Fei and May

Fei and May

By Faith Stuard

The pitter patter of little feet echoed in her mind’s eye; she could remember the sounds Fei made as he made his way around their small studio apartment located above the local bodega. Every inch of the space made her think of him no matter where she looked from the ceiling to the floor his presence was there, his laughter echoed off the walls. May wrapped her arms around her self as she sat on the cold floor in the corner of the room, she was thinking of all the things that she should have done with Fei, played with him more, yelled at him less about leaving his toys on the floor, kissed and held him tightly, laughed and sang louder, took him to the park to play on the swing and slide his favorite things to do he was only four years old when he was taken from her. It started out when he forgot how to walk and started to cry whenever she touched him those were the beginning signs that something wasn’t right. May took him to the hospital right away. At first, there were no answers the testing didn’t tell them anything about what could be going on, he was in pain all the time and just cried and groaned as he writhed his body racked with convolutions and seizers, they sedated him and gave him pain medications to help ease his hurt and with that, he slept the days away laying still in a large hospital bed machines whirling and beeping around him sometimes the only sign that he was still with her was the slow beeping of his heart and the small movement of his chest as he breathed in and out. May cried and cried and cried some more praying for some sort of miracle that he would be saved. That day that she found out that he had terminal cancer and would likely not make it through the month, she screamed out in agony that this was happening to her Fei, to her little man, he was so small and fragile and she knew that she wanted to spend all of her time with him no matter what the doctors said, she waited on God for a miracle and It never came well not in that way anyway. Fei died exactly 3 weeks after he went into the hospital and May held him in her arms as long as she could until the hospital staff took him from her the thought of him in that cold morgue all alone made her heart cry out but there was nothing left to do but gather his things, his small toy cars and other toys she had brought to the hospital hoping that he would want to play with them and that they would somehow help to heal him and bring him back to her but they didn’t they had failed her and that was it or so she thought it was, for weeks after the funeral she was a zombie just walking through life. Some days she would roam the city and just walk and walk until she could barely stand up she would cry as she walked and call out his name Fei, Fei where are you my love? come back to me she would say over and over, one night as she was walk through the park where she used to take Fei to play the place where she felt closest to him she heard something that she remembered from four years before as she labored thought the birth of Fei when he took his first breath and whaled out the sound was an infant’s cry. May looked all around frantically searching for the source of those small sounds she looked by the trash cans than by the swings and the slide, the playground was empty and it was late at night but the sound was still there that’s when she looked up in the night and the full moon and all its shining glory lead her to the top of the hill just under a beautiful pear tree that was full of fresh pears and lush leaves, the weight of the fruit caused its branches to hang lower to the ground creating a canopy of fruit and leaves and just under the branches there was a cardboard box, within the box there was the source of the crying, it was a baby a small and tiny like a cub wrapped in wrinkled newspapers and left alone in the dead of the night. May called out “hello is anyone there!” It was a chilly night so May quickly took off her jacket and picked the small child up and wrapped it up and held it close to her body to help warm the little infant up, who could do such a thing leave such innocence out in the elements no telling what could have happened to the little one, as she held the small bundle in her arms she looked down into small dark eyes and she saw something familiar, "Fei?" she said is that you that’s when the crying stopped and he just looked up at her as some sort of confirmation that she was right that her Fei had been returned to her she cuddled him closer, I will never let you go again and with that, she took the baby and left the park and returned to her small apartment located above the small bodega.