By Penny Zhang, aged 16

I

Poet Tagore said, “The moon has her light all over the sky, her dark spots to herself.” Wasn’t it true, for both of us?

 

 

II

I looked up to the sky, and there the full-moon hung. Gleams of ivory dripped like silk, and dripped onto my mother and I. It was the same moon as 28 years ago, when I was still a child with panic disorder along with a host of phobias, and when my mother was everything to me. She still was, but in a different way.

 

 

III

“And the world just goes ‘boom’, and we are all gone. Forever.”

 

“It shouldn’t be far. How exciting is that?”

 

“Hey. You know what does ‘the end of the world’ mean?” A boy turned to me with thrill hiding in his face and asked as if he was baiting me.

 

“Gone”, “Forever”. Such inconceivable, appalling words. A blare pierced through my head and resonated in my skull. My abdomen was throbbing, and I felt my body toppling into feathers. My heart — it was dashing madly in my body. I was too stunned to utter a word, and talking to them was no less upsetting, but I needed to know. Is it real?

 

“Is that really going to happen?”

 

Curled up under a table in the playroom, I watched the other children who were in a gaggle, and whose faces were brimmed with gloat.

 

“Oh yes. Scientists say that there will be an explosion of the entire universe.”

 

“And we will be blasted to dust.”

 

“Well, if you are lucky enough, you may die before it happens.”

 

My hands, clutched onto my shirt, were soaking. I was falling into an abyss, desperate for a grip from someone. I felt truly helpless, but I must have looked ludicrous to the other children, for I heard “Chicken” and “Coward” and the burst of a jeering laugh…

That was one of those blustery days for me, but the moment I saw my mother standing at the gate of the kindergarten, I flung myself into her arms, and the blare in my head was quieted. She clasped me to her bosom, asking me how was my day. I could not answer, and only broached the question: “Will we all die at the end of the world?”

There was a pause. It was only today that I realized my mother would have become deeply perturbed upon hearing this kind of question from me, because what I received after a few seconds was so soothing, like the hum of a lullaby that flowed softly like a mother’s kiss, and like a zephyr’s wings, cuddling my restless heart, “If someday, it is to happen, your mother will take you away before it happens, far away. If we lose the universe, we can always make our own. You can be the sun, or a meteoroid if you want, and I will become a dust that runs around you in laps. Your mother will become so skinny, because you are so big, and that is a lot of running!”  Her hands gently stroked my shoulder. My heart had stopped its battering as if it had fallen into a sweet dream.

I had determined since I could remember, that my mother was different from all the others; everything appeared much more wonderful from her mouth, including that explanation of my sickness. My sickness was genetic; ever since I was a toddler, a beast had been living in my body, as my mother explained to me. It was easily incited by any trivial matter. When it raged, I would be absolutely defenseless, bringing disrupted senses and a crushed spirit. But my mother had the most peaceful soul and magical words that could always quell it. For that reason, she was the only one with whom I felt secure and with whom I shared my thoughts. This didn’t come effortlessly; it was more than difficult to help a child with severe panic disorder, and even more when the child was beset by Necrophobia, Achluophobia, Dystychiphobia…and when she could not even stand being touched…

But it was only when I grew up that I realized my mother’s saving of me came with a great expenditure. My mother and I lived in a small convenience store at a corner of Oak Street, where she worked. We slept on a discarded cushion, hemmed in by loads of cartons full of goods and flying dust. Doctors exhorted my mother, that I must undergo CBT and other therapies and go to a special school, but the truth was we could never afford it. Since I had started to understand, I had become aware of the absence of my father, my grandparents, my uncles and aunts, and cousins in my life. It didn’t really concern me since I had never needed them, but I didn’t know that my mother had to bear too much heaviness from this solitude, and this shortage of money. Until now, I am still oblivious of the history of my family and the direction in which my father has gone, for my mother has never touched on the topic. The only time I caught a glimpse of their existence was when my mother came home one day with an envelope clenched tightly in her hand. Inside it was a thin stack of money.

Life in a public kindergarten and later a public primary school was full of despair. I remember one evening in fourth grade when Math class was just over. The other children left the classroom in a flock, and with a snap, the light was turned off and the door was flung shut. The beast in my body went wild, and my teacher broke into the room after she heard me scream and bawl with a sound like a knife. I could no longer contain my frenzy, so when I saw a pencil case lying on the lunch table, I snatched it up and hammered it hysterically against the crowd that was in a wail of terror, until my teacher clutched on to my arms.

That night, the teacher had a talk with my mother, requesting me to move to another school. She said my disposition had disturbed the progress of the class and startled the other students. My mother pleaded, “You have to learn to get along with her. She’s just a harmless kid, if you tell the children to leave her alone,” but the teacher thought about it and finally refused.

Together, we walked back home quietly along the pavement of Oak Street, knowing that the world had turned us down. “It’s not your fault. You hold something special, and some people cannot understand that, because they can never have it.”

My mother’s body radiated the flames of a thousand suns, chasing away the nips of the autumn air. I remember the moon of that night so clearly. I remember gleams of ivory dripping like silk, and dripping onto my mother and I. I could hear the music of the moon’s mellow breath, and see her beaming behind a light gauze. I was fascinated. My small hand gripped onto my mother’s, and I felt a blotch of wetness on her fingers.

 

IV

Until today, I still believed that it was the moon that night who was touched by the love in our misfortune and imparted it to the others, because after a week, when my mother was searching for a new public school that would accept me, the teacher from the old school called. She said that a group of researchers from the Mayo Clinic had visited the school in search of a child with genetic mental disorders, and that they had studied a new cure and that they would like to experiment on me. The teacher and my mother believed it was the perfect opportunity. In the next three years, the course of my life was changed. I caught up at high school and then college, and have found a job at a hotel. For the first time, my mother and I tasted a sweetness that life had not provided for…

V

It was after 13 years of serene life that my mother fell sick. It was Alzheimer’s. It was one Saturday morning after I left home early for work that my mother walked out to the compound, into the biting winter air, in her pajamas. She strayed in the midst of the paths and bushes, with her thin body drifting in the gusts, and she eventually walked up to the neighbors, knocking on each and every one of their doors to find her own…

My mother’s sickness was traveling down a ramp, and there was not much for cure except for the drug therapy she took occasionally. So I worked part-time and spent most of the time at home, only having the share of watching more closely how the sap in my mother was being drained drop by drop, day by day.

It was autumn, and I was taking my mother in a wheelchair out for a stroll. It was not long before we were unwittingly on Oak Street again. My mother’s body sank into the wheelchair, her bones extruding at every joint. Her head was crooked, and the ravines on her face were carved onto her soul. She looked around at sea, at the pedestrians, who were gazing back with lament, but more of an aversion.

“Ho I remember you! Your son. Last time I saw him eating up the grass at - at somewhere there!” my mother blurted out when she saw a middle-aged man walking a Corgi and she pointed to the south. The man, bewildered and offended, glared in disgust. “Sorry! She didn’t mean to —”

I had been taking everything and abiding every circumstance since my mother’s illness, but all of a sudden, the expression in the man and those people’s eyes devastated me. Did my mother feel the same 28 years ago, when I was the special one?

“Was that a bomb? What?” The sound of a demolition truck blasted on the other side of the street wall. My mother spun her head, flustering to search for the source.

“That was a truck. They are building a new mansion.” I withheld the ache that must have been displayed on my face and lulled my voice.

 

“It was a bomb. Right?”

 

“It’s okay. It was not.”

 

“A bomb.” She was swerving fiercely, and she looked lost.

 

I stopped the wheelchair and crouched in front of my mother. When our eyes met, I saw myself, and I saw a child. On my mother’s already shriveled face, the eyes were still bare and blank and overflowing with a pellucid stream, like that of a child who carries little knowledge of worldly affairs, and who doesn’t remember much from the past. It knocked on my spine. My mother, who was so strong, who had the most peaceful soul and magical words, and who could radiate the flames of a thousand suns, was now as vulnerable as me as a child.

“If it ever is, we will run away before it happens, far away. If we lose the place we live in, you can be the sun, or a meteoroid if you want, and your daughter will become a dust that runs around you in laps. She will become so skinny, because you are so big, and…that is a lot of running.”

 

I could not speak anymore. I turned around with my back facing her. I tried to swallow the tears back to the brink of my eyes, but they eventually slipped out into a meandering brook. It was painful, concealing this pain.

It was only at that very moment that I realized the ravines now on my mother’s face were not a record of her age, but were etched by tears. She had taken in too much sorrow from her life, and could only gorge on it until it was infused into her every single cell so that her surface remained intact, because she could never disclose a single relic of the pain on her face. She knew if my only dependence, my only faith in the world, collapsed, my entire world would collapse. I was suddenly struck by the idea, that the blotch of wetness on her fingers that Autumn day 28 years ago was nothing but — my mother’s tears.

VI

I looked up to the sky, and there the full-moon hung; same as 28 years ago. Gleams of ivory dripped like silk, and dripped onto my mother and I.

A woman who carried little light but a fountain of pain in her body had to emit the heat that could warm up a frail little heart. For that, she herself was deeply scarred. On this day, I truly understood.

 

Poet Tagore said, “The moon has her light all over the sky, her dark spots to herself.” Wasn’t it true, for both of us?

 

Under the moon, my mother smiled. It was a blithe smile. Together, she in a wheelchair and I right behind, we roamed Oak Street, beatified by the light of the full moon.