“Mum, where’s dad?”
Maria was strangely silent. Ivy watched her crouch, shrinking smaller and smaller as dusk casts, devoured by the darkness. Maria had never felt so tiny yet so daunting to Ivy. Ivy stood behind Maria, watching her all along. She wanted to go and hug her, but her feet were mysteriously grounded. When Maria turned around and found Ivy still standing there, she punished Ivy for two days without solid food, and Ivy never dared to bring her dad up again.
Maria was tough otherwise, even domineering. She was a police officer. She would wake Ivy up at 8 a.m., turn on the television for propaganda before going to work. “Learn.” Maria would instruct Ivy. “You need to be an officer. It’s the only way you can survive here.”
Life after the pandemic had been silent, static.
Ivy had not heard any other sound outside the cramped apartment since the beginning of the pandemic. Life had accumulated to a point where Ivy was on the brink of being choked by the loneliness. When Ivy’s mum turned off the television strictly at 10 p.m. every day, Ivy started to get nervous, losing any source of sound surrounding her, feeling like she was left in an expansive forest, calling out but no one could hear her. She tried to sleep off the fear, but was never able to do so because there was nothing consuming to do in the daytime that could make her tired enough to fall asleep early.
In fact, with the government privileges coming with Maria’s job as a police officer, Ivy lived a care-free life: she didn’t have to worry about supplies and safety. Yet, Ivy had always felt like a puzzle missing from her life. Feelings, passions, and expectations had been forced to shut down as Maria never allowed her any chance to think about the family’s past, the authoritarian mechanism, or the joys that could no longer exist after the lockdown. Among these, Ivy’s dad was the most strictly forbidden subject.
Ivy’s dad disappeared five years ago at the start of the pandemic, except that back then, the government didn’t admit it as a pandemic: nobody was allowed to wear protection against the virus. Although most people had forgotten the starkly opposite measures the government took, but Ivy remembered, because she remembered asking one of Maria’s colleagues why her dad disappeared. “There’s no such thing as a pandemic,” the police officer snapped. Ivy looked to her mum, but Maria was sobbing endlessly before she was also dragged away by one of her colleagues. “She will be back by tomorrow,” the police officer shut the following Ivy outside the door. The second day, everything changed: the government ruled that no one should step out of their apartment without special permission, or else they would be shot dead, and Maria started playing the propaganda on the television for Ivy to watch, non-stop.
Maria became calm, almost numb.
There was not even a trace of evidence that proved the past existence of Ivy’s dad—no photos, no conversations, no memories. Where was her dad? Who was her dad? Did she really have a family?
Pondering these questions in the choking loneliness of the lockdown, Ivy became sharper at even the slightest movements, the softest whispers across the solid soundproof walls. One night, she heard a series of familiar, soft notes from downstairs seeping through the gaps in the hardwood floor.
“Where, oh where has my little bear gone?
Oh where, oh where can he be?
With his ears short,
And his hair long,
Oh where, oh where can he be?”
“Hello…?” Ivy squeezed her voice through the gaps in the hardwood floor, a bit timid but unbelievably excited to find another trace of life. “Can I…” she paused, “listen to you sing?”
“Sure.”
“I’m Eddie, by the way.”
Listening to Eddie’s music was like picking up scattered puzzles scattered, paying every effort to picture the image of life way back before. He’d always sing the same old childhood rhyme whose name no one knows, but it made Ivy feel like she was lying on a puff of soft ice cream, only the ice cream was not iced—it was warm. Ivy felt that she could almost grasp the sunlight seeping through the crevices of her early childhood memory. She felt assured by Eddie’s rhyme.
“Where, oh where has my little bear gone?
Oh where, oh where can he be?
With his ears short,
And his hair long,
Oh where, oh where can he be?”
The singing ritual went on. Eddie and Ivy started to have more conversations other than singing. For the first time in five years, Ivy felt fulfilled when she went to bed. Sharing their memories before the pandemic and their feelings during the lockdown, they were indeed helping each other picking up the lost puzzles blown away by the choking loneliness.
“Isn’t that lyric ‘little dog’ instead of ‘little bear’?” Ivy impulsively asked one day, noticing a mistake in Eddie’s version of the childhood rhyme.
“It was because my dad changed the lyrics.”
“My nickname was bear, so my dad David changed the lyrics,” Eddie giggled. “It was a stupid name, because he thought I looked too big at my age, and I always slouched.”
“My dad… always refreshed me. Do you know what the outside world looks like now? He told me all about it, his adventures out there.”
Ivy noticed the past tense that Eddie had been using, but she pretended not to have felt anything.
“Your dad had been outside after the pandemic?” She curiously asked.
It was as if a switch was turned on in Eddie’s memory. He let out all the wonders that his dad told him.
“At the periphery of the city, there are vast areas of trees standing together, and when you go in there, you will feel that your lungs are replaced, totally refreshed; everything seems to dissolve their mysteries for you. You could still see people making their own crafts and trying to trade with each other in the city center market, although the city center is literally dust now,” Eddie talked so fast that he was almost out of his breath, filling his sentences with so many details that Ivy thought he had been there himself.
“I like listening to my dad tell all those stories on the outside so much, and he would explain how they came to form in that way. Totalitarian, power structure, agents and principles… I kept those all on my notebook.”
“My dad also took me out on his journey one time, but it was only in the neighborhood – safer. It was toward the evening, and I could see the orange red sunset seeping through windows. The color was so vibrant that I was quite worried if the windows caught on fire,” Eddie inhaled, and giggled. “You could see people doing different stuff in through their windows: cooking, baking, doing yoga, laughing, chatting… They seemed quite lively.”
Eddie paused, allowing for a moment to catch his breath, and his voice suddenly became serious. “But I always wanted to go out there myself. I want to explore how all these came into being: how they can control the people so well, how people gradually become so willing to be controlled.” His emphasis fell on the word willing. Ivy felt suddenly taken aback. She felt her chest congested.
“I don’t want to be one of them. I need to relive my life as people did before everything.”
Something sank in Ivy’s heart. A familiar feeling from the past came storming at her. It was at the beginning of the pandemic, and people thought the lockdown would only be temporary. Indeed, everything was cheerful and hopeful at first. “It’s necessary,” Ivy’s parents would say. “After this, everything will run normal again.” They played puzzles together to waste the indefinite time, but the “after this” moment never arrived.
The next day, Eddie continued with even more interesting stories he heard from his dad. “Dad would also go to one of the hidden pubs. They were hidden in one of the backrooms of subway supervision station where they believed the pandemic first broke out. But nothing was in fact in there, my dad said, nothing harmful. He said they were all friends there, but they were only allowed to talk at a very low volume. He would smuggle back bottles at one time,” Eddie laughed.
“You drank?”
“Yes! Never thought of it, huh? Well, but my dad used to drink a lot in the last days,” Eddie sighed. “Probably gave him the guts to…Never mind.”
There was silence. Ivy knew it was the guts to wander outside and risk getting shot.
Neither of them slept that night. It had been Eddie talking, and Ivy filled herself with the amazement that kept her brain excited throughout the dark. A feeling that had been churning in her stomach became clearer. When she woke up again in the day, Ivy decided to try something.
After Maria went out to work, Ivy started to look over Maria’s drawers. They were mostly empty. Yet, when Ivy was picking up her pen that rolled under Maria’s bed one time, she accidentally found on the floor a stack of letters written in inscrutable words, but Ivy could tell indistinctly that they were letters between two people, and one of them must have been Maria, lasting from five years before Ivy was born and till the day her father died. They must have been letters between her parents, only Ivy did not know how to interpret them.
Since that night, Eddie had been telling her everything he learned from his dad, and Ivy exchanged with information she tried to decipher in her parents’ letters. The two worked so passionately each night that they almost forgot to sleep for some of the days.
“It must have been a new language that her parents invented,” Eddie murmured in deep thoughts. Letting their imagination fly, Ivy and Eddie worked out a story that they believed was true. After eight idealistic years spent together in college, Ivy’s parents realized that they were the lucky few ones who had the privilege to opt for the traditional life and live affluently: having a child, taking her to singing lessons, and sending her to a private elementary school for the best education. How came Maria never talked to her about any of these? How could Maria take away her dad from her? Why did Maria make all the decisions for her since her dad’s disappearance?
***
“To protect people from the virus, the government initially decided to shut down the city for four weeks, but they found their control over the people highly effective and decided that the restrictions should last. Nothing is deadly now. Everyone gets the virus once, and an immune defense will be built,” Eddie was reading Ivy one of the scripts his father brought him from his revolutionary group.
“Isn’t that illegal?” Ivy gasped, “for the government to shut people down for no reason?”
“Do you think there are still laws? There is only the barbaric will of living, and rebel.” Eddie sounded more adamant than he ever did.
Eddie always seemed very determinant when he talked about rebel. He’d also talk about a night on which they should go on an expedition together, to escape from the enclosed environment, to really live out there, rebelling the restrictions that the government forced on everyone, but Ivy had never dared to accept the invitation. She felt that ever since she had memory, her brain had been torn between two forces, fighting to tell the other what is right or wrong. Yes, Ivy was deeply attracted by Eddie’s recount, particularly the soft sand at the beach on the edge of the city, the passion to fight for a future that she did not dare to spare her emotions to dream about. Why didn’t she have the guts as Eddie did? Why couldn’t she inherit all the amazing stories and spirits from her parents? Why was her life entirely controlled, passionless?
She leaned her head on the dusty, cold window whose other side was already frozen in the frosty weather. She felt dizzy, a burning sensation started in her forehead. Her eyelids felt heavy. She couldn’t help but close her eyes. Dreamily, she walked to her bed. When she woke up again, it was already dark, but Ivy felt strangely awake. She walked straight to the bathroom and tested for her temperature. It was high, high enough to be mistaken for an infected.
“I think it’s tonight,” Ivy went back to her room, whispered through the gaps in the wooden floor. She lay down on the floor, staring blankly at the ceiling. “I caught fever today. If I don’t run for now, then when?” After a long silence, Eddie replied concisely. “Meet you outside.”
City lights still blinked despite the empty streets. “Where are the rubbish bins? Bus stops? Mail stands?” Ivy asked before she realized that no one needed those anymore. Eddie started to run without answering Ivy’s question.
“I will bring you to more places before dark! We have so many things to relive, Ivy.”
“Where are we supposed to go after dusk casts?”
Eddie laughed. “Who cares?”
Cold, December wind blew mercilessly past their skins, but the ignition inside them kept them running and running. They passed the old middle school that Eddie’s dad went to, and none of its walls was recognizable anymore with no one restoring it for years; they passed the instrument shop that Eddie’s parents used to play guitars together; they passed the pub which Eddie’s dad used to smuggle wine from…
“Here it is!” Eddie wiped off the sweat from his forehead while it started to drizzle. Ivy couldn’t tell if it was his sweat, or drizzle, or even tears. “This is where my first memory happened. My parents took me here every weekend when I was really young. I have always wanted to find this place. My first memory has kept me going during the five years.”
“What does your first memory look like?” Ivy asked.
“Nothing clear. It was just ambiguous sunlight, so bright that it hurt my eyes, and the vibrant green grass… It was vague, but it was real. It makes me feel that I am a living human, having fulfilling memories actual experience of walking outside.”
“Do you remember what your first memory was?” Eddie paused. “Ivy, are you okay?”
Before she knew it, tears were trickling down Ivy’s face. She didn’t have a “first memory”, at least she wasn’t sure which one was the actual first, but she felt a damp cotton stuck in her chest when she heard Eddie’s first memory and saw the grass rendered greener by the drizzle. After so many years, she could finally see her father again, standing in the rain, holding out his hands to her, “Come, Ivy. Running in the rain is fun!” Maria pulled Ivy back, “You’ll get messy!” Regardless, the three of them ran recklessly in the rain together in the end. Infuriated, Ivy seemed to feel the feeling she had lost track of for a long time, the passion, love, harmony, and freedom, but an opposite force was fighting inside her, telling her that she was not supposed to have those feelings. Everything should get back on track, Ivy thought to herself. “Maybe I should get back home,” Ivy sighed. “This is too bold, too…free.”
“We still have a lot of places we haven’t been to!” Eddie said.
Ivy turned back and ran away alone. On her way back, she felt the melody of the childhood rhyme that Eddie always sang flowing through her body like strength that always held her upright. Eddie’s presence, his stories with his parents, his curiosity about the outside, gave Ivy a sense of routine, a light routine with freedom, thoughts, passion, and feelings. But Eddie was Eddie, and Ivy could never have the courage again to live like nothing happened. Indeed, Maria had stolen Ivy’s feelings, memories, and freedom, but Ivy couldn’t imagine leaving Maria behind alone, either. She had already lost her dad, and she didn’t want to become an orphan.
She feared to lose, but she feared to take risk and gain anything, either.
***
Maria kept driving, feeling numb in every part of her body, but she kept driving, as if stomping on the accelerator could help her forget anything. Maybe just let her go, she thought when she first found that that Ivy was gone. It was too late to save anything, too late to make her back on track, on the track that Maria wished her daughter could have. Maybe it could be better for both of them just to let go of everything. But why…Maria was assigned with the task to track Ivy and Eddie down and she would be required to shot them.
Almost unconsciously, she arrived at the spot with her instinct of how to find elicit criminals, achieved from years of policing.
Maria’s index finger was on the trigger, but her hand shook. She dropped her arm. The air was so heavy that Maria had a hard time breathing, her eyes blurred by the drizzle. At the moment, she didn’t think about her collapsed future, she was not even afraid to pull the trigger, she did not feel sad, she did not feel sorry. She felt a strong sense of disgust swallowing her. Maria loathed the life she had been and was still having: she loathed all the lies, the escapism from her sorrows, her fears, her rebellions.
Squeezing a thin breath from all her self-loath, Maria faintly asked: “Why did you… leave?”
“Mum, I still remember,” Ivy pointed to the lawn behind her. “We used to go to the Johnson park every weekend with dad, right? You taught me the rhyme there. Where, oh where has my little dog gone?/Oh where, oh where can he be?” Sobbing, Ivy could finally piece together the song, where she heard it from; she could finally piece together her memory, who her dad was, who her mum was, who she was, and what life was like. Looking at her mum trembling slightly, Ivy never felt life so real, so…delicate. Maria, for the first time since the pandemic outbreak, seemed to have feelings.
Bold enough with the power of sensing feelings coming back, Ivy continued: “It’s all fake, right, mum? For the past 5 years, every move you made, every word you said, was not … human. I hate you for that, Maria. I hate you for not allowing me to have feelings either.” Ivy didn’t know how she confronted Maria for the first time in 5 years.
Maria raised her gun again, her face reddening. “You cannot say that. I didn’t forbid anyone from doing anything.”
“I didn’t.”
“What was it like before? What has become of us now?”
The air fell silent. Maria looked away from Ivy, but still holding her gun. Ivy felt dizzy as if the silent air was shaking, going to explode. For a moment, Ivy had so much hope from Maria, hoping that she would solve everything out while she quietly reflected, giving her a valid account of how she felt all these years. Eddie braced Ivy tightly. Ivy felt sure that her shattered life was finally going to work out.
“Take me home, mum, with all these memories,” Ivy sobbed. “Cover the escape for me. Don’t let them kill me. We can still live a life. I want to hear everything about dad. I promise I won’t escape again. I just want to know the truth, but I will keep living according to the rules.”
“Mum, I’m so sorry for being rude. But I really want the truth. You will tell me all about it, right? Where is everything?”
“Yeah,” Maria sighed and looked away from Ivy, “Where is it?”
She pulled the trigger.