Chapter 2:Myself
I don’t know where I came from. Nor do I know my parents. All my earliest memories were from when I was three years old, because that was when I started working. I used to work under an old man. He was big and physically stronger than the other elders. He was a man feared by the others. Rumors say that he used to be a city dweller and was also the richest of all the people. He lived in the top regions of the slum—you could say the “privileged land.” No one was there other than him and me.
I don’t know whether I was even related to this man. He never referred to me as such. He didn’t even call me by name. I didn’t have a name. Only a single, “Oi brat, come here!” was the closest thing I had. I never bothered to make a new one. Everyone already knew me… the kid of the old man. He only took me under his wing and no one else. I don’t know why. Thinking back now, being under his wing is what saved my life—and also the reason I managed to live far better than the others.
My job was simple—tend to the potato farm, collect water from the makeshift plastic sheets, and take care of the house, which was a simple tin hut with one room.
Yes, it sounds cruel to have a three-year-old child work for others, but you must understand that this is not a normal place for kids to grow up… nor anyone in general. The old man, whom I used to call “Jiji,” wasn’t exactly an affectionate man, but he was kind enough to give me some money to buy oranges.
Here comes the interesting part. Let me tell you the story of the orange seller by the river.
I never understood why people called her that—especially the “river” part, considering there was no river in the area and the closest one was six miles away. The story goes that the orange seller, who was an old lady, once found a rotten orange on the side of the city. Fruits are a delicacy, rotten or not. She ate it with gusto and spat the seeds out. She didn’t know that plants grew from seeds, nor did she know how to grow an orange tree. Land suitable for crops was extremely rare; Jiji’s land was one example. Although his potatoes weren’t the healthiest, they were more than enough.
It was as if by fate that the seeds landed on a fertile patch of the slum without her knowing. She went about her day, and days later when she returned, she saw a tiny sapling. You can imagine how wide her eyes must have gone. I heard that she began treating the plant, sacrificing her own drinking water just to water it. There was no certainty that it would grow, but she kept watering it, hoping that one day it would bear the same fruit she once tasted.
And just like that, the tree grew, and oranges began to appear. They weren’t the juiciest and were mostly fibrous, but to the slum people, they were gourmet. She was, in my opinion, a shrewd and smart woman. She saw how badly people wanted the oranges, so she started her business—the only business that existed in the slum. She charged money for the fruits and used it to care for the tree. If sales were low, she ate the oranges herself, giving her both food and income. She gave free oranges to the kids because she knew how badly children needed food. After she began doing that, the number of kids actually increased.
She used to charge me money because I was Jiji’s kid. I didn’t mind. I had money. In a day, I would get half a cooked potato and oranges to fill my stomach. And that was more than enough.
The old man… I was always curious about him. But I never asked him anything. I wanted to ask why people feared him, why people distanced themselves whenever I walked down the path. I never asked. But I guess it didn’t matter. I was just trying to live and be able to tell the tale the next day.
When I was free from work, Jiji would give me some spare paper, like old newspaper. Paper was rare, as most people used it for shelter or clothing. I used to grab burnt wood and use the charcoal to draw. Sometimes to write. Jiji was the only person who knew how to read and write. He taught me whenever he felt like it. That’s why I never learned fully, and I didn’t have the guts to tell him to teach me properly. I tried reading the papers—yellowish, torn, and marked. Some of it made sense, but most were too difficult for me. What I liked the most were the pictures. I always wondered… how did they paste pictures on papers so smoothly? Were they drawn? Or was there some other magic I didn’t know yet?
Sometimes I tore those pictures out and decorated the house with them. Jiji didn’t mind, so I continued.
At night, I would look up at the sky. Jiji used to tell me that skies in cities were clouded, and he couldn’t see anything. But here? The sky was clear. I couldn’t count the number of stars that clustered the night. And how I loved the moon. It was so pretty and so… innocent. I wanted to know what it was like to be ignorant. To be coddled and cared for. To know nothing of the world.
But my bare feet rested on the cold soil, and every time it reminded me that it was just a fleeting dream, like those faded stars I used to draw on the paper.
