She is #3

I’ve had it with migrants.
They always leave.
The good ones always leave
eventually.

She waited outside as I undressed. I got on the bed and faced down and she asked, I haven’t seen you for so long.
I knew. I had counted the months and the dough.
“I have been busy.”

She asked for the parts that hurt.

She need not asked. She often discovered and eased the pain I have learned to live with.

“The same.”

I have been doing the same things and the same mistakes.
It is always the entire back. This time, the shoulder too.
I traced my finger along the neck and the shoulder.
“This part hurts. I take heavy things will pain,” I said in broken Mandarin. A complicated feeling broken in simple words.
- “Your mandarin is getting better!”

I know now to drop my arms and flop it by the side instead of placing it on the sides. Previously, she would tenderly take my arms and place it carefully on the side, the exact place in mid air it should hang.
For someone who does not get nor give hugs easily, massages are becoming a source of connection with human beans. Perhaps this is why babies get a lot of massages.

There was a pregnant pause. She did not start.

“Bā yuè.” August, I am returning home.
She walked to a small calendar that hung on the wall and pointed to 5. Her last day there.

I looked up and then back through the hole of the massage bed as she pushed my spine back in order. She always wears a neat blue pair of leather shoes that bound her feet tightly. It matches her neat hair that was often in place even when untied.

She pressed my spine.
On the third press, *click*. A part of me is back into its rightful place.

“Ahhh,” she sad with a slight chuckle.
“Uh-huh,” I replied.
With her, everything is in place.

I started seeing her since last Ramadan when I strained my back while preparing for my first powerlifting meet. She had offered me water at the end of the session and I tried to find words to translate fasting.

I found, “I cannot eat till 7.”
- “I understand.”

I assumed the TCM was good. But when I chose someone else after the meet when I was desperate and she was unavailable, I realised, she was the good one.

They always leave.

I was hoping it was simply a holiday.

“Will you come back?”
- “No. I go home.”

I turn to her when all the hugs and Salonpas could not heal me. She touched me in places no one has. She has been the only one I let my self “suffer” with repeatedly.

She calls me “silly child” when her repeated reminders against anything cold was unheeded. I think of her with every cup of cold beverage and fruit or whenever I have to make a choice on a hot year-round summer’s day — in short, I think of her a lot.

When the pockets got dry and I was in the reds, all I ever prayed for to Him was I will go to her upon my first paycheck.

I have scrimped some months to visit her. A visit to her meant looking after myself. It meant gratitude for the body that has given me much. She taught me about the wondrous creation — our bodies. She kneaded my shoulder blades when my neck hurt. She pressed in the cheeks of my bum when my knee and glutes hurt.
She will prod two spots consecutively, “here and here,” to show how my body is connected.

Her kneading hurts that I have resorted to foam-rolling somewhat diligently. She taught me if I wanted to get better there will be pain involved.

Yesterday she said, “this will be painful like never before but I only have one minute left.”
I realised, all this while, she held herself back because she knew it would hurt.

It hurt a lot yesterday.

She kneaded the shoulder blade, pushed and pressed till the nape of my neck as if there is a bottleneck and the blood needed to learn how to flow again.

“Ah, ahhh, wait,” I needed a break.
“This is tiring,” I added with my teeth clenching as I watched the floor.
- “I know.”

She continued to press. I tried to relax. She laughed as she saw my feet and cheeks clenched. Number 3 knows and sees the slightest tension, even when I clench the mattress sheet underneath the bead.

The last time I told her to stop, she did but only for 10 seconds. My knots were her puzzle and I had paid to let her solve it. She knew the customer satisfaction she was hankering for — not the immediate one. She worked for the customer satisfaction that she would not get to observe.
“Bear with me. It is painful now but it will get better. Did you drink cold water again?”

She pressed along my spine in spots where the pain had become almost second nature. She elbowed the knots out of the muscles and then she returned to the shoulder.

She has been the only one I have allowed leaving bruises on me. I remembered her name by her initials, Y.Y. The first time I asked, she repeated “Number 3”. I told her I knew Mandarin and she could tell me. She gave me a business card and wrote her name in Chinese characters and “#3”.

I wanted to ask her name that Wednesday, but the gripping pain had my teeth clenched.
The owner hung around into the lunch hour.
“You are not gone yet? She can speak mandarin,” #3 called out.

In the middle of the massage and so much pain, she bent down next to my ear and whispered, “#2 is not that good. Choose #1. She is like me.”

She told me to move my arm to see if it got better. The stiffness hasn’t gone away. It is more limber but my nerves and blood are staging a coup.

A voice came from the adjacent room. They spoke and she later said, “That is number 1. Choose her.”

I heard the clinking of glass and I breathed a sigh of relief. Cupping is bittersweet, it means the session was ending. My tolerance has grown except when she cups my gluteus maximus. Once, when the pain got too intense, I turned to say, “bu yao”. She paused and put it anyway.
“Just bear with it for a while. You will get better. One more only.”

I asked her where is home.
“Rujie.”
- “Oh.”
“Have you been to China?”
- “No.”

I wish there were more things I could say.

As the cups did their magic, she moved to my calves.
When she removed the cups, she told me to move my arms.
“Come again in two weeks, I will finish doing,” she said as she walked to the same calendar to point at the date.

“Come again. Then, I am leaving. My flight is on the 6th. This is your last chance before I leave.”
I said I would return and she left me to get a cup of warm water.
She reminded me of my last chance again.

I had waited for six months for this hour and it seems life works in strange ways. Life’s serendipitous character allowed me this chance.

She reminded me of my privilege as a native here. She reminded me of the nomadic existence of people. She should stay and be allowed to — but only if she wanted to. She made a little part of the world better. It is easier to be kinder when your back does not hurt.

She allowed me to discover gratitude for my body — that in the right hands, my body will learn to heal. She allowed me to function, to live, to breathe.

Why do the good ones always leave?

She’s Yue Yan and she is leaving.