“Feng, you know the really big skyscraper?”
She blinks for a moment. “You mean Taipei 101?”
“Yeah, that. Are tourists allowed up at the top?”
“Oh, definitely!” She looks cheered by my sudden interest. “You can see the whole city from every direction—”
“Great,” I tell her. “Can we go there? Like right now?”
We’ve barely stepped back out onto the street when an apple rolls right to my ankles. There’s no one in the direction from which it came.
Waipo stops me from bending to retrieve the fruit, muttering something in an urgent tone.
“She says not to touch it,” Feng translates. “It might bring a ghost after you.”
“A ghost?” I repeat.
“They like to latch on to people.”
I look back at the apple as we walk away. It catches the light of the sun, that waxy skin shining like a smile. I can’t shake the thought that it looks just like a Honeycrisp.
Waipo calls my name, and for a second her voice sounds like my mother’s.
She doesn’t realize that the ghost is already with us.
The eighty-ninth floor of the Taipei 101 tower is the observatory deck, where you can look out at the entire city through walls of glass. Buildings in miniature. Mountains layered in the distance like gentle strokes of watercolor, the farthest ones fogged and fading into the clouds. It’s a strange juxtaposition: the city so tightly packed, everything built so closely together—and beyond that, the sprawling greens and blues of lush forests.
Feng won’t shut up. She’s going on and on with all sorts of tourist facts. “So it’s the only wind damper in the entire world that’s on exhibit for people to see. The steel basically balances out any movements in the building caused by wind.…”
We’ve circled the floor four times, and there’s been nothing. No sign of the bird.
Feng says brightly, “Hey, how about we take a picture together? Want to use your phone, Leigh?”
Reluctantly, I pull out my cell. I lean in toward my grandmother and force my mouth into a smile. Feng squeezes close on Waipo’s other side, and I can’t strike the thought that they look like a proper grandmother and granddaughter.
I just look like the tourist.
On the little screen I can see my hair sticking out in annoying directions. I comb a few fingers through, try to reshape it. Behind our heads is Taipei and its wide sky, pale and overexposed.
“Smile!” Feng says.
Something red soars past our heads, and Waipo and I both gasp.
“That was her!” I squeeze my grandmother’s arm. She’s shivering a little.
“Wait,” Feng is saying. “You didn’t get the photo.…”
I whirl around and press close to the glass. “That was the bird!”
Beside me, Waipo is silent, her hands knotting together, eyebrows tight and drawn. She looks out over the city. She saw it, too. For the sliver of a second, those red wings beating past us—she saw it just as clearly as I did.
We wait and watch for a long time, but the bird is gone.
Did she see us? Does she know that I’m here?
My heart is still slamming into my chest, shaking my veins with a heavy violet rhythm. An idea makes me turn to Feng. “I need to go to all of my mother’s favorite places in Taipei. The places she went when she was younger. Can we do that?”
Feng begins to translate. Waipo’s face is hard as a rock, but she drinks in the words, her expression softening. Her features sink into her wrinkles, crumpling like tissue paper, turning fragile.
“Hao,” my grandmother says. She nods.
We have to find the bird. And then my mother can tell me herself.
I want you to remember
26
My mother’s hands have turned to wings. Her hair, to feathers. Her pale complexion now red as blood, red as wine, every shade of every red in the universe.
The bird. The bird. The bird.
That’s all I can think about.
Crawling into bed is like swimming through something thick and murky. My every limb weighed down. Brain hazy with sleep deprivation. Eyes aching, the periphery of my vision dull and watery.
I should be able to sleep. I’m exhausted.
But the moment I close my eyes, they flutter. I have to strain to keep them shut.
The bird the bird the bird.
My mother the bird.
I catch myself rubbing my thumb in circles around the edges of the jade cicada.
Funny how when you can’t sleep the brain turns itself inside out, becomes a desperate and hungering thing. All I want right now is to fall headfirst into the blackest black. All I want is for everything to shut off so I can finally rest. Make the colors stop. Send the thoughts away.
Let everything go still.
Is this what it feels like to want to reach the end? Is this the kind of existence that led my mother to become a bird?
There’s a rhythmic sound outside—growing louder and louder. The flapping of wings. I bolt upright, yank the curtain open.
Nothing. Only the bright coin of a moon, and the hint of coffee-dark clouds beside it, unmoored.
Maybe if I step outside, she’ll come to me like she did back home.
Without turning on any lights, I make my way through the apartment, my bare feet lending me an extra bit of quiet. I only pause to hook my fingers into the straps of a pair of sandals, waiting until I’m out the door before I slide them on.
The outside air is still thick and muggy, the fluorescent streetlights casting their ghostly beams down into the alley. I stand at the nearest crossroads and wait to see if I hear the wings again. Wait for some sort of sign. A sound, or a smell. A vision. Anything.
Even when I squint my eyes, I can’t see anything moving across the sky. Everything is dark and murky and still. The nearby alleys are all quiet, but I can still hear distant sounds of traffic, of cars wheeling past.
I’m so settled into the emptiness that when I turn and see a man standing across the street under a tree, I nearly jump with surprise. He stares at me long and hard, barely moving, his hands at his sides. I keep waiting for him to walk away, but he doesn’t, and so at last I’m the one to break eye contact and turn back toward the apartment. I hate the idea of him seeing where I live, but when I glance over my shoulder again, he’s gone.
There’s no breeze, but the tree where he stood rustles slightly, and for a second I think I see something like a mist shifting across the branches. And then it’s gone. The tree is still, and it’s just me alone in the alley.
Upstairs in my dark room I sit down on the bed. It happens in a flash, in a blink: My eyes close, and when they open again, the room is bright as day, the ceiling so white it’s glowing—except for the inky cracks branching off in all different directions above me. They’re as jagged as lightning, like something heavy has struck down from the other side and begun to break into my room. The in-between lines so thin, so black—like there’s nothing beyond that layer of ceiling but a gravity-defying abyss. Wind loud in my ears, goose-bumping my skin.
It makes no sense.
I blink again, and the room is dark once more. My fingers fumble to click on the lamp: The ceiling is perfectly fine. Not a crack to be seen. No wind, no sound. Just my heart drumming, drumming.
27
The hands of the clock glow alien green: It’s 4:12 in the morning. Is there any point in trying to sleep? The seconds tick past, louder and louder, echoing in my ears.
Then, over the sound of the clock, I hear it again. The flapping of wings, faint in the distance. Click the lamp on. Swing my legs out of bed.
The noise is gone.
My feet carry me across the moon-cold floor to tug open that same drawer as before. I reach past the flattened pastry bag for the box of incense. The feather is still there, slightly curled, like something asleep. I take that out, too, pinching the shaft between thumb and finger.
I’m still trying to figure out why the bird brought me the incense—if it’ll lead me to her. Or if it’s to help me understand.
I want you to remember