A Flashlight’s Truth!

A Flashlight’s Truth!

   “Chia-Hao Chen, did you do this, that and/or the other thing?” The rambunctious five-year-old boy’s mother, Yi-Chun Chen, asked rhetorically knowing he'd never fess up to the deed in question. Instead, the child stretched his almond-shaped, brown eyes to their absolute limits looking in his young mother’s direction and concocted the most incredibly off-course answer he could possibly fathom! Subterfuge was a word eluding the kindergartener; however, his mother swore Chia-Hao’s picture appeared in her phone’s dictionary as a pictorial representation of the word's meaning! The mother wished he wasn't so imaginative and hoped the truth would be more forthcoming as he matured. Besides, she had bigger concerns needing attention for the moment...   

   Yi-Chun wearily rubbed her petite. bruised body, which she told her newly arrived mother from Taiwan, Ms. Huang, resulted from a fall while carrying an overloaded laundry basket. Ms. Huang or, Ama, as Chia-Hao called his favorite grandmother, wasn’t happy about it. Wrinkling further her already wrinkled face from time's ravages, Ms. Huang silently observed her beautiful twenty-three-year-old, middle daughter having only one kid appeared older than her forty-year-old sibling with eight! With New Year's still two months away, she knew her resolution would be to visit Yi-Chun and Chia-Hao in America more often and stay for longer stretches going forward. That is, if they'll have her! Yi-Chun had become more withdrawn, private, and accident-prone since Chia-Hao's birth, but why? Ms. Huang had her suspicions, which she kept quietly to herself.  

   Yi-Chun growing tired of her son’s intentional lies, hyperbolic tales, and side-steps, dropped the matter squarely on her wayworn mother's lap shortly after she'd unpacked and settled in. Despite Ms. Huang's near twenty hours of travel from Taiwan to America, she gave Yi-Chun her full attention as it was unlike her daughter to confide in anyone.  

“Maaa, Chia-Hao’s lies are gonna catch up to that grandson of yours. One day, you'll see, they're gonna throw him down and squash the stuffing out of him as if he were dim sum!"   

Ms. Huang attempted to hug Yi-Chun offering solace. However, the young woman winced drawing back in avoidance! Though astonished, Ms. Huang waved her daughter on making light of what had just happened mumbling something about it must've been "Godzilla's" laundry basket."   

   Having digested enough of Yi-Chun's sarcastic comments about Chia-Hao, Ms. Huang began focusing on the more pressing need to satisfy their growing nutritional concerns. Intestinal alarms strongly signaled — "lunchtime!" Yi-Chun’s food dim sum analogy made her stomach growl forcing the mother to answer her daughter's question with a question,  

"What time do American's eat lunch these days? It's past one o'clock! No problem can ever be solved or digested on an empty stomach. Collect Chia-Hao while I prepare lunch, troubled daughter! We can better digest those figurative dumpling concerns after we've ingested some literal ones, right?"  

“Chia-Hao! Chia-Hao!” Yi-Chun called. "Wash those dirty hands! Ama’s preparing lunch for us!"  The boy did not stir in his room. The young mother called out again noticing the once full dish of Ama’s gifted Taiwanese candied treats minutes ago, was now half empty... A trail of ill-concealed wrappers led her eyes to a discarded pile under his father's favorite armchair. To ask Chia-Hao about it would have been a waste of time, she thought. Yi-Chun felt she must, but not before deciding not before deciding to rest this newest situation on her mother’s lap. As if on cue, Ms. Huang entered the living room to collect her big, and little kid.   

   Yi-Chun pointed out the wrappers calling out after Chia-Hao again. His lackluster response to lunch announcements made them ask simultaneously: “Do you know how those got there?" pointing to the colorful stack of wrappers under the chair. "Who ate those candies?” Chia-Hao placed his left index finger on his chin leaving behind telltale chocolate-stained imprints. He  looked up, then to the right, as if looking towards a video prompter for cues. His mother and Ama observed the child's inventive mental factory busy itself by creating the beginnings of a response:  

“Ama, I don’t feel well because my tummy hurts... because I didn’t sleep last night... because it was so noisy in here... because, well I don't know! I came in here with my new flashlight, the one you brought from Taiwan, Ama. You know the one...”   

   Seeing where this was headed, Yi-Chun stopped the bus waiting for him to get off so Ama could then lift the brake pedal putting it in full gear to leave the station! Smiling, she said,  

“I know the one; it's magical! My grandfather gave it to me when I was about your age telling me if I ever became a liar, ancestral spirits would haunt me by turning it on, aiming it in my direction; thereby 'branding' me a liar - forever!”  

Ms. Huang placed special emphasis on the word “branding” as if representing a fate worse than anything Chia-Hao could have ever imagined!   

   In silence, Chia-Hao headed forward towards the kitchen worriedly looking back in his bedroom's direction. Yi-Chun looked askance at Ms. Huang - who now turned towards the kitchen motioning them to follow. Chia-Hao waved them on stumbling while mumbling that he’d come after first checking something out in his room. A subdued squeal came from the bedroom’s direction as he entered. Yi-Chun reacted turning away from the kitchen towards Chia-Hao’s room. His Ama smiled gesturing to her to let the child be! Now, it was Yi-Chun who appeared awkward and curious...   

   Chia-Hao joined them at the table minutes later quietly disturbed with the head of his red flashlight just peeking out from his collared shirt's front pocket... He picked at Ama’s lovingly prepared luncheon spread at less than his usual quickened pace. It was as if every bite was that of sea cucumber, and Chia-Hao detested sea cucumber!  Ama noticing her daughter’s expression, held back a smile donning a serious face. She asked,  

“Chia-Hao, your mother asked you a question a moment ago about treats I’d brought as a gift to share among the whole family here in America. They are expensive and hard to find in my homeland. You were about to shed light on their whereabouts?”   

   The kindergartener, still wearing his chocolaty chin-prints, thought long and hard before answering... “Rats, must have been...” Chia-Hao let out an irksome squeal! Before he could complete this tale about to twist itself in as many directions as the crazy straw in his juice box, the flashlight in his pocket turned itself on illuminating his face. Chia-Hao then dropped his fork, ran to the living room, gathered wrappers bringing them into the breakfast nook. Throwing them in the garbage and then, himself into Ama’s ample lap, he began to tremble, apologize, and weep!   

   Chia-Hao retrieved the flashlight from his pocket handling it as if it were a hot potato. The small child handed it over to Ama, who immediately pocketed it. The child admitted he’d eaten nearly half the candies. He pleaded with Ama not to let ancestral spirits take him away or even worse, do the “brand thing” to him. His vivid imagination imagined that would hurt worse than the time he’d broken his arm playing on stairs! He'd lied then, stating the injury resulted from tripping on a loose shoe-string rather than telling the truth about how it really happened: Chia-Hao disobeyed Yi-Chun's orders not to play catch on the stairs with his cousin!   

   Déjà vu feelings suddenly came over Yi-Chun. She'd become Chia-Hao in her mind watching a very familiar scene play out. A distant memory flooded into her consciousness... Yi-Chun remembered that she also used to be a horrible liar as a child about  Chia-Hao’s age. She recalled being presented with a similar light by her own, now long deceased Ama, Ms. Huang's mother. The frightening flashlight mysteriously vanished after first scaring the bejesus out of then, five-year-old Yi-Chun, turning on out of the blue! She glanced over at Ms. Huang, and in astonishment, at the flashlight - now on the table. Tears welled.  

   Ms. Huang winked, blowing Yi-Chun a kiss and gesturing towards her right apron pocket affirming it was empty. The flashlight was off. Now on the table, it pointed towards her daughter of twenty-three, who at that moment, appeared five again! With Chia-Hao’s face still buried in Ama's lap. Ms. Huang asked Yi-Chun: 

“Now daughter tell me, was that laundry basket about one-hundred-seventy pounds, five-feet seven inches  tall like my son-in-law, per chance?”  

Yi-Chun placed a left index finger on her chin. She then looked up and off to the right, as if awaiting  a teleprompter for cues on how to change the topic to one less incriminating. All she could muster was a very subdued, “No, Ma.”   

   Instantaneously, the flashlight turned itself on! It glared in Yi-Chun’s face with an intensity brighter than she remembered as a child. She squealed, shook her head, joining her head with Chia-Hao's in Ms. Huang's lap. Yi-Chun cried as she'd done some eighteen  years ago when a similar flashlight "branded" her a liar. Ancestral spirits then took Yi-Chun's Ama the next day! The little girl thought she'd never cry again - depleted from filling a well's worth of tears over a lie causing the death of someone she'd held dear.   

   Since then, Yi-Chun suppressed all tears. None came while birthing Chia-Hao without an epidural, or intravenous sedation... None came during, or after any of her beatings by her husband. However, somehow this day they returned, flowing like Taiwan's  Zhuoshui River.  And, along with them  came an apology, a confession, and a promise  over a hot cup of Jin Xuan oolong tea once Chia-Hao napped.    

The flashlight turned itself off for the day and stayed off after Ms. Huang returned it to her right apron pocket. Her New Year’s resolution began two months earlier than expected...