My Songbird's Dream

1. Price of passion

Shanghai, November 1944

"One day my God will ask for my mercy, and when He does, I will refuse to forgive him..." she mumbled bitterly, staring down at hands she could scarcely control from shaking out her scalded fury.

Her breath was caught. Her fingertips stung from the cold she was desperately trying to warm herself to; her body felt rigid, her mind unsettled. Between ragged fingernails and dirt stains, Etta fixated on the crude bandage cloaking her burn, already weeping traces of red.

The dried blood map outline of rising veins in her arms seemed to echo Shanghai's catastrophic network of uncaring streets that brought her here - destitute and ruined.

Did a woman not deserve to voice the venom boiling in her belly without being damned for eternity by pious gatekeepers? Society owed far darker debts than her measly utterances and yelling against God, she reckoned.

With a bone-tired sigh that verged on a sob, Etta splashed a palmful of metallic water across her face, then gripped the station sink harder, again...wishing it were the city itself she could wring mercy, or at least coin, from.

The cracked mirror betrayed the tracks of too many tears hastily wiped. She dared not study her reflection's eyes, hollowed out by smoke, loss and a steely refusal to collapse inside a country that hated her.

Etta traced one nail anxiously over the fading rouge tinging her lips beneath the station bathroom's harsh light.

When had she last smiled brightly enough for dimples to reemerge from this barren mask reflecting scarcity and fear? Rather, when had she last laughed brightly enough to smooth away the etched lines around her mouth? She remembered dancing and singing gaily for wealthy women and men just years prior, with genuine optimism glinting in her gaze.

But now, as she took in the stubborn, useless color mocking vanished potential, Etta scratched angrily until crimson smeared messily and marred beneath her fingertips.

"Will you hurry it along in there already!" the impatient voice of an elderly woman yelled from outside, punctuating the threadbare misery enclosing Etta from all sides.

The weight of the last 72 hellish hours crashing furiously, she slammed the tap off and shouted hoarsely back, "Wait your damn turn!" Her voice rippled the dingy puddle below; she noticed little Daniel jolt nervously from where he perched atop the toilet seat lid, studying his feet silently.

Seeing his eyes, anguish rose up Etta's arms. She inhaled sharply, softening her tone as she bent down, searching her son's eyes.

"Don't you worry, Danny...we are going to figure this out." She pushed optimism steadily into each whispered word despite fate's cruelty.

But Daniel just kept swinging his legs limply, his gaze fixed nowhere as their dire prospects loomed. Almost as if he was doing it to distract himself...trying to sooth his young mind.

Her gaze caught on his mismatched buttons, they were 'hand-me-down' items from discarded pieces at the station now used to replace their destroyed wardrobe.

Practicality lodged agony in her throat. Spitting the bitter remnants of useless dreams into the sink, she turned it on again.

By then he had moved again. Almost like he remembered where they were, all they lost. He stood behind his mother. From the spiderwebbed mirror, she watched as little Daniel sniffed, with shoulders hunched inside the worn, placing on the too-big overcoat they shared for warmth.

Cold water continued trickling, forgotten as Etta spun quickly to embrace her son, again.

She gently dabbed his damp cheeks with her frayed handkerchief, embroidered by her from some distant lifetime.
Etta pressed fierce kisses to Daniel's hairline as she gripped his hands for warmth there in the harsh lights, against the station's cold that seeped deeper than bone.