The Astonishing Color of After(62)

A stream of lights and colors, wavering, buzzing a few beats longer than usual.

Then the darkness. Then the flash, and the colors return muted. I think we’ve jumped back in time.

And suddenly I’m hyperaware of everything I’m seeing and hearing and feeling. Thinking, too—I can sense people’s thoughts.

Inside an old kitchen made of plaster walls, a young woman sings, stirring a dented pot with a wooden spoon. With a happy sigh, she settles into a woven bamboo chair. Her free hand cradles her belly, swollen with child.

It’s Yuanyang. No longer the little girl, but also not yet the Waipo I know. She’s somewhere in between.

Her husband swings into the kitchen with a grin. He wears a dark uniform, hair trimmed close to the scalp. Waigong, so young I barely recognize him.

“I can’t wait,” he says. “Why can’t the baby come already?” It’s so strange to hear him speak, to remember he once had a voice, too.

“He won’t be a toy to play with, you know,” says Yuanyang. “He’ll be a living thing.”

“She,” says Waigong.

“How are you so sure it’s a girl?” says Yuanyang.

“How are you so sure it’s a boy?” says her husband.

Yuanyang shrugs. “Just my guess.” She has never borne a child; how is she to know?

“It’s not a guess for me,” Waigong tells her. “I dreamed it.”

Heavy darkness. A flash of light. New colors:

A scene much like one the incense has shown me before: a woman on a bed with a blanket over the hump of her stomach. Yuanyang again, though she’s a few years older than in the last memory. Her eyes tired but shining. The same husband at her bedside, cradling their newborn child. It’s another girl, already full of music, cooing and grunting and blinking up at them.

He goes to rewrap the ragged blanket around the infant, and I glimpse a little brown patch in the soft rolls under the baby’s chin. The same birthmark I grew up seeing in the hollow of a pale neck. That’s my mother.

“Jingling, come and meet your new sister,” Yuanyang calls.

Sister. Sister sister sister. The word bounces in my skull, wrapped in the cottony gauze of disbelief. My mother is a younger sister. The black-and-white photographs of the two little girls—that’s who they were. My mother and my aunt. Dory and Jingling.

A four-year-old girl emerges from the dark corner where she’s been standing quietly. She chews shyly on the end of one of her braids.

“Look, Jingling,” says her father. “Your sister looks a lot like you did when you were born.”

Jingling straightens up, trying to see better.

“Can you believe you were this tiny once?” Her father grins. Sweat coats his face, making the color of his cheer shine all the brighter.

The midwife rushes into the room, giving commands, wrapping the new baby in fresh rags.

“Jingling,” says the midwife. “You’re a big sister now. You have a very important role to play. Are you ready?”

Jingling’s eyes are wide and unblinking.

“Today your life has changed. Now you have someone to take care of. The first thing you can do as a new big sister is go and prepare the kitchen so I can boil some water. Then we’ll be able to sanitize and wash everything.”

Jingling nods and disappears out the door.

Yuanyang takes the baby back and kisses the flat nose. What a magical little thing, beautiful and warm.

She is alight with happiness, but she is also thinking of her own mother holding her like this, fresh out of the womb—her mother making the decision to sell a newborn child. Yuanyang shifts the baby closer, inhaling deeply. Her new daughter smells wonderful, better than the best tea leaves on Alibung Mountain.

“They will be best friends,” says her husband, beaming. “Our two little girls.”

“Yes,” says Yuanyang, warmed by the thought. “Best friends.”

A flicker. The light changes.

In a living room I don’t recognize, Yuanyang paces in a troubled circle around the two brocade armchairs. She’s aged by a couple decades. Her hair is short and wavy; silvery strands wink in the light. The edges of her eyes starting to pouch and wrinkle.

“Please, Jingling,” says Yuanyang. “Talk to her. She is unhappy.”

This memory feels different. It takes me a second to realize: It’s from Jingling’s perspective. It’s also fuzzy—blurrier than any of the incense memories have been. The faces are hard to see clearly. There’s a sweet floral smell—the feeling of being inside Jingling’s head.

She’s grown into a young woman. Her hair arranged in a neat bun. A simple dress hanging from her shoulders, the sleeves fat and billowy.

Yuanyang sighs. “You were never this much trouble. You did everything so well. You were always so focused.”

“You shouldn’t always compare the two of us,” Jingling says quietly.

Yuanyang shakes her head. “She will listen to you. Tell her to work harder. Tell her she must understand her priorities.”

“I will,” Jingling says to mollify her mother. But she knows her little sister has a different kind of spirit, bursting with a different kind of ambition. Her sister has so much more in mind, even now, as she comes up on the end of high school. Dreams that stretch beyond being a perfect child, a perfect wife. Her sister, with the right support and intention, could be a real artist.