I was nervous. I couldn’t recall what he looked like at all.
I had just turned fourteen and we were on our way to the airport to pick up my father.
"Are you excited?" Asked my aunt.
"I don’t know. I mean I’m confused. I haven’t seen him for nearly nine years.
I don’t even know what he is like." I looked out the window trying to think of the moments that we had spent together but couldn’t think of any.
"Don’t you worried. You will be fine. After all he is your father and you look just like him."
We arrived at the airport early and my cousins and I started checking things out and chasing around one another inside the building until my uncle came over to me and yelled;
"Hurry, your father is here." I started running with the others, and then I saw this strange man standing there talking to my uncles.
"Go on, that’s your father." My aunt pushed me forward.
I just stood there looking at him, and finally I called him, ’Papa’.
My father came back to live with us for about six months and then brought us to the United States.
On the flight to New York, something inside me was struggling. I was kind of sad, uncertain, and a little afraid but somehow delighted because I might start a new life all over again as a newborn baby.
I couldn’t sleep on the plane. I was curious about everything, the food they were severing; the languages other people were speaking... ... the lavatory.
They have everything in the lavatory. Soup, towel, perfume, cologne, and they even got this packet tissue. I thought it was neat and I took a pack and put it in my packet.
After I went back to my seat, I turned to my family who were sitting behind me and showed them the new stuff I got.
"Look! A packet tissue. Neat, isn’t it?"
My mother and sister looked at me and; all of the sudden burst into laughter, and then all the people around me started laughing, too.
"What? What? What’s so funny? Is it something wrong with this little... ... oh no! It can’t be!" I was holding a pack of tampons in my hand and I thought it was... ...
My face blushed with embarrassment and I wished I could have just disappeared.
We rented an apartment in Queens. My father showed us the city.
We looked around the neighborhood and did some shopping.
We went inside this supermarket and I heard language that I hadn’t heard for a while.
I ran over to the person and said to her,
" We speak the same language. I’ve just come to this city. "
Then I just stood there smiling; but my heart felt some sort of sensation that I had never felt before.
The first snow I had ever seen in my life. I thought it was the most beautiful thing.
That cold late winter night, with no one around except me and my brother playing in the street laughing, I thought I saw all the beauty of life.
I woke up from a dream. For a moment, I didn’t know where I was.
I thought I was still a little boy as many years ago. I sat up in the dark all in a cold sweat.
To start a new life was not easy. Trying to adapt to totally different circumstances was even harder. My family had no relatives here in the U.S. and none of us understood English.
My parents were working so hard to make a living. My father was always away from home so that I only saw him a few times a month, and my mother worked all day long.
They didn’t have any extra strength to take care of us.
There was the time I saw my mother sobbing in the darkness alone at night when I went to her room to ask her something. At school, some guys made fun of me. Even my English teacher once insulted me in front of the class and called me ’stupid’ because I couldn’t understand what she was asking me. When I didn’t know what was going on in other classes, I simply let my mind go far away and wrote poems.
I didn’t watch television for a whole year, all I did was read Chinese books day and night.
My mother would scold me if she woke up in the middle of the night and found me still reading.
" What are you doing still up this late? Don’t you have to go to school early tomorrow morning?
I know you love literature but in order to live in here, you just have to put away your Chinese books and learn English first. Now go to sleep. "
So, every time I heard her up at night or in the morning, I would slip into my bed quick and pretended I was asleep, and then after she went off to work I would get up again and kept reading and writing. But sometimes while I was pretending, I really fell asleep.
I wrote for Chinese literature clubs at school and I also contributed my writings to newspapers published in New York. I didn’t have close friends because none of them loved literature as much as I did. They used to ask me, " How come you don’t hang out with us? We are gonna play basketball after school, why don’t you join us? ". Or " There’s a party tonight, wanna go? " I couldn’t refuse their kindness; I went for a couple times. While everyone was enjoying himself I felt lonely.
Why do they always seem so happy? Isn’t there anything that ever bothers them?
I kept asking myself these questions over and over, kept looking for an answer.
I didn’t know what got into me. I kept my solitude and lived in my own world.
New York City never was the land of comfort paved with gold. I couldn’t help thinking of the life I had in the small town I grew up in, relatives, friends and everything.
There was a lot of space for me outdoors. Neighbors were close and helped each other.
My mother was home all the time as a housewife and the dinner was always ready when I got home from school. Maybe because then there always seemed to be
Some thing to do, something that I needed to attempt, that every minute of my time was filled with sensation.
I felt gratified and every day seemed more than twenty-four hours to me.
One night, my father brought home a stranger on his off day.
" I met him on the train today. He is kind of down on his luck right now.
We used to work in the restaurant together. " My father said to my mother.
My father suggested that he take a shower and gave him some cloths to wear and food to eat.
They stayed up pretty late talking that night and the next morning my father went off to work, he left too. We never heard of him again until a long time later.
My father was talking to my mother; " I met the guy again in Chinatown today.
He was making a thorough search through the trash. I tried to talk to him but he didn’t seem to remember me at all. "
Through the conversation I learned that he used to be a happy man waiting on tables studiously.
Finally he achieved the green card and saved enough money to marry a young woman.
After all, this woman not only used him to get her permanent resident status, also left him after she had gotten all his savings. I didn’t understand how all this could make someone crazy; at least not until after years later.
If someone were to ask me how I had graduated from high school I honestly don’t remember.
It just happened.
Two years at Hunter College didn’t help me much. I was still confused. At the same time that I was struggling, trying to figure out what life meant to me, my adolescence had gone imperceptibly. All the loneliness, nostalgia, and love that surfaced in me
I buried within the depths of poems and songs, but they had no meanings to anyone.
We all have a life of our own that we can’t share with anyone else.
When my sister got into fights with my parents she used to say,
" Why did you bring me to the United States? I could be happier back in Taiwan. "
" We thought we could provide you a better life and better education here. "
" But did you give me any choice before I came? Why did you even give birth to me at all? "
She almost burst into tears.
I never would have said anything like that to my parents. I knew it hurt!
But I didn’t want to live in New York either; what was I going to do with this family?
It’s breaking apart.
I decided to quit Hunter for the first time and go back to my hometown for a change, to be welcomed by relatives and friendships comfort me. In half a year I felt alive again and I came back to Hunter with my heart filled with joy and appreciation.
But a few months later, one afternoon in the middle of semester, when the autumn leaves withered and tumbled, I was robbed and was badly injured. I went to the police but of course they couldn’t give me any help. I then went to the city hospital and the nurse made me wait in the waiting room for four hours and I never got the chance to see a doctor; I left, disgusted. I couldn’t describe how I felt at that time. For the knowledge of what I’d learned and the things I used to believe had all disintegrated.
I left school for the second time. I thought to myself that what’s the purpose of learning.
I often looked upon the sky, some sort of sadness with me. Like the cloud that flutters from here to there, I was looking for a place to go.
I worked for a while tried to make a change and bring back my self-confidence.
But life’s funny. The same thing happened to me again; once again I was injured.
I didn’t go out at night and, not even in the daytime either because I was so afraid.
Something inside me had died.
Last year I spent my time alone in Taipei working. I thought if I could just escape from New York, things would be better again like the first time I went back to Taiwan.
However, I sensed that the human touch and friendliness were not the same anymore.
Things had changed and I knew I could never be the same person I once was.
I also realized that soon or later I still would have to face the reality of life no matter if I were in New York or my hometown. Finally, I come back here and re-attended college again last semester.
Looking back to all those years, I feel somehow the experiences I had are kind of related to the books and writings we have read during this semester.
One good thing about reading someone’s story is that I can place myself within the characters from the books; then taste the feelings of joy, anger, sorrow, and delight as if I am the characters themselves. And when the heart touched by story, all of the memories will come back to me. I don’t know why sometimes I really want to be with people, but also want to keep a distance from them at the same time.
Is it because I don’t trust people anymore? When have I started wearing masks when I face different people like others do? I have tried to uncover the darkness of my inner world through writing. I wish through this process the filthiness inside me could be cleaned and washed away. And hopefully one day I will find out what life is all about at last and I will no longer be alone.
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