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Small Hands
A story from Dreamlike Reality
In my memory, the mornings of that time were always quiet.
Before the sun had fully risen above the hills, my parents would already be preparing to leave. My father moved with few words, gathering his tools; my mother checked things one more time—water, fire, the small things that kept a home alive. Beyond the door, the mountain paths waited, and the rice paddies lay somewhere farther down, hidden in the pale mist.
Inside the house, three children remained.
I was five years old. My two younger sisters were three and one. At that age, I did not think of it as responsibility. It was simply the way things were. When the door closed behind our parents, the house became very still, as if it, too, were listening.
Our home was not a single solid structure, but a few simple spaces arranged around a small courtyard. On the northern side stood the living room and a bedroom; along the eastern side were the kitchen and another bedroom. On the western side stood a simple toilet beside the pig pen, where we kept a few pigs that ate leftovers and chopped sweet potato leaves. The southern side was bordered by a hedge, planted to keep people from falling down the steep slope beyond. Some parts of the hedge were broken, and through those gaps the ground dropped sharply down the mountainside.
It was a modest place, built of bamboo, clay, and a few wooden posts, with a roof of dried straw. At the time, it was simply our home.
The youngest lay on the big bed in the bedroom. It was a wide wooden bed, built close to three walls, leaving only the front side open. To me, it felt like a small world of its own—safe on three sides, but uncertain on the fourth. I could not carry my baby sister for long; my arms were too weak. So I stayed near the edge of the bed, watching her carefully as she rolled, crawled, or waved her small hands in the air.
Sometimes she laughed at nothing I could see. Sometimes she made soft sounds, as if speaking to someone invisible. I did not understand her language, but I understood my task. If she came too close to the edge, I would gently push her back, or call her name, or simply stand there, alert and still.
Time in those mornings did not move quickly. It stretched, like a long breath that was never quite released.
Before leaving, my mother would give me a soft rice cake. It was made of rice powder and sugar, slightly sticky, and warm in my hand. She would say, “Feed your little sister later—around ten o’clock.” She had already divided the pieces for the three of us.
I always nodded. I believed I understood time.
The hours passed quietly. My elder sister played by herself, sometimes humming, sometimes talking to things only she could see. I stayed near the bed, guarding the smallest one. From time to time, I would look at the rice cake and wonder if it was time yet. The sunlight slowly shifted across the floor, but I had no clock to guide me—only a feeling that grew stronger as the morning went on.
When I finally decided it was time, I took a small piece and fed it to my baby sister. She accepted it, slowly and seriously, as if she knew it mattered. I watched her chew, feeling a quiet satisfaction that I had done something important.
In the evening, when my mother returned, she would ask, “Did you feed her?”
“Yes,” I always answered, without hesitation.
She would smile and say, “You are a good boy.”
That smile stayed with me longer than the taste of the rice cake.
When we grew a little older, the courtyard became our world. It was open, edged by the hedge on the southern side, and beyond it the slope fell away sharply. At the time, we did not think of danger in clear terms. We only knew the joy of movement.
Our father made a wooden board car for us. It had four wooden wheels and a flat board on top. One of us could sit, while another pushed from behind. We took turns, laughing as the car rolled forward, sometimes smoothly, sometimes with a sudden jerk.
One day, my youngest sister insisted on pushing the car by herself. There was no one sitting on it, but she pushed with all her strength, as if carrying an invisible passenger. She did not yet know how to guide it, how to turn left or right.
I remember watching her, perhaps a few steps away. The car moved faster than she expected. Then, before any of us could react, it went straight toward one of the broken gaps in the hedge.
There was a brief moment—so brief that it almost did not exist—when everything seemed to pause.
Then both she and the car disappeared over the edge.
We ran to the slope, our hearts beating wildly. Below, she was already trying to climb up, crying loudly. There was blood on her forehead, bright and shocking against her small face.
I do not remember whether we cried. I only remember the fear—sharp, unfamiliar, and deep.
After that day, we were more careful. Not because someone told us to be, but because something inside us had changed.
There were other moments that seemed to belong to a different kind of memory.
Once, when my parents were away, I tried to cook rice as my mother did. I had watched her often enough to believe I understood. I placed the pot on the clay stove, arranged the firewood, and waited as the flames grew stronger. The heat rose quickly, and the water began to boil. For a moment, I felt proud, almost like an adult.
Only later did I learn how worried my mother had been. The house could easily have caught fire. At the time, I did not think of such things. I only knew that I had tried.
And sometimes, along the path that led toward our home, a figure would appear.
We called her A-Moi-Jia—a Hakka way of saying “Sister A-Moi,” the name our parents used, and so did we.
She walked slowly, her clothes worn, one hand covering one eye. Whenever we saw her approaching, we would feel a sudden uneasiness. We hid behind the living room walls, or behind the bamboo rice storage, peering through small gaps to see how close she had come.
Curiosity always brought us back to look again.
One time, as I stepped quietly from behind the rice storage, trying to see through the cracks in the wall, I almost ran into her. She had already entered the house and was moving toward the bedroom.
I cried out in fear.
At the same moment, she seemed just as startled. She turned quickly and stepped back out of the living room, disappearing as suddenly as she had come.
For a while, none of us moved.
That moment stayed with me—not only the fear, but the strange closeness, as if two worlds had briefly touched and then pulled apart.
Now, many years later, when my own vision sometimes doubles and blurs, I think I understand her a little better. Perhaps she covered one eye to see more clearly. But at that time, she remained a quiet, uncertain presence at the edge of our small world.
When I look back on those days, I do not see them as difficult. We were too young to measure life in that way. What I remember instead is a kind of stillness—a space in which small hands learned, without knowing it, how to care, how to watch, how to act.
I could not hold my baby sister for long. My arms were too weak.
And yet, each morning, I stood at the edge of that bed, keeping her from falling.
Even now, I sometimes feel that those mornings have never entirely left me.
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