Chinese Okra - An Anthology

I. The Man Who Lives in a Treehouse

He finally says something he initially thought he would not say. "Fine. But I will not come down there."

"That's enough for me!" And without waiting for the young man to welcome him to reside under the shades of his treehouse, the old man sits underneath it. But since the old man is still out of reach, the young man allows him.

"Can I confide?" The old man yells.

"Fine."

The old man begins his story without catching a breath. "I lost my daughter a month ago."

The young man stays silent.

"She was having a reunion with her college friends. They were just... driving around, having fun, being girls. And then a truck just appears, and... And..." The old man begins to cry as if on cue. As if he is doing it on purpose. But it is merely the young man's judgments; hence he reacts with only silence.

But the old man doesn't mind as he already makes it clear that he only asks for company, and being the gentleman he is, he expects no more than company. "A week before the car crash, she was visiting me. Her twenty-year-old daughter, my granddaughter, tags along. They were asking me about how I was whether I have been taking my pills. Whether I have been doing medical checkups. Whether I have been getting enough rest."

The young man continues to listen in as a pair of ears is the only company he implicitly agrees on.

"I keep asking myself, what did I do to deserve this? I have a much shorter life, yet she's the first one to push up daisies." The old man wails.

"Because that's the nature of life. It just is."

"I know that, young man. I know that."

"Emmett."

In a sniffling mess, the old man responds, "What?"

"My name's Emmett."

"Nice to meet you, Emmett. I'm Gary."

But Emmett remains silent. He begins to think that responding to the man with words is a mistake. Still, somehow, he wants to keep making that mistake.

"Well, anyway... My grandchild: my daughter's daughter. She is now staying with her uncle. That poor girl. To lose a mother and has no father at such a young age."

Emmett finally decides that he is going to make another mistake.

"And you are not a poor old man?"

The old man ruefully chuckles. "Ha! Aren't we all, Emmett?"

"With all due respect, sir, I'm a poor young man by choice. You are not."

"Wrong." The sound of dirt crunching from Gary's boots makes Emmett thinks that Gary is about to take his leave, but it turns out that he is only repositioning his feet, for he continues to expand his answer. "Do you think I want to move on from my daughter's passing? Hell no, young man! I might grief not by choice, but with time, it finally becomes my choice, Emmett."

"How do you know it's a choice?"

"Because I choose to feel the guilt of staying alive when someone who should have stayed alive longer than me dies before me, and I am a dying, withering, old man! She does not take any medicine! She eats and exercises more than I did in my youth! And a goddamn truck that comes out of nowhere decides that her life ended that way? Bah! Irony! Stupid, goddamn ironies!"

"Survivor's guilt."

"No, it is not, young man. It's simply guilt. I am not involved in the incident. I am only involved in living in a world surrounded by unfairness. And that's why I choose to feel the guilt."