The Astonishing Color of After(101)

“That’s just… I don’t know.”

“What does she look like?” he says.

The question catches me off guard. What does she look like? As I open my mouth to describe her, I realize I don’t know anymore. All I remember is her paleness, and her bright floral prints.

Dad shrugs. “Waipo says she doesn’t know anybody named Feng.”

I bolt into my room and tear through everything, searching for a sign of her. She existed. I’m sure of it. My phone still works—it’s still on that Taiwanese network. The SIM card she gave me was real. I look for the selfie we tried to take at the top of Taipei 101, but all I find on my phone is a blurry picture with half of Waipo’s shoulder. But the pastry bag—the one with the red bird logo—it’s still there in my drawer.

Is that all? No other traces? She was so deeply embedded in our lives for two weeks. I return to the dining table, scanning the apartment for any other signs of her.

“Dad, can you ask Waipo about the box of stuff that was sent to us—it had, like, tea and pastries in it. It had my SIM card in it. Feng brought us that box. Ask Waipo if she remembers.”

I watch the two of them conversing, the way my grandmother points to him, the way he shakes his head as he responds.

“Leigh,” he begins slowly, “she says that the box was delivered by mail, and that it had no sender listed. She’d thought that I was the one who sent it.”

“But you didn’t. You weren’t. Right?”

“Right,” he says, looking concerned. “I never mailed you anything.”

Back in my room, I carefully fold up the gift bag that held the pastries and tuck it into the back of my sketchbook.

Feng was real. I’m certain of it.

But somehow, nobody remembers her. Nobody but me.





“Dad, can you look at something for me?” My fingers tighten on the lid of the small marigold-orange box. The edges of it are burned up from the day I brought Waipo into the smoke. But the characters are still readable.

This, I know, is also real. Which meant the incense had to have been real. Which meant the memories were real.

He finishes unzipping the worn corner of his suitcase and throws the top open. “Sure, what is it?”

I show him the incense box and point to the characters in red:





“Zui nan fengyu guren lai,” he reads. “Oh. It’s a phrase from the Qing Dynasty. A line from something a scholar wrote, basically a poem.”

“What does it mean?”

“Zui nan fengyu guren lai,” he says again, more slowly. “Zui nan means the hardest. Feng—you know feng, right?”

I blink for a second. Feng? Does he suddenly know who she is after all?

He continues. “It means wind. I thought I’d taught you that, but maybe I didn’t. And yu means rain. So fengyu means wind and rain—in other words, bad weather, and metaphorically, bad times. Guren means loved ones, friends and family, and lai means for them to come. String it all together, and it means it’s an incredible blessing to be able to see your loved ones during the most difficult times.”





101





I remember it all. The bird. The incense memories. The way the world began to fill with black cracks. The falling. Feng.

And since the forty-nine days have passed, something has changed. Dad is different. During those absent years, his presence had turned a hard and icy blue, but now he brings with him a warm, reassuring yellow ochre. He’s been trying really hard. We’re learning to actually talk again, the way we used to. Inside jokes are resurfacing. We’re remembering how to smile together.

It was the final gift the bird could give us: the remembering.

The pieces of my family history glued back together, so that I finally know and understand. And a reminder of the love that we’ve always had, even in the times when it was stormy, when it was hard to see.


I want you to remember



I will. I’ll remember.





102





One day I make the commute back out to Feng’s address. I step up in front of those steel doors and push the same button: 1314.

After what feels like forever, I hear the sounds of feet coming down the stairs. One of the doors creaks open and a man pokes his head out.

I recognize the birthmark before anything else. The watercolor cloud on his cheek.

“You again?”

I take a step back. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bother you—”

He scowls at me. “So why do you press my doorbell?”

It wasn’t Feng’s address that she’d left in that box, on the pink Hello Kitty stationery. It was Fred’s.

“I’m really sorry.” I’m already down the steps and turning away.

“Wait for a minute,” he calls to me. “I have something for you.”

The door clangs shut and I hear the sound of him climbing back up the stairs. A few minutes later he comes back holding a red envelope.

“I can’t accept that,” I tell him. The thought of taking cash from— He shakes his head. “It’s not money. It’s Chen Jingling hair. I never burned it. You can have it, for you to remember her.”