It is raining. The asphalt road looks cold and wet. It glitters with reflections of green, yellow, and red lights. We are taking shelter under the balcony. The green mailbox stands alone across the street. Inside the big pocket of my white windbreaker is a letter for my mother in the South.
Yingzi says she can mail the letter for me with the umbrella. I nod quietly and hand her the letter.
“Who told us to bring only one small umbrella?” She smiles, opens up the umbrella, and is ready to walk across the road to mail the letter for me. A few tiny raindrops from an umbrella rib fall onto my glasses.
With the piercing sound of a vehicle screeching to a halt, Yingzi’s life flies in the air gently, and then slowly falls back on the cold and wet road, like a butterfly at night.
Although it is spring, it feels like deep autumn.
All she did was cross the road to mail a letter for me. A very simple act, yet I will never forget it as long as I live.
I open my eyes and remain standing under the balcony, blankly, my eyes filled with hot tears. All the cars in the entire world have stopped. People rush to the middle of the road. Nobody knows the one that lies on the road there is mine, my butterfly. At this moment she is only five meters away from me, yet it is so far away. Bigger raindrops fall onto my glasses, splashing into my life.
Why? Why did we bring only one umbrella?
Then I see Yingzi again, in her white windbreaker, the umbrella above her head, crossing the road quietly. She is mailing the letter for me. The letter I wrote to my mother in the South. I stand blankly under the balcony and see, once again, Yingzi walking toward the middle of the road.
The rain wasn’t that big, yet it was the biggest rain in my entire life. Below is the content of the letter. Did Yingzi know?
“Ma, I am going to marry Yingzi next month.”
(2006)