The Little Boy Who Never Got To Live

You have not been forgotten.

Xiong was dead. Mama’s Boy was dead. He, who walked miles to Ramsey Hospital to deliver food to his mother because his father always found some reason not to be home and his mother had just had a baby, so she could only eat boiled chicken and rice and not the hospital food, was dead. He shot himself with his father’s handgun.

We did not know why he did it, but I guessed it was because he did not want his parents to find out about the shoplifting incident. He probably felt that his mother had too many things to worry about, and the last thing she should have to deal with was a son who was a thief.

I guessed this because he committed suicide on the evening of the shoplifting incident. He and my brother Thai had attempted to steal two pairs of jeans from K-mart. So while Thai was getting his beating from my father after the shameful drive home from K-mart, Xiong was planning to end his own life.

According to one of his little brothers afterward, Xiong made ramen noodles and eggs for them that evening. He sat on the sofa and watched them eat. Some of the little ones sat on the raggedy sofa, and the others on the floor, eating and watching TV. He did not eat, though. He just sat and watched them eat.

I wondered what was going through his mind. Did he look at the hungry, little faces and worried about who would feed them when his mother was sick and his father was busy somewhere? I wondered if he carefully studied their faces so that he could take the memories of them with him. Did he wonder if he could even take the memories with him?

That night he bathed the younger ones and told the older ones to wash themselves. When everyone was clean and ready for bed, he made all of them climb into the two queen-sized beds that were pushed together to accommodate all of them. He hugged and kissed each of them and told them to go to sleep.

Later. Way past midnight, one of the little ones, who sometimes wet his bed, woke up to go pee. As he walked to the bathroom, he noticed a flickering glow from downstairs. The little one thought it must be their father, back from an out-of-town funeral. So, he quickly went to the bathroom and then rushed downstairs.

As he entered the living room, he saw Xiong sitting in the middle of the worn-out sofa, his head thrown back as if he had fallen asleep while watching TV. The light from the TV cast fluttering shadows across Xiong’s upturned face.

The little one walked over to Xiong to wake him up, but when the little one reached him, he saw a dark stream of blood running along the right side of Xiong’s face and ending at his shoulder and the area of the sofa on which his head was resting. But his eyes, the little one said whenever he told the story, were wide opened and staring up at the ceiling.

Every night after the suicide, I had trouble falling asleep. Whenever I closed my eyes, I saw Xiong’s face. At his funeral, I did not look at him because I knew I would be afraid afterward. But I heard fragments of how he looked from different people, and my mind took all those fragments and pieced them together and added to them, so what was in my mind became worse than the actual corpse.

In the dark, whether I closed my eyes or not, I saw him. Bloody. Blood bubbling out of his head and running down the side of his face. His eyes were wide opened and staring straight at me.

I was not the only one who had trouble falling asleep after the suicide, however. I could hear movements from my brothers’ room. One of them was tossing and turning. I knew it had to be Thai because the noise sounded heavy. It sounded as if Thai was struggling with someone.

As scared as I was of the dark and of leaving the security of my thick blanket, I told myself I must get up and go check on my beloved brother.

Thai was curled up in his bed as I walked in. Then suddenly he started thrashing and writhing, wrestling with his blanket. I moved closer. The light from the moon revealed beads of sweat on his forehead and in the bald spots of his head. Sweat was also trickling down his temples. The pillow looked damp. He did not look like himself.

For a moment I wondered if he was my brother. I reached down, grabbed his shoulder, and shook him. “Wake up,” I whispered. “Wake up, Thai.” After several shakes, he finally woke up. He looked startled and scared. It took him several seconds to realize who I was. “Are you okay?” I asked. “Were you having a bad dream?”

He swallowed and nodded. Then he looked relieved to see me. A sob escaped his throat, and he started to cry. I sat on his bed, and he moved over even though there was plenty of room for me already. He cried, and I sat and listened. After a while, he sniffed and wiped his eyes.

“Xiong came to me in my dream,” he said. “Xiong wanted me to give him back his jacket that I borrowed. I searched and searched but I could not find his jacket.

“Then he asked me if I wanted to go with him. I don’t know where. He just wanted me to go with him. I wanted to tell him he was dead, but I did not want to scare him, so I just told him to go by himself. Then you woke me up.”

Thai paused to take in some deep breaths. “I am scared. I am scared and sad and lonely.”

I did not know what to say to him, so I hugged him. To my surprise, he hugged back and continued to sob some more. After we pulled away from each other, Thai pointed to his closet and said, “I still have his jacket. When do you think it would be okay to return it to his family?”

“I don’t know, maybe tomorrow,” I suggested.

“Yes. I will return it tomorrow. I hope his parents won’t think I am being rude. I don’t want to stir their sadness.”

Thai and I sat in his bed and talked. We talked and listened to the silent night and talked again until the sky turned gray, and the scary shadows in the room disappeared to reveal familiar things that we knew and recognized and were not afraid of.

Then, after our fears faded, we talked about our kind friend who never got to be a kid. He was always doing chores and taking care of younger siblings. He was a gentle, loving soul who would never get to grow up and move away to see what else was in the world beyond a bare kitchen and a living room with one raggedy sofa, an old TV donated from a church, and little siblings who were always hungry and needed bathing.

© May Y. Yang 2022. All Rights Reserved.

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