Shirley Yang

Shirley Yang never knows if she truly likes winter or not, when the first crisp cold travels through her nostrils that it almost freezes the hair inside, she immediately feels like her soul is being lifted out from her body. She loves the refreshing feeling that she can only feel in the wintertime, not fall, not spring, not to mention the hot, humid and suffocating summer. But when the cloudy and gloomy days have been going on for weeks, and the coldness seems to stop her from walking outside successfully, she would also curse the weather secretly. No, she doesn’t want other people to know that there are moments even when she, who always claims to love winter and snow, sometimes is sick of this kind of weather.

It is a week before Christmas; Shirley has already started her winter break. She has one more year to work till her retirement, so she is not worried about work at all, not like some of her coworkers, who still reply to emails on their vacation days. She doesn’t understand the younger generation, some of them don’t seem to care about anything, while some of them care about their job too much. Since she started working, she always knows when to dedicate at work and when to slack, she always tells the younger coworkers, “Don’t spend too much of your time here, you must have more important things to spend time on.”Most of time, her coworkers just smiled at her and started with “I know, but…”

There is always a but, Shirley thinks every time, they always say they know, but they don’t know anything.

She decides to go to the mall to kill some time. Shirley always loves holiday season, the Christmas music that she can never get tired of listening to, the smell of all kinds of fragrance that you don’t get to smell other than during Christmas time, and the crowds, she normally hates crowded area, but except during holiday season, because most of people just look so happy, ‘Maybe this is the only time of the year they are truly happy.’ Shirley already convinced herself this is a fact long time ago. She remembers when she was young, her parents always told her that this was not their festival, and she would have to wait till Lunar New Year to get her gifts. If there is only one thing she doesn’t like about Christmas, it must be that memory from her parents, and because of that, she never truly likes Lunar New Year, that’s also why she never celebrated it since both her parents passed away.

Shirley is now sitting in a Starbucks inside of the mall, it’s quite busy today in the mall even though it’s a weekday and many people are still at work. She has ordered a small cup of cappuccino and sits down at a quiet corner inside the coffee shop. A family of four are sitting next to her, two young kids, who look like around 5, are running around when the mom is trying to tell them to stop, and the dad is busy scrolling on his phone.

“Mommy, why does she look so sad?” The girl finally stopped and asked her mom. The mom shushes her right away. That’s when Shirley noticed the girl was talking about her.

“But she does look sad!” Now it’s the boy who says that. Shirley is now looking at him directly into his eyes.

“And she is scary!” The boy almost starts to cry.

“Sorry about that.” The mom turns around and says to Shirley.

Shirley doesn’t say anything, she just shrugs and looks away. She can see her own reflection through the glass, she spent a few more minutes on her hair this morning, she has short hair now since it’s much easier to take care of, she also has given up dying her hair and just let the gray color grow naturally. The only makeup she has put on today is the lipsticks, at this age, she doesn’t care much about how she looks, as long as she looks clean.

‘Kids, no manner at all.’ Shirley thinks to herself, she bets that the husband listens to his wife all the time because he surely knows he doesn’t do a damn thing at home and he’d better keep his mouth shut whenever there is an argument or just complain from his wife. She doesn’t blame the younger generation, in her mind, no kid has manner and they are all some little assholes, including herself when she was little. She starts thinking about her little brother, whom she was not very nice to when they were both kids, she doesn’t blame him at all for not contacting or visiting her, he and his family live in another side of the country and they barely talk to each other anymore, occasionally his kids would mail some cards to her during holidays, but she hasn’t got anything this holiday season. As she is thinking about them, a strange voice calls her name from nowhere.

“Shirley! Is that you?”

Shirley turns around, it takes her one second to remember who the lady standing not far is. She looks like she is in her forties and has a long red dress on with an even redder jacket on the top, her long red hair falls on her shoulder, Shirley feels like a giant red cloud is moving toward her.

“I knew it was you, Frank told me to not be rude,” she turns around and taps her husband’s arm, he stands behind her with a fake smile on his face. “How are you Shirey?”

“Good, just enjoying myself.” Says Shirley. “Are you off today too? It’s so good to see the mall is packed, I remember there were a few years nobody wanted to come to the mall, but now it seems like the mall is back! Oh, how I miss the time when I was a teenager, the mall was like the best spot to hang out in the whole world! How is life treating you? Oh my god, when was the last time we saw each other? It must be at least two years, right?” The woman sounds like a miracle just happened.

Shirley can’t help from thinking about when they met last time. She met Catherine from work, Catherine used to work in the same company as her, then she left the company about two years ago, Shirley is pretty sure they haven’t met each other since she left.

“About two years, that was when you left.” Said Shirley numbly.

“Do you remember Frank? We had so much fun at the party right before I left.” Catherine reaches her husband’s arm and holds it. Shirley doesn’t know how he can keep the fake smile for so long.

Of course, Shirley remembers him, a handsome man who was flirting with almost every woman in the ball room the whole night, including herself, though she didn’t spend much time talking to him. That was a fun night, Shirley admits in her head.

“It was a fun night.” Said Shirley, “Nothing is the same since that.”

“Oh, I heard about it, the owner sold the company, and they changed all the policies, how sad, we used to have fun all the time at work.” Catherine said with a pitiful tone.

“Well, I don’t think it’s a bad change, someone has to work so the company can make money to pay everyone.” Shirley looks away when she says it. Catherine seems to finally realize Shirley is not in the mood to talk, “Well, we are so behind on our Christmas gifts, so we will keep going. Oh, I look forward to your retirement party! I heard it’s coming soon!”

Shirley doesn’t know who told her that, but she surely is not having a retirement party, or maybe some of her workers want to give her a surprise. She doesn’t care.

“Have fun!” Shirley finally squeezes a smile at the end and waved Catherine bye. Her husband still has the fake smile till the last second in her sight.

Shirley doesn’t like to make friends at work, they are just coworkers and they don’t need to know too much about her personal life, they know how they gossip behind each other’s backs, and they know the managers listen to everything they say. The reason why Shirley chooses accounting as her job is because she doesn’t have to deal with people all the time, she never thinks of climbing the corporate ladder, she has no desire to manage other people, nor she needs a lot of money to support a whole family, she lives by her own and she just needs a steady income so she can sit comfortably at home without being bothered by other people.

She starts thinking about the party Catherine just mentioned, she has to admit that Cathy was one of the very few coworkers she was close to at work, she might be annoying sometimes, but she was still kind enough to always talk to her though Shirley knows she can be awkward in the office. Thus, when she saw Frank talking to different women in the party while touching them on their back or arm purposely, she couldn’t help by feeling bad for Catherine. She didn’t know if Catherine cared for it or not back then but now, she knows she must not care that much since they are still together. When Frank was chatting with her, he kept complimenting how nice her make up was and he also held her hand for a while just to tell her how gorgeous her ring was.

“The ring is from my great great grandmother back in China, it’s made by pure jade.” Shirley was tipsy that night, she kind of enjoyed flirting with Frank.

“Well, it sure looks expensive, just like you.” Frank was still holding her hand when he was speaking.

Shirley remembered how handsome he looked that night, he looked much younger and fitter than today, his hair was combed, shining and smooth, his hazel-colored eyes were the brightest she had ever seen, his jaw line was so clear, and she could tell he must be a sporty person. And his hand, till this day, she still remembers how gentle and strong that hand was.

“Hope you don’t mind, Cathy said you have worked in the company for over thirty years, but you look like you were just around my age. May I know what your secret is?” Frank squeezed her hand a little bit when he was speaking.

Shirley laughed and said, “Oh Frank, you are being too nice. I am probably your mother’s age but thank you for saying that.”

Frank laughed and had another sip of his whiskey. That was when Catherine walked by and asked Frank to meet her boss. Shirley didn’t even remember when Frank let go of her hand.

Shirley is never married, nor does she think she will. When she was younger, she had few relationships and none of them went well and ended up breaking her heart. As she gets older, she slowly loses hope of finding her so-called true love. She met her first boyfriend when she was in college, his name was Leo, she was naïve enough to think all he wanted was to have a family with her and they could live together till they were old, she gave him everything she had back then, including her virginity, but the relationship only lasted for less than a month when she found out he had been dating other girls at the same time. Till this day, she still doesn’t like anyone whose name is Leo, the name just makes her feel sick.

Her last relationship was also the closest to getting married, that was twenty years ago, she was no longer a young girl anymore and she already knew how the real world runs. One of her coworkers invited her to a party and they met at the party, he was not Shirley’s type by looking, so she didn’t pay attention to him at all at the beginning. It was not till the end of the party that he walked to her and started talking with her. His name was Sam, and he was Shirley’s coworker’s husband’s friend, by talking to each other, they found out they had lived in the neighborhoods next to each other, it was not a formal and fancy party but Shirley still dressed properly with a long green dress which she usually not wore, but Sam, he just wore a pair of jeans and a wide T-shirt covering his beer belly, Shirley could even see the stain on the jeans. Sam told her he was an electrician and had recently been divorced. He sounded enthusiastic, whenever he was talking, his charisma was turned on like someone clicked a button, which made Shirley forget about his unfit clothes, his belly and his untrimmed beard. When he asked for her number, she didn’t hesitate much and gave it to him.

Sam was a very caring person, that was what she liked the most about him, and she knew how much he cared about and loved her. He had a five-year-old girl from his previous marriage who was living with her mom, and he always asked Shirley’s opinion whenever he was planning something with his daughter, which Shirley appreciated a lot. She is never a kid’s person, but she is also not cold-blooded. She wouldn’t say she had got along with his daughter, but she didn’t mind spending time with her together. Sam knew exactly when she was not happy or happy about something, even though she barely told him how she felt, he knew her more than her own brother or even her parents. She felt lucky to have met him when they were together. But there was only one thing that bothered her, Sam was not as active in their bedroom, Shirley remembered the first time when they had sex, it was she who initiated it by sitting on his lap while they were watching a movie together on the couch, since then, she could only remember a couple of times that she didn’t make the first move, and as time went by, she started to initiate less and less, after a few months, they barely had any sex.

When Sam asked her to marry him, she hesitated, she was not even forty yet and she was not ready to live a life without sex.

“I am sorry Sam; I don’t think I ever want to get married.” That was the only thing she said to him, she then left and never saw him again. Sam wanted to talk to her multiple times, even her coworker asked her what went wrong, but she was just not feeling comfortable talking about it back then.

Right now, sitting here in the Starbucks in the mall, Sam comes to her mind easily, she wonders if he is happy now with a family loves him, she wishes she could have talked about why she didn’t say yes to his proposal, she wishes she could have told him how great a person he was and how much she enjoyed spending time with him, she wishes they could have talked about the concern over their relationship earlier so all could have been clarified and maybe, just maybe, they could have married now, her life would be much different. Would she like that life better? She doesn’t know. But sometimes, especially at night, she really just wants to have someone sleep next to her, there is no need to hug, or even touch, she just wants to hear someone’s breathing other than her own.

Her dating life after she broke up with Sam was not as easy as she expected, Shirley firmly believes that the world is not set to be friendly to women, there are always women younger, hotter and willing to do more things for the men, no matter how old or ugly they become. Among the guys she has dated those years, only a handful of them she could say were decent to her, some were racists, some were cheating behind their wife, and she almost got raped once, and some just didn’t even treat women like someone equal to them. And Shirley herself, ‘Thank God’ she always says to herself, because time has been nice to her, she barely got sick and she has been healthy and fit as always, though she is not the beautiful young girl she used to be, the girl with long black hair well below shoulder, the girl with firm breasts and always fit nice dresses perfectly, the girl who had guys after her often. She can’t tell since when she was labeled as a difficult person to deal with, a woman that is so dry and boring that no man wants to date her again. What’s the point of being healthy if time has robbed other things of you?

Out of the window, there are more people coming to the mall, a group of teenagers stand in front of her, they don’t seem to notice Shirley, but they have blocked her view of the mall. Shirley can hear their conversation clearly.

“Oh bro, your dad is so dope, how can you let him treat you like that?” The boy looks like in his fifteen or sixteen. The other boy didn’t answer, instead he keeps rambling something she doesn’t quite understand, either about a girl or a boy, who knows.

The boy who asked the question reminds Shirley of her brother. He was not the smartest kid she knew but he was a kind one, and she (till this day) still feels bad about how she treated her younger brother, who always wanted to play with her. She didn’t do anything terrible, but most of time she just ignored him. What was she doing when he asked her to play? She can’t remember anymore. Her parents always told her to watch her brother since she was almost ten years older than him, and she would scream back to them that no one wanted to play with anyone so much younger than them.

She barely thinks of her parents anymore, her parents worked very hard when Shirley and her brother were young, especially before they had her brother. Shirley barely remembers the time her parents spent time with her when she was a child, though she was the one who took care of them for at least ten years till they both passed away. Sarcastically, they made up the time they should have spent with her during her childhood when she was in her fifties. During the time living with her, they would treat her like a kid again, her mom would ask her what she wanted to eat all the time, her dad would tell her to drive slowly and watch out for the bad people like she didn’t know how to survive without their reminders. At first, Shirley felt happiness and fulfillment, like she had never felt before, she was always jealous of how close other people were to their parents, that was why when their dad got sick, she was the one who offered to have them live with her. As time went on, she started to get irritated more and more often, every time her mom told her to eat healthier, every time her dad asked for help on his phone though she had told him many times about how to use it. And her brother, who her parents had seen him as the best thing that happened in their life, had barely visited them, not even made phone calls.

“Oh, boys are different, they don’t express their feelings like girls.” That’s what Shirley’s mom always said whenever Shirley complained to them, which made Shirley sick whenever she heard it.

And he is not even that successful, at least in her mind. Her brother Tom teaches at a university far from where she lives. From what she knows, he recently got his tenure, she knows it’s a big deal, that’s why he called her, which he barely does.

The group of teenagers left the window area which gave back Shirey’s view of the mall. She has drunk almost the whole cup of coffee, and she is now thinking if she needs another one. She sees the boy who reminded her of her brother going to a store, she wishes they could have stayed around for longer.

She always wonders if her parents thought she was successful, they never said anything about her career, she suspects they didn’t even know what she does. They knew she worked in a company, doing some job related to numbers, which they were not interested in at all. Before they retired, they ran a small Chinese restaurant nearby, they always told her and her brother that they didn’t care what they studied but they would have to go to a college and get a degree. Throughout her whole life, she has been following her parents’ lead no matter how hard she tries to deny it. The way she dresses herself, how she chooses her career, how she chooses a dating partner, how she chooses whom she wants to hang out with. She doesn’t realize how she has made every single decision exactly like what her parents would do until she looks back on the decisions.

She remembers her parents’ last moments, the way they looked at both of her and her brother, the last word her mom told her was to ask her to take care of her brother, “Take care of Tom for me, Shirley, I would be relieved.” Shirley didn’t think much at that moment, but later she kept thinking, who would take care of her, after all, Tom had his family around him, but she was all by herself. That was also why it made her sadder for her dad’s pass away, her dad left them in a sudden from a heart attack, though he never said anything sweet like other fathers she knows, he never singled out her from her brother, he always use they when he talked about his children, “They need to be more cautious on spending money”, “They would be happy to hear from us”, “They are having a much better life than us”…

Shirley has no doubt that her parents loved her very much, maybe not as much as her brother, if you can compare loves. But she knows she was loved, there is no need to find proof, she just knows it. Because of that, she never feels she needs to sacrifice or compromise to find a partner, not even after her parents passed away. Somehow, she almost feels like her parents never left her but just attached to her, like three of them have merged into one person. Maybe that’s why she barely thinks of them, just like you don’t always look in the mirror unless it’s needed.

“Do you need a refill for your drink?” An employee of the store walks by and asks Shirley, which pulls her back to real life from her endless thought.

“No, thanks, I think I am good.” Shirley looks at her emotionlessly. She then stands up and walks out of the coffee shop. She doesn’t like how they nudge the customers in such a subtle way, for God sakes, she just wants to sit by her own without feeling alone.

Now Shirley is wandering in the mall aimlessly, she doesn’t need to buy anything from here, she already ordered gifts for her nephew and niece online and the gifts will be shipped directly to their house, she has no friends that she will see during the holiday season, sometimes she wonders if they count her as their friend.

Shirley walks into a puppy store, this may be the favorite store in the whole mall, every time when she comes to the mall, she always stops here. Shirley loves animals, she used to have dogs all the time when she lived by herself, but since her parents moved in and they were strongly against of the idea of having an animal living with them, Shirley hasn’t had another dog since her last dog died not too long after her parents moved in, his name was Jasper, a happy and handsome Labrador, and he was ran over by a car in the neighborhood. Shirley still dreams about Jasper once in a while, more often than she dreams about her parents, he was such a good boy, Shirley thinks about him whenever she sees other dogs.

When Shirley walks out from the store, she is holding a puppy in her arms. She has never bought a dog from a puppy store before, all the dogs she previously owned were adopted from local shelters, she never trusted those puppy mills. But somehow today, on a day that everyone has smile on their faces, on a day when no one should be alone, she has decided to treat herself nicely like she never did.

It’s already dark when Shirley walks out of the mall, snowflakes are falling from the dark sky gently, the puppy in her arm is trying to lick the snow that just fell on his nose.

“Oh, JJ, look, it’s snowing, do you like snow?” Shirley holds him tightly in her arm and cries out loud. She decides to name him Jasper Junior, but instead, she calls him JJ.

What a beautiful world, Shirley thinks. She can feel the warmth of JJ’s soft body, Shirley has never felt so content before, with JJ in her arms, with the snow falling on them, she finally has a big smile on her face.