Candy Given Too Late

Taga is sixteen years old. She has a father, a brother, and a mother at home. Her life is poor, but poverty is very exciting. On the day she went to the market, she acted coquettishly and asked for two toffees. Her father said he didn't like them, so he put them in his work jacket pocket. My brother sold local goods for half a month, secretly bought a pink hairpin, and hid it in the mezzanine of the bed, hoping to give it to her on her birthday. Three days later the earthquake came. Taga was overturned in the vegetable field. He got up and dug through the ruins for three hours, with his fingernails peeling off half of the ruins. She dug out her father's hunched back, like a bird with folded wings, and protected her brother's head in her arms. The toffee in my father's pocket was half melted and stained with blood and ashes. She put the candy in her mouth, squatted on the ruins and cried for the first time. She didn't shed a tear in seven days. Until the bulldozers came to push down the remaining wall, there were still family photos she drew before the earthquake on the wall, as well as the chicken with a crooked neck that her brother added. She rushed forward and wiped the dust with her sleeves. The more she wiped, the blurry the faces of the three people became. That night, she dug out something from the mezzanine of her brother's bed - a handwritten storybook with dozens of pages, and every word was crooked. The last page reads: Happy sixteenth birthday to Taga. The hairpin is pink, butterfly-shaped, and has a small piece of tape on the back: don't lose it. She put the hairpin on her head. In the early morning, I set up the cucumber stand again and cleaned and straightened my father's half-repaired farm machinery. The sun fell on the dent of the iron kettle. She squatted beside the vegetable patch and gently straightened a crooked seedling. "Dad, brother, the shelf is set up." ---