c3 (1/2)
Chapter 3
Yu Zhou Zhou constantly said that the name Ben Ben is good.
At the time, there was a cartoon on television where the main character was a little yellow car that looked like a b.u.mper car, flat and cute like it had been blown up like a balloon. That little car was also called Ben Ben. The little car was partners with a boy and together, they went to many, many places in the world with the goal of finding his mom.
Yu Zhou Zhou didn’t understand how muddled the mother could be to lose her own child so she felt very sympathetic for Ben Ben. That was pretty much the first time she felt a cartoon was utter nonsense.
She looked at her own mom who was currently sewing and thought, look, moms will forever be by your side. Thinking like this, she happily patted her chest as if she was a survivor of a disaster treasuring her luck.
However, later, she really met a Ben Ben, a boy who had been intentionally lost by his mother.
After the happy ending of that cartoon, she happily ran to tell Ben Ben: “You’ll also find your mom. Definitely.”
The little Yu Zhou Zhou always thought that the tragedies in cartoons were all nonsense, such as Ben Ben being lost by his mom, whereas the happy things were definitely all true- such as Ben Ben finally finding his mom, laughing brilliantly in a sea of flowers.
When she grew up, she realised that her perceptions were only correct when inverted.
Those sad and despairing people always created many beautiful fantasies to lie to people with.
Ben Ben was always discouraged. He believed that he may not be able to shake off his alcoholic father for the rest of his life.
Yu Zhou Zhou teased him, asking him how he’d know about something as long as a lifetime.
“Is a lifetime very long?” A wry smile that did not match his age appeared on his face. At that moment, Yu Zhou Zhou froze. She didn’t know why but she liked that smile of his. It seemed to contain a lot of responsibility, like an adult. Then, after thinking more about it, she felt that it was actually better if Ben Ben cried- he cried like a little kid.
“A lifetime isn’t that long. I was pushed by him and my thigh knocked on the edge of the table. The next day, when I checked, it was purple. After a few days, it turned black and a few days later, it was purple again. Finally, little by little, it turned into a light yellow and finally, it disappeared.”
Yu Zhou Zhou didn’t understand, “What do you mean?”
“I’m saying, when I count the days of my bruise fading bit by bit, I won’t finish the ones I’m currently counting when new ones appear. Just by counting the days like this, I discovered that the days go by quite quickly. Is a lifetime long?”
Later, Yu Zhou Zhou pretty much forgot Ben Ben’s appearance but she always remembered, there was a boy who told her that the pa.s.sing of time wasn’t just calculated through calendars.
Time could also be marked through using the period it takes a bruise to fully fade as a unit.
Yu Zhou Zhou looked at Ben Ben and sorrowfully thought- that is if she had understood that the emotion she was feeling then was sorrow- how perfect cartons were, the car Ben Ben wanted to find his mom and he was able to move immediately around the world. He had friends, he didn’t have to worry about food and petrol, how long the road was and he didn’t have to ride the train (because he was a car)……
In the past, when she heard Qiao gege* from her eldest uncle’s family say, “life is a blurred net”, Yu Zhou Zhou didn’t understand. But in this moment, when she raised her head and saw the thin spider web, she thought, if life is a spider’s web then what are they? Are they little bugs caught in the web and can only wait to be eaten?
“My mom and dad also fight a lot. They fight really fiercely and they throw things too. They threw a bottle of ink on my head. Uh huh.”
Yu Zhou Zhou said this like it was a coincidence. Actually, she has only seen her dad two or three times and only once out of these times did her mom and dad both appear. Plus, they were fighting. They fought like they were about to tear the house down. She didn’t know that her originally quiet and gentle mom could also have such power. She had learnt two words from television when she was little, one was ‘hysterical’ and the other, ‘over-emotional’. She felt that she could put these two words together to describe her mom and dad that day.
Yu Zhou Zhou naturally didn’t get hit by the ink bottle or else she wouldn’t have lived until today. However, she sincerely, to the extent that she boastfully said it out loudly, wanted to comfort Ben Ben.
The world’s best way of comfort wasn’t telling the other person, “Everything will become better”, but saying, “Why are you crying, look at me, I’m worse off than you.”
Hence, the successfully comforted Ben Ben very sincerely said, “Zhou Zhou, I don’t want my mom, I want you.”
The two pure six year old kids were naturally unable to tell how awkward this sentence was.
Yu Zhou Zhou continued to pat his shoulder and vowed, “I will always be by your side.”
She had learnt this sentence from a cartoon. They were both touched by themselves and the other person and the atmosphere couldn’t be beter.
I will never leave you, what a beautiful yet painful lie.
Yu Zhou Zhou only found out later, that her first lie in life was copied from a cartoon. She had firmly believed many wrong matters.
Life in the large compound peacefully pa.s.sed by day by day like this. Yu Zhou Zhou still stayed at home every day and every evening from six to seven, unaltered by any circ.u.mstances was cartoon time. In the weekend, she went to grandma’s house and occasionally, when Mama Yu was at home in the evening, she would go out and play with the other kids.
For the rest of the time, she lived through the small stage in her mind. Sometimes, she would play in her imagination until she got a headache and had exhausted all her sources. At those times, she would quickly go and read some stories to acc.u.mulate new inspiration. She had three sets of books at home, Hans Christian Andersen’s complete edition, x.x.x, x.x.x.