The Astonishing Color of After(39)

With a hand, she swipes the perspiration from her brow. This work is exhausting but easier than school. Easier than studying characters by scratching them into the mud, worrying that a mistake might bring the teacher’s biting stick down upon her hand. Here among the leaves the only punishment to be had is the burn of the sun, the occasional itch or sting of a bug. But it’s quiet. Nobody telling her how to think. Her hands are busy, but her mind is free to roam.

She clutches a handful of tea leaves to her nose and inhales deeply, letting the green smells tell her the secrets of the land.





40





Was it real? It had to be.

My brain turns these new pieces around and around.

Yuanyang.

I think of the careful way my grandmother brewed the pot of tea. The way she gazed intensely into that foil bag brimming with stiffly curled leaves.

I say her name out loud to feel the shape of it on my tongue. “Yuanyang.”

Yuanyang, who is my waipo.

Does that make Ping… my waigong?

Everything in my brain is glimmering with wonder, with iridescent hues, like the colors pinned by the sun against an oil-slicked surface. Wonder, and sadness. Because I’d always imagined that one day it would be my mother telling me the stories of her family. Not memories materializing from wisps of incense smoke, memories that feel stolen.

And somehow—I’m absolutely certain of it—these glimpses of the past will lead me to my mother, the bird. These pieces will help me find her, will bring her to me.

And when the time comes, I’ll be ready for it.

I pick the scissors back up, thread my fingers and thumb through the plastic loops to find a good grip.





41





I’ve cut up all the shirts, and my hand is sore, so I decide to try to get some rest.

My body is heavy with exhaustion, but my brain won’t stop. It flutters like a restless animal. When I close my eyes, the past dances across the darkness in spurts and swirls of light.

Sleep is a thing I can’t remember. The face and smell and texture of it all forgotten, as if it’s been wiped from my mind.

I think of the temple, the people chanting, the melody of their words dark and lilting.

I think of that tail sweeping past us. What I need is for her to come down out of the sky and stay awhile.


I want you to remember



I’ll throw that net—gently, lovingly, so that she senses that I don’t mean to hurt her. I’ll catch her in it, and then she’ll talk to me. She’ll tell me what I need to know.

I blink, and the ceiling turns shadowy. The cracks are there again, widening, spreading farther. They’ve stretched across the entire surface and begun fissuring down the walls. An entire corner’s missing, like someone just took out a chunk of it. There’s nothing to be seen there, only oblivion made of the blackest black.

Blink again, and it’s gone.





42





In the early morning darkness, the display of my phone glows like lightning, white-hot as the latest email loads.

Axel.



FROM: [email protected]

TO: [email protected]

SUBJECT: (no subject)



Sometimes I got to your house for Sunday waffles before you woke up. Those mornings your mom and I would sit and have coffee before she started the waffle batter. There was this one Sunday when she said out of the blue, “Do you like Emily Dickens?”

I asked her if she meant the poet Emily Dickinson, because this was right after we had gone through those boxes. She said yes, and then she started to recite poems in this calm and steady voice.

I think about that morning a lot. There was one poem that I’ll always remember:

I lost a world the other day.

Has anybody found?

You’ll know it by the row of stars

Around its forehead bound.



I’m not even sure if that’s the whole poem. But I think about it a lot. I wonder what she lost.





43





WINTER, FRESHMAN YEAR


By the end of winter break, Axel and I were down to the last couple boxes.

“Ack! Oh my god!” he shouted, leaping to his feet and shaking his arms.

“What?” I stood up, alarmed. “What is it?”

“That was a spider. Definitely a spider. It went under there.” He pointed at the box he’d been halfway through opening.

I rolled my eyes so hard. “Seriously? Unless it’s poisonous—”

“No—ugh, I think it was a daddy longlegs.”

“Oh my god, Axel. A daddy longlegs. Those are, like, the teacup wiener dogs of the arachnid family. I thought you’d gotten over this by now.”

“It—is—not—funny,” he said, gritting his teeth. “Will you just kill it already?”

“Sure, if you’ll help me pick up the box so we can find it?”

“Ugh. Fine.”

He took two edges of the box and I grabbed it from the opposite side. We moved three paces to the right and craned our necks to peer down at the square indentation in the beige carpet. It was flat and empty.

“I don’t see it.”