“Bang!”
I touched the back of my head with my shaking left hand. “Please, don’t bleed,” I prayed sincerely. I took a deep breath and plucked up the courage to look at my palm – luckily there was no blood on it. The metal pencil box swung through the air, hitting straight onto the surface in front of me.
“Bang!”
A corner was destroyed. On top of my reading report lay the broken cold metal and peeling paint. They lay in silence, like death. I trembled all over and tried to continue with my writing. My palms were so sweaty that the pen in my right hand was about to slip.
“Dot, dot,” teardrops dropped on my handwriting on the page and the ink blurred like flowers blooming. I covered my mouth and clenched my teeth immediately, preventing myself from sobbing. I picked up my correction pen but things began to blur and I lost sight of words…
---
“You have to follow every single stroke,” said my visual art teacher.
“But why? It is my own portrait,” I asked.
“There’s no why, just follow,” she replied emotionlessly and continued with her demonstration.
Every student sat still and followed. I looked at their eyes and found nothing but hollowness, as if they were empty bodies without souls. At last, a “copy” of the demonstration was selected as the best work of lesson and was pinned on the board. “Well-portrayed,” she said. My eyes were stabbed by a flash of red.
---
“Your book report should include these elements,” said my Chinese teacher.
“But why? It’s my own writing,” I asked.
“There’s no why, just follow,” she replied impatiently. “Do not miss anything, I warn you,” she looked me straight in the eyes.
I did not follow what she said.
---
One day, my mother got a call from my Chinese teacher, claiming that I did not follow the guidelines and I had to redo the book report. “She’s such a rebellious child,” she added.
“Bang!”
I could feel the heat of my mother’s palm leaving a scald mark on my face. My school bag fell from my narrow shoulders and my textbooks were all over the floor.
“How dare you!” she roared.
“Bang!” She slammed the door.
She searched through my belongings and picked up my book report. She then grabbed my hair and dragged me towards the table. She tore my book report into pieces. Paper strips fell from the air, like the white petals that are placed on coffins. That day marked the beginning of a nightmare, which has haunted me for years.
Every evening I had to sit beside of my mother and finished my homework under her supervision. Whenever my handwriting was poor, my mother would hit me with whatever she could pick up at that moment. Hardcover books, water bottles, rulers, to name just a few. I still remember once she hit me with a metal pencil box.
“Write more! You have to stand out,” said my mother. As a primary fourth grader, writing was a challenging task. It took me a very long time to complete the first paragraph and finally my mother ran out of patience.
You all know what happened next. “Bang!”
“Stop crying you coward!” I just could not stop myself from bursting into tears. I wiped the tears using my sleeve and I sobbed. I opened my pencil box and found that every pen was broken. I picked up the correction pen and tried my very best to stop my hands from shaking. Perhaps my hand shook too much. No matter how hard I squeezed, the correction pen just did not work. I even created a hole on the paper after dropping tears and struggling so hard. My mother grabbed my notebook and she tore the whole page off, again. \
“Start over. It's a mess.”
I stood in front of the basin and looked at my palms. A flash of red stabbed my eyes. I washed away the red ink with my bony fingers. That was when I realized that only when I wrote properly and met the expectation of my teachers could I escape from the violence. If I failed to fulfill my mother’s expectation, like now, I would fall, like the cold metal pencil box, laying deadly in silence. Writing “properly” was my only way out.
One day my mother stopped sitting beside me. I thought, maybe I'm good enough.
It was a peaceful afternoon, where the sunshine sneaked in my living room through the gap between the wall and the curtain. It fondled my face and sprinkled some light on my paper. The white spots created by the correction pen stabbed my eyes – they looked extraordinarily obvious under the sunshine, deadly and horrifying. I closed my eyes immediately and started to sweat. I looked at my paper again – a million black little creatures covered in ink were lumbering towards me, like zombies chasing after my flesh. I fell back in horror and tore the whole page off in desperation. I took a deep breath and plucked up the courage to look at the paper again – I saw nothing but imperfection. I had thought I was good enough. I trembled and I anxiously picked up my pen to start over. I made another mistake. I tore the whole page off. I picked up my mug with my shaking hands. In the water, I saw my mother’s reflection.