Chapter 1. Once 你 Once Once there was a time when I did not exist. Once I was called 婴儿. Now I'm not so sure about that anymore. The baby in my arms, no longer a newborn, seems so much older than that. Who knows when he's really going to be mine? Maybe I'll lose him before he even comes. Once I was the smallest little boy in his grade. And, yes, I learned to sing and dance with my Dad. That night he didn't know I was watching. I caught his attention; he was dancing with his wife. Did he want me to follow in their tracks, or my father to hold my hand and teach me how to grow old? His wife, I know, will be beside him when he does. Will they dance to the songs he once sang to her? Or will he be like all the other fathers in the world, and take his girls to the disco? All of a sudden I'm on stage and so is he. My parents dance to the beat of their own drum. I hope he's just acting, and all those who aren't dancing will soon be too tired to continue. The music gets louder. I look out at the crowd. My mother keeps looking back at me. There are other men, some of them fat, other children, but very few women and fewer mothers. He sees a woman, and I see her, at the very end of the dance floor wandering about, looking for some place to sit down. Her face shows her frustration and she disappears into the crowd. When she does not return after a while, my father asks me to go and look for her. I run, taking his request seriously. "Where can she have gone?" I ask the woman behind me. "She's over there," she points. "There?" I don't want to go there but I go anyway. I have to see what's happening, have to see how she's doing. I sit down on the sidelines, right behind the woman's back. Even now, I'm not sure why I'm going to see what's going on. I'll never tell anybody, especially not my father, but her handkerchief is all I am looking for. But she left without it. I look out to the night sky. Not even the stars are there. I watch and wonder why isn't she still there, why didn't she come back? Where could she have gone? Where could she have gone? I'm going to die tonight. I'm still looking for her. I walk out of the night club and back home, to my family, and, then, I'll have a little cry. Then, I'll stop looking for her. I'll ask my mother to take me to bed. There, right beside my bed, I will lie down with my eyes wide open. I will be an old man. That is the moment I live. I'm not sure if it's a moment that is just for me or one that everybody has. I'll try to remember her face when she disappeared into the crowd looking for a place to sit down. Then I'm going to sleep, and go to sleep with her face before my eyes. I'll remember her all my life but I will never see her again. I'm not sure if I'm the only one who will never see her again. I don't know. But that woman didn't have anything with her, either, not even a comb so, just like me, she was also searching for something, I think, a place to cry. The night is over. Everyone is leaving the nightclub. I can barely catch my breath as I put my arm around my mother's waist. My father lifts me up and makes a joke about my being exhausted. Later, as we sit on our own couch, I look around and know this place is already beginning to be a distant memory. Chapter 2. She, Not Him A new day, a new night, a new world. I have to do it over and over again. To wake up and not be afraid. I wake up again, and again. My mother's eyes are open, too. Her face is next to mine. "Mom?" I ask for the twentieth time this morning, if she can hear me. She hasn't gone to bed yet so I have to take my best shot and leave this world before it's her turn to make me unhappy and before she changes her mind to let me go, even if that is just a moment from now. I know she doesn't like me all that much. That's why I keep her company. I talk to her every morning. I feel tired but so many people need her help that I wouldn't miss even one day, not one, not one. She asks me, but, the truth is that she can't possibly hear me. Not when her eyes are closed. I want to tell her, but I can't find the right words. She doesn't know what my mother, or any mother, feels like. Maybe that's why I find it hard to be honest. My mother is gone again. I can hear my father shouting. He is so frustrated. He says: "Who told her? Why are you still not here? Have you stopped loving me? Why do you play the fool? Do you know how hard I work to put food on the table? Don't you ever stop to think how hard I work? "Do you ever think of me?" He's shouting, "Do you ever care?" He doesn't know that I've stopped eating. I've stopped all that. I've stopped trying to eat. I've started waiting for her to go back. She must have gone to see my father who, I guess, must have asked her to go away with him and not come back. "Where is he taking her?" I yell out. He doesn't understand. He doesn't want to know. "What do you care?" The words don't seem to reach him. He's in a different world. But, then, what's a girl, or anything he can see, ever going to do about it? He shouts more. This time, he is angry. He gets up. He walks up to me, and with his arms straight, picks me up in the air, and then puts me down right in front of my mother's face. For the time I can't say why I keep playing the fool. I am afraid, because my father won't stop laughing, and it feels terrible. "Don't laugh," I feel like yelling and shouting. "Let me go." I am tired of not being able to breathe. I don't know if the noise can scare anybody away. I don't like being laughed at, but I don't like it being made fun of. He lets me down and carries me back to my bed, but I don't mind because I know he isn't going to let her go. I'm sure about it, but I don't dare say that or I might lose her, so I wish he would stop. It's not enough for her just to wait. I feel so miserable that I have to shout out to him: "Please go and leave us alone." I can feel her breathing getting heavier and heavier. I hope she is as tired as I am. I wonder if he can hear me. He picks me up again and lays me on the bed beside my