The Astonishing Color of After(12)

Waipo ushers us in and the door squeals shut. Dad and I drag our suitcases into the small elevator. On the second floor, my grandmother stops and gestures for us to remove our shoes. She offers us foam sandals to wear inside.

We round the bend into a small living room. The man who must be my grandfather is perched on the couch with a wooden cane next to him. He shuffles across the room in a pair of faded blue slippers.

“Waigong hao.” My voice cracks.

He nods for a beat too long, then twists his head down to cough into his arm. When he straightens, he’s smiling.

If only I could remember how to say, It’s nice to meet you.

I try really hard to dig the knowledge out from my memory, but suddenly all I can think of is Axel at the funeral asking me, What color? and me answering, White.

White, like a blank page. White, like my teeth. I try to smile back.





14





I sip from my tiny cup of tea, grateful I have something to busy my hands and mouth with. The taste of the oolong is colored by the smell of smoke—salty wisps bending toward me from the altar.

Not an hour ago, we stood there before the bodhisattva statues, touching flame to incense and pricking the bottoms of the spaghetti-thin sticks into a bowl of rice and ash. Dad closed his eyes, and I tried to follow his lead, but I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be praying, or taking a moment of silence, or maybe listening for some distant sound.

In my head the words that circled were the ones crossed out at the bottom of that note.


I want you to remember



The bird wanted me to come, and here I am. I inhaled the salty smoke and tried to make up a prayer. Please tell me what it is I need to do here. Please tell me what I need to remember.

No answer arrived. Well, and what was I expecting?

Now we’re all sitting in the living room. Dad and me in brocade armchairs, Waipo and Waigong on a couch made of wood and cushions. Beneath bright halogen lights I study their faces. My grandmother’s thin lips are stretched in a perpetual smile, her cheeks lightly mottled, nose small and flat. She wears simple gold hoops in the lobes of her ears, her white hair pulled back in a loose bun. My grandfather nods as we speak, his gray hair military-short, teeth slightly crooked, skin freckled with little brown constellations.

I try to find my mother’s face in each of theirs. How different did they look the last time she saw them? What caused there to be such a chasm between them?

Dad and Waipo carry most of the conversation. I catch a few words I understand. Airplane. America. Eat. Weather.

How strange this is. To sit here and talk like this, hold polite conversation over tea, when it’s a tragedy that has brought us together.

Dad passes things back to me in English like a game of telephone: This is a new home; they moved here two years ago. Waigong hasn’t spoken a word since he had a stroke. They’ve had decent weather the last few weeks, not as hot as usual, thanks to a typhoon out in the ocean that’s carried in some rain. The sugar-apples and dragon fruits have been particularly good this season. The guavas, too, which Waipo makes into smoothies.

Who the hell cares about guavas when my mother is a bird? My knee jiggles fast and hard.

Dad tips his suitcase on its side and unzips it, the contents gleaming like the innards of a treasure chest. He pulls out packages of candy: Hershey’s Kisses. Godiva chocolates. Tootsie Rolls.

Waipo’s eyes light up, but then she shakes her head.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“She’s saying it’s too much,” Dad explains. “But I wanted to bring all her favorites.”

The words sting oxide brown, the unfairness slicing at something deep inside me. Why is it that he knows what my grandmother loves, and I don’t?

Now, at last, we’ve run out of things to say, and a paralyzing silence fills the air. No one speaks. No one moves, except Waigong, who sucks on a Tootsie Roll and nods vaguely to himself.

My body tautens with every passing second. I’m wound up, ready to burst.

Waipo reaches for the television remote, and in a panic I spit out a word in English: “Wait!” The words spiral up out of my memory: “Deng yixia.”

Because how can the four of us sit here and watch TV together? Pretend like we’re just having a normal night as a family? This is not how this is supposed to go.

Everyone watches me expectantly. I hold up a finger, uncertain whether that’s even a universal sign, and run for the guest room. The box is in my duffel bag, carefully wrapped in a pair of jeans. I peel off the lid.

I hesitate for just a second—because is this what my mother wants me to do? But how would I know? I can’t afford to waste time. If she’s here, I have to find her.

“Leigh,” my father says in a warning tone when I return to the living room holding the box.

I ignore him and kneel on the floor between the couch and the armchairs, carefully extracting the contents. Waipo says something; the lilt of her words form a question mark in the air. Dad doesn’t answer. When my eyes meet his, I note his furrowed brows, the unhappy tug in the corner of his mouth. He doesn’t want me to do this.

Well, I don’t care. I didn’t come all this way to keep secrets.

I turn to my grandparents and point down at my array. The letters, in a carefully balanced pile. The photographs, fanned out. The cicada necklace, which I pour out from the pouch.