The first hope

That Sunday my mother promised to take me out, I don't remember where, maybe to the zoo, maybe somewhere else, but she promised a long time ago. It's not wrong to take me out on that Sunday; it's not wrong to look forward to a day for the first time in one's life; and that's what my mother had promised to do the morning before: go, of course.

I got up, brushed my teeth, ate, it was a spring morning, the sun was shining. Go there? Wait a while, wait a while before you go. I ran out and stood in front of the street, waiting just a little while, and I hid behind the gate for a long time. I knew it wouldn't be that easy for a while, I had to hide for a while longer without making a sound. My mother came out, but I forgot to scare her, why was she carrying a vegetable basket in her hand? You said you were going! Wait, after the grocery shopping, after the grocery shopping, immediately after the grocery shopping? Hmm. It was a bad time, I was squatting on the land, fiddling with an anthill with a branch, I was the only child in the yard, no one was playing with me. I crouched in the grass and looked at a pictorial, a movie pictorial that I don't know how many times I had seen, and there was a large group of girls older than me, all very beautiful.

I squatted in the grass looking at them, imagining their homes, imagining what they were doing at the moment, imagining their siblings and their parents, imagining their voices. My mother came back from grocery shopping, but she was busy digging through the boxes again. Let's go. Didn't you say you would leave when you got back from grocery shopping? Come on, come on, can't you see I'm busy? It's strange, I'm the one who has to do something. I've been waiting. Didn't my mother promise me that? I've been following my mother's leg all morning: go? Go, go, why don't you go? ...... I just chanted and chased under my mother's legs, watching her do one thing and then go do another. I was not yet as tall as his legs, and those two non-stop legs are wobbling in front of my eyes to this day, they don't stop coming down, they tripped over me several times, and I almost strangled between them several times to knock them over. In the afternoon, my mother said, in the afternoon, wake up for a nap before going. Go, my mother said afternoon, go. But this time I blame myself, I blame myself, I took a nap too much. I woke up and saw my mother doing laundry. It would not be too late to go then. I looked at the sky, it was not too late. Are we still going? Yes.

Shall we go? Finish your laundry. This one can't be forgiven. I don't know how long that load of laundry will take, but my mother should know. I squatted beside her and watched her wash. I didn't say a word and looked forward to it. I don't think I'll ever understand love half a step, and I won't ever oversleep. I think I'll pull her up and go as soon as the laundry is done, and never let her delay. I looked at the clothes in the basin and the clothes outside the basin, I looked at the sun, look at the light. I did not say a word, looking at the clothes in the basin rubbing and blooming foam; I felt the light around me gradually darken, gradually cool down, dull down, more and more distant and more remote, I did not say a word, suddenly a bit of understanding. I can still feel the long, rapid change of light, the lonely, melancholy dusk, and hear the sound of my mother scrubbing her clothes, a sound that never ends like the footsteps of time.

That Sunday, that very day, my mother found the boy crouched there motionless and found him crying, weeping without a sound. I felt my mother shake the water from her hands in alarm, pull me over and into her arms. I heard my mother talking, stroking my head as she kept saying, "Oh, I'm sorry, oh, I'm sorry ......" That Sunday, it was supposed to go out, to where I can't remember. The boy was crouched next to that big, heavy laundry tub, snuggled in his mother's arms, eyes closed and no longer looking at the sun, the light was fading irrevocably, a desolation.