Esmé Wang - The Border of Paradise

“A mi tuo fuo,” she says. “Guanshiyin pusa.”

The photograph of Ma is an old one, no doubt taken by David. A portrait with the focus only on the face. She is, what, twenty-five, thirty, sad eyes, a smiling mouth.

How many joss sticks are there left? How will we ever have enough without eventually going into Sacramento? This is what I think as I hold my stick between my hands next to Gillian and bow, my bangs floating into air. In my head I see my parents next to each other on the couch, kissing. My mother, with such love toward David. How could I ever understand such infinite affection, such deep love, for someone whom one has not known for a lifetime? Ma has her hand on the side of his head and is cupping his cheek and ear as she kisses him, a gesture that I believe I have mimicked with the girl beside me in a poignant moment. Gillian stands. I have forgotten to mournfully think about my dead parents. Gillian is still repeating “a mi tuo fuo, a mi tuo fuo.” Now we are both genuflecting, and my forehead is damp against the floor. My buttocks itch from the insect bites and rub against the seat of my pants as I genuflect. I’m trying to think about the catastrophe that has befallen us, made clear by the fact of food poisoning. This is our fault. Or this is her fault, and not mine except by the fault of not being strong enough. I was never strong enough and Gillian did not know how to cook the fish and here we are, trying to cleanse ourselves with ritual and be pure.

Gillian is trembling, and I put my hand on her back. Her body shakes under my palm, and I cry, too. Now Gillian says, “I’m sorry,” in Mandarin, and then in English, “I’m sorry.” Her throat bubbling and childish. She crawls to me and her arms are around me. With the joss stick still in one hand, and the smoke wisps around my head. Maybe now it falls to the floor. Again I feel like vomiting, but all over her shoulder now. Things are changing.

The thought is a worm at first, and then grows heavy and fat. It begins with the memory of carrying Gillian as I stumbled up the hill with smoke in the air. I carried her and Ma was calm as she led the way, occasionally looking back to make sure that we were following. And of course we were following; but of course we would follow. How could she think anything different? I carried Gillian and we went so far as one slanted peak, until the rocks became vertical and I would have had to put her down for us to go farther. She would have had to get down out of my arms and by her own free will choose to climb up the rocks to the next slanted peak, where we like animals would claw our way to the house, and we would, in the house where we had grown up, I imagined, sit at the kitchen table with David’s picture in the middle, holding hands, waiting for the fire to gulp us whole. I could see this even as I let Gillian go and screamed at her to keep going. And while we wasted time, because Gillian refused to move after I put her on the dirt, two men in fire suits stood at the top of the hill and saw us, and that was the end of our little hurrying toward death.

What I am fastened upon is the epiphany that we would all die together, and the lack of terror I had when it came to facing this truth. I felt profoundly more mature than Gillian in that moment because I was willing to face our inevitable end under the circumstances of losing the house, which is presumably the reason; Ma would not know how to find a new place for us, is how I read it, or perhaps she was simply panicked and saw no other way out. Though I can’t imagine Ma panicked about anything — and it is likely that she was full of clarity that day, just as I am beginning to be full of clarity now.

As clear as anything, I realize that we actually have to leave this life as we’ve known it. It can’t go on like this, if only for the joss sticks, the Buick, the groceries, the soap to wash our bodies, the fact of bleach, the confusion of the insertion of gasoline into a vehicle, our clothes that will disintegrate, the end of thread, the fact that I can’t face the beginning of a new life. Because she will fall in love with someone, a stock boy, perhaps, and let him inside of her, and she will shun me, as she has already begun to. Ma is dead and she killed her and I had to close her eyes, and Ma would have understood. I know that she would have implored us to do the very same thing, if her ghost could materialize.

Knife to the heart, in the back, in the chest. Slice the throat. If I had a gun I could make it quick, but I have no way of making it so swift. God knows how angry Gillian would be to see me staring! She’s been examined enough. A wash of pity — Gillian is such a child, and she is still unaccustomed to my love. How happy she would be, if I could leave her alone. I think of the knives I keep in the closet, lying like corpses in their trunk. I should end it and let it be ended.

I wipe my eyes with my palms. No. I can’t do the inevitable, or at least, not today. So I will leave her alone for now and go into my room. My gift to her is to let her awaken and to see that I have left and not harassed her.

When I’ve decided I’ve had enough of leaving her alone, I go into the hall, ready to have a civil conversation, and there is music playing from Gillian’s room, the door closed. I find a letter taped onto my room’s door, and the sight of this letter, a piece of paper, some kind of communication, startles me.

William,

Please forgive me for what I’m about to do. I need to get away, and for that I’m sorry. Don’t try to come find me. I’m attaching a map of directions to town and to the mailboxes.

I’m really sorry. I know you won’t believe this, but I love you — just not in the way you, or anyone else, wanted.

Gillian

“Oh,” I say. I rush to Gillian’s room with the letter in my hand. I bang on the door, call her name, say that we must talk about this. But there is too much quiet beneath the sound of Mussorgsky, and I know. I push the door open and in, violating our contract, and here are her things, her animals, sketchbooks strewn. The spinning and tinny turntable. I search the rest of the house. I look in the closets and the bathrooms. Half deliriously I look in the cupboards. Back in her bedroom I break into tears, kick over the turntable, which exclaims and dies; and then I plead to every familial ghost to bring my girl home.

Highway and right on Cedar Street,

Right on Elm three miles to meet

A mighty oak, and left you’ll see

Samson Drive, 1-9-8-3.

How funny is it that I remember this old, singsong rhyme of my father’s? I am more adept at memorization than William is, but I was also more captivated by the journey to Sacramento than William ever was, just as I have always been more concerned with the way to town, or interested in the brands of cereal that the K & Bee makes available to its customers. Certain things I have chosen to pay attention to, primarily things of the world, including this shred of instruction, and I must make the most of it. Samson Drive, 1-9-8-3. A young man comes down the aisle with a rucksack over one shoulder and stops with his hand on the train seat beside mine. He’s my father’s height and nearly as thin as when my father was most ill. This boy’s hair is neatly parted and dark; every strand is in its right place, so smooth that it shines like liquid, and he has dark eyebrows to match the mole at the corner of his upper lip, which becomes more visible when he turns to face me and says, “I’m sorry, but — I’ve been looking for a free seat for forever .” He pauses. Finally he gestures to the seat beside me. He would like to have a seat offered; he would like for me to offer him this seat.