Sky was crying and her tears english literature essay

” You can’t stop looking at me, staring at me. Be what I be… ” My phone blared loudly, by then everyone standing near stared at me. I laughed it off.” Hey, where are you? I’m at the shop near the bus stop. Please come quickly. I’m wet and hungry.” I quickly complained.” Yes yes, we are on our way mother” They yelled on the phone. I looked around for an empty table for all of us. I sat down and waited. ” It smells so good. I wish they could hurry up so I can have my favourite ” pho”, chicken with rice noodles.” I muttered under my breath. ” Tay ba lo” or foreigners come here a lot because it is a famous noodle stall. Well, if you want to know and see unique things about Vietnam then I guess this is the place to come. While I am waiting for my so called ” children” to come, he caught my attention. A giant of a man with tattoos of a dragon and phoenix covering his enormous left arm and shoulder like a wet suit walked casually past my table and sat down at the front. He looked like our revered warrior, Quang Trung. His fierce glint completed the look. Everyone give him a surreptitious glance. I would never talk to someone like him because my parents told me that people who have tattoos are uneducated and probably dangerous criminals. I wonder, is he a gangster? Suddenly, ” Hey, who are you looking at? Oh, that guy umm…tattoos? Seriously?” Have you changed your taste? He doesn’t look like someone you can trust.” My friend Myn ” Chocopie” said with a satirical tone. I jumped out of my seat. They all laugh and I refute with a shake of the head. While we were eating, I spotted an armless child begging from passer-by’s. I guessed she was around 6-7 years old, the age that children shouldn’t have to worry about money but go to school instead. She had dishevelled hair, with dirt smudged on her face and she barely had enough rags to protect her body from the cold. She looked our way and approached the table my friends and I were occupying, receiving a glare from Tien. As she got closer to our table we automatically ignored her.” Where is your compassion, Stephanie?” Myn ” Chocopie” asks me.” Well, I always want to help poor people but I learned a lesson. These days, we have no idea who is pretending to be helpless and who is real. I heard that there was a page on Facebook that was about a homeless guy who had an eye disease. He was poor and needed money to pay for his mother’s hospital fees. The Facebook page encouraged people to help the poor man. So I did. I went to the market where he sold vegetables and bought plenty of his goods, I even gave him a donation of 300000VND. I thought that it would help him pay for the hospital fees. But after two weeks it was exposed that it was all a lie.” I reply with a heavy sigh. The child sits down near the corner of the street looking hopeless. As she sits down, the waiter shouts at her telling her to go away. I looked away feeling pity for her, but then I was surprised to see the gangster guy walks up to the two of them with a bowl of noodles. He gestured with a simple point of his finger to the waiter and sat down in front of the child, blowing the hot noodles and clumsily feeds the girl. In that moment my heart stopped beating, I felt an imense sense of guilt. It seemed as if time itself has frozen with both of them smiling. I looked down at my own soup. It has lost its appeal and has left a bitter taste in my mouth. Turning to my friends I saw that they were also watching with amazement.” He surprised me, I never would have guessed that he was capable of such warm actions” Tien said.” Umm, guys I’m finished, I…I’m gonna head… umm home now” I stuttered out to my friends. ” See you guys latter” I walked off.” Hey, Steph…where are you going?” They shouted. I walked and walked, step by step. The rain kept falling heavily as the thunder clapped. I don’t know how I got home. I felt the coldness in my soul. When did I become such a hypocrite? Tears mixed with rain and Its bitterness slowly seeping into my flesh. I felt the smooth wooden floor beneath my knees, and then the palms of my hands, and then it was pressed against the skin of my cheek. I hoped that I was fainting, but, to my disappointment, I didn’t lose consciousness. The waves of pain that had only lapped at me before now reared high up and washed over my head, pulling me under. The man with the eye disease didn’t fool me. I fooled myself by thinking that throwing money to poor people will help them and make me a generous person. But no! Treating them in the same way, whether they are the garbage man or the president of the university, whether they are poor or rich is what I should do. I learned a life lesson about the hearts of people from the tattoo man ” Don’t judge a book by its cover.” I thought of myself, my hands are not clean so who am I to judge the life people live? I am wondering if I was in the same circumstance as him, would I do the same thing. A clap of thunder brought me back to present. I instantaneously walked to the kitchen and quickly warmed the bottle of milk in the microwave. I grabbed the umbrella, carefully holding the bottle of milk and I ran like Cathy Freeman toward the poor beggar child sitting outside. I squatted down in front of her and give her the warm bottle of milk with a smile. She held the bottle and looked fearful. She drank the milk slowly and she was so polite to the point of obsequiousness. Unexpectedly, tears rained down her cheeks. She held my hands and said: ” Thank you… I have nothing to give you but…but…” I hugged her tight and clenched my teeth to hold back the rising tears, as the words rang in my ears, ” You can’t stop looking at me, staring at me, be what I be…”