Short English Story

小鱼王子 · 发表于 21-4-2005 15:21:16|来自：辽宁大连

I Long for a Day Without Pain 
©Hollyton
Mom and Dad ate dinner with us last night. They look much the same - Dad with a silver-white fringe of overgrown hair spilling over his ears, his red face vapid and smiling. Mother has her ever-rumpled salon do and glaring red lipstick, frenetically pulling items out of a wrinkled, torn bag. 
“Olaaa hijitaaa! This is hello and where's the bathroom." 
English is not her first language - she lapses in and out of it without noticing. Her next sentence is in Spanish -
"Could you please hold this for me?"
A white bag, ready for the dumpster, is pushed into my hands along with an umbrella. She runs off. The remaining trio finds a seat in the restaurant among the dimmed lights, elderly patrons all around us. I wait until dad and Steve, my husband, return with their trays to get my meal. I see my mother in line, but avoid her, not wanting to be alone with her.
We all sit. Mom lapses into Spanish again.
"Your aunts and cousins say hellooo to you; they alwaaays ask about you." It's said in a sing-song, whining tone, the one I hated as a child. "They alwaaays think of you." I still hate it. 
" I hope they are all well," I say, even though I really don't care. They are not a part of me. I haven't seen them in years. Those same years have separated me from my parents as I realized their prejudice and lack of education. I left home as soon as I could, at 17, to escape the taint of bigotry that permeated our house, and my mother’s irrational tantrums. I was like a caterpillar emerging from its cocoon after a long winter - the cocoon is left behind, shriveled and wrinkled, while the new creation flies away.
Somehow, though I try to prevent it, the discussion takes the inevitable turn toward my father's favorite subject: current events. Now is his time to shine. 
"Did you hear what Conan O'Brien said?"
"No. we don't have a TV. We don't watch TV." We haven't in ten years, but they always ask us. 
"He said we should give bin Laden a sex change operation and send him back to the Taliban." He chuckles, and I groan inwardly. Steve mentions how many times he has heard that joke. It's not funny to us. Nothing about the war is funny. I change the subject. Mother interrupts, pulling something out of the flea-market bag. 
"Look, I got you a cat toy. Would you like to try it?"
"The cats aren't at dinner with us."
She dances it on the table a while, staring happily at its motion against the Formica. 
"I thought they might like it."
She reaches in the bag again, her clawed, arthritic hand moving in unsteady jerks. I wince to see her. My hands will look like hers someday. I have my mother's hands. She pulls out a stack of cloth. I recognize it as wool scarves, dingy from storage. I remember how she insisted I wear the wool sweaters and socks she got me when I was a child. I resisted - they itched - even when I took them off, my skin would continue to itch. She didn't believe me, so I would sneak to the laundry and wash the aggravating garments in hot water. 
"They don't fit!"
"Oh, too bad," she would say. She never caught on. Now, at 27, I can just bear wool. 
"Thank you. I'll look through them later," I say, but she ignores me, as usual. She deliberately pulls each one off the pile. She spreads the scarves on the table's edge, in front of her tray of food. It looks like a bazaar, there at the table.
"Well, maybe I'll keep this one." She pulls out a pink one. She always did like pink. She puts it into her huge white purse. Nervously, she picks at the remaining scarves, plucking at each one in turn. 
"You know, you can just keep the ones you like and give the others as gifts."
"I'll take the green one," I exclaim, to appease her.
"Don't you like this one?" She holds out an orange-red plaid. "Do you have any skirts like this?" 
"No."
"I used to have some but I don't know where they went." 
I used to have one too - the uniform of a private school. I am not fond of plaid, I am not fond of wool, not fond of the color - but what can I say? She looks at me complacently.
"Thank you." 
"It goes with everything, you know." I nod.
I turn my eyes back to the table, where dad and Steve speak of other things, willing to return to the conversation. We discuss my husband's law studies. We talk about different professions, and dad's wit erupts again. 
"Doctors work with sick people, a lawyer has angry clients, but an engineer builds the future of mankind. Why don't you become an engineer, Steve?" Dad is a retired engineer. I flub - dad is discussing the work that engineers do, failure analysis comes up, and I mention the studies on the World Trade Center disaster. That gets him back onto his favorite subject.
"O'Brien said that if those Muslim men want to die, we'll accommodate them." 
Steve and I say nothing. We don't want anyone to die. He repeats the heavy joke, laughs. Steve comes out of it first. 
"It's nice to be back in a place that has real weather."
I chime in, relieved to discuss anything but the previous topic.
"Remember that electrical storm in San Jose?" We go on like that, and the folks don't seem to mind the inanity of the subject. After about four sentences, mom breaks in.
"Juanita asked how you were." she sings. "She misses you." I have seen Juanita perhaps five times in my whole life.
"She has a terrible problem." Mom lowers her voice, whispers in Spanish, "Her son, Pepe, has obsessive-compulsive disorder. But don't tell anyone - it's only for the family to know." 
"There is no shame in having that," I say. "It is a physical disease, like diabetes or heart problems. I saw an excellent exhibit on treatments -" She interrupts.
"I brought you this article on fibroids and how to treat them." I smile. I can finally tell them something meaningful about my life. I tell them about the surgery, almost a year before, that ended my trouble with fibroids and many other problems. But it didn't stop all my physical problems. I now know I have endometriosis. There is no cure. There are no more treatments or surgeries to try, unless I agree to a hysterectomy. I don't tell them that part of the story. There is nothing they can do, and I can't stand their attempts to be helpful.
"Why didn't you tell me?" she says. Looking at Steve, "Why didn't you tell me?"
"I didn't want you to know." 
Steve says, "There was nothing you could do."
"I need to know these things so I can pray to the Virgin for you!"
She takes my head in both hands and kisses my forehead. I can feel the lipstick mark, that I must leave until she goes. She will be offended if I try to wipe it off. She would think I was trying to wipe off her kiss, her benediction in red Maybelline.
"Thank God you are better. So you don't need this article?"
"No."
She tears it up, triumphantly.
I don't tell them that with the certainty of endometriosis comes the knowledge of a lifetime of constant, chronic pain. I am never entirely free of it.
"But why didn't you tell me? I have said so many prayers for you. Did you know, when the Virgin answers your prayers, a flower will come up in your garden. I prayed, and a flower came up."
Dad says, "You know, when she hears you are sick, she imagines the worst-"
"Don't lie about me." my mother spews across the table at him, in Spanish, in some agitation. "You always lie."
She sings it, nasally expressing her displeasure. The cherry red, wrinkled lips droop at the corners. I sense a tantrum and I cringe. I know how she gets when irritated, the sand grain of perceived insults causing an explosion out of all proportion to the offense. But somehow, this time, it passes. 
Steve says, "We have to go." We all get up to leave. I take the yard sale bag this time, knowing she won't be happy unless I take it. She offers us a ride home, presses us beyond what civility allows, but I insist that Steve and I will take the Metro. The traffic is too heavy to drive. We ride the subway home; we are relieved that we got off so easily. 
The next day, I get a message. They were stuck in traffic on route 66 until late last night. They want to have lunch with me. But I have had enough of my family, for now. I don't return the call. The cats have duly played with the new toy and forgotten it, as cats do. I unfold the scarves. They are all moth-eaten, trails running through the fabric, the integrity of warp and weft gone, leaving spaces where the pupa crawled before it emerged, transformed.

riko_qiqi · 发表于 22-4-2005 09:22:47|来自：辽宁大连

that 's not consider as SHORT!!

小鱼王子 · 发表于 23-4-2005 14:37:33|来自：辽宁大连

it is![em01]

WHOO · 发表于 23-4-2005 22:44:34|来自：辽宁大连

nah, it is definitly not..!

破茧成尸 · 发表于 24-4-2005 00:03:17|来自：辽宁大连

this short story is no longer a short story.........a bit long.....and can you paste out the Chinese passage?some parts that i can hardly understand......