[Blue Jacaranda] 蓝花楹 - Chapter 9 何木屋语2021-10-09 08:27:22
Blue Jacaranda Chapter 9
澳洲：何木
It swelled, and it touched smoother and the veins under the skin seemed thicker. This was what her breasts would feel in the days prior to her period.
‘So, it should be okay,’ she thought, ‘it is coming.’
During the experience with her boyfriends, the fear of getting pregnant had been a constant mental affliction. It was a price she had to pay for her desire for a man’s company. Of course they used condoms, but even herself disliked this ‘anti-intimacy’ layer, let alone the boys. Therefore, its proper usage had never been strictly followed.
So far she had been very lucky, hundreds of her fears in the last few years had proved false.
‘Why doesn’t a man have to endure this?’ she sighed, ‘Why aren't women as free as men?’
She dressed up, and began to decide what to do for the day. The holiday would soon finish, and the final year of her university would begin. Suddenly the new life was emerging on the horizon, painting a future coloured by the success of her career as an artist, by many of her possible romantic love affairs, and perhaps, at further distance, a happy family landing.
She missed Beijing, and she would definitely go back to China after her study and carry on her life adventures in a country native to her, much bigger and more promising than places like Australia. Perhaps only one thing that could possibly alter her plan, that was if someone she really loved would ask her to follow him.
Could that man be Peter? Oh, no… for some reasons, she didn’t feel ‘really’ attached to him. In her future life, Peter was scarcely present in the picture.
Then, who?
The figure of Cooper came to her mind, Oh… this bastard … but, honestly, if one day he came back to her and asked her to marry him, and to stay in Australia or wherever he wanted to go, would she agree?
Ehmm.. she probably will... Oh, my god.. what does this mean? Do I really love Cooper that much, or just out of jealousy? And how about Peter, who is so caring and reliable, who seems to love her more with every day passed? Hasn't she been happy with him since the resumption of their relationship? But why he is not included in her imagined future life?
‘Well, if I am not really in love with Peter, then I should not keep dating him,’ she decided, drinking a glass of orange juice made with the juicer. ‘I should not hurt an innocent boy.’
A few days later, her period had not come as she had anticipated, though she still hoped it would come. After all, the damned dates that had to plague her adult life every month had never been 100% accurate.
Nevertheless her unrest was growing. Her breasts were still unusually taut, her body feeling strange, and her heartbeat seemed faster and unsteady.
Then, the next day, it did come, and with it, a massive relief, but her heart sank again, for it had stopped prematurely, and the amount of blood was only a little, almost negligible.
This couldn’t be her regular, her wisdom told herself.
With escalating fear, she went to buy a pregnancy test kit, and the test result?
Two red lines!
Oh, my god, how could this happen?
The anxiety made her weak. At once she thought of her grandma, from whom she would seek support in a crisis like this, just as what she had done when she, at 12, saw her first blood staining her clothes.
But was it a false positive? She wished so badly, though at the bottom of her heart, she was certain she had got hit finally this time.
Slowly, her mind was back to reality, a reality where Peter was the centre of gravity. A level of resentment was geared up towards him, the culprit who had caused all of this. Now that she had fallen into the mud, the only person she could drag together with was Peter.
“Peter!” she texted him, “What are you doing?!”
But Peter, at that moment, was talking with Rose at the Massage, and could’t use his phone. Rose had warned him a few times already not to use it at work.
Without receiving his reply, Melody’s spirit grew toxic. “Peter!!! What are you doing? If you don’t get back to me this minute, I am going to kill you, and dump you into the sea!!!!”
Still nothing coming over, she called his number, but it just kept ringing.
Her fury ran off. Her strange body seemed to encourage her to do something extreme. She grabbed a wine glass from the table and smashed it onto the floor.
Stunned by the breaking sound, with splinters scattering all over the place, she melted down by the table, and burst into tears.
When, half an hour later, she heard the messages streaming in, and then a ceaseless phone ringing, she was still bent at the place, sobbing her heart out.
At last, she picked it up, and texted, “What do you want???”
“Melody, what is going on? My boss was here just now, so I couldn't take your calls, are you okay?”
“Okay or not, none of your business!! Go back to your boss, play with those whores, I don’t care.”
“Melody, what is happening, can you just tell me please?” Peter begged. “Anything has happened? Please don’t be upset. Wait for me. I'm going to ask for a leave and will be at Rhodes in half an hour...”
Melody hung up. The stress in Peter’s voice, and the fact he was coming to rescue her, was soothing her, and her fury seemed to slowly dissipate. When she managed to get up she was able to produce a bitter smile.
She treaded carefully to avoid those sharp shiny pieces. She went to her wine cabinet, picked a bottle of Er-guo-tou, and poured herself a cup of it.
When Peter texted that he had arrived, she was unreasonably excited. She checked herself in the mirror, wiping the trace of her tears, feeling satisfied with the rosiness of her cheeks. Then, as she turned the door knob, about to go out to meet Peter, she felt against the idea of staying in her car to talk about the serious matter with him, or in any public places they might go.
“Can I just ask him to come up to my apartment?” She was thinking, and the voice in her head grew louder, that she should break the rule and get him up here. It was such a crisis, him being the only person she needed so badly.
“Come up to Room 4103 of building 6, when you come to the entrance, press the room number...”
In her drinking, the time didn't seem long before she heard the buzz of the security box, and short afterwards, the knock at the door. She felt her hands shaking. It was the first time she had allowed another person into her living place, apart from her parents.
The moment she saw Peter, she put her arms around his neck, crying out, “Peter, what can I do?”
Peter, at total loss, thought her parents, or some other important trees, must have died. Stumbling into the room, and with Melody’s weight on his shoulder, Peter couldn’t appreciate the grandeur of the place.
Then he noticed the sharp glass pieces on the floor, and at once seemed to have figured out Melody’s real trouble - breaking a wine glass. “Oh, is that upsetting you? Did you hurt yourself?”
Quickly he grabbed her hands, one after another, expecting to see the evidence that she had been injured. “So you are okay, you must be more careful next time,” and without giving her time to explain things, he went back to the mess, “Let me clean this first, it is very dangerous.”
Melody was a little amused by his ignorance. By now her anger as well as her resentment towards him had largely disappeared. She felt content by his expeditious care, and decided to postpone the release of her news.
Watching him shoving about the place, she had a dreamy feeling that Peter was indeed a good husband, right now mending the chaos a heartless wife had caused. Oh my god, how lovely is he? Don’t I love him at all? The young man who really loves me, and cares for me, and who is at this moment allowed to enter my sacred place. She was suddenly unsure of her 'love' ...
“Ouch,” Peter cried out, his hand flinching.
“Peter,” Melody rushed over, picked up his hand, and seeing the blood oozing out of his index finger, she placed her mouth straight onto it and began to suck. “You must be careful,” she spoke tenderly.
“It is okay, just a little cut, you leave here, Melody, let me finish this, there are a lot of tiny pieces that may hide in the corners and nooks.”
“Better leave it to my hourly worker,” she replied, but Peter kept searching for the tiny pieces, so she left him and went back to her drink.
The reaction of Peter, when later Melody told him of her pregnancy, was not really melodramatic. “How could this have happened? I thought we had been careful enough?” he said, raising an innocent face.
“Careful Enough? How many times have you put it on only half way?”
The guilt, thus aroused, made him speechless for a long moment, before he could speak again. “But are you sure? Is the test really correct?”
“99% successful rate as it claims, so what do you think? There is no luck now, Peter,” said Melody, her tears on the brink, “so what can we do?”
“Don’t worry, don’t worry ...”
“What do you mean by 'don't worry’? Of course you don’t worry, it is not you who got pregnant. I have friends who have done abortion, and fear they would never get pregnant again.”
If Melody wished to seek much technical support from Peter, she would be disappointed, for Peter had only one woman, Melody, in his experience, knowing far less than herself about the type of problems and the ways how to deal with them.
Slowly, the first shock of the bad news had run its course. She became more willing to face reality. ‘Well, it was not a big deal,’ she thought, sipping the spirit that had helped calm her down, while Peter’s attention was for the minute diverted to the environment.
“Melody, how large a place and what a luxury you are living in,” Peter said, going from one room to another as a renter doing his inspection. “This is far more splendid than I had ever imagined, look at the large oil painting on the wall, is it a work of some famous artist?”
Melody didn’t answer him. She touched her belly, and had a sense of slow satisfaction. Isn’t it exciting, really, to think that one of her eggs and one of his sperm had not been wasted and decided to create a life?!
Indulged in a motherhood flowing through her, Melody felt a sudden sensation around her vagina, that seemed desired to encounter the very life inside her, and since it had yet to be palpable, the desire was reverted to a man’s penis.
She went towards Peter, and started to kiss him. In the large and comfortable bed, she had at last possessed Him, with a Man’s root growing deep in her uterus.
She screamed, at the height of her orgasm. She was having a weird vision, that the man under her was someone else. The face seemed changing, from Cooper's, to even the face of her first man at high school, then to that of the Perfect Man in her imaginary future who must receive the brunt of her final crush.
“Peter, you need to accompany me to see the doctor.”
“Of course.”
“Peter, can you check where we go for the abortion?”
“Of course.”
“Peter, will it hurt? Will it affect my pregnancy in the future?”
“I don’t think so.”
Melody pulled his hand to her tummy, “See, your sperm has cracked my egg, your bad sperm.”
Peter was at once humorous, “It was the bag egg that had been asking for it, hehehe...”
“Peter, how about we allow the baby to grow, grow, grow and at last crack the surface of the world?”
“What a beautiful idea, Melody...”
“I know we are not ready for it, and it would be difficult for us. But don’t you think it is beautiful, that a life, Our product, is growing inside me? Oh, how beautiful it is ...”
Peter, affected by the growing mellowness in her, held her and kissed her, soothed her tight nipples, then came up with a resolution. “Melody, can’t we just marry so we have the baby?”
Melody, like affected by cold water, sobered up, “Marry? Oh my god... no, no, we are only in our twenties, not yet out of our university…”
“I mean, if you love the baby so much, there is no other option, is there?”
“No, no, no, too early, anyway, we have to abort it, oh, poor baby…”
The following days were very busy for Peter, who had to do a lot of research as where to do the abortion, about its safety, and its price, and its Medicare requirements, etc. His knowledge about women, about their bodily structures and systems and cycles, had never been so much expanded. And after her first interview with the doctor, confirming her pregnancy, her day of doing the surgical operation was set a few weeks away.
Melody, in the meantime, had asked Peter to move over to live with her, to better look after her at the special times. He was not too bad at cooking, at playing a ‘husband’ and ‘father’. Living together was indeed the true beginning of their relationship, seeing each other 360 degrees under the natural light.
As demanded by Peter, Melody had ceased to use her hourly workers for the household chores. One reason was that they were often naked, wishing nobody to bother them at any time; another reason was that Peter didn’t want to feel totally useless by not contributing anything to the household. Helping maintain the place, and treating Melody as a 'princess', would help him feel better, although nothing he did would be sufficient for the share of the potential expense for the apartment.
After the aborton, Melody felt sick for one week, and then just as she thought she had fully recovered from it, she caught a bad cold that had lasted nearly a month. Peter, therefore, had to quit his job at the Massage, stayed at home the whole time caring for Melody who would often go hysterical when feeling bad.
Peter didn't have to use his savings for the living. Melody would transfer enough money to his account for their shopping needs. While Peter had enjoyed the convenient ‘lifestyle’, he had some lingering concern that Melody was not really in love with him, and that their romance was only temporary and it would end sooner or later. Every time he ventured to broach the topic of their future, Melody would manage to evade it.
With the puzzlement in mind, he wished to obtain some advice from other people and nobody seemed to him better than Lotus, who had known him and Melody longer than most of his friends. So one day he asked her to have lunch together at a nearby Chinese restaurant.
“Well, Peter,” Lotus said, “The question is, always in regard to a relationship, do you love her?”
“Yes, I have never felt so certain of it,” Peter replied, “Put this way, if she asks me to marry her right now, I would accept it without hesitation.”
“Then, the second question is, does she love you?” asked Lotus smartly, whose face seemed very pale these days, as though she had long stayed dormant and had just come out of it.
“That is the question I am not so sure of, and I wanted to know what you think, from a woman’s point of view.”
“So, do you think she would accept you, if you ask her to marry you?”
“I had already asked her a couple of times, though not in a serious manner. But she had always brushed it off, saying we were too young.”
“Does she mention anything about your possible marriage in the future?”
“No.”
“Then, it is clear enough, to me at least, that she doesn't love you.”
“But what she said does make sense, does it not?”
“Then why you can marry her right now, but not her? She is just making excuses, especially when she has no plan for your future.”
Peter was sad, “but what should I do? Keep living with her like this until one day she jilts me?”
“Well, I don’t know. But I can tell you about my story, me with Jason. You see, I don’t particularly like him, and I feel he loves me less these days. But with no better candidate, we have been together for more than two years, sharing things and looking after each other, and because of our friendship-like relationship, we tend to have fewer quarrels, both thinking we will separate anyway after graduation, or till one of us finds a better partner and says bye bye. Perhaps, Melody thinks in the same way, while you are silly enough really into it thinking of a common future. So, I guess you will be the one who will get hurt when the time comes. And be ready, it may come sooner, see, we are only a few months away from our graduation.”
“So is she going to leave me cruelly, after what we had gone through?”
“Peter, Melody is an ambitious girl, and you and she, frankly, don’t belong to the same kind.”
“If you told me this during my first dates with her, I would agree with you entirely. But now, I am not so sure after having lived with her for the last many months. I think she really needs my care, though bad-tempered, and feels happy with my presence, so perhaps she will eventually think of me to be her suitable man?”
“Peter, you are illusional, what a woman really needs is not a babysitter. Apart from security, she needs inspiration, a fantasy of having the best person she can get in her life, especially for a person like Melody who, as an artist, would not compromise on her perfection and idealism. And you, in my understanding, was more or less a temporary substitute for her, to make up for her loss of her previous boyfriend…his name Cooper?”
“I don’t want to mention the name. Melody had never told me about him.”
“I guess, Cooper, also from Beijing, was the person she really cares for.”
Peter’s face turned gravely dark. Without speaking, he downed the whole bottle of the Qingdao beer, and quietly picked the pieces of the duck meat on a plate and chewed his misery.
Lotus was also sad, witnessing the man she loved had fallen in love with another girl who didn’t really love him. “Peter, don’t be upset, love is alway like this, never up to one’s wishes,” she then mirrored Peter’s way and emptied the whole bottle in her hand.
Peter was amazed, “Oh Lotus, thank you…but can you drink that much?”
“It is okay.”
There had been something unusual in Lotus. “Are you okay, Lotus? Your face has been very pale lately, sometimes I thought you had put on some powder.”
“No, no, not that,” said Lotus, “I don’t know, perhaps it is because of my … Well, you know, women have troubles every month.”
Assured by her words, Peter's thoughts went back to Melody, “But, sometimes, I do think Melody loves me, especially since she got pregnant, see, she had even asked me to move in to live with her.”
“Sorry for my blunt words, but I think that was a kind of convenience. We have so many convenient relationships on campus. If there were someone else she might do the same. A woman feels the weakest when she is pregnant, especially when there are no other ones to share her troubles.”
Peter was curious, “Have you? If you don’t mind?”
“Yes, twice.”
“Ah?” Peter couldn’t bring himself to believe it. Lotus had been looking so quiet and modest, totally opposite to what he felt about Melody.
“Two years with Jason, was a long time, you see.”
“Yes, I understand,” said Peter, thinking that Melody would have been pregnant many more times if he had stayed with her for that long. “So, you really don’t think Melody and I will have a future?”
Peter, like many people in love, could hardly accept the hard truth of being denied.
“I can’t say that for sure," returned Lotus, "but since you have asked me to share my perspective, that is my answer.”
'But, is there an ideal love, in the world, say, the two would love each other, truly dedicated?’
“There might be, but with very small chances.”
Peter sighed, and Lotus was inclined to touch him. ‘Oh, how much I love him!” she cried inside herself, ‘This is the man who has never known my love for him. Where can I get the sort of advice to solve my own trouble? From you Peter? Can I confess my love to you?...’
A cloud of sadness hovered over the table. Peter asked for two more beers.
At the point of their departure, Lotus did touch Peter in handshaking. It was the first time for such physical contact to occur between them. Lotus was thrilled, with beautiful colour reappearing on her face, and her throat attrited ath farewell. "Peter, don’t worry so! If she doesn’t love you, someone else will.”
Peter only smiled a bitter smile. And Lotus had to get away quickly to hide her tears from him.
That evening at Rhodes, Peter buried himself in a bad mood.
“Peter, are you okay?” Melody, who had been watching a commentary the whole day, made her first inquiry, after they had gone to bed.
He said without turning over to her. “Yes, I am okay, just thinking…”
“Thinking of what?”
“Not a big deal.”
“What kind of