All We Know about LOVE
Elle Liu 1
CONTENTS About the author…………..……..…..... 3 Prologue………………………..…....…. 4 Chapter 1…………………………..…..... 5 Chapter 2…………………….…....…..... 9 Chapter 3…………………………...……13 Chapter 4……………………………….. 17 Chapter 5…………………………...……20 Chapter 6……………………...……. …..24 Chapter 7…………………………..... …..30 Chapter 8…………………………………33 Acknowledgement……………………….39
Words Checked: 3261 Words in Oxford 3000: 92% 2
About the Author Elle Liu was born in Kaohsiung, Taiwan in 1993. Now she is a fourth year student at Wenzao Ursuline College of Languages. She is the suffer-in-silence kind of girl and sometimes not talkative, especially just after waking up. She never thought that one day she would write a book and publish it. There is a warm welcome to all readers to experience different emotion and sensation through the novel. Hope you enjoy it.
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Prologue My mother was telling me something just before she left for good, taking nothing with her (as far as could tell). Leaving behind everything she had ever wanted, everything she owned or had even been given. Me, she left behind. She walked out mid-sentence before she finished what she was about to say.
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Chapter 1 It was a long time ago already. Four years, four months and fourteen days to be exact. I didn’t think for one second about what she never finished telling me. I gave no thought at all to her unfinished sentence. I suppose it is like being in a car accident. You don’t think about something as trivial as the conversation you had at the moment of impact. Not until weeks later, if at all. It comes to you in a daydream one day as you are remembering the crush, that awful crumbling-metal noise, and if you begin to reconstruct the install at all, it may not be for months, or in my 5
case, years. But then recently I started to remember and reconstruct and wonder if only I had let her say what it was she was she was about to tell me, would everything be different? She was talking about love. *** At the Stamford bus station, there is a little newsstand with chip, candy and gum. It’s early, way early, especially for Saturday morning. And this kid working behind the newsstand isn’t paying any attention to me. Some time the world reminds me of 6
how invisible I am. “Excuse me,” I say. “How can I get you? Stuff for your trip?” “Yeah.” I nod. My trip. “Where are you going?” “Florida,” I say. *** At least this is one of those big buses, and so far the seat next to me is empty. I am doing a silent prayer that it stays this way all the way to Florida. It is such a lone trip to be sitting next to someone you don’t know, maybe someone awful. 7
So far so good. The bus has been lurching forward for a while. But now all of a sudden people start getting on the bus, and again I am doing my soundless please-let-mesit-alone invocation. Then just the driver pulls the door shut, the last passenger shuffles down the aisle toward me. I lift my head from the window for a second, not too much so it looks like I want to say hello or anything, just enough to see who she is. She sits down next to me. She has that look, like someone who likes to care about others for no reason at all I hate that. 8
Chapter 2 If I think hard, I am pretty sure I remember she hated to waste. She officially objected to wrapping paper. I’d show up at elementary-school birthday parties with my gift packaged in either wrinkled recycled paper, or worse, the Sunday funnies from the newspaper. It’s been four years, and it is still her hands I remember best. Yes, I remember now we were in the kitchen. She just started talking. “I think I had it all wrong, Allison. You know, my mother, Nana, just gave me the worst advice. But it stuck with me.” 9
I was eating my dessert, and I knew she was crying. But a bigger part of me didn’t want to hear or see it. I wanted different cookies. Chocolate cookies. So I was just waiting for a pause in her monologue when I could ask her if I could open a new box of cookies. It was a risk, I knew. “I don’t ever want to give you that kind of advice…” But I wasn’t listening anymore. A grown-up language I wasn’t supposed to hear. “There’s something I want to tell you, Allison. I think you should understand this about –” 10
I stopped her cold. “I want chocolate cookies.” “–about love.” She turned from the sink and looked right at me. Her eyes were swollen, even redder than I was expecting. “Sure, sweetie,” my mother said, in a strange voice. I watched as she dropped the entire package of cookies into the garbage and placed a new box of chocolate cookies before me. My heart stopped beating. I was flooded with the sense that I had done something wrong. Very wrong. “Do you have enough milk?” She asked calmly. I nodded, wide-eyed and fearful. 11
And she left. She took her coat from the peg by the door and stepped out quietly into the night. Never back again. *** My dad had a funny look on his face when he handed it to me. I had known even before I saw the address, the handwriting, or the inside-out brown-paper-bag wrapping. This was the first time she was contacting me. 131 Fernando Street St. Augustine, Florida 32084 This time, it’s my turn to look for her. 12
Chapter 3 “He isn’t worth it, honey.” I open my eyes when I realize the lady next to me is talking to me. It was like she had been reading my mind. “You’ve been crying,” she says. “You’re too pretty to be worried about your looks, and you’re too young to be worried about money. So that leaves only one thing. Boy trouble. It helps to talk about it.” “No, it won’t,” I answer, and I am looking out the window again. I see a square-style BMW parked by the road. 13
“Oh, yes. It always does. Sometimes you know it’s just the sound of your own voice. Just hearing out loud. Sometimes you sound so crazy, and you’ve just started laughing at yourself. You laugh too hard, you cry.” “I guess.” “Think about it. And talk to me when you’re good and ready. We got a long trip.” I smile. I have to. *** Adam was three years older than me. He was in eleventh grade when I was a freshman. Now he’s a senior, but he was always different. Maybe more. 14
My dad just dropped me off in the high-school parking lot. It was the third time I missed the bus. “Thanks, Dad,” I said, shutting the passenger side door. I mouthed sorry, but I knew my dad never got mad at me. “Don’t worry. It’s an adjustment,” he said. Adam’s car pulled up right behind me. He had this weird car, an old square-style BMW. “Who are you?” he said, getting out but not turning off his car engine. The radio in his car sang on. The music played into the air like movie sound track. “Allison,” I answer, because I figured I had to. 15
“Al-li-son,” Adam said. He whispered it as if it were a part of the song playing on his car radio. “Do you like to dance, Allison? My first instinct was to pull away, to look around to see if anyone was watching. Should I be embarrassed, or flattered? It was late; the first period must have already started. We were dancing in the parking lot, all alone. It’s not for anyone else’s joke or entertainment. Just his. And mine.
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Chapter 4 Her name, I found, is Helen, fifty years old. She’s on the way to visit her new grandchild in some town near Delaware. “So, where did you say you are headed?” Helen asks. “I didn’t,” I answer, but that doesn’t sound nice. I have no reason to be mean. Some people just make you feel comfortable talking and listening. Helen is one of those. I want to answer, but I don’t want to tell my story. It’s too complicated. “I’m on my way to softball camp.” God, where did that come from? 17
“You’re going by yourself? “Yes,” I can honestly say. *** So while I am on a bus, Sarah’s family is heading north to go skiing in Vermont, and that’s where my dad thinks I am. I tell Helen I need to get out of my seat to get to the bathroom. I stand, sort of bent over, and stare at the fabric pattern of the bus seats. It’s a mixture of greens and browns that reminds me of vomit. She’d better hurry. When I get into the tiny bathroom, I feel better. 18
The nausea passes. Now I am about to perform the same ritual I have been doing every month since Adam. Please, I pray to God. Let me get my period. Then I remember all times when I promised that if only I got me period, I would be more careful next time. I sit down on the toilet and stare into the crotch of my underwear for any sign. After I use the toilet paper, the last part of my ritual is to inspect it for the slightest redness, the tiniest sign from God. But there is none.
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Chapter 5 We’ve been rolling along about two hours since we left New York City, and I think we’re in New Jersey. The bus is filling with the odors of food. Helen is unwrapping what looks like a sandwich. “Please take half,” she says. “No, thanks.” But this doesn’t even slow her down. “I won’t eat unless you eat with me.” “OK, thanks.” I smile and I chew slowly. Actually the food helps my stomach a bit. “So what position do you play on the softball?” 20
Helen asks me. “Um, I play first base,” I say, because a good lie requires enough detail, I add. “I pitched a little until I hurt my shoulder.” Helen doesn’t seem to mind. She says,” I played softball in college.” “Really?” I turn away and look out the window. Oh, shit. Helen tells me she’s getting off here. “I thought you were going Delaware,” I say for some reason. “This is still New Jersey.” “I know, honey, but it’s closest. My nephew is 21
picking me up here.” She is already gathering her belongings, her paperback book and her packages of food. I have never been good at saying goodbye. Never. But it strikes me as odd that I feel this way about a woman I met three hours ago. Why do I feel anxious that she is leaving? And sad. “Look, little lady, you take care of that shoulder now,” she says. “What?” “Your pitching arm.” She smiles at me. “And the whole rest of yourself, when you figure that out. You 22
know what I’m talking about.” But she doesn’t move away. “Stand up now,” she orders me. I do, and she puts her arms around me. She does all the hugging. “I’ll take care of myself. I will,” I tell her. “I promise you.” The driver had gotten off the bus to get her suitcase out. “Don’t promise me, girl,” she says. And she is gone. But the trip must be going on.
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Chapter 6 Florida. I have to change buses in Jacksonville. I know this, sort of. I am in Florida, and when I step outside, I can tell. It’s warmer, sunny. An announcement comes over the loudspeakers on the outdoor platform. Due to the delay, the bus to St. Augustine will be leaving in just five minutes. St. Augustine, Florida 9:30 a.m. Current temperature: 30 degrees I keep searching the purpose why I’m coming 24
here. “What are you running from?” I stop, out of breath. Sweating , and lost. I turn to the voice. It belongs to a little boy sitting on the top of an old car. “I’m not running from anything,” I say. “In this neighborhood you are,” he says. “Or you should be.” When I look around, I notice I am in a neighborhood, no longer near the St. Augustine bus terminal. “Well, I’m looking for an address,” I say to the kid 25
although a couple of others have gathered around him. “Fernando Street,” I say. It is the first time I have said it out loud. “One-seven-one-one Fernando Street.” Another little girl has moved closer, as if I were the main attraction of the morning. “There is no street called that,” she says almost defiantly. “Nah, I know where it is,” the boy on the top of the car says. He jumps down and says, “It’s not far.” “Maybe there’s someone else I could ask. A grown up or something,” I say, turning around. There is a group of men, sitting on chairs outside the convenience store, all smoking. There is a woman 26
walking across the street. She looks younger than me, in super high heels and with massive hoop earrings. She will definitely not like me. “OK,” I say, turning back to the boy. “Can you tell me where?” “I’ll do better than that. I’ll take you there.” “Are you sure you know where it is? Fernando Street.” I start to spell it. “He isn’t dumb, lady,” the girl says to me. It is the first time anyone has ever thought of me as a lady, a grown up. It should be now when I am completely lost. It seems like a good idea to follow this 27
kid. “OK,” I tell him. He’s already off, skipping happily. *** The neighborhood changes a little as we walk. I finally get the kid to slow down. “I am an old lady. I can’t run that fast,” I tell him, and he seems to believe it. “Don’t you have to tell your mom or something?” I say. We’ve gone about ten blocks or so. “My mama’s dead.” “Oh, I’m sorry,” I say. “About your mom, I mean.” “Don’t be,” he tells me. “My grandma takes care 28
of me. “Well, don’t you have to tell your grandma then?” “Nah, she doesn’t care where I am.” Does it mean you are “lost” when your family doesn’t care where you have been? Maybe you are lost in your heart, instead of on the road.
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Chapter 7 My mom had left several times before she left for real. All those other times, I never realized what she was doing. But she was practicing. The first time it happened we were in a big store. In my memory, I was in the child seat of a mental shopping cart. I wanted to get out of that cart in a bad way, kicking and screaming. Probably saying something to the effect of Let me out. I want to get down. I wanted to see something, and the shopping car 30
had passed by and hadn’t allowed me a good look at: a cartoon character of a cereal box. I started to lift my knees out of the cart anyway, with no sense of gravity or concept of height. “Stop. Allison. Sit still, please,” my mother said quietly. She never yelled. Finally my mother let me down, and as soon as she did, I darted off down the aisle back toward the object of my desire. And in an instant she was gone. I was old enough to realize what it was more logical for me to continue forward and speed around 31
the others aisles to see her again. She wasn’t in this aisle. Not this one. Not this one. I was crying by that time. I was blinded with drowning tears, the fear and the enormous out-of-control realization that I was truly lost. A woman picked me up, and the rest is a confusion of sights, an office and a loudspeaker. And then my mother was there. Here you go, little girl. Here comes your mom. My mother looked happy to see me but certainly calm. I remember thinking. She isn’t crying. 32
Chapter 8 We stop walking at the corner and he points. Sure enough the sign that hangs the intersection and swings in the wind reads FERNANDO STREET. The storefront on the corner is number 1681. 1711 can’t be far from here. “Hey, thanks a lot,” I say. “I wish I could give you something.” “Like what?” “I don’t know.” I feel that offering him money would be insulting even though that’s probably the thing he wants the most. I know I would. “But you 33
really went out of your way. I mean, can you get back OK?” The kid spins around on his toes and starts off back down the way we came. “I’m cool,” he says. “ I need nothing.” There are apartments, plastic garbage bags tied, this morning newspaper lying on the ground, waiting to be picked up. I can’t see the doors or the numbers, but I know behind one of them is my mother. Maybe. I’m not still ready. I turn back down the street the way we came. “Hey,” I shout. I don’t know his name. “Hey, kid. You. 34
Hey.” He stops, already a small figure halfway down the block. “Wanna get some breakfast? Coffee?” It takes me a half a second to finish what I am saying, but by the time I do, he’s standing next to me, smiling. He smiles like someone who is always smiling. I think he must have the happy gene, like Sarah. I like that. “What’s your name?” “Mike.” “I’m Allison.” 35
“I knew that,” he snaps. “I can read minds.” “Yeah, well, so can I,” I tell Mike. He looks right at me and I look right back. “Go inside. Don’t hesitate. Figure it out lest you regret.” *** Now I am standing here on her street. One of the apartments is owned by my mother. I remember the last time I saw her in the kitchen, washing dishes. Now I try to get accustomed to her any action when she’s home. That also includes crying. I’m ready for any cruel or touching truth. Little by 36
little, I realize that being a mom sometimes must play a heartless role because I know I may become a mother in a near future. Maybe in my body, my feminine instinct is growing. Just maybe. Now all that I need to do is knocking on the door. Let everything be clear. No matter how hard it would be to accept the reality, I will make an effort to put myself into my mom’s shoes. I will. Knock! Knock! Knock! “Who’s that?” A woman with a similar voice I’ve heard in my heart thousands of times for the whole 37
four years. I’m ready to understand all love she gave me. I can take it. That’s my love for her.
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Acknowledgement To Mr. Smith: Thank you for giving me the chance of creating my own novel. It is an unforgettable experience for me. You are such a supportive and encouraging teacher. Cheers, Elle Liu
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” Sometimes you sound so crazy, and you’ve just started laughing at yourself. You laugh too hard, you cry.”
Four years, four months and fourteen days ago, Allison’s mother left her. Now, Allison is travelling twenty-four hours to find her mother.
Along the way, Allison finds herself noticing other people with stories that have never been told. Little by little, she realizes what LOVE is.
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