Returning Home

I dared not go out to town for quite a number of days after I had returned home. The reason? It was because I believed my fear of being given up for lost would be refreshed when I met friends and relatives in my hometown who certainly would congratulate me for my graduation. During those days at home, I did not feel lonely because I did enjoy pleasures of the so-called family reunion after a long separation. Then I got used to living with family. Every grown-up member of the family had his or her business to attend to. My younger siblings who were old enough to go to school did so on every weekday. Smaller children stayed at home, of course. It was fun to play with them, but I would have difficulty taking care of them. As a matter of fact, I didn't know what to do when these little shavers refused to stop crying even though I did my level best to comfort them. In other words, I dared not take responsibility for small children of my family, for I would often make them cry while I was trying to amuse them. Then I would be blamed by those members of my family responsible for caring these children. In short, I was getting bored at home not very long after my return.

More than a dozen years of life as a student away from home made me kind of alienated from my hometown. When I went out to town, I was more like a guest who was treated courteously and politely. Their polite treatment made me feel ill at ease, because I was concerned that I was just like a new commodity on the market that had yet to win the trust of customers. My fear of being given up for lost would be deepened.

But the fact is that though I was away from my hometown to study elsewhere, I used to come back for a stay of one to two months during each summer vacation. Why should I feel ill at ease, then? Ah, I remember. When I was a student, I came back to spend the summer vacation with my fellow students who also came back for the summer like me. We formed a sort of exclusive club, spending most of the time together to have fun without even trying to renew old friendships with those who did not attend schools away from home. So we were estranged all right. Altogether five students of our town, including myself, were graduated this year. None of us were free like birds of the same color to gather together for fun any more. In the meantime, we all had to start working in the real world, where mature people have tastes for fun and enjoyment very different from ours as newly graduated students. It seemed to me that there is an unbridgeable ditch separating us from our society. And the trouble is that we dared not cross over it to go out into the world. The more I thought of it, the less determined I dared to go out. I got all the more bored at home.

* The Chinese title of this short story is “歸家.”

The Lai He Fiction serialization, sponsored by the Council for Hakka Affairs, is provided by the Central News Agency.

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