The Astonishing Color of After(90)

Am I just completely losing it?

The air is so wet and sticky I immediately begin dripping with sweat. The morning light pale and watery… and shattered. Broken into a million pieces. Everything outside the apartment cracked, like someone took a sledgehammer to the world. The breakages are marked by inky black. Jagged lines stretch across the sky. The clouds, cracked. The trees, cracked. My grandparents’ alley, cracked, ready to crumble at any moment. With each step I take, the cracks in the ground double, triple, black lines fissuring outward, the sound like ice breaking.

I make my way to the park slowly. Even the people I pass look broken. Their mopeds about to fall apart. Their bodies shattered like mirrors, heads like crushed eggshells. The inky lines run down their noses and mouths, but they don’t even seem to notice.

There’s a noise high above me. I look up to see something slowly falling my way, drifting a little. It’s a deep dark red. A perylene maroon.

A feather.

It lands in my outstretched palm. Something is unlocked by my catching it. The sky turns purple. It begins to rain feathers. Every shade of red. Scarlet and merlot and opera rose and Venetian and ruby and mahogany and sangria and blood and currant reds. Long, sharp contour feathers, fluffy down feathers, even the small, hairlike filoplumes.

I run along the sidewalk collecting them, gathering them off the ground, plucking some out of the air, taking all the ones I can before they’re stolen away by a breeze.

Why are these falling? Where is the bird?

The thought hits me: I’ve broken something.

What if I wasn’t meant to unlock all those memories? What if those things were supposed to stay tucked away, hidden and eventually forgotten?

Is this what my mother—before she turned into a red and winged beast, back when she still wove magical worlds over the piano keys, and delighted in the look of a perfectly done waffle, and called my name in her warm bismuth-yellow way—is this what she would’ve wanted? For me to chase after ghosts? For me to uncover whatever answers I could, and try to stitch together the broken pieces of my family history?

I think of Emily Dickinson, asking her sister to burn all her words.

I think of my mother’s note.


I want you to remember



Maybe Mom crossed that out because she changed her mind.

Maybe I wasn’t supposed to do all this, and the cracks are her way of striking out all that’s left.

It begins to rain. All the colors swirl together like a dirty paintbrush plunging into a cup of water.





91





I sit in a shattered park, beside shattered trees, under a shattered sky. I even feel the bench crunching when I shift. Rainwater snakes its way through the crevices of the broken ground. The only thing that hasn’t cracked is my own body. My limbs are whole, unscathed. I’m the last person out here who isn’t about to crumble.

In my left hand, a bouquet of the feathers that fell from the sky. I bury my face in them. They’re soft and buttery, just like my mother’s hair used to be. Warm, springy, with a hint of coconut. They don’t have the wet and rotting musk of the red-filled tub. They smell like Mom. The way she smelled in life.

“Those are some beautiful feathers.”

Feng’s standing next to my bench. I didn’t expect to see her here. She’s not broken, either—a huge relief. I’m not alone.

“Mind if I sit?” she says.

“Go ahead,” I tell her.

“I’ve only got a few minutes, actually. Then I have to go run an errand.”

“Okay.”

Feng takes a deep breath and lets it back out in a slow sigh. “I like to come here, too. It’s so peaceful. The mosquitoes don’t even bother me anymore.”

“It’s been forty-eight days,” I tell her.

Even though I’ve never told her I was counting, I can tell by the expression on her face that she knows exactly what I’m talking about.

“I came all the way to Taiwan to find the bird. But what if I don’t? I’m almost out of time.”

“Are you sure she wants to be found?” Feng says gently.

“Not anymore.”

“What are you planning to do if you find her?”

The question annoys me. “How am I supposed to know? It’s not exactly like I intended for all this to happen. She’s the one who sent me a box of clues. She basically told me to come.”

“Maybe that’s all she wanted,” says Feng. “Maybe it’s enough that you’re here.”

I shake my head. “I have to find her.”

“I have faith that you will,” says Feng. She stands. “I’m really sorry to cut this short.”

“No, it’s fine.”

“You’ll find her. I know you will. But when you do, promise me you’ll let her go.”

“What?” I look up.

“Let her go. Let her be. That’s the greatest gift you can offer a ghost.”

The words echo in my head, titanium white, turning and turning. Let her go. Let her be.

Feng hesitates for a long moment. This time, when her voice comes out, it sounds just as cracked as everything around us. “I saw the bird, Leigh.”

“What?”

“She spoke to me. She told me to go home.”