Beixi Li

Family Injured, Boy Killed During Street Collapse.

The Wall Street Journal headline opens into death as words on paper reveal a story of poverty and helplessness. Through the rubbage of the street you can still see remains of furniture, a broken chair leg, a lampshade crushed and misshapen. How long had they been living there before this street collapse enlightened us? Long enough to have a mismatching set of plates, crushed now, on top of a cracked table. Long enough for a buildup of ragged toys in the corner, one stuffed duck hugged close by the small boy sitting on the ruined sofa. Words run across the page, New york… weak infrastructure…homeless numbers increasing…casualties. A voice cuts through the image on the screen and she looks up to see her 5-year-old son standing alone in the doorway, trailing a blanket behind him.

 

“Mommy, what are you doing?” He hugs the blanket closer as she blinks the lights from the computer out of her eyes.

“Honey, what are you doing out of bed?” She swivels the chairs around and straightens her stiff  form, trying to clear the image out of her mind.

He reaches up and as she scoops him up, lays his head sleepily on her shoulder. The blanket trails near the floor and she tucks it between his curled hands, under eyes that are already drifting closed.

“I couldn’t fall asleep,” comes out broken midst yawn.

Superheroes leap off the walls and the nightlight illuminates crumpled blankets on the child size bed.

 

At the store, they had walked down the aisle two, five, ten times looking at the white, golden, mahogany bed frames. Deliberated whether shelves were necessary, whether drawers underneath would be useful.

And the sales woman had smiled, impatient yet understanding, and they had finally, sheepishly, pointed at the one that now leaned against the wall, holding spider man sheets and missing a little boy.

 

He fidgets as she stretches out the covers, and suddenly, both eyes are wide again in anticipation of a story. He curls into her a little tighter and her hands play with the soft brown strands, as she leans back against the headboard.

 

Unbidden, the cracked and broken streets resurface and swim before her eyes. Again, she can see in her mind the picture of a little boy looking up through similar cracks years ago. Only that time, it was someone halfway around the world in Korea, looking at her from the slideshow of a professor from college, trying to convince students of a lesson they were too ignorant to understand back then.