Happy birthday, dad!

In that weightless voice of hers.

I shook off the warmth of my quilt, and slid open my bedside drawer. Pills eyed me emptily from a webbed corner. I pocketed half of yesterday’s wage, ready to set out, but almost forgot my share of the flatbread. I left the other half for her, and as a special treat, some Cola from the black market.

Eventually, I stepped out. The door let out a vacant yawn, which echoed through the willows, before slamming dead shut.

“Mister?” I found myself facing a girl whose head barely reached my shoulders. A woven bamboo basket was strapped to her back. In it, three watermelons towered above her tasselled hair. “Would you like a watermelon?”

I sighed, dropping a creaky knee to talk eye-to-eye. “Why are you selling watermelons on New Year’s Day? What would your parents say?”

“My parents? Well,” her fingers tightened around the straps of her basket, “they’re not letting me go to school this year. Unless there’s enough money.”

Too many like her these days.

“Sir? It’s only two mao for one.”

“Of course.” I fumbled through my pockets. Two, four, six. “Here.”

“Three?” Above the scarf that skid over her nose, her eyes softened into smiling crescents.

“Thank you.” She carefully folded the notes into a little square, and tucked it into her coat.

I dumped them onto a table, and chopped one in half.

Like any other day, the bus left a ten-minute walk between itself and the clinic. A familiar train of faces passed by- cleaners, doctors, assistants- all watched expectantly by decks of slumping men and women.

I turned away, and headed towards the janitor’s closet.

I went through my usual routine. Mop, dry, repeat. The crowd wasn’t getting any smaller. By the time that I took notice again, their shadows started to sap into the dying light. Time for a snack.
The floor of the closet was always somewhat dank, but by eight, neither my legs nor my stomach cared much. In a spare bucket, half a watermelon sat, two weeks’ worth of newspaper separating its bloodied flesh from the cracked plastic.

I can’t remember the last time I’ve had a watermelon. But it was always one of Yue’s favourites, back in those humid summer days. Dad, do you want some? Is what she’d always ask. No, no. I’d say. I munched through so many when I was a boy that I could’ve built a new Great Wall with their shells!

When she was born, I caught happiness and yoked it to a wheel. You. I commanded. Plough the fields that my daughter will walk on.

But we were ploughing a swamp.
“Cleaner?” A man yelled. “A kid threw up at reception!”
I licked my fingers clean, and rushed down the corridor, mop and bucket in hand. “Please, she just needs a few pills, the pharmacy is out, we’ll go-”
The man huffed, “Like that’s anything special. You’ll wait.”

The girl, no bigger than ten, was draped over her mother’s shaking knees. One hand gripped her back as the other held up her hair. For a second, she held her head up, as if underwater and gasping for air. Puffed face, a lolling, bumpy tongue, skin speckled scarlet- just like Yue. A leaking bamboo basket collected her vomit.

The waiting room sharpened into red, and ears pounding, my mop and bucket clattered onto the ground. I sprung into the streets, deaf to “cleaner!”, shouts, murmurs, all from some train speeding down distant rails, faces smudged into windows.

“You!” I shouted at the nearest cyclist, before shoving a wad of money into his hands. “You see the willows? Get me there. A girl’s dying!”

The air thinned from lead to ricewater as houses, vendors, streets flew by. The rugged breathing of the man in front of me cut through any capacity to discern time- a blur. Before I knew it, I was at the willow grove.

Knocking into walls, pots, tables along the way, I wrenched open my bedside drawer, pocketing the pills with my left hand (hers, from the pharmacy that restocked too late, from when I saw her, arms limp, scarlet cheeks, miming life- they almost fooled me), while grabbing a pile of cash- a week’s worth- with my right.

“Thanks!” I shoved it into the cyclist’s hands. I strode, panting, to her mother.
“Penicillin, two per day, ten days." I paused. Read the patient. Distrust still quivered in her eyes. I smiled reassuringly. "Don't worry, I was a doctor once. I know my doses."

“Oh, was it the revolution that- never mind." She smiled. "How could I thank you enough?”

The little girl’s back rose up and down as she gently snored. I shrugged. “Don’t.”

From the doorway of the clinic, the willow grove seemed half-eaten by a jungle of grey rooftops, but it wasn’t a cold sort of grey. A certain warmth whistled between the tiles- ribboning mist from flatbread, chattering lovers on bikes, the rustic yellow of lit windows.

When I got back home, I got out my brushes, ink, paper, dusted them, and painted half a watermelon. Then, I stood under the shade of her favourite willow, and lit a match. I made sure the night air carried the ashes to the clouds and beyond.

I closed my eyes. We were by that pond again, the one that carries suffering as its frogspawn, all set and ready to rain on Earth in flocks of bullets. She took my hand.

Here’s your coat, dad. Don’t worry, it’s not too cold up here.

When she let go, the stagnant water began to leap. I waved at her without looking back, and slipped into this little spring of yawning tadpoles, where none of them know which stream- stretching ad infinitum- they should swim down.

Everything is there, just not the linear.

And that’s what keeps us going.

I found a spoon, and treated myself to the other half.