18-Mar-2003
Title: Street of Dreams 17/?
Author: Lasha Lee
Pairings: Various
Warnings: Angsty
Email: anakerie@cinci.rr.com
I lived, for part of my childhood, in a tiny fishing village, and I knew no other world in those days and wanted none.
If my mother woke up before I did, I could be certain of being assigned a whole list of chores to complete, all designed to keep me as close to the house as possible. It wasn't that I resented helping her out; it was that I resented anything that kept me inside, away from my friends, and the sunlight, and the constantly churning ocean I worshipped. So I made sure that if possible, I was awake and gone long before she was, and that I didn't return until the sun was sinking low. It was a constant, silent battle between us. The harder she fought to hold me down, the more I longed to be free.
My friends and I sometimes went to the docks in the morning, to watch the fishermen singing and hauling in the big, soaking nets, to watch the silvery fish flop around on the deck. If we were good and didn't get in the way, some of those fish might make their way into the plastic bucket my friend Himo always carried.
We would roast them on the beach, wrapped in seaweed, pretending that we were stranded on a desert island, watching the horizon for signs of "rescue." When the sun was up fully, we threw away the bones and put out the fire, and headed for school if we had it that day. Otherwise we stayed on the beach or went to the park. There was only one general store in the town, and the owner was a crabby old lady who made us leave if no adults were with us.
If it was raining I ended up in the homes of my friends, watching television or playing video games or doing homework. Anything to avoid going back to my own house again.
My mother didn't work, but we had plenty of money, something I never gave much thought to when I was very small, and resented her more for when I was older. I received less than half the pocket money of my friends; when my clothing was torn she mended it rather than buy me something new. We did not own any video games or even a computer, and our television barely picked up the news broadcast from the mainland.
"We have what we need, Rachael." She would say. "It's foolish to throw away money on things we don't."
That was yet another thing I hated her for, my name. Just because my father had been white was no reason to saddle me with a Western name. I didn't look Western, I didn't want to look Western, unlike some of the older girls in the village who dyed their hair blonde and ordered blue contacts online. I was Japanese; I wanted a Japanese name.
"Your father wanted to name a girl Rachael after his mother." She would say. "Don't be disrespectful to his wishes."
That was her favorite word, disrespectful. Apparently, wanting anything of my own; my own beliefs, my own friends, my own life, was disrespectful.
"Why?" I yelled, when she told me I wasn't allowed to take the ferry to the mainland with my friends. "Why not?"
"Because I said so. You're too young. Don't be disrespectful."
"I'm almost 11."
"That's too young."
She didn't have any friends in the village; I think part of the reason my friends' mother's took care of me was that they thought she was crazy and they felt sorry for me.
The only time I saw her leave the house, expect for shopping, was on the night of the Lantern Festival, which she never missed.
Every year, she would go to the general store, and buy three small lanterns, and so did everyone else in the village. That night they'd go to the beach, and light the lanterns, and let them go. She told me that the spirits of the dead came back on that night to watch over us, and that the lanterns would guide them safely back to the afterlife.
"Who are yours for?" I asked once, but she did not answer. It was part of the mystery about her, a veil I was never allowed to look under. It was, I suspected, the reason she cried out in the night. The reason that certain days of the year she would not speak at all, simply staring into space, tears running down her face.
I was 11, and sitting in the school room, trying to figure out how I could capture the attention of Himo's older brother. He'd worked the fishing boats for years now, and his bare arms were tan and muscular. We all wanted him, we all made excuses to go to Himo's house hoping to get a glimpse of him. Himo, seeing a golden opportunity, would accept money in exchange for letting us paw around his brother's room. I giggled, remembering that he'd once sold his brother's underwear to a persistent older girl. Since he was one of six boys, his underwear had his name clearly marked on it, which made it easy for the girl's father to track him down and threaten his life.
So I was sitting there in my skirt and tie and pigtails, staring across the room at my beloved's back, when the door opened and the Matron had some quick words with my teacher. A moment later I was summoned forward, and my world changed.
On her way to the general store that morning, my mother had stepped off curb into the path of a delivery truck, and had been killed instantly. The witnesses all said the driver wasn't at fault; he'd tried to swerve. But my mother, lost in her own world, hadn't even noticed.
It was the first loss in my life, and in my grief I became a wild thing, reckless and uncontrollable. I felt the kind of guilt only a child can feel, that my bad feelings toward my mother, the fact that many times I'd yelled at her "I wish you were dead" had actually led to the accident.
I stayed at Himo's house until the funeral, not knowing or caring what was going to happen to me, and that was when I was given the letter.
The island had one lawyer, as old as time, and difficult to understand, and seldom used. He shuffled up the walkway that afternoon and didn't even greet me, just shoved the letter into my hands and walked away, leaving me to read it in my own time, and deal with the information it contained the best I could.
Now, when my mother was gone, beyond my reach, it was now that I was allowed to know her, to understand the sufferings that had brought her here, to know the meaning of the three lanterns she lit with such love and tenderness each year. To see the fear that led to her smothering me all those times, and I cursed her for not telling me before, for not trusting me with the truth. For dying a stranger.
The day after the funeral two women in business suits came to Himo's house and explained that they were taking me to a children's home on the mainland, and to go get my things. Although like all of my friends I'd dreamed of leaving the island and talked about it, the reality of actually doing it scared me to death, and I fled out the window instead, determined to hide out there until they gave up and went away.
It didn't take them long to find me; there weren't many places to hide in the village, and they dragged me kicking and screaming, literally, to the boat, as my friends stood there watching in amazement.
I have never been back to the island, but I made them regret the day they ever laid eyes on me.
My mother had raised me not to swear, but now I repeated the words I'd learned from the fishermen to everyone who came near me. I picked fights, and I stole anything I could get my hands on, and there was an arrogance about me now. I knew who I was, and what I was. I was better than these fools, and they were fools the more for not recognizing that. And yet, in spite of everything, I said not a word. My mother's letter to me had made one thing clear; in my silence rested my life. No one could know the truth.
I'd been at the shelter for a few years when my life changed again.
I'd wandered into the common room of the shelter in a particularly poor mood, and with a growl made the younger children scatter and the older ones move nervously away. They'd all been watching a newscast about blonde girl and it was the name that stopped me cold in my tracks.
She was speaking, addressing the world at large. Only a few years older than me, fair and delicate and refined, and they said it was a miracle, that she'd been given up for lost long ago, only to appear now.
I can't even began to describe what I felt. Anger, elation, fear. Everything I'd tramped down over the last few years bubbling up to the surface. I watched her as long as I could, and then fled to my room to weep in private.
She was beautiful and powerful, and I was nothing. I was a rat in an orphanage, bound to her by a connection she could never know about. Even if the danger had passed, she must never know, I thought. She can never learn about me, about how I came to exist. I can never go to her and tell her the truth. The thoughts tumbled though my head over and over. I'll never tell.
The next morning, I awoke rumbled and tear-stained, and with a sense of purpose and shame. I wanted that beautiful girl to be proud of me.
I began focusing on the schoolwork I'd neglected, stopped going out of my way to make people hate me. When the news revealed that Milliardo Peacecraft was also alive, no one understand the reason for my joy, or why I followed the lives of the reunited siblings so closely. In writing about them in the school paper, I discovered that I had a knack for journalism. The irony of that made me laugh for hours; it still does. But no matter where it came from, it was there, and I embraced it, graduating in good standing, and finding a job without much trouble.
There was a world out there, beyond the orphanage, beyond the memories of the island and my mother, and I was ready to take it all on. From war-zones to nurseries I was there to see it, write about it, make it real for my readers. The one thing I never wrote about again were the Peacecraft siblings, or their children when the time came, but I never stopped watching them from afar. When the world was large and lonely, it was a comfort to know that they were there.
Yet something was unfulfilled in me still, an itch never scratched. Two out of three lanterns were still lit. Where was the third? What had happened to him? Had he died, as my mother believed? About him, there was nothing, no matter how deeply I dug.
I couldn't stay in one place for long; there was a need in me to keep going, keep moving, keep looking for the next story, and in the hunt the wild child faded away to a young woman and then an older one. Now, a few years shy of fifty and with a lifetime to go, I found myself wondering what it was all about. There were no children to carry on when I was gone, no husband to guide me to old age, and I had no regrets about that. The lonely ache inside was one I'd lived with so long I took it for granted. But there was a burning ache for something more.
I stood on a beach, half a world away from the island I'd been born on, and I let go three small lanterns into the waves. For my mother; for the little boy who had never been allowed to grow up, and for my own childhood. I watched until the lights had faded away.
End Part 17
(:./lasha/street17)
