Esmé Wang - The Border of Paradise

Such a lovely girl, with such meanness available to her. She comes out of Ma’s room, holding a fistful of envelopes with the tops torn. “We have to think about money,” she says. As soon as she says it, I realize that there are small, forgotten things about Ma ad infinitum as yet unspoken, such as the fact that she was the one to get the mail, and we were never allowed to accompany her when she went down the mountain to retrieve it. Here is Gillian with the envelopes in her hands, the stripped envelopes with the stern typewriting between her fingers. I start to panic.

“Were you snooping in there?” I ask.

A growl rises from the back of her throat. “It’s not snooping, it’s trying to survive. Look. It looks like we have some receipts here. I imagine they’re from… checks that come from somewhere.”

She hands me a folded piece of paper, on which there are things like “Total Balance” and “Investment Returned” and “Allowance for 9/1/72-9/31/72.” The numbers are big, but big compared with what? There is a name, and a signature.

“Alan Topor?” I ask.

“I don’t know. He seems to deal with our money,” Gillian says. “I think. All of these envelopes have his name on them. And they all say an address with NY. Maybe he knew Dad back in New York.”

“Mmm.”

“Money, William. We need to think about money. Doesn’t this seem like a lot of it? Thousands of dollars of an allowance? Compared to a week’s worth of groceries? Are we rich, do you know? Can you imagine that we’re rich?”

“Do we seem rich to you?” is what I say. And then, “This is profoundly, profoundly morbid. I can’t believe you were snooping in there.”

She ignores this. “We’ll be fine as long as we keep getting the mail.”

“Are you listening to yourself? You don’t know the first thing about how to use a check. So you take it to the bank, if you can figure out where that is. We don’t know the first thing about banks. Can you just show up and get money? How will they know we’re Nowaks? We don’t exist outside of the property.”

“I’m sure we can figure it out,” Gillian says, and stares at the envelopes again. “I’m honestly not trying to be morbid. You’ve got to realize that this solves so many of our problems — you’ve got to see that we’re in an enormous amount of trouble if we don’t figure out what we’re doing. If these come monthly, we’re not going to starve. As long as we can figure out the money situation, we’ll be all right…”

Why don’t I care about such things? Is it because of the rejection and sleeping alone that I’ve fallen into despair? She’s still reading the letters, looking at the receipts. I don’t even ask her to hand them over. She is flipping through the papers in her hands and pulling sheets out of every envelope, examining, and in the haze of my fear I see her in my mind’s eye using the bedroom phone to call up this Topor fellow and getting money out of this somehow, after which she runs away and leaves me here, oh God.

“At some point, we’ll have to go through all of the things in her room,” she says.

“We?”

“Yes. As in you and me. There are probably plenty of things of importance in there.”

“It’s morbid,” I say.

“You’re incorrigible,” she says. “But if you won’t do it, I will.” She pulls back her lips in a faux snarl, and there is some food caught in between her teeth, something soft the color of bread, which reveals itself as she smiles. Faintly, like a burp: disgust, an unfamiliar feeling. I reach out and grab the papers from her. Then I begin to tear them as I exit to the kitchen, with Gillian yelling behind me.

“What are you doing?” she screams.

I turn on the burner and drop the pieces into the flame, and they curl and disappear quickly into ash.

She slaps at me, her hands on my shoulders and upper arm, but I barely feel them. Her eyes are lit green.

“I may love you more than anyone on this earth,” I say. “But I’m not helpless.”

Gillian whirls away from me and out of the kitchen. Ma’s bedroom door slams, its lock clicking into place. I am triumphant, though I know better than to gloat now that I, for once, have the upper hand. Should another letter come in a month, as Gillian anticipates, I’ll deal with the new intrusion then. Much can change in a month, I remind myself.

Gillian tersely cooks trout as I read, and when she calls me to dinner there it is, laid out: the trout on a platter with soy sauce, two bowls of wet-looking rice (off-putting, but perfect for xi fan), and a bowl of withered mustard greens, cooked in the same garlic-and-soy-sauce combination as the trout was. We eat everything like starving children, proving to ourselves that we are all right alone and even fully capable of being human beings and almost adults, even if the fish looks slightly underdone. Gillian eats the eyeball. I have the tender cheek. We suck on delicate bones and pick the skeleton clean. I finish the too-salty, bitter greens. Then I wash the dishes while she sits at the kitchen table and sings to me, and I marvel at her shifting moods as she softly croons “O Rupakach,” but something is still not feeling right. I sing along, badly.

Later we are sick. Sick as dogs, sicker than we’ve ever been before, and we take turns vomiting into the toilet as the other expels into a gray bucket. We have runny bowels and then alternate the use of the toilet for that, until we are vomiting and I feel my bowels clench and expand simultaneously in multiple spasms, but Gillian is on the toilet with her face in her hands; I run out the back door and, undignified, am rudely, horrifyingly sick outdoors by a tree in the dark. This illness goes on and on with no time by which to measure it. With my pants half-down and my body convulsing I want to die; and it is nighttime, so the insects are investigating my vulnerable body and disgusting rump, though my spasming intestines take precedent over the vague and growing itch. After the sickness abates I practically crawl into the house, weak and trembling, down the hall, and pass out on the living room floor with my trousers up, unable to summon the consciousness needed to wipe myself clean with something to be buried deep in the yard later. I dream of climbing a tall ladder against the side of the house. Ma is telling me to do something on the roof. I’m too afraid to climb up the ladder and do whatever it is that she wants me to do. When I look down at her I notice that her face is blurry beyond recognition, as though it’s been smeared by an upset thumb.

I awaken, feeling sick for multiple reasons. The sun isn’t up yet; the light against the windows is a bruise. Soon it will be cold. In the bathroom I see that Gillian is curled up against the tub, and the air is fetid with the expulsions of our insides. I want to carry her out of the room and be alone to wash myself. It’s the first time that I’ve wanted any kind of separation from her since the sweetness of our honeymoon week. Instead I go back outside, my movements shrouded by darkness, to use the hose, where my skin prickles in the cold air and the icy water sluices down every insect bite and every sensitive part of my body — a beating — an admonishment.

In the morning it’s mostly shame that drives Gillian’s movements as, after she bathes in the plentiful stream of the tub’s faucet, she takes the altar into the master bedroom, and is it that shame that has her searching for a suitable photograph of Ma the way that she does? This is her own private project. At around two o’clock — I have been sleeping fitfully in a cave, scratching till my fingernails catch blood beneath them — she shakes me. She calls me into the bedroom to genuflect and say prayers. On the vanity she’s arranged space for framed photographs of David and Ma, as well as a grapefruit pyramid on a plate. Here is the joss sticks’ scent, and my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth.