The flowers of the pond

My grandmother's house smelled of the perfume of the flowers that grew in her garden, roses, carnations, chrysanthemums, gladiolas. The clavellinas and trinitarias adorned with their colors the entrance gate and the graceful daisies clustered around it.

A path of stones led from the fence to the entrance of the house painted in pink, my grandmother's favorite color. She said that color brought tranquility and harmony. And there was no way to convince her to change it. Year after year her son... my dad, would please her by painting the walls with some shade of pink she chose. My mother would help her cut flowers to put in vases and decorate the house with colors.

But what attracted me most about the house was a pond surrounded by reeds, where white and purple-flowered water lilies grew, with their large floating leaves and the pink lotus flower rising above the surface on a graceful stem that held it suspended. I would spend hours sitting in front of the pond, while the bees danced on the flowers and the pond reflected my image, that of a ten-year-old girl, with long black hair covering part of her face and big black eyes staring into the water, as if searching for something in its depths.

One morning in May, a very peculiar family with strange eyes and speaking in a language I did not understand came to the house next door. Later I learned from my mother that they came from a country called China, which was very far from here.

“And why did they come to live so far away?” I asked my mother”.

“You are curious Andrea!”, my mother said smiling. “I think that there are many people living in China and there is a lot of poverty.”

As my grandmother was a very friendly woman and liked to help other people, she quickly made friends with the new neighbors, the mother, father and grandmother of a boy my age who looked at me whenever I accompanied my grandmother to bring them some of the tasty food she prepared or some of the fruits from the trees in the yard: mangos, avocados, guavas and oranges. They would receive all these gifts with a bow, which I found very funny.

Chang, that was the boy's name, and I became very good friends, we went to school together, we played in the yard and in my grandmother's garden. I taught him the names of the flowers that grew there and he quickly learned to speak Spanish. The pond was our favorite meeting place.

Time passed and we stopped being children.

“You know that the lotus plant is really a princess, that when night comes and the moonlight illuminates it, its stems transform into arms, its roots into legs, its leaves into its body and its flower into a beautiful face with very long and shiny hair like yours,” Chang told me one day as we were walking home from the high school.

“That's a very nice story”. I replied with some embarrassment, at that moment I felt my face turn red and my palms were sweating.

Chang took me by the hand and we walked in silence the remaining distance until we reached the gate with the trinitarias and the clavellinas and at that moment he told me that he wanted me to be his girlfriend.

I just looked at him and smiled.“Tomorrow I will give you an answer”

But fate sometimes gets in the way of love and that night, my grandmother went somewhere else, she died peacefully in her sleep. My parents were very sad and I was heartbroken, I sat in front of the pond and cried.

The next day Chang's family came to join us and so did all the people who loved my grandmother... almost the whole village. The house was filled with people and I didn't have time to talk to Chang.

The next few days passed very quickly, my parents decided that we should go back to the city where I could continue studying. But I didn't want to do that, I wanted to live forever in my grandmother's house near Chang. I barely had time to say goodbye to him and we promised each other that we would continue to love each other and that when I finished my studies, I would come back.

It has been six years since I last saw him. It has been a year since he went back to China with an uncle. His parents continue to live in the house next door, they now have a bodega and grow vegetables in their backyard, which they sell to their neighbors.

I decided to return, I graduated as a doctor and I am going to start working in the village hospital. When I arrived at the house, I saw that the person who was taking care of it had painted the walls yellow and had cut down the trinitaria because according to him... it attracted snakes, I was so sad not to see it on the fence. I ran to the pond. It was very dirty, there were very few water lilies left and a single lotus plant barely raised a button above the water. I peered into the water and could not see my face reflected in it.

I began to clean the house and garden, painted the walls a strong pink as my grandmother liked. I planted trinitarias near the fence and spent a whole day cleaning the pond, and it reflected my image, that of a young girl with short black hair and big sad looking eyes.

“Grandma, I miss you so much, how I wish you were here with me“.

That night I dreamed of my grandmother, I saw her as cheerful as always and she told me.

“When the lotus flower opens its petals, love will return to your door, there where the trinitarias were”

Every day when I came back from work at the hospital, I would go to the pond to look at the lotus flower, but it was still closed. It must be true what my grandmother told me in my dreams? She could have communicated with me to warn me of what was going to happen?

The next two days I was on duty at the hospital, some children had been poisoned by eating some lychee fruits and we put them under observation. When they recovered, I went back home, I felt tired and for the first time I did not go to the pond. I fell asleep and dreamed again of my grandmother. She was calling me.

Wake up! the lotus flower has already opened its petals”

I woke up with a start, my heart felt like it was going to burst out of my chest. It was just dawn and the sun was faintly shining through the curtains of my room. I got up, got dressed and went out into the garden, walked to the pond and gazed in awe at the lotus flower with its pink petals open in all their splendor.

I heard my name being called and I turned to the fence and saw him there, looking at me with a smile on his face, he came closer and we hugged.

"I missed you so much, I couldn't be without you," Chang said looking at me with his slanted eyes.

And I answered him that question he had asked me six years ago.

“Yes, I want to be your girlfriend”

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