LIVES by

Kusamei Q

May 15, 1955

Karan, karan, karan! At a reckless speed, the girl was running down the long stone stairs. Karan, karan, karan! The sounds of her wooden sandals echoed on the downhill street. It was around suppertime. Yellow lights from villagers' houses danced on her tear-streaked face. Karan, karan, karan! The sounds cut into the talk and laughter of her friends and their parents from the open windows, to which she had no time to turn. The stairs were two miles long, winding its way down through the miner's village nested between two mountains. In the whole landscape poorly decorated with human lights, she was a small dark dot trying to reach the bottom of the valley as quickly as possible. Karan, karan, karan! The night sky was like a huge animal with lustrous black fur. It was looking down the village and the girl with its countless shining eyes. Crack, crack, crack...

August 6, 1992

The closed corridor was long and smelt of illness and medicine. Everything was painted in white or dark green. Even people's skin color, too weak to fight back the depressing air, was tinted with the dark green. All the doors along the corridor looked same. After carefully checking the number on a door, I opened it. There were six white beds with six patients in the same green pajamas. My grandfather was one of them.

"Sorry, it took me such a long time to come back from Tokyo."

I saw the old man try to smile. More exactly, I saw several thin muscles move and stretch just beneath his faded skin. For last few years, he had been repeatedly hospitalized. "This time he might not come out." My mother's words came back to me. All of his relatives, even parents-in-law of his children, had visited him in last few days. Although the old man didn't know the true name of his disease, he must have known that he was dying soon. I saw his resignation behind his thin smile. After a brief conversation about general trifles, he said, "Please take good care of your grandmother."

"Yes, we will. Yes..."

With both of us sure of the approaching death, I couldn't give him any cheap consolation. He was dying, after long and tough eighty-three years. In World War II, he was sent to China as a medic. When he came back in a half-wrecked ship full of invalids, there awaited decades of malnutrition and hard work to support his wife and four children. He and his wife suffered from tuberculosis, and barely escaped from it by sacrificing half of their lungs.

"How's your college going?"

"Just fine."

"Do your best. That's the only advice I leave for you. Do your best."

Each of his words sank into me like a heavy stone. Perhaps we don't listen to anyone seriously until the end of their life is so near. I was trying hard not to show tears. After some twenty minutes, I said him goodbye and walked out of the room. Through the glass door at the end of the long corridor, I saw the semi-tropical August sun hammering the parking lot. As soon as I was out of the building, the sight was blurred by my tears.

May 15, 1955 (Again)

Finally she reached the main street at the bottom of the valley. Along the street, there were a shabby barbershop, bus stop, vegetable store, fish store, and several other houses, now all preparing for the night's sleep. She had lost her sandals. She stopped in front of a house and began to bang on the door. In the darkness, the sand was comfortably cold against her heated, bleeding bare feet. A man with a white beard saw her at the door and disappeared. He soon came back with a bag under his left arm. Only half of her task was done. Now she had to lead him back to her house.

April 26, 1995

We spent the whole morning in harvesting wild tea leaves. At the age of seventy-five, my grandmother was still a master of mountain life. She could pick emerald-green young tea leaves three times as fast as I could. When our backpacks were full of still breathing leaves, we damped the leaves in a box at her house and came back again to the bushes of wild tea.

In this season, mountains were full of lives. Woods, vines, and grass were all wrestling with each other to climb on top of others, reach for the sky, and drink the sunshine. Birds, insects, monkeys, wild bores, and humans were also in their rivalries for the best of the gifts from the botanical world. On my way to the grandparents' house, a hornet sentinel was flying in the figure of an "8," watching out for any trespassers. Every time I crossed his boundary with tea leaves on my back, he was so agitated. It was the forth or fifth time that the angry hornet decided to show his power and landed on my bare neck. I froze to let him check me. I knew hornets were dangerous only in a panic. Yet, I was scared enough to try some telepathic communication with him.

"Don't worry. I'm no enemy of you. I may look too large and scary, but I intend no harm to you and your clan. Please let me walk across your territory. I just want to carry tea leaves, as some of you bring honey home."

After five minutes that felt like an hour, it finally released me. For the rest of the day, it let me pass without much caution.

Making green tea is a tough job. First, we steam the leaves for ten minutes. Then we wrap them in a cotton towel and wring. It takes days to dry the processed leaves under the sun. To secure the tea for yearlong consumption of all our relatives, we have to repeat the process all day long. Usually, women boil the leaves, and men wring them. That was why I was visiting my grandmother, who now lived alone. Tea-wringing hurt my hands with heat and friction. Still, I liked the strong and refreshing smell of the green juice coming out through the cotton towel and my clasped fingers.

When we were taking a break, I began to explore the storeroom next to the kitchen.

"What's in this bottle?"

"Those are walnuts your mother and uncle collected when they were much younger than you."

"Are they still good?"

"Yes, I suppose so."

The room was full of preserved foods: pickled radish, salted plums, potatoes, dried corncobs, and beans... Then I found something weird.

"What's this?"

"That's a snake in liquor."

It was apparent. The snake was still staring at us in liquor.

"Yeah, but why do you stock a snake here?"

"Snake liquor makes your heart strong."

"Because a snake is a strong animal?"

"Yes. That one almost killed me."

It was one of our family legends. Forty years before, the snake bit her in a dark corner of the yard. Hearing her scream, my grandfather carried her into the house and bound her leg so that the poison would not come closer to the heart. My mother, then still too young to go out after dark, was sent for the doctor. My grandfather would say, "I still remember her sob and the sounds of her sandals went away in the dark, 'Crack, crack, crack...'" She came back with the doctor in time, and the doctor saved my grandmother with a serum. Later, my grandfather killed the snake with a cane and put it in strong liquor. Whenever he teased my mother about her tearful night errand, she would be so upset. It was a simple, but long story repeated at every family reunion of us. Each of the characters would replay their own part in the story.

Sometimes I wonder if my grandfather killed people in the war. I hope not. At least, Chinese and Russian soldiers did not (or failed to) kill him. A liver cancer killed him instead. The snake tried to kill my grandmother. It failed, and her husband killed the snake in revenge. Its body is still staring at the living world from inside the bottle. I don't know if Grandfather drank some of the liquor energized by the snake's venom and anger. All I know is that Grandfather's cane is still at the entrance of their house. Tuberculosis is another thing that almost killed the couple. They managed to survive and raised their four children. Grandmother must have split some of her life to give birth to my mother. The daughter saved her mother's life by running through the dark night. Things are gone, but relations and stories remain. I still remember the hornet. He could have killed me, if he wanted. I could have killed him, too. Somehow we did not do that. As a result, I am still alive. He would be dead by now, but I believe one of his offspring is still patrolling the same mountain path, drawing an "8." Sometimes I find myself grateful for everything and hear the sounds of my mother's sandals, which she lost long before I was born. Karan, karan, karan...

THE END

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