I dreamed of rotting babies, of insects the size of my fist and my fingers elongated and white and sharp and spindly like those of a dead corpse's. Sometimes, I hear odd snippets of dialogues in languages I have no knowledge of, there stood a half-monkey-half-horse creature walking on its hind legs, pointing at my flaws with ugly burned claws. The sun was cold and the moon dyed in mucky purple. What was odd was that I found those things not at all odd in their outlandish states.
I was a girl whose race was not mine entirely. Chinese, whilst I was mixed, age not more than the quantity of the fingers on my one hand. My hair was long and straight and black like coal, nose small, lips forever etched in a frown. I felt like I knew I belong here as much as I knew that I was not supposed to be here. Stood in all its gloriousness was a red Chinese temple, white and gold lampions up above my head, hanging from strings stretched from dragon carved woods mounted on the ornamental roof to poles at a far place behind my back. The sky was white.
Walked through a woman whose face reminded me of an old cat, even though the lips that grinned at me were supple and red and glossy. There obviously wasn't any wrinkle to indicate any age past 35. Her cheeks were shallow, eyes squinted as she smiled down, hair sliding and brushing her shoulders, falling down like cold water on a glass of ice. She had hair like mine, which wasn't mine but was mine, it was mine, it was in the dream. I didn't remember that it was ringlets originally, I didn't remember I was not a small girl at all. I knew somehow that she was Mother but she wasn't the Mother I was supposed to remember. That woman didn't look like she particularly liked me. Perhaps she wasn't Mother after all.
"Take this bag of snails to Grandmama, I will be waiting here when you are back."
My dress was singlet, short and dark green, worn old by time. The woman patted my fringed hair and straightened her shoulders. I did not remember what she called me before she went back to where she came from, though I believe it was a Chinese name. I nodded, and she was gone.
I peeked inside the bag and found, plenty bodies of snails, twisting in all directions possible, gel-like skin glistening. They were disgusting. It was bizarre. Curious.
The memories I had were not mine, but they were even though they weren't. It was me who experienced the things I saw but as I said, I was not even a full Chinese young girl and my hair was not straight. I had visions of sleeping on rattan bed, a lovely lady stirring porridge inside a huge pot, the walls of the kitchen full of concerning cracks on their surface. Smokes were ever present, my neck always wet with sweat.
Rows of bald men and young boys in yellow clothing practiced movements of Kung Fu on the once deserted ground, brown dusts flying as their feet stomped and kicked and slid through dry soil. I coughed, dirt getting into my eyes, the sound of my hacking voice sputtered through yells of encouragement. I remembered walking away, to a place I did not know. I only knew that I was supposed to go to Grandmama's.
I did not remember how I proceeded until I was standing at the edge of a street, somewhere in the heart of London. It was foggy but it was not, I think it was cold but I didn't really feel either sensation of warm or cold. I think, it felt like being inside a stagnant room, a room where the windows were closed while the air conditioner had just been turned off.
I did not know what I could possibly be doing there, I only knew of the waiting. Standing alone, watching rare pedestrians making their way up and down the road. I was quite alone. I hoped something would happen soon.
Not long after, a double-decker bus stopped, gloomy and sad in the cold atmosphere of the city, the machine sighing as it slowed down in front of me. Sighing, like a train does when it stops. It was painted in dark forest green, the windows tinted black and I suspected that the curtains inside were drawn as well. I knew then, that I was waiting for the bus. I should have known all along, why wasn't I cognizant?
My fingers were small, round around the edges, the nails like young moon in the early time of the month. I hummed a tune, head nodding, feet swaying as I stepped up the stairs into the opened door of the large vehicle. Then the bus started moving and the doors slid closed. I held onto a pole, body tilting from side to side as I put all my weight on one feet.
"Come sit over here, young girl. It's dangerous to play near the door," said somebody, voice quivering with age. It was then that I noticed the interior. All the seats were, unsurprisingly, dark green. There was a man at the right second row of the front part, wearing a cap, sitting alone, silently. A woman with short, roll-curled brown hair, sitting quietly on the left. It was very silent save for the rolling of wheels against gravel, their bodies moving along the rumbling bus. I was not wrong, the curtains were all drawn. They were black, nearly blending along the dark theme of the fabric-covered wall. Only two neon stick lamps were aglow, flickering, worryingly. Buzzing as if wanting to burst.
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It was an old woman who called me. Sat at the very back of the bus, on the long seat, at the right. Caucasian, kind eyes, neither plump nor skinny, dressed in a blue tweed and a flower brooch pinned on the breast. The kind of woman you'd see giving breads to pigeons or knitting wool socks on park benches. She looked harmless, I suppose. Never can you judge a book by its cover, after all. At the far left of the seat was another old woman, dressed in pink, snoring peacefully.
"Sit next to me," she asked. I shrugged, skipped towards her, and threw my bum on the seat. My legs were kicking, my grip on the bag which contained the snails tightening. I was supposed to give it Grandmama but Grandmama is dead, so who was this Grandmama I was supposed to give this bag of snails to?
"What are you doing alone? Where is your Mama?"
I smiled, shook my head and stared right ahead. I could not see the driver. The bus had no driver, probably. It was dingy inside. Odd, I think I might have heard a train from where I sit here. No, in fact, I think I could feel being inside a train. It felt like I sat inside a train instead of a bus. It was too dark to make sure I was still on a road, instead of being underground. Underground train. Where everywhere you looked are either dark or electric bright.
She started to try chatting with me, her words I paid no attention to. I did not understand most of the things she said, they were all nonsense. Of some radio station she used to hear on her prime years, of failed marriages (no dear, no, you can never be sure of the right one. There is no right one. Only endurance and patience), of sun-bathed flowers and blood-drenched dances and cotton-stuffed heads. Nonsense and nonsense and this woman was probably senile, lost on her way home and ended boarding the bus for no remembered reason.
Somehow, I grew older and older as the bus started turning smaller and smaller while the old woman becoming closer and closer. The curtains shriveled, the windows cracked and fell off. Then I was inside a broken car instead of a bus and the driver was a pot-bellied man with a funny mustache. I was wearing long jeans and a red shirt instead of the singlet dress from before.
"Get out," he said, "you're not continuing with us. It's not your time."
We weren't in London, we were on a street near my house and I remembered, I remembered Father who smokes three packets of cigarettes a day, remembered Mother whose hair is short and brown, and myself, hair coiling at the ends, likes to laze around on Sunday mornings and eats cereal for more than twice a day.
"I don't want to," I whined, "it's hot outside."
Staring out the shattered window, I could see clearly that we were right in front of my house, the house I had forgotten and now remembered. Perhaps I had missed, perhaps I hadn't, possibly yes, if I didn't find it too hot to step out of the car into the boiling heat of never ending summer. I didn't want to get out. I want to get back. Back where though, I didn't particularly know.
"Look kid, it's no difference outside or inside, both are hot. We have no air conditioner here, don't you notice?"
Yes, yes I noticed, but not before he pointed the fact out to me. I didn't care. I didn't want to go back inside my house.
"Just please continue moving, I'm bored." I pleaded, toes curling anxiously.
"It's okay dear, you can continue going with us sometime later, when it's time." I've almost forgotten about the old woman. She was smiling sympathetically, as if knowing something I wasn't supposed to learn about. As if knowing the secrets of every guarded secrets. As if knowing my name, my thoughts, my masks. As if knowing my time. "For now, please get off the car, darling."
I hesitated, but they were both now looking at me, the driver and the old lady. I huffed, stepped a foot out and hopped off. When I looked back, it was nothing but a rotten car I've been in all along. There was no lady, no driver, nobody. The seats eaten by moths, doors tattered, machines rusty.
Somewhere then. Somewhere other than home. Somewhere not hot, I suppose. I started walking.
"Once upon a time, I, Chuang Chou, dreamed I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was Chou. Soon I awakened, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man."
- Zhuangzi
When I blinked, I was a Chinese young girl again. Hair long and straight and black like coal, nose small, lips forever etched in a frown and back at the temple, holding a bag of snails while watching men and young boys practicing Kung Fu movements.
"Only after the great awakening will we realize that this is the great dream. And yet fools think they are awake, presuming to know that they are ruler of herdsmen. How dense!"
-Zhuangzi
When I woke up, reality was tipping between either the false and the truth, its edges fried, the clarity of it becoming vague and I was not sure. I was not sure whether I dream to wake up and live, or if I go through the haze of day only to eventually live in my dream every night.
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