Interlude: Short Story -- "Seeing Red"

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---------------------Seeing Red----------------------


I was eating a deep-fried pineapple pie from McDonald’s when I saw him hit her.

Walking alone, hair blowing in the chill wind. Staring into the dark, thinking of another life.

When I say I saw him, I mean I heard him. The actual blow, no, I can’t say I saw that. I just turned my head after the crack, watched her reel, heard her shriek. The shouted words that spewed from his mouth carried all the venom of a snake’s bite… well, judging from tone, that is.

I had no idea what they meant, of course. Nor did I understand any of the signs around me, nor did I understand a zillion other little nuances of this strange and alien world.

I was an American in China, and though I had been so for several months, I was not, would never feel at home.

So I didn’t know why he had hit her, and I didn’t imagine that I could hope to understand it. But I remembered a girl I dated once, who had told me one night how her father beat her. Then she drank a bottle of vodka and vomited into a trash can while I held her hair.

She’d told me she wanted to marry me that night, before she passed out. Then she’d woken up, still drunk, and gone off to sleep with somebody else.

What a terrible thing, violence.

Menace in my eye, I shoved the half-eaten pie in the bag, crumpled it, threw it to the street. The man stared back at me, eyes betraying nothing. He puffed his chest a bit, posturing. Tough, I thought, like the men are taught to be here. He was young, younger than I’d imagined at first. Maybe 20. She was crying. Both of them were frail. Tiny. Enough to make me feel a giant.

I liked that.

The space between us closed quickly. Now his eyes flashed fear. I have to wonder how my face looked. I glanced to the girl, cringing, trembling there in the night wind. Blood trickled from a crease in her split lip. She was pretty, I thought. A tiny, pretty, delicate thing, like a butterfly.

A butterfly who had just been swatted mercilessly from the air by an angry child.

Never mind that the "man" in front of me was scarcely bigger than she. Never mind that he was starting to tremble, too, at the sight of my pale, angry, western, alien face. I didn’t see that. Never saw that.

I saw the abusive husband, the abusive father. The coward. The scum of the Earth.

Before I knew what I was doing, it was done. Too well done. A hand that knew how to throw a punch shot out before I could call it back. A heavy hand backed by a strong arm, a strong arm backed by a body so much bigger and thicker than most in this part of the world.

The force surprised me, hurt me. I felt his teeth carve into the flesh of my hand even as they caved from the blow. It was the crack, though, that split the night; the crack that left me stunned, mouth open and empty of words or breath.

I knew he was dead before she started screaming, before he started falling, before I even pulled back my hand. I watched his eyes roll backward as his head lolled on top of his broken neck, angling toward the ground that rushed to meet it.

I looked at my hand, my bloody fist. I looked at the pale skin drenched with red, and I knew.

There would be no escaping this.

The girl was on her knees now, sobbing over him, saying things I couldn't understand, feeling things I hadn't tried to understand. I could only look at her, shame forcing my eyes open, binding them to her in silent penance. And what an easy penance it probably was, I thought, compared to what was surely coming.

My lip trembled as I ground my ragged knuckles against my other palm, hiding from sight the life that bled from me, the hopes and dreams that fled before my very eyes, lost to me forever in that awful, red moment.

I shuddered as I drew my next full gasp of air, like an infant struggling for breath at the first of a new and difficult existence.

What a terrible thing.


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Author's Note: Now,this is a work of fiction through and through, so don't get any ideas. However, for the record, I did see a guy hit a girl tonight while I was walking home, and when I started going towards him, he moved away very fast. It wasn't until after that I began to imagine the many possible pitfalls of confronting someone so far removed from my element. Good thing I have more sense than that, huh?

One Month Later

So yes, I’m aware that there is a lot I’ve neglected to say in the last little while, and while there is no excuse, my reasons are myriad.

Suffice it to say that things have been busy. Tumultuous. Fun. Difficult. Easy. Arduous. Heartwrenching. Heartwarming.

But enough of that. Essentially, I owe my current episode of writer’s block to five things:

Writer’s Block (hey, it happens).

Almost four uninterrupted weeks of cold, hard rain. No, I am not kidding, or exaggerating. I have not seen the sun in a damned month.

Saying yes when Chinese people ask me to do things with them.

Being absolutely brain-dead whenever I have time to myself.

And, of course, an understandable degree of moping about a certain notable absence.

That being said, tonight, after a reasonably amusing episode of KTV (that’s Karaoke TV, for the three of you reading) at which I got molested by an overzealous Chinese man… yeah, they do that here… no comment… well, I feel like I should write SOMETHING about the events that have transpired since I returned to Anqing (to say nothing of what transpired in Moscow).

Since I returned, I’ve taught four weeks of school. For two weeks, I had to take the classes all to myself, just like before. However, at last, Ray’s replacement joined me, and she’s been helpful relieving some of the workload, to say the least. So here’s the deal—I got paid, a LOT, for the extra work I did, which is excellent; my employers cater to my whimsy because of my willingness to help out in a tight spot; and I don’t have to eat alone now. Plus, the kids are a BREEZE to teach now, and I feel like I can actually make tangible progress with them. I’ve taken hold of the reins pretty hard in the classes so far this year, and they seem to be responding well to my brand of easy discipline. So, reading that, everything sounds great, right?

Well, the long and short of it is, I have very little to complain about, here. It’s an amazing experience that, so far, is getting better. Really, thinking of it now, I only have the one thing. I miss a lot of people, you know, and these days, as you may surmise, one in particular.

It won’t go away, that feeling, and really, why should it? Why would I want it to? It’s a call I should be answering. It’s something I should be beyond happy about.

And, come to think of it, I am.

At the moment, it just has its hurdles.

Good thing I get to jump over one of them next week, for a while. Then I can run free and easy, at least for a few days, till the next one comes along.

All right, now that that’s all out of the way, for the time being… Russia.

Cyrillic is a cool alphabet. It’s like code. I think if it had been Russian I was learning, I’d be damn well fluent by now. I thought it was THAT much easier. The metro was easy enough to navigate, I suppose, after a time, but stressful with luggage. And man, the cold. Everywhere, biting at your face and every other bit of uncovered flesh.

I felt it most keenly in the two or so mile walk we took to the Chinese Embassy to iron out some visa difficulties (and THERE’S a story I’m not willing to tell without a beer). Let’s just say it was a little nerve-wracking, and we almost didn’t make it back to China alive.

Well, we almost didn’t make it back to China, anyway.

After that our days were relaxing enough, taking in the Red Square (but still outside! My nose was half-dead at this point) and some of the other sights within the Kremlin. We went in a mall, ran from the police (lest they accost us and ask for passports that couldn’t be produced), and generally just explored. We even found Irish pubs, and ate at two of them!

(One night involved a pub crawl and a snowball fight. And an advertisement for Miller Midnight. What the hell?)





It was just one more amazing time to add to a growing list of ridiculousness that I am experiencing here. When I think about what I expected, from my life, a year or so ago… let’s just say that I’m now aware, more than ever, that we really don’t know what’s best for us. I’ve had plans before, sure, but the way things have turned out since I’ve been here… I couldn’t have drawn this up.

But I wouldn’t draw it any different.