Chapter 43 Once 2
Once burned and so exhausted her tiny arms couldn’t be lifted, those hardships didn’t frighten her when she was just a little bean. What she feared most was her mom disappearing without a trace. She would panic and rush to find her, often discovering her on the rooftop or by the river. At first, she didn’t understand until one night her mom cut her wrist with a knife. Blood stained half the bed sheet. She cried and knocked on the neighbor’s door. Only after the neighbor helped send her mom to the hospital did she realize that her mom’s illness led to attempts at suicide.
She was scared and began to stick closely to her mom because her mom’s illness was called depression. To her young mind, it equated to unhappiness. From then on, she always showed a smiling face in front of her mom, performing songs and dances for her. Even though the kids she used to play with shunned her and mocked her, calling her the murderer’s daughter, mocking her mom as a lunatic, even throwing stones at her, she always wore a smile in front of her mom. Only at night, once her mom was asleep, did she secretly cry under the covers. She had to guard her own health cautiously, bundle up more when it was cold, wear a mask in the spring. Even at such a young age, she understood she couldn’t get sick. What would happen to mom if she did?
Day by day, their precarious life improved against all odds. She, like a tender grass growing on the edge of a cliff, was both fragile and strong, gradually learning not to cry.
When she was six, her mom had improved enough to send her to primary school. She didn’t want to go to school; she wanted to stay by her mom’s side. Yet, she couldn’t disobey her mom. On the day she returned from school registration, she quietly went next door where a grandma stayed home all day. She knelt in her house, startling her, just to beg the grandma to watch over her mom during the day.
How could a six-year-old understand what kneeling meant? She only remembered being hospitalized at five when a nurse mentioned it was a little boy and his mom who called 911 to send her to the hospital. His mom initially refused, and it was only after the little boy knelt before her that she agreed and even paid for her.
But while kneeling, her mom, who had followed her, saw it, and cried uncontrollably when they returned home, telling her never to kneel easily to others or beg casually.
Her mom’s words she barely understood, but the boy with the round face and round eyes and the mole on his eyebrow left a deep impression on her heart. He knelt and saved her life.