The Walk
Written on November 11, 2006
I woke up a little disoriented. An unpredicted grey had settled over the area rendering the room darker than usual for 3:30 in the afternoon.
Careful not to wake the kids, I craned my neck for a better look at the alarm clock. Yes, it was still Monday.
I had originally planned to sneak downstairs for a moment to say goodbye to LanFeng, but 2:00 had come and gone while I drifted through my inadvertent slumber. Hopefully I wouldn’t miss her tomorrow morning.
Suddenly I felt as though I’d been yanked from under the covers, held upside down, and shaken until my brain ricocheted painfully within my skull.
Tomorrow.
Rolling onto my back, I stared at the ceiling, biting my lip and fighting to regain some control over my emotions.
It had been obvious for some time now that we had outgrown Room 205, but I wasn’t ready to move to the city and I hadn’t expected us to go from no options to signing a lease in what felt like thirty seconds. It wasn’t fair. I’d never even been in the city before and I certainly wasn’t thrilled about the idea of living there, but what was done was done. We were packed; we had paid the first month’s rent; we were leaving. I just had to accept that. Still, this was to be our last night in the Hotel, and I’d been dreading it.
In a matter of minutes, JunE had become one of the best friends I’d ever had. I did not want to say goodbye, but the prospect of not bidding her farewell stung more than the thought of not knowing when I’d see her next.
Silently, I began praying that, when the time came, neither my courage nor my faulty Mandarin would desert me.
Rod would be home within a matter of minutes, we’d pack the last, essential items into our suitcases, order dinner, eat, ready the children for bed, tuck them in and then, well, I wasn’t sure what would happen.
***
Rod stood under the purplish fluorescence of the bathroom, sorting through his paraphernalia. I leaned against the wall watching his reflection.
“The kids are asleep.” I muttered.
“Are you going downstairs?” he asked a little half-heartedly.
I didn’t resent his lack of interest. What was the point? Where I had had days to sort through our belongings, he was only to be granted a few hours. It would have been unfair of me to expect more from him tonight.
“Yeah” I sighed, reaching for the door-handle.
“Hey!” I paused before looking into the eyes of his reflection, “It will be alright, Hon, it really will. Just follow your heart.” He whispered gently, and as clichéd and over wrought as that phrase had become, I knew he meant every word of it.
Usually I managed to make it out of the stairwell and completely across the circular pattern set into the floor at the center of the Lobby before JunE caught sight of my approach, but tonight she appeared to have been waiting for me. Before I had even put two steps between the staircase and myself, she was beside me.
“Could we go for a walk?” I blurted out before even saying “Hello”.
She shot me a quizzical glance, nodding her approval.
The air outside was crisp and smelled of early Spring. A rather stout breeze whipped about our bare arms and faces before darting off to induce the graceful willows in the park to hum a mournful lullaby.
“Are you cold?” JunE asked in a bland tone which most employ to simply fill the air with spoken sound, but it wasn’t particularly like her to just make conversation. I stopped walking and looked at her.
“No. You?”
She too stopped and stared at me with such an appraising glint in her eyes it made me feel as though she could read my thoughts as plainly as if they’d been they’d been written across my brow in perfect Chinese.
Glancing in the direction of the park, beginning to walk again, she mumbled, “Mei shi, mei shi…”
We strolled to the end of the parking-lot taking a sharp left at the corner of the building furthest from the Hotel only to find ourselves masked by its shadow as we neared the grapevine pathway.
The dim light filtering down from the odd dormitory window could not penetrate the dense tangle of vegetation which entwined its way round the arches set as support beams for the vines. The interior of the pathway was rendered all but black and at the sight of its enormous mouth yawning before me, I began to feel the fingers of panic brushing against my heart.
I wasn’t afraid of the dark. I wasn’t afraid of the pathway, but something about the way JunE’s figure contrasted against this area of the visually unknown forced its way through the seams in my armor. Water was rushing in and the steel was tearing like so much tissue paper.
I didn’t want her to go in there. I didn’t want to lose her – Not her – Not after all we had been through. I didn’t want to her to set foot in that place. I couldn’t let her be swallowed by the darkness. Once she entered those shadows, I knew I couldn’t follow her, and I didn’t want that to happen, but I felt rooted to the spot and helpless as to avoid the inevitable.
“DaSao?” I heard a feeble little voice whimper as my emotions began to churn violently within my chest.
I wanted to say so much to her. I’d always wanted to say so much to her, but had been forced to sit back helplessly, time and time again, as my pitiful attempts to speak Mandarin left me feeling stranded and idiotic, but she had always maintained her patience with me. I didn’t fully understand why. I couldn’t comprehend what she could possibly see in me to give her cause to go to such lengths to try to communicate with me. And here we were again, perched upon the precipice of our inability to simply talk to one another.
She stood directly across from me looking me directly in the eyes. She wasn’t smiling. She understood that something was wrong.
Not knowing what else to say, I blurted out, “Sam and Josh love you very much!”
She nodded slowly, narrowing her eyes slightly in studious silence, as though trying to focus on details too small to catch with a passing glance.
“I also love you…” I mumbled in the same, almost unrecognizable squeak with which I had first called out to here, then, silence…
As though she were preparing herself to say something difficult to articulate, she sighed deeply then began talking in a hauntingly gentle tone which harmonized with the willow’s song beautifully.
Her voice ebbed and flowed with the breeze and I felt safe just listening to it.
Pausing for a moment or two, as though she were listening to her own words, making sure they were all accounted for, she finally asked, “Did you understand?”
Well, no, not entirely, at least not in the literal sense. Having only been able to recognize a word or two out of her speech, I had not understood what she said, but, upon allowing myself to return her kind, yet penetrating stare, I could answer with confidence that yes, I knew her meaning, regardless of the fact that I couldn’t translate her sentences into my own spoken language as accurately as I could feel them.
Her eyes told me that our relationship had become important to her as well. I wasn’t simply a hotel guest or a nameless mother of two blond-haired, blue-eyes toddlers. We were friends, and close friends if not yet old friends.
“I’m going to miss you…” I whispered as something warm trickled down my cheek...
Was I crying? If so, how did I reach the point of tears without the usual internal war to prevent them from escape? How had we circumvented such a battle? Perhaps the wind had simply stung my eyes.
Whatever the cause, I wiped the wet from my cheek before it had a chance to cool, but JunE caught sight of the quick movement of my hand and, at the sight of the glaze in my eyes, she moved closer wrapping an arm around my shoulders.
The feel of warmth against my now cold arms delivered the final blow to my defenses. The damn broke. Every bit of fear, hurt, anger, apprehension, and sorrow I had been wrestling with during the course of the past three weeks came pouring from my eyes faster than I could dry the tears.
JunE squeezed my shoulder and wrapped her other arm around me, but it wasn’t a hug, not really, and I needed a hug now more than anything.
“O.k., so Chinese don’t hug,” I thought to myself, “but I doubt that holds true for every situation and I’m not Chinese.”
“DaSao,” I stammered, “Americans hug…”
She chuckled kindly and squeezed my shoulders again.
“May I?” I whispered, choking a bit on the words.
“Of course.” She replied in that same hauntingly gentle tone.
As I turned, gratefully, to wrap my arms around her, the tears again took hold of me and I began to weep.
I hadn’t expected this, and it was not the goodbye I had imagined, but I realized that every single one of my tears was going to find its way to freedom, with or without my consent. What was the point in fighting? I buried my head on her shoulder and sobbed.
To my relief, she retuned the embrace, holding me as though I were a frightened child waking from a nightmare.
“Bu yao ku.” I heard her say softly, “Bu yao ku.”
It wasn’t that I wanted to cry; I just could not find a way to stiffen the flow. The valve had broken, there was no going back, and though she continued to whisper, “Don’t cry” as we stood there in the shadow of the buildings, I knew she too realized this.
Soon, we fell into a silent embrace as I wept, the willows sang and the wind wrapped us in a surreal moment of untold minutes until the well of my anxiety had run dry.
Mei shi - Not a problem; don't worry about it
DaSao - Literally: "my Elder Brother's Wife", figuratively: a term of respect for any middle-aged woman.
Bu yao ku - don't cry
