All Posts

A-leng drags her foot when she walks.  I understand that a car struck her as she crossed the road in Meishan a few years back.  It happened right after her husband died; they had lived together as man and wife for eight years.  She lost the right to live in his house and struggled to find a room to rent. The only work she can do is trimming the betel nuts off of the branches.  She tells me they work long hours from nine in the morning, through the lunch hour, and into the night until past midnight.

A-leng borrowed some money from me under the pretense of going to Taipei for a couple of months until the Betel Nut season rolls around—in September.  The next week she came to my house again, hoping I would give her another thousand, saying that “the big fat lady where she once lived” took her thousand because she insisted she owed it to her for past rent.

“Where have you been staying this past week during the typhoon?” The typhoon dumped a lot of rain, and the wind blew lots of debris, loose walls and billboards, making it very dangerous to be in. To make matters worse, it moved very slowly, belting the area for three full days

“I stayed in the Meishan Park.  I slept on the benches.”  I know there is a café’ and Meishan plum snacks store at the top of the park.  Still, it is hard to imagine how she survived the week.

I never know what to believe, because A-leng’s stories change over time.  I had asked her if “that man”—an elderly street musician, a saxophonist—was still in her life.  She denied it.  But then she said that he, too, along with a number of creepy men, stayed in the park.

Over the three years I have known A-leng, I have pieced together some details of her life.  I know she has been married twice.  She divorced twice because of violence.  One of the husbands used an iron rod to beat her.  The first time she bore two girls and left them to her mother-in-law to raise when they were only preschoolers.  The second marriage produced  four children—three girls, and one boy.  This marriage ended because her husband’s friend did not like her and influenced her husband to divorce her. But she, also, said that she did not like him because he was violent.  She left the children when they were in their early teens.

Now, two of those girls work together in Taipei doing the make-up for dead people.  They make good money, and I wonder if their income is what is keeping A-leng from qualifying for some social welfare.  A-leng insists that the girls do not care for her and will not help her.

I wonder why she was denied a Disability ID and stipend when the doctor certified that she has a mild disability.  I heard that it was because her father had property.  A-leng and her siblings, she says, swear that there is no property.  Their father gambled it all away.

“If I don’t get some help,” my sixty-three-year old friend says, “I will commit suicide!”

She shocked me with another piece of the puzzle which is her life.  When she was seven years old, her drunkard father took her to the train station to take her for a doctor’s visit because her mother had to work.  She looked at him, and said, 

     “You don’t really want to take me, do you?”

     “Want to take you?  No!  The only thing that matters to me is my next drink!” Then he pushed her onto the tracks!

     “A young policeman lifted me out of the trench, but he was crushed by the speeding train.”

     “What? Are you telling me your father pushed you down onto the tracks?  And the policeman jumped down onto the tracks to save you, but then he couldn’t get out?”

     “I was too small to help him out, and my father said, ‘Just ignore him!’  I’ll never forget it.  Never.  He would have been eighty-three years old this year if he had lived.”