Chapter 6

Separate ways
It might lead
Different worlds
We might have
Friendship
Should never be
Erased


I spent the following two months in Taipei with grandma and aunt Yuan. I enjoyed ice cream and shaved ice sold by the shop downstairs. The water park was the high light of my summer vacation. I just loved the thrill plunging into cold water. The crowd was not too bad, mainly children around my age. I was anxious to see the new school I would be attending in the autumn. The old school in Taitung and teacher’s face seemed to fade after the two-month’s time. Yet I often thought about what Yang Dong-Yu was doing and whether he was fine.

Right before the New Year, I sent a card, made by myself, to Yang Dong-Yu and waited impatiently for his reply. One week, two weeks and a month had passed. I didn’t get anything back. I thought about calling him but dropped the idea, fearing that it would be his father answering the call. As school life went on, I was busy with all kinds of activities in this big city. The passion about language grew little by little in me. Eventually I was ‘hooked’! I would spend hours and hours reading English books and pretending I was living in the United States. But English was not my only passion. I also loved Judo and a secret hobby-reading cooking books and writing up my own recipes.

After junior high, I went to another school in Taipei. My family still went back to Taitung once a year. But the few times I was there, I never saw Yang Dong-Yu. Later I realized he returned to Ping-Tung to live with his grandma. However, Yang Yu-Fong kept living in Taitung and seemed to drink more and more. As for Yang Hui-Ching and Yang Hui-Ming, they were forced to drop out of school after junior high. I heard they worked in a pineapple factory, trying to support the family. I never saw them when I visited our old house.

The summer vacation of my second year in high school, I went back for a visit again. The banyan trees looked the same, even the azalea bushes were still there. But the friends I used to have were nowhere to be found. As I walked around the neighbourhood, I noticed an old lady in ragged clothes. She looked familiar to me but I couldn’t make out who she was. When she saw me, she called out my name, “Ai-ya-ya, Huang Chih-Hao! It’s you! My god, look at you, a totally different person now! So tall and very strong too!” I was blushed by her comment. Then I suddenly remembered she was the breakfast shop owner. But why did she look so ‘poor’? After a brief exchange of words, I found out she wasn’t poor, she just didn’t care after her two sons died in a fire. She said money was useless; it couldn’t buy her sons back.

I was quite saddened to hear her story; and as I was about to say good-bye to her, she held my right hand and said, “I have something for you. It’s been at my house for 4 years. It’s a brown envelop left by Yang Dong-Yu. Do you still remember him? He used to work for me, helping to set up the breakfast shop in the morning before he went to school…” I was surprised to learn that Yang Dong-Yu had left something for me. Why didn’t he just send it to me? Why did he leave it to the old lady not someone in my family? All of sudden I had many unanswered questions.