Once upon a time - updated version

Once upon a time...

A story about a girl named “Little Grass”

Once upon a time, in a remote rural area of China, there lived a little girl. Her name was Little Grass. Little Grass dwelled in an adobe house beside a pond with her parents and three elder sisters. Life  at that time was hard. Mom and Dad worked all year long, just to feed their children. Unfortunately, these children brought no hope to the family, for they were all girls. Back then, raising girls was a bad business. Girls would grow up, marry and become  members of their husbands' families. When they had kids, their kids would carry their husbands' lastnames, and take care of their in-laws instead of their own parents.  Little Grass's father wasn't happy with his girls. He hardly smiled at them. Because of them, he had to carry the shame of being heirless.  

Regardless, Little Grass grew up a healthy and vibrant 9-year-old. Like a dandelion blooming on the roadside, she grew tenaciously and beautifully. She was intelligent and loved reading stories. Though her parents were poor and they had never bought books for her, Little Grass always managed to borrow books from friends and neighbors.

In the late afternoon of a hot summer day, Little Grass sat outside the front door of her house, immersed in a worn-out fairy tale book. In front of the house across the dirt road was a huge pond glittering in sunlight. Occasionally, a big fish jumped, causing a splashing waterfall like scattering pure pearls. Little Grass read and read until the sun set behind the mountain faraway and the whole village was basked in the soft twilight.

It was too dark to read. Little Grass got up. She massaged her tired eyes with the back of her hand and looked at the shimmering water... The evening was quiet. A silver moon rose quietly from the east and embraced Little Grass with its soft light. On the bank of the pond, Grass was tall and luxuriant, fireflies had lighted up their lamps, singing silently the love song of a typical summer night.  

Little Grass felt a sudden itch on her bare arm, and instictively her hand slapped. A mosquito was killed on her lower arm.

Three days later, Little Grass had a fever. Mom took her to see a village ‘Barefoot doctor’. She was injected with antibiotics. But her temperature kept rising and the fever lasted. Four days later, she became semi-conscious. Then another day went by. In the evening, she completely lost consciousness.

Her parents were scared and panicked. They placed her inside a 4-wheel wooden cart and pulled the cart manually to the hospital in the city of the county seat. It was a 20-mile trip, which was quite long if measured by footsteps.

It was a beautiful summer night with splendid stars scattered in the dark blue sky. Insects chirped along with crying of frogs. Here and there, an owl howled, penetrating the harmony of the summer night. Little Grass, on a rugged blanket in the cart, acted like she was possessed. She giggled, talked senselessly, cried, sat up, and jumped all along. Behind the cart, her mother wept and pushed the cart forward with all her strength. In the front, her father was silent. With the strap of the cart on his shoulder and both hands gripping the handles of the cart, he pulled hard and panted hard. Once a while, he wiped the streaming sweat off his forehead.  At about 2:00 a.m., they arrived at the Emergency Department of the People’s Hospital.

A kind middle-aged female doctor received Little Grass. She touched Little Grass's forehead with her left palm, feeling the temperature. Next, the doctor held the back of Little Grass’s head and tried to push upward. Her neck hardly bent.

“It is a Japanese encephalitis B infection.” The doctor said confidently. 

High temperature and stiff neck are typical symptoms of the illness. The virus Japanese encephalitis B is the culprit and the mosquitoes are the vector. They carry the virus around and when they bite they transmit the deadly virus to those who are unfortunate to encounter them. This particular virus affects the essential part of brain. If not treated in time, it would kill a person within a few days, or cause significant damage in the brain. It turned out that there was an epidemic of this virus in the region. Children were especially vulnerable and many had been sent to the hospital.

The treatment was quite simple. There was a powerful drug to treat the condition effectively. The only problem was-There were no drugs in the hospital at that time. The widespread virus caused an overwhelming number of sick kids, which had exhausted the stock of the drug in the county hospital. In those few days, doctors’ hands were tied and they could do nothing except hydrating her and trying to lower her temperature. While waiting for the drug to come, some kids might be treated sooner if their parents had connections or had money to buy the drug from other sources.

Little Grass’s parents had nothing! No connection, and no money. But the viruses did not wait! They rapidly multiplied inside her.  A few days later, when the drug was made available to every child free of charge, Little Grass was already dead, along with several kids.

Her body was carried out by her father from the hospital. Many people witnessed the agonizing scene: Her father's expressionless face, bowing head and heavy footsteps. On his back was Little Grass’s body, tied by an old red scarf . Her head hung down, dangling up and down in rhythm with each and every step of his father. Her face was paper white and her eyes were closed tightly.  Her long hair, once shining and vivid as a waterfall, was messy and lifeless like a bundle of dry grass, swaying in the hot summer air. 

By tradition, Little Grass’s body was not allowed to be brought back to the village and buried next to her grandparents in the graveyard. On the way back home, her father found a place in the bottom of a creek nearbythe village and buried her there. Before he left. He broke a branch off a nearby willow tree and transplanted it in the center of the mound, which, among luxuriant summer grasses, looked like a painful scar.

Gradually, grasses invaded and covered the mound, and the willow branch took roots and became a flourishing tree. The tree started to attract birds of different colors. They played and sang among its dense leaves and laid eggs in the nest between branches. There also came wild ducks, rabbits, frogs and numerous insects. These creatures made part of the creek in Little Grass's resting place full of life.