Before my father arrives at our apartment, my mother sits the mannequin in a rocking chair near the front window. My mother and I like to change his socks together. We pull the bright patterns over his club feet, roll the bands up his calves. We’ll do this again years from now, for my father, just before he dies.
Merit cigarettes, orange juice and vodka, money. I miss the grind of his voice. I miss the word when it was still golden: father.
This here is your father.
Hello, little one, I’m your father.
My mother, a Chinese, Hawaiian, pocketknife of a woman, shot a man once. She’s already lost her own father, her islands, Samuel, a daughter, the gift of naming that daughter and holding her and tossing her into the air, the joy in that suspension.
But then, there was another.
There is always the point at which a story changes. A good story must always change its terms.
I’m glad she found her sister, but where is the brother?
Another missed period. Another month of nausea. Another month. Another talk on the living room floor between my mother and father as I squirmed in a crib.
You can’t keep him, my father says. We’ve done this before.
I can.
We can’t.
That’s how I imagine the scene going. That’s what I’ve been told.
My mother kept carrying that baby. She thought my father would change his mind. The mannequin—he’d had a greater purpose. He protected me and he protected my mother as she grew, as she listened for noises at the window. I don’t remember pressing my ear to her stomach, saying Hello, but I did that.
Sometimes we choose what to believe, sometimes we know it.
Like this: Uncle Nuke was left on our curb one Christmas wearing a Santa hat. I was six. My mother went back out for him, the trash bags still waiting for pickup, but he was gone already. Off to another family, or little girl, who needed him. The truth is, I hadn’t missed him till now. I never even knew he was gone.
I thought your father would change his mind once the boy was born, says my mother. I’d waited for that.
These hushed years. These secrets of the body. To whom did they belong first? I want to find where it began and say, I’m here now, listening. I want to reach through the years and tell the women I’ve been lonely.
My father stopped breathing on a cold, clear afternoon. October. The sun was out.
My mother was making him soup.
The story I’d rather tell: I make it out to the beach that day. My half brothers are there. And my half sister. My baby brother, too. We are all familiar to one another. We’re a family.
Truer.
My brother was born on January 27, 1990, in Miami, Florida. Before he was adopted, my parents named him. I was sent to Disney World when he was born, though I will never remember that. Baby boy. Beautiful, I know it. I never got to meet him.
You could have told me, I say now, to my mother, all of this.
My father, he married her. I wore a yellow dress. They kept me.
Son, my father used to say.
There once was a girl on a flying horse and everybody loved her.
That’s the unfinished story.
That’s all.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Billie, it’s with you I start—I didn’t write that, Evan “Billie” Rehill did, and though Evan does not appear in this book, he’s spent years walking me over every bridge in New York to safer places. Thank you, EBR, for the matchbooks, the guts, every rabbit in every hat, and your unwavering belief and love.
To Anne-E. Wood, for teaching me how to draw a house in that first writing class I ever took. I’ve been doing my best to live inside of it ever since.
To Jin Auh, who is so much more than my agent and Spice Girls manager. Since the day we met you’ve reminded me that words are power, and the work you do to translate and advocate for that power is nothing short of sorcery. Thank you for always feeding me sweets, for your great laughs and wisdom. Thank you, too, Alexandra Christie, Jessica Friedman, and the superb Wylie Agency.
To my editor, Callie Garnett. The way you have seen me and this book is a greater magic trick than any deck of I AM’s. Thank you for the privilege of seeing you, too—an acolyte, a poet, a precious stone, a dear friend. This book will always feel like ours. My sincerest gratitude to Barbara Darko, Nancy Miller, Marie Coolman, Cindy Loh, Sarah New, Nicole Jarvis, Laura Keefe, Tree Abraham, and the whole Bloomsbury family, for believing in a book that couldn’t be summarized easily or packaged sweetly.
To those who have provided the time, space, warmth, and support to write these pages, I am so grateful: the MacDowell Colony (my safe haven in the darkest days, and the place this book was born), Hedgebrook, Tin House, Yaddo, New York Foundation for the Arts, the Fine Arts Work Center (who treated a bedfellow like family), Todd Lawton and Jeff LeBlanc, and especially Cynthia LaFave and Paul Rapoli, for providing so many literal and figurative homes for me to write in, and for loving me like your own.
To my beloved teachers, for your friendship and mentorship and words both in and out of the classroom: Suzanne Hoover, Nelly Reifler, Noy Holland, Jo Ann Beard, Lidia Yuknavitch, Jeff Parker, and Claire Vaye Watkins. To Mary Morris, who taught me everything from peeling a potato to structuring a story.
Sometimes we are lucky enough to choose our family. That’s been the case with Ian “PTP” Carlos Mormeneo, Randie Kutzen, Jana Krumholtz, James Question Marks, Marisa Lee, Michaela Basilio Batten, Rick Moody, and Laurel Nakadate, all of whom have stood with me through every fire.
I am so moved each day by the ferocious minds of my No Tokens family, including Rowan Hisayo Buchanan (for all the wonder), Justine Champine and Molly Tolsky (for Taco Trio, the best writing group in history), Annabel Everest Graham (for the saudade), Janelle Greco (for shaking ’em up), Lauren Hilger (for the heat, the poems, the oracles, the girls), Ursula Villarreal-Moura (for never forgetting me), Hannah Mulligan (for the ponies), Leah Schnelbach (couch-mate, soulmate, purple blazer dream machine), Carina del Valle Schorske (for the moves and the nudes), Samantha Turk (for every sacred word), and Scout Woodhouse (for the missives).
To those who have listened, who have supported this book and supported me through the writing of this book by reading drafts and writing blurbs and offering me beds to sleep in and fish to eat, by sending postcards and saying Yes to every long walk and always asking How can I help? when I’ve needed it most, my gratitude is profound and enormous: Benjamin Schaefer, N. Michelle AuBuchon, Chelsea Bieker, Genevieve Hudson, Ruthie Crawford, Tatiana Ryckman, Jonathan Dixon, Mary Gaitskill, Allie Rowbottom, Kristin Dombek, Vincent Scarpa, Adam Dalva, Tony Fu, Shelly Oria, Melissa Febos, Meakin Armstrong, Karissa Chen, Bükem Reitmayer, Che Youn, Alisson Wood, Cal Morgan, Brigitte Hamadey, Jack Woods, Sarah Gerard, Kimberly King Parsons, Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, Julie Buntin, Lauren Groff, Matt Bell, Laura Lampton Scott, Gabriel Jesiolowski, Alexandra Ford, Kyle Kolomona Nakatsuka, and Team Jo Ann Beard. And to those who may or may not appear in this book, who gave me a past and helped me make my way back through it, thank you: Alyssa Banker Hiller, “Gabrielle,” Graham Heyward, Jennifer Abrams, Lisa Mendoza, Karen Purcell, Nicki Alpern, Nicole Polat, Paige Newberry, Maxwell Burns, and Nicole Betty.
To Jac Martinez, for the light and shadows. For leaving flowers on the dashboard.
To John Bean for the French lessons, the metaphors, and for always reminding me that No is a complete sentence. You’ve helped me find and therefore love myself in ways I had forgotten.