighty oak trees and swing daringly from its flimsiest branches.
"You just knock on someone's door," said my friend Mandy, explaining the rules of Postman's Knock to me when we were six.
"And then what?" I asked.
"You run away."
"Why?" I asked her.
"Because it's fun," she sighed impatiently.
So I was pushed into giving this new game a try. I knocked rather timidly on Mr Kingsley's door and of course, forgot to run away. So whilst he was peering down at me through his half-moon spectacles, I had to ask him if he knew what I was supposed to do next.
But things like the alleyway excited me. I loved exploring places on my own, where I was alone with only my thoughts and daydreams for company. Where I could get lost in my own little world and for a brief instant of time, be whoever I wanted to be.
I glanced backward over my shoulder. My mother was nowhere to be seen, although I could hear her voice floating out of an upstairs window. No one would notice if I slipped away for a few minutes.
I carefully crossed the road, ignoring the twitching curtains either side of me and the baleful stares. The alleyway loomed large and foreboding. I felt a drop of water touch my head and looked upwards at the fat grey clouds sliding across the sky. It was going to rain soon but I didn't care. I wanted to get away from my mother's embarrassing shrieks and the eyes of the street.
A putrid smell filled my nostrils as soon as I entered the dimly lit alleyway. Some decaying smell I couldn't locate. But it didn't matter. I was fascinated by the colourful walls that stretched past me, filled with wonderful sentences and strange words that I didn't quite understand.
Gary wets his pants proclaimed a section of the wall on my left, scrawled in fading blue chalk. I wondered who Gary was and if it was true.
Moving along, I saw the remnants of countless tic-tac-toe grids dotted over the walls, and a ghostly hopscotch grid that materialised from under my feet. Crusted marbles clogged up the drains that emptied down the sides of the alley. Empty crisp packets fluttered by me metal ring pulls rattled in the breeze. I was glad to see all these things because they were familiar to me. I missed my old friends. I hadn't wanted to move, but my mother made me. She said it would be better. But it meant I would have to go to a new school and make new friends and these things filled my heart with fear.
"Too shy!" my mother would tut frequently and I would pull out my lower lip in a sulk. My mother made me this way. Her loudness had shamed me into being quiet. Besides, my mother had enough courage for the both of us.
"Your daughter," my Aunt Mei would simper as she perched her petite form on a stool at the dining table, "is a very good girl. So quiet."
"Ha!" my mother would screech, waving a pair of bone chopsticks in the air and flinging rice grains in all directions. "She is mouse! Mouse, I say!"
This confused my aunt because I was born in the year of the tiger.
"No! No!" Mother would shriek impatiently. "Tiger outside, mouse inside!"
And it was true. But whereas Auntie Mei saw this as an asset, Mother viewed it as a tragedy. And I blushed until I was as red as the crab's leg Mother was waving at me as she spoke.
"Too quiet," she would scold me, clicking her tongue. "Always reading. Books, books, books! No man want silent wife."
How my father would have disagreed with that. Besides, I was only seven. I wasn't even thinking about husbands yet, although my mother was.
"I find nice man for you when you twenty-two," my mother continually vowed. "Nice doctor. Good money."
"I don't want to get married!" I would protest.
And my mother would always smile knowingly. "Silly girl!"
The alleyway split into two paths. The one on the right stretched far ahead and curved into darkness the one on the left continued in a straight line. I opted for the one on the right.
Each step was bringing me closer to the foul smell I had detected earlier and when I rounded the corner, I located the source lying several feet away. It was a black bin-liner, bloated with rubbish. One side of it was split into a gaping mouth so that its rotting contents spewed over onto the ground. I could hear a faint buzzing as I came closer. Swarms of sapphire-winged flies hovered over the moulding food and as I leaned over to get a closer look, creamy white maggots wriggled out of a congealed milk carton. Gagging, I backed away, pinching my nose so tightly I could barely breathe. I ran back down the alleyway until I collided into someone. The jolt pulled my hand away from my nose, and I gasped for air.
I found myself looking up into the blackest eyes I had ever seen. I could see a pair of pink lips curled into a snarl. He was easily bigger than me, probably about fourteen years old. Suddenly fearful, I wondered if he was going to hit me, but instead he opened his mouth. His voice was raspy and filled with hate.
"Why don’t you watch where you’re going, you stupid slit-eyed -"
Someone was calling his name. I don’t know who it was but by that point, my entire body was paralysed by fear.
The boy shot me a look of disgust and spat on my shoes before walking away. He joined the group of boys playing ball in the street. I could hear their half-whispers floating in the cold air.
Trembling, I ran home to my mother.
"What? What?" she shrilled in alarm as I buried my face into her arms.
"I don't like it here!" I shouted petulantly through choking sobs. "Everyone’s mean!"
"Shhh," soothed my mother, enfolding me in her arms. "Is okay...is okay..."
And my mother, the loud and terrible one, simply rocked me in her arms.
One week later, it was finally time for my parents to open up the shop. I clapped my hands with glee as I watched the yellow neon glow of our shop front spill onto the pavement and light up the street. My parents beamed with pride at their first business venture. I remembered the years they had spent working in other people's shops and restaurants, mopping and serving and cooking and cleaning to save up enough money for a shop of their own. And finally they had succeeded.
"Now we can hold our heads up high," my father said to me as we stood outside our new shop.
Father hung an 'OPEN' sign on the door.
"This is good day," sighed my mother, hugging me. "Very good day."
As they both went inside to prepare for their first customer, I lingered outside to marvel at our new shop. I was the only one who noticed the freshly painted word running down the side of the wall.
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