A Miraculous Disaster (By Senith 9C)

The building stood in darkness as I opened the main door, my cold arms clenching my drenched, feeble body. There was no one else here, yet a familiar array of long, grey tables stood before me, with chipped, wooden chairs placed behind them. The furniture gave off a sense of eeriness against the silence of night and flickering street lights, as if they were warning me about the horrors today would reveal. Nothing special, really. The only area in the enclosed building which didn’t feel claustrophobic was a set of four narrow pathways around its periphery, properly revealing a dirty concrete floor with several cracks.

I slowly approached my working space, as water droplets came falling from my torn, black shirt and my saturated, long, black hair, being sucked by the thirsty concrete. My working area was on the furthest back table and on the extreme left of that. It was adjacent to a tall, somewhat thin window. I would peer through it every fifteen minutes or so, as a break from the boring, repetitive work I had to do. I would see white men dressed in impeccable, sophisticated suits and trousers, carrying fresh loaves of bread to their families. I would see white women dressed in lavish, pompous white dresses, walking their white children to school, who all grin in excitement. I would daydream on the job, picturing myself in a dainty, white dress roaming the streets of Melbourne, strolling past Flinders Street Station, catching a tram for the first time, going to school like all the other kids.

It would be foolish to have such thoughts, though. I had no family to go home to, barely any money at all and no clean, dry clothes, besides the few clothes I quickly stitched up while at work, which had to be done in secrecy, of course.

I sat down on my chair, staring intently at the rain violently platter onto the ground. I could barely see anyone or anything, to be exact, through the window, against the torrential downpour and curtain of midnight. I could only put together a faint silhouette of a boy about 200 metres away and a small umbrella he was holding, his head turning frantically around him. When the street lights turned off momentarily, he vanished. And then, he appeared again against the dim light that emanated again, looking even more flustered than before.

Two hours passed. My eyes grew heavy. Thoughts and sounds started to fade away: the tall, neatly piled tower of fabric next to me. My right foot firmly slammed on the pedal. The monotonous sound of the needle pounding into the fabric. The even more monotonous sound of rain splattering onto the gravel streets outside.

It was time to take a short rest, I thought. I would finish my shirt later. Shouldn’t take too long to get done.

I took one last look outside, though. The storm ceased to end, becoming even more enraged than a few hours ago, if that was possible. The grand stone buildings that once stood outside disappeared against the torment of the storm. I couldn’t see anything else, besides a teenage boy, who seemed to be only a few metres outside my window, looking directly at me.

My heart froze at the sight of him. Was he going to kidnap me? Or worse…

Then, I realised; no, his expression told a different story. His eyes seemed to sparkle with joy, alongside the almost relieved sigh he let out. Most importantly, though, his eyes were … different.

I twisted my body around to get a closer look of him, but something suddenly jerked my hair behind me. My eyes lit up immediately. I screamed in pain, as my head slammed against the sewing machine. More of my hairs started to get caught, becoming stitched into the fabric, as my cries amplified. It felt like they were going to pop out of my scalp at any moment. How could I be this stupid, I thought.

All of a sudden, I slammed onto the floor, groaning mainly from shock. My tears of pain blinded me from my surroundings.

“How could you be so stupid?”, I heard.

I quickly opened my small, slanted eyes at that instance, wiping my tears away. Was that my boss? I immediately panicked at the thought of it.

I looked around to see someone right in front of me. It wasn’t my boss, thankfully. Instead, it was him again. I could clearly see his snow-white skin inside, which had no dirt impurities whatsoever, unlike my skin. What really captured my attention, though, was his eyes; they were different, but familiar at the same time. They were … like my eyes.

“Huh? Why didn’t you stop it?”, he loudly asked, but this time, with a slight hint of concern in his voice.

I looked behind me. My wooden chair was somehow adjacent to the window. The needle stopped moving. I realised my foot wasn’t on the pedal anymore.

He… he saved me.

“So what?” I mumbled; it was almost inaudible.

He stared at the right side of my head, where a bare, pink patch stood, around the size of my fist. It felt like the patch had been soaked in boiling water; it was excruciatingly painful.

“Let’s go,” he said, in a quieter, more consulting tone. “Let’s go and have you healed up.”

He held up his soft, white right hand at me, gently placing his black, saturated umbrella on the ground in the process. Rivers of tears started running down my eyes uncontrollably, washing down the layer of dirt and mud on my face.

Why? Why was he helping scum like me?

I started whimpering, as my mouth trembled in both shock and elation.

I wanted to hold myself back, but I couldn’t. I propelled myself onto him, my cold, feeble arms wrapped around his warm, black coat. My tiny, drenched head situated on his broad, right shoulder. My weak, worthless body against his strong, pristine body.

I wanted this moment to last forever. For some reason, he felt … almost like family. Like someone I could depend on.

Soon after, he softly laid his clean arms on my back, against the old, dirty shirt I had on.

“Welcome home, Chi Li,” he said in soft Mandarin.

I smiled even more, as I clutched even tighter onto him.

I had to say it. The words were mumbled, amongst my cries of joy.

“谢谢你, 兄弟.”

Thank you, brother.

A Miraculous Disaster investigates how the power of love and kindness can overpower the rules and restrictions placed within society. This story illustrates the classist society of Melbourne during the early 1900s and how the working class significantly suffered both physically and mentally, while the middle and upper classes had more prosperous and less confining lives. To a smaller and less obvious extent, the story also references the superiority and prosperity of the white or European race during this era, and how this may have influenced Asians living in Melbourne to assist or bond with one another for security, survival and personal purposes.

To depict the above ideas, I tried to craft the main character, Chi Li, as a young Chinese girl in the working class that relies on working in an unsanitary and unsafe textile factory for survival, and has also lost her family. Before explaining about the work she does and her everyday life, I wanted to make the first paragraph more about describing the setting she was in and slowly easing the audience into what she does for a living, which I wanted to make quite mysterious and suspenseful.

I put some detail on her everyday life further into the story, about how she “barely had any money” on her and “no clean, dry clothes”, and how she must actually steal the clothes she manufactures for work, in order to have a slighter more comfortable life. Since she is a child, I also wanted to talk about the boredom she faces sometimes, curiosity, haziness and the dreams she wants to become realities in the future, which shows her human nature out a little more.

In addition, when the Asian boy (most likely a middle-class boy) stops Chi Li from killing herself, she shows utmost gratitude towards him, hugging him for his act of kindness. She can also “sense” and then, confirm that he’s her brother, as they speak in their native tongue at the end of the story.