Painting may get in the way of family love, but when you are a young girl and need a male parent, there's a lot of will and maybe a way
My name is Shu Hue and I am 15 years old. I just finished middle school and live alone with my mother and a small cat. A cousin of mine used to live with us but he failed the college entrance examinations twice and had to go to city to find work and study at night while waiting to be drafted. He is eight years older than 1. He seemed to know everything, from where to find crickets to where to catch fish. His absence has brought silence and inactivity in our little circle of life. Even the cat and the chickens are boring now. When he first left, I missed him every much. Then my junior high school studies and the cram sessions at night pushed him out of my mind. My mother also liked him very much.
Mother never cared about sprinkling her face with powder, gooping up her lips with lipstick or painting her eyelids with ghastly colors. Yet all who saw her remarked on her loveliness. At 33, she exemplified the quiet beauty of the country woman content with her life of simplicity. When friends asked mother her age, she always told them to count the years of her child-me, that is-and there was no need to come right out with a bald number. These would have been moments of pride for father.
He left us when I was six years old. One rainy typhoon night father and two friends got drunk and tried to ride one motorcycle home. They fell into a creek. Father was killed. After that, mother did not wear pretty clothes. Nor did she tell me stories as she had when father was alive.
I remember mother's words that stormy day after we got home from father's funeral. Tears in her eyes, she told me: ", from now on you are a girl without a father. You must behave yourself and listen to mother. At least we can be glad that father insisted on buying this house. Otherwise we wouldn't have even a place to live now. Tomorrow I shall have to go to work in the factory. If you are a good girl that will keep mother from worrying."
Last year our class went on a spring outing. I came home the night before the excursion and asked mother for some pocket money. She refused. The little green book that father used to keep was in mother's hand. She showed it to me, saying: "This month mother did not work on night shifts. The payment on the house has taken away much of my pay. You can have an allowance when we have saved up some money but not now. And by the way, since your cousin moved, the upstairs room has been empty. Someone is interested in renting it. He will come tomorrow to look. Be sure to be at home and see if you think you could like him. A good tenant who paid his rent would be a big help."
Looking at mother closely, I could see that she had reddened her lips ever so little and that her cheeks were lightly powdered. I embraced her and asked: "Mother, tell me, what kind of a man is this would-be tenant? What does he do for a living?" Mother patted me on the back and said: "I met him while I was working at night. He's an artist - a painter. He can become your teacher and take care of the house and you when I'm away or working. He even promised to take you hiking and sightseeing, things which mother has not had time to do. He has a big smile and a big black beard." I asked: "Is he a big black ape, then?" Mother didn't seem amused.
Next day she brought our tenant-to-be to see the room. He really did look like an ape with his big black beard. Mother introduced him to me. "This is Mr. Tsui. Don't be afraid. His heart is as big as his beard." Mr. Tsui smiled at me and said: "I was a good friend of your father. Maybe you don't remember, but when you were a year old, you wet my pants while I was holding you. Would you mind if I lived upstairs?" He was so sudden I didn't know exactly what to say. I hesitated. Then I thought of mother and said: "Of course, you are welcome. But you'll have to teach me to paint. I've learned a little at school but don't know anything, really. Do you think I could learn?"
Mr. Tsui smiled again and said: "After my room is in shape, I'll take you to the countryside and we'll have a painting contest."
"How can a girl like me compete with a professional?" Maybe he was only trying to make me feel good but I didn't like games in which grownups played to lose.
"You are wrong," he said, "you can never tell about painting. No two people can ever paint the same object exactly alike. The way you look at a cow and the way I look at a cow are different. Your cow and my cow will never be the same. Who is to say whose cow is better? There are cows for looking and cows for painting." I laughed.
He kept his promise about teaching me his way of painting and taking me on excursions. A three-day trip to gave me ample time to paint. I learned the proper way to hold the brush, the right way to use the pencil and not to move my paper around. The important thing in painting, I learned, was not whether there was an exact likeness with what was painted but the feeling that the painter put into his work. As long as the painting delights the painter, the painting has value.
One Sunday Mr. Tsui promised to take me out for painting but didn't come down. I refused to speak to him for several days afterward. He was too absorbed in his own painting now and had forgotten about me. He locked himself in his room and painted for hours without eating or sleeping. Sometimes I took his meals to his room and watched him paint. Later I did some of my painting in his room. He would point out my faults and make me paint things over again.
Once he said to me: ", a painter must observe all the minute details of things, all the living creatures. Among the fish you eat, some have whiskers, some do not. A painter must study the many differences and know them all."
When Mr. Tsui came out of his shell, he took me on outings almost every week-end. Mother tried to give him back the money he spent. He would keep the bills in an old brown envelope and spend them on our next expedition.
One afternoon mother brought out her diary and said: "The money I have given Mr. Tsui for your outings is more than we can afford. You had better not go to his room so often. Besides, an artist's feelings and emotions are different from those of ordinary people. Disturbance may unbalance him and lead to failure in his paintings. Mr. Tsui has had a hard life. He had a daughter once. She was quiet and very pretty. His wife liked mahjong and stayed out nights. When the daughter fell ill, the mother didn't stay home to take care of her. The girl finally died of pneumonia. Mr. Tsui asked his wife for a divorce and gave her all his property to be free. He has no home and no family. He often says you look like his daughter."
The infrequency of my visits made him wonder what had happened. When he asked me why I was avoiding him, I couldn't help asking: "Why do you think I look like your daughter?" His answer was simple and poignant: "You have rekindled my past and my love for a daughter like the one I once had. Can you forgive me?" Forgive? How could I help it? From that time I felt the warmth of having a father again.
Mr. Tsui lived at our house for nearly a year and a half. The only really striking changes were the new cosmetics on mother's dressing table and the neater trimming of Mr. Tsui's beard.
One afternoon after school, I ran home fast, wanting to surprise mother with my feelings of love for her. I took off my shoes and tiptoed into the kitchen. There were mother and Mr. Tsui standing close together. He was wiping the tears from mother's cheeks. They kissed tenderly. Then mother turned away.
It was a sunny Saturday afternoon. Mr. Tsui and I went to the neighboring shop to buy some pens. The shop was owned by the father of one of my classmates. As we went in, my classmate pulled me aside and whispered in my ear: "Your father sure has a large beard."
On the way home, I asked Mr. Tsui: "Would you like me to be your daughter?"
"Yes," he replied without hesitation. "But your mother has doubts. Once she told me: 'I'm just an ordinary woman. I want a man who can drive away my loneliness. Perhaps you love me. But you love your painting more. We will not be happy if you lock yourself up upstairs after the honeymoon is over.' What she says is true. Happiness must be shared. It cannot be forced on others."
I was hurt and didn't understand. I went to mother and argued: "I want a father. Having a father is ten times or a thousand times better than having no father." Mother wiped away her tears and said: "Mother loves you. Having a father may be good. But being a studious girl and getting a better education than Mr. Tsui and I have had is better. You will know this when you have grown up and find happiness as a young woman."
Mother didn't cry when Mr. Tsui left us. He said he wanted to go to the mountains to paint. Mother went on working at the factory. There are no more cosmetics on her dressing table and pretty clothes are put away again.
I am going to senior high school now and after that to college, I hope. I'm happy enough but I'd still rather like a father. And how about mother - will she be lonesome as I get older and grow further away from her? Well, we're all still young - even Mr. Tsui. I think it will all come out in the wash -the wash painting, of course.