passing shadows

Hours after landing on American soil, my mother sits across from me at a Mexican diner that now occupies a cut off street. It feels like autumn. The lime green tables, streaked with bright orange, hold my caritas and her salmon salad. Between bites of pork and pinto beans, I ask her the difference between change and growth.

“I don’t know,” she says, her fork waiting on the plate, “But your grandmother has  changed.” Leaves vibrate above the table, glimpses of sunlight in harmony with the mid-spring wind. Flowers bloom all over—pink and yellow and peachy orange, tinted at the edges with grey.

“I always thought she was a child. You know: traveling around the world, breaking her leg racing a teenager at sixty.” I nod: she raised me singing about a tofu man while scrubbing my back in the shower, dancing through the grocery store aisles as we made up songs about our eyes. Even after surviving the cultural revolution—her family’s company seized by the government, children removed from school and exiled to the countryside wearing clothes made of stitched together towels, she only told stories of running through summer corn fields, squirting tomatoes and laughing among the funny-looking goats.

My mother takes a sip of lukewarm water, “Her sister’s cancer has been hard on her—they borrowed thousands for a treatment she barely survived. She no longer talks to anyone, and  her sons are trying to sue each other over money. Your grandmother’s so worried she moved into a run-down apartment she can barely shower in to save money. When  I landed in China,  she was signing the paperwork to sell our house to invest, thinking she can ‘make it big’ at seventy.

“We went out for hot pot when they first picked me up from the airport. She wouldn’t let us order meat. When the waiters weren’t looking, she grabbed raw meat from a crumpled plastic bag in her purse and tossed it into the soup. The meat was gray and hard, barely chewable. I ate it out of politeness and got a stomach ache later that day.”

I swallow my pork but it tastes like water. That’s not her, I want to shout, she’s not like that. But all I could see was her crumbled face, stale like an apple left on the counter, grey and dry and bone hard. I stared at the beans on my plate as my eyes burned and the waiter stared.

Mother doesn’t meet my gaze as she probes the salmon, “She did something else the other day, I don’t want to tell you because you might not be able to handle it.”

I don’t argue. Instead I press the soft meat to my mouth, trying to distract from the memories spinning in my mind—us singing by the beach, making dumplings for dinner, sliding down water slides made for toddlers, laughs erupting like soda fizz.

“She’s good at putting on a mask. It’s how she survives.”

#

I’m sitting on the bleachers of the little league, waiting for my mother to finish using the  restroom. It’s empty: the bases put away, not a ball or bat in sight. A homeless man lingers in the corner under tree shadows, digging chips from a crumbled bag. My legs dangling off the edge, I read the same sign I’ve read a thousand times before, “Please remember: These are kids. This is  a game. Coaches are volunteers. Umpires are human. Pick up all trash.” It echoes like a half translucent mirror, the words folding into ripples.

Tall, overarching oak trees smother the field, leading up a highway on one side and an abandoned power plant on the other. Leaves cast ghostly shadows on the peeling paint, the splintering wood, my swinging legs. It’s hard to imagine it busy: little kids cheering and throwing Cheetos, their faces painted in team colors. I try to remember the roar of the crowd, the sharp, electronic numbers on the board—the feeling of Saturday afternoons, lips sticky from snow cones.

But I only hear the whooshing of cars driving past, lines across the sky, tires across concrete, speeding towards green metal signs and bright futures, fleeting towards the distant hills and city lights, never to return.

The road only runs one way, afterall.

#

I put post-its on my wall to countdown the end of school: 11 in total. Above hangs a wind chime my mother bought in China, the bells stabilized by the wall—silent, motionless.

Each day, afterschool, I peel a post-it from the wall, crumble it up, and toss it into the trash. Assignments, to-dos, I speed through bell schedules and bullet journal spreads, running faster and faster on this hamster wheel—yet going nowhere nonetheless. I tell myself it’ll be okay in ten days—nine, eight, seven. And everything in between blurs like clothes in the laundry, drenched by the inpouring water.

#

I dance in the moonlight. It’s long past twelve but I’m tired of sleeping. The night is blue on my hands, water coloring my hair as street lights flicker—I feel like I’m made of ice. Balleting, ice skating, twirling in the air as my dress flies behind me, drenched in white shadows and crimson promises.

When my heart starts to pound I drop onto the floor, the soft carpet pressing against my legs. I blink and strands of light draw out beneath me; they stretch across the skyline like strings. I once wrote a story titled Moonlight Strings after my seventh grade crush taught me to spin a nickel. You’re so happy to make a coin spin, he laughed as he gave me the nickel.

When things don’t work, I shift the timeline—we’ll meet again when we’re forty, at a coffee shop in Brooklyn. I clamp onto the idea of “right person wrong time,” because I can’t deal with the possibility they might not have been the right person all along.

In the dark, I fish the nickel out of my pencil case—it’s been here all these years—and spin it towards the moon, hoping it’ll catch light.

#

My mother and I sit at a small ceramic table overlooking an abandoned parking lot, white lines fading into concrete. We ordered apple cider and a quiche from a cafe, but it closed at six, so we’re taking refuge on the patio of a restaurant that’s closed on Mondays.

The brick walls around us break down like tofu, pink scattering across the well kept garden where carnations and white roses bloom. The sky darkens and the sunshine turns grey like the distant windows and drawn curtains, hazy street lamps and rusty benches.

I close my eyes and take a photo. The white light passes through the rose at such an angle, a majestic casket growing dim. Lush green mountains sunbathe overhead, so distant I can’t tell if we’re in the same dimension. 

Hour by hour, cars disappear and more lines emerge. I sip my cold cider, puckering with cinnamon, and chew the cheese stuck to the crust while my mother browses on her phone, scrolling and scrolling into the void.

#

I stopped taking down post-its from the wall. I stopped coloring in my mood tracker or planning my days before bed, sectioned by ruler lines and dotted pages. I let it all stretch between me like a blanket of mist, let it hang, let it bend when it doesn’t know where to go.

#

“It’s my fault,” I said that afternoon at the diner, “We’ve been out of touch for years. She’s raised me, I know she cares about me.” I thought of all the times I promised to come back to China to visit her, but end up postponing it year after year. Call again when you have time, that’s always how she ends the call. Yet the next time she hears my voice is Chinese New Year, sandwiched between phone calls of nearly twenty family members.

“It’s not just you,” my mother said, poking the lettuce around her salmon.

“But I should call her, I owe it.”

“Whatever you want. Just know it’s not something you can help.” Through the gaps between leaves, the blue sky dips in bits of grey and yellow light, reflected off of cars and high windows, tall oak trees near wooden buildings. “Make sure you talk about happy things.”

I called her that night and we talked for half an hour. I tried to convince her doors were opening in my life, pouring her cup after cup of glimmering possibility. I told her about the money I earned tutoring and the prizes I’ve won and the school newspaper I started. I told her I picked up crocheting and can now make scarves, that I’m excited to drive and rent an Airbnb with my friends. I don’t know what good it did, but these pebbles of sugar kept tumbling out, bag after bag, like I couldn’t stop the flow. My heart lightened as I heard her and grandpa exclaim on the other side of the phone, I tried not to cry, to smile though they can’t see me, to sound happy.

When the call ended, I collapsed onto my bed. The walls read six days, but I knew there were only three.

#

In the seventh period, we pass around yearbooks, scribbling kind messages in bright sharpies, graffiting our existence in someone else’s life. “It was great getting to know you.” “See you next year.” “I’ll miss you. Here’s my number, let’s keep in touch.” In these pages,  confessions were made, crushes exposed and fake words muttered. Give me a trace that you existed. I wonder how many of us will flip back through the years and laugh at a certain message, fall onto their bed and stare at shadows on the ceiling.

“Can you sign my yearbook?” I asked my seventh grade crush who’ll never know I loved him once.

He agrees, handing me his as well. I sign something generic, wondering if I’ll regret this.

In my yearbook, he writes, “Am I a chicken or a gorilla?”

“Two hundred percent chicken,” I answer. It was a system I invented in seventh grade, when I was obsessed with  the  words “chicken” and “gorilla.” I categorized people based on their vibe: chicken is more bubbly, while gorilla is more smooth. People from around the school came to me to get sorted, as if I was a tarot reader or a circus act.

He smiles, and we part. I wonder if it’s the last I’ll ever see of him.

#

I was handed my scroll and diploma during graduation. “Row eight please sit.”

#

On the last day of school, we gather on the field, gazing up at the summer sky. Students hug and cry and scream at the top of their lungs, while the clouds continue to drift like floaties in an endless sea. It smells like grass and melted cupcake frosting, sweet and thick like mist.

Someone starts the countdown, “TEN, NINE, EIGHT!” The numbers ripple across the  field until every person is chanting along, counting the seconds for the last time.

My heart threatens to rip as tears prick my eyes, “FIVE, FOUR, THREE, TWO…”

The bell rings before we could say one, and we spill out of the gates like skittles from a  ripped paper bag, pushing people, hoisting phones, whipping jackets. I watched as each person separated from the crowd, like the string of a sweater, a droplet of once-cloud. We waved and hugged and said our goodbyes,  as if these words could make it better, make the future a bit calmer to bear.

In the end, it was just a handful of people out on the pick-up lawn. My seventh grade crush stood by the tree. I walked to join him.

“It’s sad how it’s all ending,” he said.

“I know right.” The Californian flag wavered in the breeze as the teachers walked out with their lanyards and binders, squinting at the summer sun. The air was so light it could escape  gravity and drift up to space, past trees and melting clouds, past the expanding blue. “I don’t think I’ll ever say ‘gorilla’ or ‘chicken’ again. Maybe it was just a middle school phase.”

“Yeah. You’ve changed a lot.”

“So have you.”

I turned away in case I’d cry. The grass was so unbelievably green, sunlight seeping through translucent feathers, golden and warm. The breeze was soft on my fingers, a fleeing silk  gown. I’ll miss you, I wanted to say, just so you know, I liked you in seventh grade.

I wonder if he’ll remember the time he taught me to spin a nickel, or when we finger skated on each other’s desk. How he’d walk in from brunch and make music with my highlighters while I scratched my pencil case in harmony—look, we’re a band. Remember the calls when he streamed on youtube, the small “the was fun” after we stopped recording, where we lingered and laughed and felt the warmth of a million suns.

But when I looked at him, all I could see was the summer breeze, sweeping past like a lullaby. We took a photo, his grey cat mask and peace signs. I promised to send it to him though I didn’t have his number.

Goodbye. See you when we’re forty, maybe you’ll be in Brooklyn.

As I left, another girl caught up to him. He was waiting to buy her tacos.

#

I’m in a courtyard surrounded by buildings of tinted mahogany, storefront signs like yellow parchment, flowers blooming through faded jade vases. The sun is slanted so only one side of the building sees light, the rest cast in a smooth grey shadow.

My mother checks out her reflection in the window: she’s wearing a ruffled green and black skirt, a dried grass purse. She looks like she’s lost in the space between two bricks, a tiny green plant, as small as a caterpillar but beautiful nonetheless. I sit down on a bench of flower-laced metal, green from use. It’s cold on my skin, but I get used to it.

Today, there are no clouds.

Like the little league, like the parking lot, this courtyard is empty, as if stranded between the minutes. Only the sunlight moves. I pluck a leaf from the nearby plant, it’s the plump petal of succulent—in the shape of a long, drawn out heart. I fiddle with it—weaving it through my shoelaces and threading it through the mouth of a coffee lid. Finally, I press it to my palm. It’s cold, firm. It feels like a nickel.

Mother, when was the last time you felt lonely? I don’t ask because I know she wouldn’t  answer. She’s not the type of person to dwell on the past, to miss things, to press her knees to her chest at the bottom of the well, dissolving into the black, shadowed wall.

There’s a glass shop across from where I sit. I walk towards the display to see it vacant, between light and darkness—grey. At least twenty glass lights hang from the ceiling, some orange with dots, others an elegant swan-like white. None are lit. Through the window, I see my reflection, a painting of features shaded by shadow. Yet the reflection of an opposing window also emerges, ricocheting off the translucent lamps. Glass on glass on glass on me. Deja vu. An echo of mirrors, a ripples of names, drenched in shadow. Abandoned, yet still.

#

“She’ll be happy again,” I say to my mother, after the waiter takes away our bill.  “This is just a slump.”

“She’s getting old. It’s different when everything is melting away: your colleagues, your siblings, your parents. Be thankful you’re still young and blooming.” My mother sighs, folding her napkin into small squares on her lap. The light weakens bit by bit, until it’s nothing but a bit of dust sprinkling her face. She looks old without the sunlight, each wrinkle magnified, acne cranberry and hardened. Sad, like a sidewalk covered in shadows, the concrete scraped again and again by passing feet until it’s nothing special at all.

The waiter comes back and hands us the receipt. We tip and push in our chairs as the sky turns lavender grey. Something falls from my coat pocket—it’s the heart-shaped petal. Passersby walk their dogs in the fading sunlight, past brick buildings and lonely trees. Shop owners flip their “open” signs closed.

As my mother reaches for her phone to take another picture, I see his face somewhere in the distance. He’s smiling and talking and most importantly walking, and as I watch his figure disappear into the fading sunset, I realize—I am walking too.