Chapter 35.2 (1/2)

Published

at 2nd of September 2019 08:15:21 PM

Chapter 35.2

“Was your mother the one who had come to adopt? Is that why after you had been adopted, you started ballet?” Yin Li gently rubbed my back . He was a very good listener .

I laughed . “Yes, it was my mother . But I also fought to be adopted . ”

“My mother actually wanted someone younger because their ligaments would stretch more easily . ” I looked at the plaza in the distance and could somehow even recall the weather on that day . The air was suffocatingly hot and humid . “We were lined up by the old nuns, and I was at the end of the line . My mother stood at the front . She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, and she was dressed very prettily too . At that time I thought, ‘If I could be adopted by such a pretty lady, then maybe I could eventually one day become pretty too . ’

“But it wasn’t long before I was scared . My mother, with her prim and proper face, had us each do side splits and leaps . Sometimes, she would personally go and inspect some of the children who went down into splits . She would correct their hands and feet and widen the angle of their splits . I heard some of the children before me crying from the pain . But my mother’s face remained cold and indifferent . ”

My hands began shaking . I tried to calm myself, and Yin Li comforted me . “It’s okay, you can rest before continuing . ”

But I wanted to continue narrating this lonely past .

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I closed my eyes, and then opened them again with great effort . “I was a bit scared . Many of the other children were already crying, but I desperately wanted to leave the orphanage . But when it was finally my turn, the old nun discovered me . She scolded me, saying that as a twelve year old, I was already past the age requirement . She then made to shoo me back to my room . ”

“Let her try it,” my mother had said at the time . I even remembered her slightly furrowed brows that expressed a hint of disappointment and her boredom . Clearly, all of the prior children didn’t fulfill her requirements . When she looked towards me, she seemed a little hopeful .

I remember walking over and taking a deep breath . Slowly, I parted my feet and forced myself to project a calm, carefree expression of innocence .

As expected, my mother had been tricked by my att.i.tude . She was a bit surprised . She walked up, stooped, and pressed down on my shoulders with one hand . With the other hand, she pressed my knee and asked that I point my toes . Without her consent, I couldn’t relax my position .

“It hurt . When she pressed down on me, I felt like my insides were tearing apart . Doing a split was like pulling the bow taut at maximum tension . Asking further to squeeze my muscles and point my toes was like adding soreness on top of the pain . I wanted to scream . Only by clenching my teeth could I prevent my tears from coming out . ”

I remember my mother pressing down on me quietly for a prolonged time . Only then did she lift her head and ask me, “Does it hurt?”

“Yin Li, do you know what I said? I said, ‘It doesn’t hurt . I don’t feel much . It just aches a little . ’ I couldn’t even let her hear any change in my tone . ” I opened my hands, looking at the lines in my palm . “See, from the very start I was a bad, naughty child . I was a swindler . The very first words I exchanged with my mother were lies . I tricked her, and to keep up the lies, I had no choice but to continue deceiving her . I only found out later that she underwent surgery for her ankles . With her weak ankles, she couldn’t even wear high heels . For ballet, she had given up her youth and was past the age of marriage and childbirth . To fulfill her ballet dreams, she thought of adopting a gifted child . She thought I was a ballet prodigy blessed by the heavens . But in reality, I was just a normal person faking it .

“I had to put in more effort than anyone else to reach my mother’s expectations . ” I smiled at Yin Li, but my tears were already flowing . “I felt guilty towards her . She originally could have found a child who was truly gifted in dance . However, I had tricked her . Therefore I had to keep up the lies to their end . And for that, I paid the price . ”