《On The Same Days》橄榄树

17、24th September Tuesday 2002 Shenyang

　　Het geluk staat niet stil voor je deur (Happyniess doesn’t stand ready on your doorstep)

　　Ling frowned to her own image in the mirror, her face was more or less all right, but the wound on the forehead might never heal. Though even there would be an ugly scar left, she didn’t really mind that much. She had never been pretty anyway. But it was so itchy that she always wanted to scratch it. The families all went to work.

　　She had been lying in the hospital for a whole week, 2 days in Peking, 5 days in Shenyang, then another 3 days at home.
　　They said it was an wonder that nothing had happened to her memory, it was a serious cerebral concussion, thank god she had such peaceful nerves that didn’t clashes much, she felt perfectly normal now.

　　While Anna thanked Jesus for her, her mother thanked another god, Buddha in the temple next to People’s Square. Her mother went there every other day to donate money and pray.
　　Ling knew nobody from the Muslim, otherwise she would be blessed by the gods from all religions.
　　Her mother had never been a Buddhist actually. The temple had always been a kind of tourist attraction rather than a real religion symbol. Now her mother found new value in there, she started to pray for Deng also.

　　Deng had his operation already, so far so good, but he had to stay in the hospital for god knows how long to be monitored, actually he might be allowed to have the chemical treatment at home, but his father insisted him to take it in the hospital where facilities were better than at home and doctors were always around.

　　To put it simple, they had the money. If Ling had to stay in Peking for a week in hospital, her parents must have gone bankrupt; she did cost them quite a lot this time, for more than the little contribution she tried to make each month to them. She would try to contribute more from now on.

　　She was told the accident wasn’t really the fault of the taxi driver, more of the truck driver in front, he stopped without giving a proper notice, the taxi driver was wounded too, more serious than Ling, he broke one arm, so Deng’s father didn’t have to do anything for a revenge, as a matter of fact he felt very sorry when he found out later that Ling wasn’t a Japanese, which made the whole accident totally meaningless to him.

　　Almost everybody she knew visited her forehead in the hospital, including many of her students, Ben and his mother, Jane and Mr. Lee, the rubbish talking aunt of Roc, and the cousin she helped for the promotion.
　　Of course Fan too, together with May, they actually laughed a lot. Ling didn’t even get the feeling of losing face as May took Ling as a kind of matchmaker. She indeed match-made them, she should blackmail them for some big ticket present one day should they decide to get married.

　　Collected the DVD movies rented from a shop at the end of the street, she went down there to change some new ones. The owners of the shop were a young couple both knew Ling quite well as she only rented English speaking movies.

　　They inquired about her forehead with warm concern and recommended some new movies such as Lord of the Rings and Tomb raider II.

　　Two other guys came in wrapped in those fancy hooligan jeans, Ling took the two recommended disks and went on checking other new movies on the shelves, left the owner take care of their new customers.

　　“I just moved to live around the corner here recently, are you open everyday?” one of the guy asked.
　　“Yes, every day from 10 am to 10 pm.”
　　“Do you have ‘good’ movies too?” the other one asked with a big emphasis on good.
　　“Uh, you may look around yourself, and see what you like.” The owner’s wife answered.
　　“Come on, I mean those that is not listed on the shelf, I’d like to take the month card from you if you do have anything ‘good’.”
　　“Follow me, please,” the husband opened a side door and lead the two guys in where Ling always thought as a toilet.

　　Apparently not, what kind of good things would they have in there then? Why didn’t they list all of them on shelf for everybody?

　　Ling checked this and that in a slow motion on purpose, waiting to see what would the guys get from the side room.

　　A few minutes later, the two guys came out signing the month card with some DVD’s without the packages, you could tell nothing from the bare discs. She gave up and went back with a few English ones.

　　She didn’t know the Lord of the Rings could be so bloody, fight among those different creatures, yet almost only male creatures, she didn’t finish it, halfway she shift to Harry Porter, she was so absorbed that she called Jane immediately to tell about the story,

　　“May I come over to watch it with you?” Jane asked,
　　“Sure, but who’d sent you here if your father’s driver is not there?”
　　“The babysitter. But you have to explain her very clear which stop she has to get out otherwise we may go to the moon to seek you.” Jane still didn’t love any of her babysitters.

　　“She is not familiar with the street here because she is from the countryside, forget about coming here, I will go over there, you father does have a computer, we can play it on his computer.”
　　“Wow, can you come right now? I am bored to death already.”

　　“hahaha, I am the one who lied in bed for weeks, how come you are bored to death? I will be there in one or 2 hours.” Ling knew she is behaving childish, but she liked Jane, Ben too. But Ben always had his mother with him; she couldn’t just go and bump in to play with him under his mother’s watch.

　　Police sirens suddenly screaming down the street, what would happen to such a quite neighborhood? Ling caught her handbag, without changing the red T-shirt, racing down the street.
　　Video shop is on fire? No, the fire was in front of the video shop, two police cars parking aside, some 6 to 7 police man circling around watching.

　　As Ling walked closer, two other rather familiar policeman were throwing all the DVD into the fire, why would she think they were familiar, aha, no wonder, yes, the two guys that she met in the shop just hours ago in their fancy hooligan jeans!

　　God, where was the couple? Ling wanted to walk alongside them to reach the front door, but the door was sealed with two huge white pieces of paper saying: “Illegal sexual media traders have been arrested, the business is closed up.”

　　Gosh, the nice young couple was under arrest? They did rent out porno-movies? She had no idea for almost a whole year, did “good” movies means blue movies as these under covered guys asked? What should she do with the DVD at hands now? She didn’t pay any deposit.

　　She almost became good friends with the couple already. Then the very idea shocked her, a friend of some illegal sexual media trader? Definitely not, she remembered what Tina said about the Red light district in Amsterdam, if these policemen were to go there, how many fires would they have to make to burn the whole street down? How many prisons had to be built to hold all those illegal sexual media traders or even actor and customers?.....

　　Quickly walking to Sunshine Garden from the bus stop, she saw Jane waving at her behind the window before racing down stairs on the street to her, “I waited for ages.” She complained,
　　“How old are you?”
　　“Just turned to 106,”
　　They went in. The babysitter greeted Ling with a shy smile then went hiding in her own room. Ling started the computer in the living room.
　　Jane tried to read the introduction texts on the cover of Harry Porter DVD. The computer must be rather new. It didn’t’ take long to start. The background picture was the Sunshine Garden building, looked somewhat different from the real one.
　　Ling tried a few multi media players, but most were for graphic designs rather than playing DVD.
　　She closed them all down, there were quite some document on the desktop, she moved them all to “my document”, accidentally one of it popped open, “Letter of resignation”,

　　Ling moved the mouse to close it up, then suddenly stopped, scrolled the letter down, “Yours sincerely Jun Lee. 5th October 2002” Gosh, what was going on in this world, why would Mr. Lee want to resign, Sunshine Construction had always been the No.1 construction firm in Shenyang. It had a long history; many houses in the city were all designed and built by them including the city hall and Shenyang TV station. Lee Jun had been referred as the best engineer and workaholic, why would he ask for resignation?

　　Jane finished the introduction, looked up to the screen. Ling closed the document and played the disk with Quick player. After watched Harry Porter with Jane, they both feel hungry.
　　Ling called Tiffany that she was not going back for dinner, then went to the kitchen to help that babysitter. The baby sitter was a small girl, looks very young, shy and insecure,

　　“Miss Liu, please just stay with Jane, I will prepare the dinner.”
　　“Call me Ling, lets make it together, maybe Jane should learn some cooking skills too, Jane?” Ling shouted to the living room, “Come on, and let’s play dumplings in the kitchen.”

　　“Play dumplings?” Jane began to be curious.

　　“Look, I can make the flour dough first into a snake; then cut it into pieces, you know what to do with the pieces?”

　　“Connect them back into a snake again!” Jane exclaimed.

　　“Perfect, we can also use a wine bottle, smash rolling the piece into many thin pancakes.”

　　“You said dumplings.”

　　“If you dump some fillings on the pancake then close them, they become dumplings.” She made one sample while talking with Jane.
　　The babysitter watched with awe. Jane had only been into the kitchen twice, once threw a whole bowl of flour on the floor, another time a pan of boiling oil, twice she had to call special floor cleaning service for the carpet.
　　Now the little devil was making the covers for dumplings, why couldn’t she think of these kinds of tricks?

　　Less than half an hour, they made some 50 dumplings in all kinds of shapes and forms, and Jane got white nose and white cheeks, looking up at the two bigger girls, she quickly put her white paw on both of their cheeks, they started to giggle loudly.
　　Nobody heard the door. Lee Jun frowned at the giggling sounds in disbelief until he walked up to the kitchen door, 3 little women with white hands, nose and cheeks were pawing each other.
　　He hadn’t seen anything like this in his entire life, he waved his head with eyes closed and opened again, no nightmare.
　　Ling felt the shadow, turned back, her white cheeks turned red, “Sorry, I didn’t know that you’d be home early today, would you like some dumplings?” the other two stopped laughing, cautiously eyeing him.

　　“That will be nice, shall I help?” he was a bit irritated by the other two’s suspicion, as if he was the one who made all the fights at home.
　　“No!” three voices altogether.
　　“Ok, I will be in the living room then.” The 3 looked at each other, then at the dumplings in all sorts of wired shapes they made, suddenly all burst into laughter again.

　　Jane was very talkative over dinner. Telling the Harry Porter story to her father full of excitement and claimed that she was Hermione.

　　Lee had no idea what Jane was talking about, but nodded every now and than. The babysitter never ate with grown ups in the house, but did join under Ling’s insistence. But she was so shy to open her mouth that she barely eat anything, and disappeared with dishes in the kitchen immediately after dinner.

　　Jane begged Ling to stay over, Ling compromised to stay till Jane went to bed. They played 20 points chess in Jane’s room till 9 pm. It was getting dark outside already, Jane finally went to bed.
　　Ling went to the living room to catch her things and say goodbye to Lee.
　　He sat in the sofa, with some document in hands, but not reading.

　　“Thanks for you’ve visited my forehead when I was in the hospital.” Ling said.

　　“Thanks for breaking the wall between Jane and her babysitter.” He gazed at her, with a kind of confusion, “how old are you?”

　　“Much older than you think or my behavior misrepresents,” Ling defended very quickly, “I mean, I like children and I am most of the time with them, which saved me from getting old too quickly, luxury of avoiding all kinds of complicated social relations.”

　　“You are right, I felt like 150 years old now, I am thinking about quitting.” He had no idea why was he telling his big decision to this somewhat schoolgirl.

　　“Do you really want to do something else or is the company hopelessly dying?” she sat on the other sofa, ready to listen.
　　Lee gazed at her for another moment, started talking. From how did he join Sunshine Construction as a trainee, he had no connections who could help him, he worked his way up through the years, design or working was never a problem, but dealing with all kinds of governmental officials from different departments were killing him.
　　The worst was he couldn’t make many decision really on his own, after abiding by all the regulations and advices, and red tapes, you hardly ever able to make any profits for workers.
　　He’d rather either go to work for a foreign invested company or start something of his own, then again, no bank would give loans on private persons.

　　“Is it a rule for all the banks to not grant loans to private entrepreneurs or is it up to the specific bank itself?” Ling inquired, she was thinking on Deng’s father.

　　“Up to the bank itself, but central government doesn’t really encourage them to fund private people. Why?” he smiled at her, surprised at her curiosity, he thought she’d be bored to death listening to these dull things.

　　“I can’t say anything now, but I do know someone from a bank, I’d ask in general terms before promise you anything.”

　　“Your student’s parents or Lily’s relationships?”
　　“Neither. A future father in law of my sister, by the way, Lily never did anything wrong, she never said one single bad word about you, you are all victims, I don’t appreciate you attacking my aunt.” Ling meant serious.

　　“Sorry, your aunt, I almost became your uncle.” He said scornfully. “You still haven’t told me how old you are.”
　　“I am 24, don’t even try to play a big uncle to me.”
　　“But I am, I am near 37, you are still a child.”

　　“Come on, what is the difference when you are 100 while I am 90? Get up and send me home, will you?” Ling knew she has to take the initiative. Otherwise he’d always pretend to be the old man.

　　He did send her home. They didn’t talk much on the way. Ling felt peaceful and secure with him, she couldn’t believe what was happening, she remembered how terrible he was the first time in her class, as a matter of fact, he didn’t change much, was she changing then?

　　Why hadn’t she felt anything when Fan sent her home, even when Fan got along with May? But what if Lee really just took her as a child? Just some ordinary looking girl who played with his daughter, She remembered how Lily described Jones, pretty and cuddly, she suddenly felt jealous. She needed to talk with Deng’s father soon.