From the Ashes of Love

Chapter 36

Zhou Loa-Nu sat in her customary chair at the table, looking at the empty spot across from her.

"It's so quiet" Loa-Nu thought. It had been very noisy earlier, with all of the Villagers crammed into her yard. So noisy a person couldn't think. But now it was well past nightfall, all of the Villagers had gone home, and Loa-Nu was left alone with her thoughts.

She missed Li-Hua like a person dying of thirst missed water. The ache in her chest was overwhelming.

"It's just a part of life, Loa-Nu" she told herself. "You have to accept it and move on."

These were the same words she had said to herself the day she had buried her husband. She thought she had felt alone then, but soon Li-Hua had been born, and she was too busy to be lonely.

She looked down at her empty belly. There would be no new baby to console her this time. She got up from the table to make tea. Not because she was thirsty, but just to have something to do. As she poured water into the kettle from the cistern by the door, something on the floor caught her eye.

Underneath a cabinet by the wall there was something sticking out. Curiously she leaned down to investigate. It was Li-Hua's old straw shoes. She didn't pack them because she had new shoes now.

Loa-Nu picked them up reverently, picking feebly at the frayed straw. She crushed them to her chest as the ache intensified. She collapsed on the ground, sobbing and hugging the shoes tightly. Her small frame rocked back and forth.

"It was a good match" she thought, "you should be happy" she scolded herself. She tried to convince herself that these were tears of happiness.

"It's not forever" she said, trying to soothe her sobbing. But she knew that life would never be the same. Her little girl was gone now. She would be a different person when next they meet again.

"That's natural, that is how it should be" she told herself. "Daughters are supposed to grow up and leave their parents. That is the way of the world."

Loa-Nu crawled over to her bed, and curled up on it with the straw shoes clutched against her body, the tea kettle forgotten. She held in her mind an image of her daughter's bright smiling face, but the image that popped up was not recent, but one of early youth. Her tooth had fallen out and she was proudly showing it to her mother.

"Look Mommy! My tooth!" she could still hear Li-Hua's little baby voice in her memory.

Loa-Nu started to sob again, eventually crying herself to sleep.