Fiction

I.

You hear the tinkle of the shop door as it is pushed open, but you do not look up. What you are doing is too delicate an operation to be interrupted. A broken heart is a serious thing, after all, and you continue to fiddle with nerves and fuse tissue in a desperate attempt to appear dismissive.

But the customer does not depart. You hear the soft, light tread – like that of a cat – coming nearer and nearer. At last you know that the customer – whoever it is – is standing right in front of you. Not speaking, not interrupting. But waiting. Waiting and watching your hands with quiet curiosity.

It is this silent patience that at last forces you to stop what you are doing and look up. You restrain the urge to curse just barely in time. Because the customer is not another middle-aged woman, bringing in a heart battered and beaten by poor nerves, nor an elderly man, who has come to you because his heart no longer works the way it should. It is a little girl – not more than ten or eleven years old.

You have never seen anyone so young come into your shop. You are curious to know the reason why. This is, perhaps, why you put away the heart you were working on, and ask the girl what you can do for her. You force yourself to speak gently, to hide your surprise. Something in the way she looks at you invokes your pity.

She doesn’t answer you though. Only lays her heart on the counter between you. You see right away that it is covered with bruises, and that there is a large crack running down one side. It beats weakly and uncertainly – quivering on the table like a lump of blue jello.

You try to maintain a neutral expression as you pull on a new pair of gloves and begin your assessment. You have seen many hearts over the course of your career – several even in worse conditions than this one. But there is something about this heart that sickens you. Perhaps because it is so small. Too small, surely, to keep anyone alive. You ask the girl, as you pinch and prod, how long it has been this way. She doesn’t answer you. Just watches your hands without saying a word. Sometimes, when you touch a particularly large bruise, she winces.

At last you finish your examination. You tell the girl that you can fix it – but you need some cooperation. Without the necessary background information, any repairs will quickly disappear. She doesn’t look at you while you’re saying this. She has dropped her head to look at the counter in front of her, and traces an invisible pattern with the tip of her finger. Around and around. Around and around…

You sigh, then, and say: Never mind, I’ll try anyway. Come back in a few days.

You pick up the heart, and turn around to put it in a large jar of fluid. When you turn around again, the girl is gone.

 

II.
When she comes back, you are working on another heart in the back of the shop. You nod to indicate she should come to you, and then turn back to your work. She doesn’t come right away though. And as you twine fibers and glue veins, you watch her as she wanders around the shop.

You got into the habit of keeping the lights off years ago. There are only two in the shop – one by the front desk, and one over your workbench, where you are sitting right now. Because of this, you cannot see the girl very well. You are like an actor on a stage – looking out into the darkened audience, watching as a few pale faces flash into being, and then just as quickly slip away again. This is how you see the girl, watching the deep sheen of her hair as it bobs behind shelves and between countertops – melding with the darkness. You see too the rims of hundreds of glass jars, rippling with the line of her shadow. She pauses by one of these, looking into it intently. Then she looks away again. The heart inside is black and withered.

You speak to her then, telling her to come to you. She can hear the excitement in your voice and hurries over. You hold out a heart to her  – deep red, and pulsing deep and hard. This is what a proper heart should look like! you tell her. Look at that – isn’t it beautiful?

She looks from the heart in your hand to your face and smiles a little. And you begin to laugh, because you see the irony of your statement. But also because you are glad. You have made her smile. You have never seen her smile before.

You put the heart away, and tell her that you’ll look at her heart now. You made some notes after your preliminary examination. But you are still rather baffled. You pull it out now, and feel that familiar sick turning of your stomach. You don’t want to look at it. It’s wrong, somehow. You have seen worse. But this is wrong.

You take a deep breath, and force yourself to focus. You ask the girl the same questions you asked her before: How long has it been like this? Where did this bruise come from? What hurts? When she doesn’t answer, you look up at her. And you see that the smile has faded from her face. You want to ask: How can I help you? But the words are thick and heavy on your tongue, and you cannot get them out.

You try another tactic. You turn back to the heart, pretending not to look at her. While you measure air and write nonsense, you ask her about her family. Do you have siblings? Do your parents work? Where do you go to school?

You are watching her out of the corner of her eye while you speak. And you see how she folds inside herself, shoulders hunching forward to protect the fragile chest and abdomen, head dropping lower and lower. You trail off mid-sentence, unsure of how to go on. Suddenly a tear splashes down on the workbench, and you reach out to touch her without thinking.

She recoils sharply, instantly. As if your hand had been a snake. For a moment, she stands there, trembling. Then she turns, and runs out of the shop.

 

III.
It is winter now. The streets are muffled with snow, and the light outside is sharp, pale, and brilliant. You have almost forgotten about the girl. That is why you are so surprised when she suddenly appears in your shop one day, bent almost double under a large backpack. You ask her how she is, although you can see for yourself that she is still small and thin, and that her eyes are restless and sad. She doesn’t answer you, but you were expecting that. You ask if she has come for her heart, and she nods. You pull it out of the jar, and see that it looks exactly as it did when she first brought it to you. You are vaguely disappointed. Although you know it’s ridiculous to feel this way – hoping beyond hope that the heart would have somehow repaired itself.

She looks at it a moment, then shrugs the heavy backpack to the floor, and pulls out a small purse. You wave it away, telling her that you don’t charge for what you can’t fix.

She nods and puts away the purse. You hand her the heart, wrapped in tissue paper, and she puts that inside her backpack too. She is having trouble getting the backpack on again, so you step around the counter to give her a hand. You are surprised at how heavy it is, and say so. You make some stupid joke about how much homework the teachers must be assigning. But she doesn’t laugh.

You watch as she walks to the door, hear the soft tinkle of the bell as she pushes her way outside. She pauses for a moment in the empty street, shifting the heavy backpack on her shoulders to move it into a more comfortable position. Then, she begins to walk away.

Your legs are moving before you are aware of it, carrying you to the door, and forcing you to open it and step outside. There she is – almost at the end of the street. She hesitates a moment at the intersection, then turns left, and walks out of sight. And you do not know where she is going, or why she is going, or why it even matters to you. But your throat is so tight that it is hard to breathe, and your heart is beating in sharp and painful motion.

 

Grace Larson is a junior studying Business at the University of Cologne, Germany, but she originally hails from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her work has previously appeared in ‘Every Day Fiction’ and ‘Variety Pack’.

The house had always been on fire. That is what they said, at least. There were records, of course – birth certificates yellowed by heat, brittle marriage licenses curling at the edges, death notices with soot still clinging to the ink–but no true memory of when the first match had struck. Some murmured that the blaze began with a forgotten quarrel, others insisted it was a divine punishment meant to remind them of their place. But most agreed it had always been like this, a fire not fierce enough to consume, only to linger, and, on occasion, flare.

It was not a dramatic fire. It did not leap at the sky or scream through the rafters. It settled. It simmered. It threaded through the wallpaper like ivy, bloomed in the hearths without prompting, whispered beneath floorboards in tongues no one tried to understand. The flames were quiet companions, and over time, the residents stopped noticing the way their clothes always smelled faintly of smoke. They got used to the scars and saw it as something like affection.

They adapted.

Children learned to crawl around glowing embers as if avoiding them were a game. Elders wiped ash from their tea cups without pausing conversation. There were rules: do not step barefoot after midnight–the floors were hotter then, more likely to blister; do not trust metal door knobs–they held the heat longest, even when they looked safe; do not mention the smell–everyone knew it, but saying it aloud made it real. Lovers met in the warmest rooms and called the heat romantic, believing conflagration to be a kind of blessing. “The flames keep us warm,” they said with soft, singed smiles, their eyelashes occasionally curling at the edges.

A girl who lived in the house tried to put it out once. Poor thing. She dragged in buckets of rainwater, tore down smoldering curtains, cracked windows to let the smoke escape. She walked barefoot and blistering through every room, whispering apologies to the floorboards, as if they too had suffered. The others watched from the stairwell, eyes wide with something like pity or amusement, and did nothing.

She became of age and left not long after. Her hands were red and raw from a childhood of blistering, and her voice hoarse from pleading. They were glad to see her go. The house, they said, could not be changed.

The ones who had originally struck the match lifetimes ago were long gone, of course. They had built the house, or inherited it, or simply walked in one day and declared it theirs. No one remembered them now. No portraits remained. But the flames did, licking softly at chair legs and bedposts, ever ready, present.

They loved the house, truly– deeply, in the way one loves a thing that has shaped them unconsciously. The fire curled around their memories, warmed their laughter, softened their grief. Even those who left, and there were some, carried it with them, a longing in the marrow, a taste of smoke in the back of their throat. They sought the same heat in others, built new houses with the same crooked blueprints. They gravitated towards anger, towards passion, toward anything that roared; they did not know the comfort of a cool breeze, how to sleep in a well-ventilated room. They did not trust silence. In the stillness of kinder homes, they missed the low, constant crackle– the sound of home.

They tried to recreate it, in small, ruinous ways. Left stove burners on too long. Lit candles and let them splutter down to wax puddles, even when there was no one present. They fought with their voices raised, not out of cruelty but necessity, for how else would they hear themselves above the consuming quiet? They called it love, because it was all they had ever known. The fire taught them early: warmth came with blisters, affection with smoke. This was the rhythm of things – wounds dressed with ash, forgiveness doled out in flickering half-light. So they grew up tracing that same pattern onto others, thinking it devotion to endure pain.

Outsiders stood at the edge of their yards, blinking through the smoke, saying, “Why don’t they just put out the fire?” As if it were as simple, as if the buckets of water hadn’t already been carried in by trembling hands, once, and poured into rooms that only hissed and steamed and kept burning anyway. There was talk, too, among the house’s older inhabitants, of leaving like the others, of finding somewhere cooler, clearer. Sometimes it was whispered in confidence, afraid of the judgement it would bring. But the idea always dissolved like ash in water. Where would they go? Who would take them in, so thoroughly charred? And besides, the fire wasn’t so bad all the time. You could live with it.

And so they did.

 

Abigail is a student from San Jose, California. In her free time, she enjoys painting, reading, and doing arts and crafts.

The chair beneath you is the same red as the blood on your knuckles. Your foot taps restlessly beneath the large oak desk of your principal. Mr. Clemmons is a graying man in his fifties, and you have likely given him most of his white hairs over the years. His eyes pierce yours; you’ve practically memorized the rain-gray of them by now.

He tells you he’s called your mother, and you hold back a flinch. Your mother coming here means she has to leave her job at the restaurant, and the last time that happened her manager docked her pay. You both spent two weeks living on cups of ramen and rationed peanut-butter sandwiches; she gave you the bigger rations.

“How are you going to explain this one?” Mr. Clemmons asks, and you look down at your lap, grimacing. There’s nothing you can say to her to soften the blow. Your mom won’t care what the other guy said; she’ll only care that you were stupid enough to take the bait. She won’t care that he taunted you or baited you with a watch worth, quote, “more than your father’s coffin,” only that you broke the kid’s nose.

Mr. Clemmons rubs his temple between two fingers. “I should expel you for this.”

“So why don’t you?” you snap, and immediately regret the words as he levels you with a glare. You look away and mutter a begrudging, “Sorry.”

He scoffs. “Your mother was my student, you know.” Your gaze stays firmly planted on the wall behind his head. “I know how hard she works now, and I’m trying not to put any more stress on her than she needs. But you’re not doing much to help, and any more of this and my hands will be tied. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Of course you do. You may be a straight-C-and-D-student, but you’re not entirely an idiot. You know how close you are to being kicked. A part of you is tempted to tell him to just get it over with; there’s no point in finishing school. Your mom didn’t, and she’s… fine. Enough. But you’ve seen her carefully counting and recounting the small stack of bills she’s saved for your college fund one night, as though she’ll ever use it.

It’s then that she walks through the door. Your stomach drops when you see her: frazzled hair, bags under her eyes, lips pursed in a line. Too late, you tuck your blood-stained hands beneath your legs. Her eyes narrow, and she meets your gaze but says nothing before she turns to Mr. Clemmons. The two of them talk, but all you can do is stare at her.

She’s never been this quiet to you. Even last time, when you slammed a freshman’s head into a locker for spewing crap he shouldn’t have, she at least said something—“Why?”. You clammed up; she didn’t need to know. Still, everyone at school knows how she’s only sixteen years older than you, and most aren’t afraid to throw that in your face.

This time, she hasn’t said a word. She’s hardly even looked at you. And twenty minutes later, after Mr. Clemmons told her you’d be suspended for thirteen days, after the car doors close and leave a ringing in their wake, there’s a tension in her shoulders and a white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel.

You whisper “I’m sorry” and are met with silence. So you turn to the window, resting your forehead on the cool glass. You close your eyes and say nothing more.

In three months, the two of you are going to snap. You are going to repeat the angry, bitter words of the kids at school to her face. You’re going to add your own, voice the thoughts you’ve only ever had late at night, when your lumpy mattress and pounding heart make it impossible to sleep. You’re going to hurt her, but your voice will crack at her desperately-hidden tears. So you’ll leave. You won’t know where you’re going, only that you have to get out, if only for a few hours.

It’ll be sunset when you finally head home. You’ll pass the cemetery, as you always do, and see your mother sitting with her back to your dad’s headstone, staring at the sky and unbothered by the cold. In the dim light, you’ll see drying tear streaks down her cheeks. You’ll pause, because she doesn’t break, not your mother; not when her high school boyfriend left when he got the news, not when the man who stuck around and raised you died in that car crash, and certainly not when her son is being an annoying little shit. Yet there she’ll be, and you won’t know how to handle it. So you’ll go home. Sit on the ancient armchair in your living room, put your head in your hands, and wait. When she finally returns, you’ll apologize—an actual, genuine apology with tears she hasn’t seen in months. She’ll hear you out, and when you’re done she’ll pull you into a hug and murmur “I just want you to be okay” as she brushes her lips to your forehead.

So you’ll try. For her, you’ll try to be okay.

Right now, you don’t know any of that. The silence stales in the car, and when you get home you go to your room without a word. Five minutes later, you hear the door click shut behind her as she returns to the restaurant. You last another ten before your restlessness drives you to the door. It’s not like you know where you’re headed. Nowhere good, probably, but a flash of white makes you still. Your eyes find the bandages she’s left on the kitchen table—bandages for your knuckles. Your breath stutters out of your chest, leaving something hollow behind.

After a moment, you pick up the bandages and clean the blood from your hands with only the quiet as company.

 

Ali Adams is a college freshman who plans to study Creative Writing and Data Science. She loves writing of all kinds and hopes to be a full-time author in the future.

Friday, July 12

 Okay, before you say anything, I just need you to know that Winnie is fine. I already know what you’re going to say, and I know it sounds pretty bad, but just remember while you’re reading this that Winnie ends up being 100%, honest-to-god, certifiably, absolutely FINE! Like, probably more fine than the rest of us have been in a long time. Even more fine that time Jamie accidentally found Uncle Ted’s gummies and started hallucinating that the birds in the sky were angels here to rapture us back to Heaven. That’s how incredibly fine Winnie is.

So, remember how you told us to avoid those spongy spot out in the yard because you were convinced one day it’d collapse in on us and we’d be sent straight into the Devil’s Mouth? Yeah. Well, Winnie has never been one to listen. I tried, Ma! I’m telling you, I tried! I yelled “Winnie, get back here! Get back here, now!” but she just kept running. Even Jamie tried chasing after her, and you know that boy can’t run. Winnie didn’t take two steps out there before the ground collapsed and she was gone within the blink of an eye. All that was left was a circle of earth bigger than the Thompsons’ in-ground pool. Jamie and I were pure stunned. We just stood there like a couple of fools for a moment. I had to think to myself what would Ma do? but the obvious answer was, of course, to never let Winnie near the Devil’s Mouth to begin with. Then we never would’ve gotten into this lousy scenario. But here we were, and poor Winnie was about to get sent straight to Hell, so we came to our senses and chased after her.

I just want to tell you in advance, sorry about your dogwood tree. It did not fare as well as Winnie did in this whole situation. But you’ve never seen such a sight! Once you see it for yourself you’ll forget all about the tree and the fact Winnie even went on this joyride to begin with.

For something you call the Devil’s Mouth, it sure makes a pretty picture. Maybe other people aren’t as blessed and theirs are full of thorns or fire or something, and that’s where you got the idea that they’re all bad. But this one is different. Jamie and I couldn’t believe our eyes.

There Winnie was, happier than Uncle Ted on Free Fish Fridays, swimming around in the most crystal-blue pond you’ve ever seen. There’re a bunch of trees that put that old dogwood to shame. Flowers, too, with bees and hummingbirds buzzing around them. A tiny little planet right there in our very own backyard. Jamie figured out that the ground had carved itself into a little staircase for us to get in, so we went to join Winnie. That pond is just about the best ever swimming hole you could find. If the Thomspons knew about it, they’d be livid! Jamie and I swam around with Winnie for hours and hours before Uncle Ted came to call us for dinner. I think he might’ve had some more of those gummies of his, because the Devil’s Mouth didn’t seem to faze him one bit. He just told us to dry off and come inside. We begged him to let us stay out and eat our dinner in the Mouth, but he said “Civilized children say grace and eat with a fork and knife at the dinner table.” As if you can’t say grace and eat with a fork and knife out in a swimming hole!

We tied Winnie to the table so she couldn’t go out and create any more Mouths and fed her her kibble. Jamie might’ve slipped her some of his meatloaf, partly because we have her to thank for this miracle, and partly because Uncle Ted’s a real rotten cook. She just kept wagging her tail so hard I thought it might fly off. Like I said, Ma, Winnie’s fine. She’s had just about the best day any dog could have. As for Jamie and I, I’d better wrap this up soon so we can go back out to the Devil’s Mouth before dark.

We’re also brainstorming better names for it than the Devil’s Mouth, because we think that’s not a very nice thing to call something so lovely. Let me know what you think.

Monday, July 15

I already know what you’re gonna say. No amount of “I told you so’s” will change what’s happened, or how Jamie and I feel about this whole thing. We already spoke to Father Murphy about it so rest assured, we’ve gotten it right with God and everything.

Jamie and I were real thrilled about the sinkhole (that’s what Uncle Ted told was the “proper” name for the Devil’s Mouth) and decided to take Winnie out for another spin yesterday. If she was able to find that swimming hole on the first try, who knew what else she’d be able to conjure up!

Here’s where I’ll admit that you’re right, Ma. We probably should’ve counted our blessings and left it at that. But things went so well the first time, we figured “What’s the harm?”

Turns out, there was some harm. Don’t freak out, but Uncle Ted’s gone. He came out to the backyard with us and stepped right into a sinkhole. This one didn’t collapse into another swimming hole or nothing. It just collapsed. And Uncle Ted’s been gone since. I hope he didn’t end up in a real Devil’s Mouth, because he may be a lousy cook, but he’s a pretty good uncle. We’re thinking Winnie must have some kind of special touch that made the swimming hole appear. She’s always been a really good dog, so it’d only make sense.

Don’t worry about Jamie and I. The Thompsons have been checking up on us, so we’re not all alone, and Father Murphy’s been doing a decent job of giving us some solace about it all, even though I’m sure this whole thing’s above his paygrade.

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. When Uncle Ted disappeared, he took your garden shed with him. I know you kept your liquor out there, even if it was meant to be secret. I hope that’s not too much of a low-blow with everything else going on.

Friday, July 19

You’ll never believe it, Ma: Uncle Ted’s back! Jamie and I were out in the Devil’s Mouth with Maisy Thompson (who still won’t admit our swimming hole’s better than her in-ground pool, by the way), when he popped his head out of the water like he’d been there the whole time. We asked him where he’d been, and he hadn’t the faintest idea. As far as he was aware, one second he was falling through the earth, and the next he was in the swimming hole!

I know you were planning to cancel the rest of your visit with Mamaw to come back for us, but there’s no need now, we’re all taken care of. Uncle Ted’s doing just fine, but I will say, he did come back a bit odd. We were eating at the dining table last night, when all of a sudden Uncle Ted went ramrod straight in his chair and said in a real deep voice, “All hail the destroyer of worlds.” Jamie and I looked at him all confused, but he just cleared his throat and asked us why we were staring. Then, this morning, he spoke gibberish and tried to feed us goat liver for breakfast. I’m pretty sure the goat was from the Thompsons’ farm, which’ll make church real awkward this weekend. I guess everyone has different coping mechanisms for returning from a pure void in time and space.

 

Aubree Landau is a writer, seamstress, and hobby collector from Phoenix, Arizona. Her work has previously placed in the Artists of Promise Creative Writing Contest. You can often find her reading in a comfy chair alongside her cat, Sadie.

When she was little, they used to plant marigolds together. Her mother wasn’t soft. She didn’t do bedtime stories or kiss scraped knees. Their little house was quiet: full of clattering pans, unspoken tension, and words that needed to be said but stopped just short of the tongue.

There were rare occasions of peace. One of them: the first time her mother gardened with her; she spoke one of those rare, kind sentences.

“We grow things, so the world knows we still believe in it.”

It was idealistic, something she had never seen her mother be before. She had only ever seen her mother be stubborn. It startled her. Drew her in. Made her believe too, even. Thus, it became a tradition. Every spring, like a ritual, her mother would haul down a battered seed crate and press a pair of gloves into her hands, no words said. And out they’d go, into the backyard where the soil was still dark and forgiving.

They knelt side by side, digging rows with their hands, sweat streaking their faces. It was sacred. It was the only time they were easy around each other—when their mouths were shut and their fingers were working, folding seeds into the ground like secrets. Dirt under her nails was the only trait she was willing to inherit from her mother. (She pointedly ignored the twist of her mother’s smile or the small mole under her left eye when she looked in the mirror.) These few weeks of gardening were the most familial thing they were capable of.

But at age twelve, she noticed the berries came up slower. At fifteen, half of them died before she could taste them, and her mother’s fingers trembled when she tried to hold the hose. The sun was scalding. Still, every year, her mother planted. Even when the rain didn’t come.

Even when the earth was dry and cracked. Her mother’s attempts to mimic normalcy enraged her. She refused the gloves the next spring, disgusted.

Then she left for college. Didn’t come home one summer. The next, she stayed only two days. The first to bury her mother. The second to bury the old seed crate beside her. She thought it was fitting. But she kept the gloves. She kept the gloves.

And she didn’t sell the house, despite it all. She convinced herself it was an investment worth keeping. So, after graduation, she moved back to her small town with her little house.

It wasn’t theirs anymore. The garden was dust. The tools were still hanging in the shed like bones. The house was as silent as it had been when her mother was alive. After all, they had never really spoken.

That fall, she remembered the gloves hanging from their rusted hook. Something in her demanded she wear them. Recklessly, she bought and planted whatever shitty seeds the cashier said would grow in November.

When they didn’t, she cried. Maybe, she thought, maybe she killed them. Maybe she killed her mother. Maybe if she’d been more grateful, maybe if she’d been a better daughter, then everything around her wouldn’t be dead. So, what if it was irrational or absurd? It didn’t make it any less true.

A few months later, the news said the ground had officially been reclassified as sterile. Nothing would grow now. Close to nothing had been able to grow for a while before that, they announced. At hearing that, she felt hollow. Eventually, she stopped staring at the TV and got up off the couch. She found the gloves again. She folded them gently. She didn’t cry this time.

There was no one left to cry to, and nothing left to cry for. She buried them in the garden. And she moved on.

She kept the house. She found love. Not the star-crossed kind she used to write stories about, but the mundane, everyday kind. It seems miraculous to be mundane when the world was falling apart, to her at least. Regardless, it was love, and that was enough. She never had children, but she never thought about her childhood either—not the garden or the crate or the gloves—not any of it. The house wasn’t full of oppressive silence anymore, just a calm quiet, with little moments of happiness in between.

But sometimes, when the wind cuts through the quiet just right, she thinks she hears something scratching at the parched earth beneath her feet. Not her mother. Something old and forgotten.

It asks her:

“Do you still believe in it? The world?”

 

Giya Agarwal is a student at Interlake High School. Her poetry has previously been published or recognized by the New York Times, the Eyre, Polyphony Lit, Hollins University, and the Pulitzer Center.

Grandma’s newly hired caretaker, Ah Ling, leaned across the restaurant table in Xi’an. A tall forty-ish woman with short hair, she pointed to an online picture of palm trees and ocean. “It’s beautiful there. Don’t you think Grandma deserves a nice break?”

“Hmm,” Mom grunted. “Mother, do you want to go to Hainan?”

Grandma gazed out the window and laughed as if she just remembered a joke.

Sensing our silence, Ah Ling rose from her seat and trotted away. She returned with bowls of rice and handed us each one. With a ladle, she scooped some chicken onto Grandma’s plate. “Eat more.”

Aunt leaned forward and asked Ah Ling, “Do you need some rest from caring for Grandma?”

“Oh, no, no. I just thought I should bring her on a trip.”

Half-eaten braised pork and crispy chicken slowly became lukewarm in their bowls. The turntable stopped rotating, and it seemed with it Earth had stopped spinning too. Grandma, once a semi-famous Chinese opera singer who appeared on Chinese TV variety shows, had been a houseplant for the entire dinner. Beside her, Ah Ling’s movements became akin to how a video game character might sway back and forth during a pause screen. Although the restaurant bustled, our table stilled, the passage of time tangible.

Grandma lived a life completely independent from mine in California, so there was no reason for me to worry. Still, I couldn’t help feeling uneasy. Was Ah Ling taking advantage of her? I knew that feeling. The school dance. My classmates’ sneers. Chuckling all around. For Grandma, the consequences of neglect or trickery could be much more grave. She had a set of pills Ah Ling needed to remind her to take. Sometimes, in a fit of confused anger, Grandma slapped people around her. I tried to imagine Ah Ling helping Grandma put on clothes, walking her down the stairs, cooking her food, being slapped. Maybe she wanted to leave Grandma in a hotel room to parasail, snorkel, and dance with locals.

But maybe going to Hainan would allow Grandma to draw a line through the circular flow she had floated along for years. The stream of time must have felt different to her at eighty-three. Every day, the hands of the clock returned to where they were a day ago. Every year, the sun and the earth aligned at the same spot. Perhaps it was truly Grandma’s desire to go on vacation, or was Ah Ling gently steering Grandma in that direction?

***

“Did the call go through?” Mom asked. Grandma’s face popped up on the phone screen.

Mom tilted the camera towards me, and I waved hello. Grandma had Mom’s prominent cheekbones and satiated eyes. The yellow kitchen light shone behind her, as if she were the sun.

“Remember what to say?” my mother asked me.

Proud of my twelve-year-old memorization skills, I began my blessings.

“Happy new year! Congratulations and stay prosperous!” I said in Chinese. “Wishing you good health!” On the floor, I bowed down for Grandma.

She smiled and let out a hearty laugh. “Ohhh, your Chinese is getting so good!” She clapped. Behind her, plastered to the wall, was a large photo of her in opera regalia, face decorated with colorful paints. The focus was her headpiece, embroidered with shimmering jewels and beads.

I didn’t really know what I had done or what it meant, but I wanted her approval.

She began to hum a tune that Mom often sang in the kitchen. She sang nasally. She was quiet, but every note pierced, and I could immediately tell what song it was—the Huanghe Daechang, about the defense of the Yellow River, the second longest river in China. Chinese resilience in the face of oppression.

What I knew was that in her prime, Grandma wouldn’t need my assurance to prosper. She had created her own prosperity through her voice, a life of parties, gifts, and operatic tours. I was proud to be sharing her family heritage. I bragged to my classmates, music friends, and teachers. “Look!” I held up my phone, displaying articles about her beauty and her uniquely gripping voice.

***

Back at Grandma’s apartment, the caretaker stepped out. “I’m going to pick up some cough medicine.”

In a hushed tone, Mom asked Aunt Liu Xin, “What has Ah Ling been up to?”

“She spends a lot of money on groceries and keeps saying how Grandma really wants to go to Hainan. I think it’s odd.”

“If there’s a real issue, then we’ll have to replace her,” Mom said.

“She’s been eating my wallet for years now! We’re not engineers like you in the U.S.!

But there’s no one else. I’ve tried to find someone.”

We stayed at Grandma’s apartment that night. While organizing a closet, Ah Ling dug up a discolored, old robe. A cloud of dust shrouded layers of red and gold silk, meticulous embroidery, lined with an array of faux jewels. Most of them had lost their shine, but they still faintly glowed. Ah Ling shook the Xifu up and down, and called Grandma over.

“What is this?” Ah Ling asked. I didn’t know if Grandma chose not to speak, or if she really didn’t know. There was a highly probable chance of both. In China’s Cultural Revolution, Grandma had been trained to hide keepsakes. The robe was central to Chinese opera, a dying art that had no place in Mao’s ideal society. Still, I hoped that she remembered something. I often listened to old DVD’s of her singing. Her dramatic melodies would sweep me from my disappointing life, from my room to the open Chinese countryside where I was strong and beautiful, too.

I envisioned what she must have felt donning the Xifu on stage. Her voice wasn’t silky, but rather gravelly and rich. As she sang her flying melodies, she must have flown with conviction and strength even more than brilliance. A stark contrast to her passive demeanor nowadays. Where did the opera singer go, when she tossed the costume into her closet for the last time? Did this identity stay stowed away, gathering dust over the years? Or did it follow her, yearning to surface again?

The next morning, Grandma told us in her own words, “I want to go on a vacation. I want to take the plane to Hainan.”

“Are you sure?” Mom asked. “Why do you want to go?”

Grandma didn’t explain why. Maybe she just wanted to fly again, one way or another.

While Mom and Aunt went back to work, Ah Ling took Grandma on vacation.

***

A week later, a video call came in from a Hainan hospital. “How did that happen?” Mom demanded.

“We were walking up a set of stairs, and she fell backwards.” “Weren’t you supporting her?”

“I—”

“Grandma,” Mother said, “Do you feel alright?” “You have to come get me,” Grandma muttered.

“But Grandma, she has work to—” Ah Ling reached for the phone. But Grandma slapped her.

“All of you are useless!”

Grandma stared indignantly into the camera, right at Mom. She appeared confused, like a child lost in her emotions, with only her fist to convey them.

“That’s it. I have to get her,” Mom said, stuffing a week’s worth of clothes into her suitcase. Dad and I drove her to the airport.

“I’ll be back soon, once Grandma is well enough to get on a plane,” she told me. Waving goodbye at the terminal, she left, and I didn’t see her until six months later. She was wearing the same clothes she had on when she left, but Grandma was beside her, shakily grasping her left hand.

***

In California, I sat on our backyard patio next to Grandma. Above our heads, a hummingbird fluttered from left to right, and the leaves of our oak tree rustled gently.

“Do you hear it?” Grandma asked. “Hear what?”

“The song.” Her wheelchair was parked between a lawn chair and potted tomato plants. I realized that I had never thought about the squirrels, finches, and trees in my backyard that way. Unlike Grandma, I hadn’t grown up around urban sounds of car horns and shouting. I never had to forget the sound of my own singing.

“Get me some water,” Grandma said, sending me inside. Through a gap in the kitchen window, I heard a distant but characteristic voice singing.

Instead of layered red regalia, she wore a simple flowery shirt that conformed to her slightly hunched back. She sang for herself in a shallow tone, but with the same confidence she had in front of an audience of thousands. Instead of the dazzling textures of traditional Chinese percussion, she was accompanied by a choir of birds and bees. Though it was softer and less nasally, Grandma’s voice still soared. Here was a version of Grandma nobody ever saw on national television. I hummed along with her, following her lead as we flew among the birds.

 

Garrett Cai is a rising senior at Homestead High School and has been writing short stories since his freshman year. In his spare time, he likes to play the piano or meet up with friends for some tennis. Because he’s always on one keyboard or another he learned to type really fast.