September 4, 2016 - 20:12
Just like how Jordan shifted her consciousness from race and class and gender, I’ve never stop finding who I am, but from different aspects.I’ve always wondered if there’s somebody on earth that share the same thoughts and interest and characteristic of mine. If there’s really an another ‘you’ on the planet, what should you say when the encounter happens, like a miracle? Without being aware of that question, I said ‘I like your dress’ when I first met Jing, at my age of 12.
Jing was happened to rush into my life on the first day of our Junior school. She was as the same height. She had long straight hair as I was and also a short gleamy hair fringe on the forehead. Her eyes and ears were as small as mine. But all those things were ignored when I was overwhelmed by the conversant blue color on her dress :’I like your dress…I have the same one.’ She smiled at me with gentle voice:’ I like them too.’ I stood in front of her, pondering what to say next. I was startled by someone who looks so similar as me and I was, at that time, thinking maybe we doomed to be best friends.
I was aware of our connection even more when I found our common interests. I was invited to her home after two weeks and she showed me all of her dresses, which are the exact size of mine. She put her clothes on me with great excitement and passion like dressing up a doll, while I love standing next to her in front of a mirror—how similar we look like! We both love watching horror movies which we watch together at every weekend night and cover each other’s eyes with our palms. I found posters of my favorite bands in her bedroom, which we can talk about all day long. But what excite us most was making jokes of every classmate on our class with no offends and laughed out loud till we both got stomachache, my brother was always thought my laughing point was queer, but she’s the one who could get them all.
We spent nights and days lying on her bed chatting randomly, cuddling each other, from the most trifle things to our wildest dreams. The connection became even stronger by our similar backgrounds. Jing has a family which her dad makes most of the decisions and takes most controls. She complained about how her dad hurts her feeling when he threw away her violin and locked her in her room, restricting her from doing anything but study, reminded me of my own, that how I was trying to hide and escape to read novels when I was supposed to do the homework and how I reprehended by my dad when I returned home late. I couldn’t remember how the mood then became so melancholy and how we spoke out secrets out to the stars. Then I reached out my hands to grab hers.
That’s how we grew close. ‘The ultimate connection must be the need that we find between us.’ Written by June Jordan, ‘Its not only who you are, in other words, but what we can do for each other that will determine the connection.’ We were like two independent plants now grew together, I believed she’s the another ‘me’ on the planet that I was looking for.
Once when we accidentally came into the topic of ‘future husband’, like most best buddies would do, our opinions differed. We had some disagreements before but they never harmed, however this time, we argued fiercely. I told her that I want to find some one who would respect and support me but girls need to rely on their own, while she thought her ideal life was to find a rich man that she wouldn’t have to work again, all she had to do were hangout with friends, watch soap opera all day long and have bunch of dresses which are more than enough. I understood the reason she says so would probably because her mom lived that way, but I can’t suppress my ‘indignant query’:’What if your husband treat your badly or takes most controls of your life?’ ‘That’s not something I could decide,’she answered calmly as it is,’Man were born to be like this. That’s what husbands do.’ I was stunned.After finding out she’s serious, I felt despise at my first time.
Jing seemed so resolute that I gave up persuading her at last. We quickly shifted to other topics about our favorite bands and musics. Later on, she still trying to engage me into girls talk, we still chat a lot, but I knew something had changed underneath. If the argument on that day was a seed planted between us ,then it’s just gradually grew up until it became a giant tree which blocked both of us eventually. ‘the student and I had moved away from each other,’ just like Jordan in her novel, this is how we moved apart.
I’ve rarely heard from Jing for a couple of years. When recall those childhood memories, it’s childish for me to search for all the details and to argue they are right or wrong. I couldn’t tell why a 12-year old girl who never knew what marriage is like could ever take this issue so seriously, nor could I manage to answer how would our relationship be like if we hadn’t come to that question. The answers are doomed to be oblivion. What I could tell is that Jing is not ‘another me’ on earth and we were never that similar as I once thought.
‘Race and class and gender remain as real as the weather. But what they must mean about the contact between two individuals is less obvious and, like the weather, not predictable.’