Chapter 3 Neglected Gifts
“Illusion?” The little girl was thinking about it all night, but several things that happened the next morning were far more unbelievable than that illusion of yesterday.
The first one was her Mom. She wanted to go shopping in the supermarket, and the flustered Yu Sha didn’t want to be at home alone, so she wanted to go to the supermarket together with her Mom. But she was a little slower than her Mom for she could not speak. When Yu Sha walked to the stairs, she heard her Mom scolding on the phone. Yu Sha never saw her Mom so angry.
“Say it again! Don’t Come!”
Mom thought that Yu Sha did not see her, but at that moment Yu Sha was hiding in the shadow of the staircase.
A line of cars parked downstairs. An old man almost over the age of 80 got out of the luxury car, showing a somewhat complicated expression when he was looking at the old residential building in the bustling complex in Macao.
The white housekeeper with gold glasses near him bowed down and extended his hand to the old man, but the old man raised his hand as a signal to make the housekeeper move back.
“Don’t come up!” Yu Sha looked out of the staircase, seeing her Mom tightly bite her lips. Her voice was very low, but with firm refusal, “My room is too small to hold you!”
However, the old man still walked up the dark stairs. Yu Sha silently went up to a higher place to observe, and the door was finally opened. The old man gazed at the shelf in her own room, which contained a variety of Barbie dolls and several dusty encyclopedias.
“I heard that the name of the child is Yu Sha, right? I want to see her.” The old man begged. Me? Why? Yu Sha felt fortunate to have hidden herself well.
“She is shy with strangers, and now she is not at home. Are you satisfied?” There was no tolerance at all in her tone.
The old man took out a blue diamond ring carved into a pattern of peacock feather, with a pleasing smile on his lips.
“Look, when I gave it to you, you were only as young as little Yu Sha. When you left home, you didn’t take it with you. I bring it specially for you today, and I ever made it framed with the best gold edge in India……Let me have a look at her, Okay?”
“I’m sorry, but I have declared on the newspaper that I have nothing to do with your noble family. Please leave my home and go back to your palace.” Ignoring this expensive gift, her Mom opened the door to ask the old man to get out.
“She is also related with me by blood!” The old man was so angry that he hit the ground with his walking stick, but he quickly calmed down. “You know I can’t ask you for a third time.”
The old man stared at her, with long, helpless and low sigh, and then he turned away with shaking breath.
“Watch out! The steps on the third floor are very steep.” Her Mom’s tone suddenly softened a little, but this time the old man never looked back……
The second one was her Dad, who perfectly missed what had happened before. He came together with the exaggerated car roar——Her Dad bought a brand new luxury SUV, and it was easy for the narrow streets to retain the smell and noise. Yu Sha could hear his proudly calling even two kilometers away.
However, how could her Dad afford a car, such an expensive car? This must not be a good thing.
Soon, his new car suffered a serious rub at the corner of the old tenement building . The harsh metal sound brought a little realistic feeling to the girl. “That’s reasonable! This luxury car should not have come here at all.”
Her Mom was very scornful of her Dad’s behavior, although her Dad brought a lot of gifts for her, just like Santa Claus, even with a gift for her Mom——a delicate woman’s watch.
“Lucas Yu! Did you just rob the bank? I don’t want my daughter to see you taken away by the police from my house.” Her Mom directly called her Dad’s name, with a strange and harsh tone. Her Dad was a foreigner, coming far away from Brazil. The place where her Dad was born and grew up was closer to the Antarctica for penguins than to Macao.
But when it came to penguins……
“Click!” Dad closed the watch case. At the moment when the case was being closed, the little girl saw the unusual blue halo in the case. It was unfortunate that her Mom seemed to turn a blind eye to this……The little girl knew that some expectation suddenly extinguished in her Dad’s heart.
Her Dad had a tall nose, but the shadow of the bridge of his nose never hid the straightforwardness of his eyes. “I came here to see my daughter. Remember I do have the right.”
Sure, both her Dad and Mom had the power to make the situation worse. As long as they were “willing” to be together, their quarrel would not be far away.
However, she could not speak nor express her refusal with her eyes. At least her parents would not regard any of her expressions as a refusal, so this kind of quarrel would continue.
“My girl, look at what your Dad has brought you. Ha, you must have no idea.” Her Dad’s face changed into a relaxed expression. His lips lifted cheerfully, his exaggerated smile reached his ears, and even his narrow nostrils quivered softly——a fatherly look. But when her Dad looked at her, there was more confidence than joy in his eyes, which always made Yu Sha uncomfortable.
“Another Barbie doll!” Yu Sha had known the answer. She mumbled in her heart that Dad liked to buy Barbie dolls for her and to dress her up as a Barbie doll, no matter whether she liked it or not.
Maybe many people praised her big and watery eyes and prominent facial features, and being a mixed-blood girl did bring her the westernized three-dimensional beauty. But Yu Sha didn’t like the appearance of the Barbie doll, and she even thought it’s “stupid” to be dressed up like the Barbie doll, for it was not suitable for running or jumping.
“Look! It’s a Barbie doll! Isn’t it a surprise?” It was a surprise to some extent, but it seemed to be reasonable after she thought of the new car downstairs. It was a set of limited-edition Barbie doll, and these dolls and furniture were beautifully placed in a case, which was even taller than herself, or……as tall as the small monster she met yesterday……
So was the monster who called itself the Dinoman real?
“My girl, you know your Aunt liked Barbie best when she was a kid, but we were too poor to afford one.” The cliche was spoken from Dad’s mouth that lacked blood color. In fact, her Dad had wonderful facial features: brown hair, deep eyes, and high nose. However, he looked older than his age——or his murmuring made him look older than his age. His white skin made every wrinkle on his face stand out, and his beard grew recklessly.
When Dad was not so nagging, his wrinkles seemed not so obvious.
“Your sister is smarter than you, for she stays where she should be, not like you……” Her Mom unceremoniously interrupted him, and then her eyes sarcastically stared at Dad’s right hand with half a finger missing.
Although she rarely agreed with her Mom, she did not hesitate to stand on Mom’s side at the point of his Dad’s stupidity.
Yes. Maybe any normal man on the earth would not take the plot from a movie as a fact, right?
However, her Dad was an exception. He loved watching Japanese action movies during his childhood, and he liked the “sense of discipline” and “sense of honor” of bad boys in the Japanese society. But it was more tragic that he finally came to Macao……After her Dad messed up something, he learned the way of atonement in the Japanese films——cutting off half a finger of his. He naively thought that all the Asian people were the same, and the Chinese people in Macao had the same believes as the Japanese.
Of course, what he got was the mockery of others and the result of that insignificant matter……But this was only one of her Dad’s stupid behaviors.
Thinking that her Dad’s stupidity could not afford so many “gifts”, the little girl could not help but start to worry about him.
“Where does your money come from?” Her Mom asked the same question in her heart.
“I have no idea! Someone gave me a letter today, and there was a lottery ticket in the envelope, and then I cashed in over two million.” Such an explanation sounded as suspicious as her Dad’s exact origin. In fact, her Dad was a Japanese Chinese, and the only thing the little girl knew was that his surname was Yu, and the mother of her Dad was a Portuguese. He had a quarter of black ancestry, a quarter of Spanish ancestry, a quarter of Indian ancestry, and a quarter of Irish ancestry.
So in terms of ancestry, which country did her Dad belong to? How about herself?
But this was not the point. Who sent the lottery ticket? One doubt after another, but all of them pointed to the same doubt! That feeling was just like the domino of fate was accelerating down.
She heard her Mom’s laughter, which was full of disdain and doubt, and perhaps a little regret. Her Dad tried to explain at the very beginning, but then his voice no longer maintained his demeanor. Finally, her Dad and Mom quarreled, with the irony on one side and the extremely high volume on the other. With a familiar feeling, Yu Sha felt a tingling sensation on her head. She knew she could not avoid anything. Because she could not say anything, naturally she could not stop anything.
Suddenly, Yu Sha’s mobile phone vibrated. “The good fortune this morning was a gift for you.”
But that gift was for her Dad, wasn’t it?
“Don’t forget what you promised yesterday.” He was real. The Dinoman was real……
“Now I am in the same place where we met yesterday. Can you come over?” It’s a good chance to get away from her parents’ quarrel——The little girl didn’t even think about it and rushed downstairs……
Yu Sha did not know how she got on the bus, for her nervous mood made her pay attention to nothing. Fortunately, there was a vacant seat on the bus today, and then a wobbly figure appeared.
But who would dress up like this to take the bus? A brown hat made of fleece, black oversized sunglasses, a silk scarf with peacock feathers and a thick suit in the camel-hair color which was impossible to appear on the street under such a burning sun……How could someone dress up so exquisitely to get on the bus?
This was the dress for attending a wedding, but that man was old, which made Yu Sha felt more strange. Then, there was no vacant seats any more, and the old man bent his back instead of grabbing the armrest. Obviously, the old man did not often take the bus.
Yu Sha stood up to offer her seat to the old man, and he walked over with a cane step by step and then sat down, without declining.
“You are a good girl! Let me tell you a story.”
But Yu Sha didn’t want to hear any story at all. She was silent——her big eyes were rarely understood as a rejection.
“When I was young, there were rickshaws everywhere in Macao. At that time I found that people always walked to work, but took a rickshaw when they came home……Everybody wanted to go home quickly, didn’t they? Now, maybe people go to work by bus, but go home by taxi, in order to get home faster……”
But now Yu Sha didn’t want to go home at all, and this story sucked.
“But I choose to take the bus. Wherever the bus takes me, I will go there. I don’t have a home.”
Yu Sha couldn’t help but feel sympathy for the old man’s suffering. Was the old man wearing all her belongings to take a bus? Perhaps the beautiful clothes was just the last decent for the old man.
But she could not make a sound and gave the vocal comfort, so she could only offer a comforting look.
“Do you know, my girl? At the very beginning, Macao was only a small island, but now Macao has become a peninsula connected with the mainland, like a person who wandered all his life finally going back to his hometown. Even the ghosts need a place to live, so there are so many temples of the God of Earth. Home is a lifelong dream for a person.”
Maybe this old man was not good at coaxing children, and his story made Yu Sha feel at a loss.
“Even the most exciting adventure is ultimately a dream……Go home, my girl! It’s still not late.” The old man’s meaningful tone was like a warning.
The bus arrived at the station at this time, and the door opened. The court was not far away, so Yu Sha just regarded the words of the old man as his murmuring.
Today the court was closed for maintenance. Without the interior “cover”, would a living dinosaur and a robot be directly exposed to the outside?
However, when the dinosaur appeared at the other side of the road slowly wagging its tail to block the wind-blown garbage bag……The robot, just like an egg with four feet, jumped on the sidewalk like a child and mumbled with unclear meaning. She was stunned by this scene.
There was no need to find them——Ignoring the strangeness of their own appearance, they came to her just like two human beings.
“Hello, the little girl. We meet again!” The crown of the Dinoman spread like an orange flame in the snow——with the feeling of both cold and hot.
“Are you……real?” The mute Yu Sha blurted out in her heart, “No! Why are you here? Are you not afraid to be seen in the broad daylight?”
“What’s to worry about?” The Dinoman said calmly. They had been surrounded by curious people, and even some mobile phones were flashing to take photos. “Do you mean them?”
“In Macao, adults always believe that good thing will happen, don’t they?”
Its windward crown and unfolded tail feather was just like its most determined self-confidence. “Yu Sha, listen, it doesn’t matter whether the human being care or not.”
Perhaps as the small monster said, curious adults would hurry away after taking photos.
“Especially whether the adults care or not——attention in the human age is only a momentary thing……but we are from 65 million years ago……”
“Can I go back to my world?” The small girl was silently terrified.