My Form of Safety

The shelves of fabric scarves, their jeweled colors hanging like rags on the shelves. The rows and rows of clothes, muted tones jostling together with vibrant ones, lined like discarded skins down the aisles. Shelves of stacked shoe boxes so high I couldn’t see over them, until they crowded around like thousands and thousands of empty souls pleading to be released. Sparkling accessories dangled from spinning racks, mimicking the dead leaves hanging from branches, except more plastic, more bejeweled. And the smell, a scent of sanitization and mall food and the plastic odor of new clothes, all mixed together and filled the stores like exhaling balloons. This was a world my mom loved to explore. 

The broad, clean, fashionable malls in the heart of Vancouver were enough to keep her busy for a lifetime. She didn’t even buy that many things. Just browsed on and on, hands touching this and that, rifting through the countless things they had to offer like they were lollipops on a spinning rack, with me following behind her like a whiny dog. 

I was too young to be left alone in the house. One hour in with the shopping, I was running on my last batteries. Two hours in, I was inconsolable unless I had ice cream. Three hours in and I was only a shell of a child. It was exhausting, both mentally and physically. Going from store to store, pausing at intervals too short to sit down, too long for my legs to stand. With each hour the boredom took a part of my soul and transformed it to dust.

One day, I was maybe four or five, I decided that I was too tired to move. I think Mom was sick of my whining at that point, so she told me not to touch anything, to stay in the store and by the stand of scarves, to wait for her, to not move and she’ll be back shortly.

I sat there. I sat there some more. I wanted to touch the scarves. A persistent claw of hunger kept digging into my stomach and nagged me to find my mom. And then I started feeling self-conscious as the stares from passerby prodded into my back and head like judgmental daggers. Why is she alone here? Where is her parent? What is she doing?

I got up and decided to just circle around the scarves. I looked around as if someone would catch me doing something bad, then walked in larger circles. It wasn’t long before my little brain couldn’t comprehend where I was. The more I tried to get out, the more I found myself tangled in the arms of the store. It was one of those that were so big, so fake, with so many levels, so manicured to fit the desire for beauty. 

I started to cry a little as I wandered around. Mom used to tell me stories about how lost children were taken away to places where there were no hugs, no good food, no warm beds or toys, a place where kids never saw their parents again, and for a moment, I felt more alone and isolated in the store, in the entire mall, than I’d ever felt. My heartbeat began to jump in my ears and with each step I started to remember every detail of those stories. I wished badly, badly that they weren’t real, or at least not real enough to take me into them. 

Eventually I realized my mom was probably looking for me too. I wanted to believe she would come back. Remembering how she told me not to move, I sat down and waited. I sat there for a really long time before a store worker found me. 

“Are you lost?” she crouched and asked. “Do you know where your parents are? What’s your name?” 

I didn’t tell her my name because Mom told me not to tell them to strangers, but I did say I was lost. She took my hand and led me to the customer service, where Mom was by the counter with a woman who was about to broadcast that there was a missing child.

I mostly remember Mom’s hug. It was tight and urgent and angry, but also soft. I think she was mad that I moved, but that fury only came later. At that moment all I felt from her embrace was relief and gratitude. In her arms I felt the withheld anxiety and the overflowing love. I felt safe.

by CHELSEA GUO