Feb 2004
No. 9
A Beautiful Flower
by Haemin Chin
Pre-Medicine; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The meaning of her name was beautiful flower; however, as if she could not put up with it, she only went far from beauty. She was the victim of her circumstances and a dissident from the conventions of life. There was nothing she had had in her life, but the only reason which enables her to claim that she's different from other delinquents is that she has a true friend who will remember her for the rest of her life with the same image of her name, Mi Yun Sim.
I used to live in a suburb surrounded by mountains. I went to an all girls middle school and most of the students were innocent. They did not know much about drugs, alcohol, nor any of those bad things in the world. I had a class with "a beautiful flower." When I first met her, she had short cut hair like a boy and unusually dark skin with an ebony speck on her neck. She wore shabby clothes that seemed never have been washed and shoes that she never changed for a year. I had never seen her smiling nor crying, never seen her studying during classes, and she had this temperament of uncouthness which reminded me of a wild horse. Nevertheless, the most terrible thing she had to go through was that she was always alone. Everybody avoided her because "she smelled" or "she was bad." I wonder how people could judge someone else so well without having even a conversation with the person.
She used to come to a gym class without her sneakers. She had no friend to borrow them from so spent the whole gym class sitting and watching people. One day, I brought an old pair of my shoes and gave them to her. I was so happy seeing her running across the gym with all of us. I never asked anything to my friends or teachers about what to do who totally ignored her. I decided that I should give more attention to her and thought the most important thing to her was a companion. I guess nobody was at home to cook for her and she used to buy cheap snacks. Whenever she walked through the whole gym to get to the other end I was willing to be with her.
Unfortunately, she never opened her heart for me. I knew it was hard for her. I felt incompetent and told my parents about her but there was nothing more we could do. Finally, she dropped out of school. She was like an infamous legend hidden with mysteries. Bad rumors about her were floating around. There were no changes made in the school, except there was one more child who completely lost sight of the future. She began to sit on a bench in a little park which was on my way home. Her appearance was totally changed. She wore a short skirt, high heels, and held a cigarette between the fingers of her long manicured nails. I asked her to quit smoking. She refused saying, "I smoke so that I can die faster." and smiled for the first time. Was it a smile? I couldn't quite see her face. I wanted to yell at her, "It's not what you want. Then, show people that you became something out of nothing. You stupid!" Her name shouldn't have been a beautiful flower, but something different, then she might not have faded so easily.
That was our last meeting. She has been my motivation to study harder as with the life of a wretch who was deprived of all the privileges and opportunities of life. My point of view to the world has been changed a lot. Whenever I heard the bad news what students have done, I think of Mi Yun and tried to understand their situation. Being that way might not be their choices but inevitable circumstances that they had to have. I regret that I didn't tell her that I was leaving because I can't be there if she needs me now.