C (June 2008, Shanghai)

The first few paragraghs of the story I am currently working on.

C's Story

I’ve been meaning to write down C’s story, a story that took C months to disclose. The story about the little boy, whom brings soaring joy to C’s mother, yet causes C many agonized nights and unspeakable pain at the very sight.

It is a story about a unified yet broken family, an all too familiar scenario to me. C preluded the telling of the story with “I don’t tell this to a lot of people…,” the very line that I’ve whispered a number of times before I began setting the stage for my story to come.

To C, the little boy meant too little and too much. To the mother, the boy may have meant the world, a whole new world, one in which for years C’s mother denied the very existence.

I wanted to raise my hand and probe. Questions needed answers. How could I get going not understanding the very important basics to the development of the story?
How could I not hear the voice of the mother, sensing the urgency and helplessness in the fabricated version of the story that she would choose to defend herself with?

But I never got to where we began. C simply shook her head and confessed the lack of knowledge on any of the questions that I had raised. “She wouldn’t tell. She just wouldn’t,” C let go of the words matter-of-factly.

It all goes back to the fact that C’s mother never bored any son. Only daughters. Two very beautiful angels yet a daughter too many in a traditional Taiwanese family. For years after C’s sister was born, C’s mother would always say “daughters are just like boys, but better” whenever the conversation involving the apparent lack of sons in the family arose.

Growing up, C never felt any mistreatment from the parents or anyone in the family. Life went on as it was, son or not. The family, the parents and the two girls, lived happily ever after until C’s mother found the calling of her life and became a devoted Buddhist.