The Astonishing Color of After(75)

“So she’s… she has…”

I could practically hear the gears turning in his head as he searched for a label, a name, a descriptor.

The word depression bounced around in my head. Depression depression depression. Was that even what she had? I knew that there were other mood disorders out there, other conditions and chemical imbalances.

Depression, I opened my mouth to say, but the word refused to take shape. Why was it so hard to talk about this? Why did my mother’s condition feel like this big secret?

Axel looked at me expectantly, still waiting for me to fill in the blank.

“She’s forgotten how to be happy,” I told him.

But that felt wrong, too.





77





Day forty-six. We’re headed north, to Jiufen.

When Feng told me where Waipo wanted to take me, I didn’t understand. “So you’re saying that my mom never spent any time there… but we need to go anyway?”

“There’s someone in Jiufen that Popo wants you to meet,” she explained. “I think it’s really important.”

All I could think was We can’t afford to waste a single day.

“But I don’t have time. I need to come up with a new plan to catch the bird.”

“Trust me, I really think this will help,” said Feng. “Your train leaves in two hours, so you should probably work on packing your overnight things right now.”

“Wait, you mean our train, right?”

She fiddled with her sleeve. “I’m not going. I can’t.”

“What? Why not?”

“It’s not a good time for me to go,” she said.

“But I need you to help me,” I told her. “I need you to translate.”

“I just can’t, Leigh. I’m sorry.” And then she left.

When Waipo and I get off the train, there’s a man about my dad’s age waiting with a minivan to pick us up. He doesn’t look happy, but he opens the door for us anyway, slinging our overnight bags into the trunk. They land with a thud that I feel against the back of my seat.

There’s a rapid exchange in Taiwanese as he pulls out of the train station. I can tell he and Waipo are talking about me by the way she glances toward me a few times.

“Hi,” he says abruptly. He turns his face, and I notice for the first time a pink birthmark spread across his cheek like a painted cloud.

“Um, hi,” I answer back.

“I’m Fred,” he says, his syllables curbed by a bit of an accent.

“Leigh.” I give him a small wave in the mirror.

“Nice to meet you,” he says without looking at me. It sounds like a lie.

He falls silent, and I turn my attention out the window. The road swells like a wave, winding dramatically so that the view is by turns mountain and sea, and by turns a bustling town. Tourist shops line the edge of the streets. Here and there we see a collarless dog ambling along the side of the road, a stray cat perched on a low wall, another one curled up on an awning.

“I don’t know why you come here,” Fred says suddenly. “They threw the ashes north. Not here.”

My skin prickles. “What ashes?”

My mother my mother my mother.

“Chen Jingling ashes,” he says, and Waipo looks up sharply.

Not my mother. My mother’s sister. My aunt.

“They scattered her ashes here?”

“No,” says Fred emphatically. “North. Farther.” He sees the look on my face. “Don’t tell my wife. She thinks you just normal customers.”

My brain is spinning, and I glance at my grandmother, but her face is turned out the window.

“You know who I am?” Fred says then, his voice a little softer, less gruff.

I shake my head.

He says nothing after that.

Around us, the mountains rise higher and higher in dusty blues and purples. The farther up we go, the more water I can see, a calm, still blue-gray that stretches on and on.

We turn off the main road, our car crawling up a steep hill to pull into the alley between two buildings.

“Come,” he says. “I’ll show you your room.”

He demonstrates how to unlock a heavy front door and leads us past a wide space with tables and chairs, and down a hallway to a room labeled A3.

“Here’s the key.” Fred raises a hand, gives the wood three sharp raps with his knuckle.

“This is our room?” I ask.

“Yes.”

“So why are you knocking?” I immediately feel embarrassed for asking.

He looks at me for a beat. “Gui yue hui peng dao gui. You know the expression?”

My grandmother makes a face at him.

I shake my head.

“It means, during Ghost Month, you will run into ghosts. You should always knock before going into the room at hotel or bed-and-breakfast, to be respectful to ghosts. And now especially—because right now it is Ghost Month.”

He pushes the door open, hands us the key, and then we’re on our own.

The room is small and well lit. Waipo kicks off her shoes and changes into the slippers provided for us. I follow suit.

On the other side of a decorative folding screen are two low beds and a nightstand. Above them, on the wall: two huge, beautifully painted accordion fans. One featuring a pair of red-crowned cranes, the other a lone phoenix beginning to dive down, its tail feathers teardrop-shaped like peacock quills, long and draping.