Xiyue Wang

Susan Neals

Writing & the Arts

Dec 6th 2012

A Locked Story

 

  It is joyous to wake up at almost noon on Sunday. No homework awaiting. Washing and dressing slowly --- it is a wonderful start of a day. What should I do today? I roam every rooms leisurely in my home until I meet my mom kneeling, cleaning the floor carefully with a rag in her hand.

  “Don’t step on it! Didn’t you see I just cleaned? Stop messing up everything you little buster!”

  “Okay,okay! Why you never show any love to me? I didn’t do anything wrong, did I?”

  “You didn’t? Go back check your own room, I don’t even want to step into it. Have’t I told you don’t put your stuff everywhere? Please DO NOT cry at me when you can’t find what you really need!”

  “Yeah, I ll absolutely clean it! Today! Now!”

  “Why she is never satisfied with me…? Yelling at me everyday…” I mumble when my Dad is just going out from the kitchen with a smile on his face. “Go do it honey, stewed beef for reward.”

  Yeah, definitely I know how messed up my room is, and what I know more is a really tough job is waiting for me. After I open a cabinet and take all the random stuff out, I find some interesting little things that have not been seen for years. One of of them is a hard cover diary book with a lock on it. It is a tiny copper lock, but I am sure that it has not been open for years. What did I write down in it? I search my memory but no clue found.

  After my room goes back to tidy, the key still has not shown up as I wished. A little disappointed, then I have to put it back to cabinet. However, since that day, it has been always a tiny copper lock swinging in my brain, I am always curious about it and my curiosity gained with the time passes by.

  “Hey dad, I know you always come out some good ideas. Can you help me opening this diary?”

  My father is really neat at those techenical things and he just takes the lock off from the hardcover of the diary.

  “Wow!!!” I can not believe so easily he brought secret diary to sunlight again! I can not wait to open it, then it comes to a big shock --- here is all of what I have:

  "Today I was going to the hill to pick daisies with mom I am so happy."     

  The words are twisted and crooked, as if I just learned how to write. But, wait, I remember that day.

  Suddenly it is like one sealed door of my memories has opened, and the dusty memories of ten years before flushing out with the sweet smell of fresh daisies.

 

  It is only ten minutes’ walk from my home to a hill, in a village where my family did not live anymore. It is a small village and only human activity there is an industrial company which my parents work in. Before the peers of my grandparents had come to this rural place and built their manufacture company, it was a unknown village in the montains --- a bucolic land with nothing likes a noisy city. It is surrounded by hills, and people came here had built only some architectures on a low hill. They had built stairs, pavilions, a dam, a playground, even a school, and made the hill like a part of our community ---a big park.

  However, nature will never be conquered --- the hill near my home was much more natural. It only had a rough dirt road, which seemed formed by people’s steps. And it was the only way for villagers who lived in the hill to come down to the town. Yes, it did have some people living in there. Thatched cottages, fences, beans canopies, appeared rather seldom. Occasionally you will encounter one when you walk one or two miles from the last one. They raised dogs and the dogs barked extremely aggressively when people passed by. That was one of the reasons why I never dared to go there by myself. And it was the best place to feel the deep silence, no sound but the leaves rustling in the wind. I would totally freak out if a human appeared suddenly.

  In the night it always has some weird and mysterious sounds coming from the hill.

  “Did you hear that? Like… calling?” I asked my friend one night when we walked near the hill.

  “Yeah, I think so…”

  “What is that supposed to be? Dog? Rooster? Wolf? Or …ghost? ”I had to force my imagination not go further, but you know how hard it was.

  There was a grin on my friend’s face. She lifted her flashlight and pointed it to the sky. “Did you hear of that? If you shine a flashlight on the hill like that, the ghost in the hill will come out and…”

  “Stop! Stop It!!!” I screamed incredibly loud, and began to run as fast as I could. My friend was on my heels until we were all exhausted and bursting out laughing.

  This hill was so interesting and intriguing to me, and my little brain is filled with it. However, for a primary school little girl, it is adventurous but dangerous to go there. So in that sunny autumn with fresh breeze, when my mom asked me: “How about go to the nearest hill to pick some daises and make some interesting stuff with them?” I could not be more joyous. “Adults are all heroes, especially my parents.” That was what I firmly believed in my childish years.

  I was wearing a white and red diamonds pattern sweater my mom knitted for me, and my mom wore a big straw floral hat, which you could probably see in a vintage store and I am sure my mom would be embarrassed to wear it now. We seemed over energetic in those young and leisurely years. Daises and some other unknown flowers were blooming everywhere around our path. They were all small --- not as showy roses or peonies, which you are hard to ignore even only one flower --- almost invisible if you only see one. Yet, when they filled a patch, you would be really comforted by such a beautiful and harmonious scene and fresh scents.

  “Fragrant flowers will not be showy, showy flowers are not fragrant usually.” Mom said. I guess that is true.

  “Look mom! There are yellow, blue, purple and white daises, will I pick all of them?”

  “Technically not, we just need yellow ones, and only to fill a bag.”

  “Hey, we don’t need to protect environment here, these wild flowers are inexhausible!”

  “Hey, you better cherish them. Always be grateful for what you can have. Well, you will understand one day.”

 We did not need to go far away. It was so easy to find them. After we collected one bag, we went back in the same track.

  "What are you going to make with them?"

  My mother smiled and took out some little cotton bags she had made for a while. "Fill the bag with the daises, then you will see." Yeah, after I filled it and sewing it, I could tell it was a pillow!

 

  Even for now, I can smell the sweet aroma of daises which accompanied me in my childhood and gave me peaceful and lightsome dreams. And sometimes I have a dream of that hill which is still mysterous and intriguing to me even now. Some time I will surely go back there. By my own? Or with somebody to whom I can tell the story behind every acre of ground there? I do not know yet.