Nine Stops

After work I walked to the Black Penny. My cousin Zoe had a long layover in Singapore (her flight for Paris did not leave until midnight) and she had left the airport and come west to Boat Quay so we could meet up and drink some beer. It was good to see her, to hear what she had been doing and how excited she was about finishing up her Masters in Paris. Mom and Dad were there too, and it is always nice when you can walk out of work and drink beer with your family. 

I said goodbye to Zoe and Mom and Dad and took the MRT home. It was crowded, like it always is. Crowded takes on a different meaning in Singapore, and unless you've been on a train here at rush hour or on one in Tokyo I am not sure you know what I am really talking about. I have enough space to stand and read and I was doing both as the train made its first stop on my way home. 

I kept reading as the train headed towards the second stop and only looked up because the people around me were moving and bumping into me. I do not like being bumped into and I wanted to give someone a dirty look. But the people were just making way for a mother and her little girl and they are what I want to tell you about.

Courtesy does not really exist on Singapore trains. Young men sit and stare at their phones while old women stand. The train doors open and people rush on without giving anyone room to actually leave the train. Twenty-somethings listen to electronic music on their phone without headphones so everyone nearby (and even those not-so-nearby) listens to electronic music. I often leave the train with a lower opinion of people than before I boarded. 

It was nice to see two men get up from their seats so this mother and her daughter could sit down. Even though I was only standing I made way too, and they sat down and I went back to where I was standing and the little girl was right in front of me, less than an arm's reach away. Sitting next to her was a wonderfully healthy looking Chinese man whose hair should have been gray/white but he dyed it a dark brown. You could tell he was a grandfather. 

The girl was little, Lilly's size and probably her age too. She wore a pink hat that had a Minnie Mouse patch and the word "diva" stitched on the front. She work pink Tevas and a pink dress that said "girl" a few times on it and I could see she had sparkly nail polish on her toenails. She also carried a pink balloon from McDonalds.

The Mom was early 30s. Looked to be Filipino and her voice gave that impression too. She was in jeans and sandals and a striped polo shirt. 

I went back to reading my Kindle (Brendan Early and Dana Moon were in a shootout with Phil Sundeen and his gang of hired guns). 

But I stopped reading because I could see the little girl playing with the balloon. She was hitting it gently with her hands the way a boxer works a speedbag. The Mom held the balloon while she did this, and that wonderful old man sitting next to them laughed. She did this for a while and then she pinched the balloon and talked to it and whispered into it and her Mom whispered into it and even rocked it in her arms, probably joking and pretending it was a little baby. I could not really hear what they were saying to each other. But then the little girl went back to hitting the balloon and that was pretty funny because as you would expect, she was not very good at throwing a punch.  

As I watched her hit the balloon, the little girl looked right at me and I could see she had a few teeth but no eyebrows and I could just see that beneath her pink hat the faint beginnings of hair starting to re-grow. I know she had a few teeth because she smiled at me when I smiled at her. 

And I can't really explain to you why, but I got a lump in my throat that sat there and then sank into my heart.

The girl soon lost interest in the balloon and so her Mom handed her a smartphone and she began to play a game on it. She knew all the buttons to push, how to swipe across to different screens, and that surprised me a little bit and made me think of Lilly. As far as I could tell, the point of the game the girl was playing was to shoot arrows and hit pieces of fruit. The difficult part was that the fruit was balanced on top of a fat beaver's head and he would move every now and then. At least that's what it looked like. 

That girl did not hit one single piece of fruit but she hit that beaver about 65 times and she squealed with laughter each time she did and her Mom beamed and laughed too and so did that wonderful old man. She even began to count in English, though you could tell she was used to counting in another language. "One," and she hit the beaver and "two," and she hit the beaver and so on. She made it to 11. Then she pressed a button that dropped a bomb or something which blew the beaver all over the screen and she shrieked again with delight and so did her Mom and the old man. I do not think she knew the old man, in fact I'm pretty certain she didn't, but once he even reached onto the screen and touched it and shot the beaver and winked and the girl loved that and so did her Mom. 

Nine stops after they had boarded they got off. The Mom led the way, the little girl followed, in one hand holding her balloon in the other one her mom's hand.The old man waved goodbye but the little girl thought he was giving her a high-five and so she high-fived him. 

I still had two more stops to go. I made it and as I walked down the stairs I was still thinking about that little girl in pink who had no hair and her mother and I felt something that was genuine but not expected. 

There are no words, really, to describe something that raw. Seeing a little person, a little girl, dressed in pink so she would feel like a girl and a princess--a "diva"--even though she did not have long princess hair, or any hair, really. Seeing a little person smile at you because she was with her mom and shooting beavers when she was supposed to be shooting fruit. She was the only person who I can remember smiling at me on the train and she was probably the person who had the best reason not to smile. What would that Mom pay to have my problems and how much would I pay so I wouldn't have to face hers, ever? How do you explain something that big and scary and awful to someone who cannot count to twenty? Those are some of the things I thought about, or at least some of the ones I can write down. 

People say "why?" is such a simple question and "isn't it funny we can't answer it?" But what they really mean is  "why?" is a short question. That is not the same as simple. 

But I think there is a short answer and that is: there is no why. There can't be. 

There is just now and balloons and reasons to smile and reasons not to smile. There is only now. Now is all we have and it is all we can give and those who say otherwise need to stand on the train and tell me what good there is in chemotherapy, what good it does to a little girl or a young family, especially to the ones that don't get to go on the train after eating at McDonalds.