A burst of new colors.
In the darkest corner, the hands of the living room clock glow slightly, little moon-green blades showing that it’s past midnight. Light slants in from the hallway—enough that the rest of the room is dimly visible. My mother’s on the couch, eyes closed, a cushion under her head, blanket sliding off her shoulder. At first it’s hard to place the memory in time—over the years there were so many nights when she slept downstairs because the bedroom had become a cave of insomnia.
But then my father steps lightly into the living room, wearing his favorite vest from my middle school years. He leans down over the couch to slide the blanket up, tuck it under my mother’s chin, nudge a lock of hair out of her face.
He turns to leave the room but stops, his eye catching on something: a piece of art resting against the sheet music on the piano. I remember that drawing—it was from the end of sixth grade. Mom had gotten me an extra special pack of artist’s charcoals and I’d shared them with Axel, who couldn’t afford anything that nice but hated what Mrs. Donovan had in the art room. The prompt was to sketch shoes, and Axel and I traded to make our subjects more interesting. He drew my new but already-stained purple Converse. I drew his off-brand sneakers that were so old they’d turned the color of dust, and there was a crack near the toes of the left one.
The flaws in Axel’s shoes made my drawing especially interesting—I became obsessed with getting the shading just right, replicating the grime perfectly.
And then I’d set it on the music stand so Mom could see, as usual. I didn’t expect Dad to even notice it. That year he’d already stopped paying as much attention to my art. Or so I thought, at least.
Now I watch as he carefully brings the picture into the hallway light, leans down to gaze at the details I captured, his eyes tracing the laces, the worn heel, the cracked rubber.
On the couch behind him, my mother’s eyes open. She shifts inaudibly, tilts her head back, watching him.
“Hmm,” he murmurs to himself. He goes to the kitchen, pulls an old camera out from a drawer, and snaps a photo of the drawing before setting it back and tiptoeing away. The golden light clicks off, but I know my mother’s eyes are still open, still looking.
The colors change.
My mother, making waffles on a Sunday morning. I must not be awake yet, because Axel is sitting there at the table alone, turning a mug of coffee around and around and around.
His hair is a mess, sticking out in funny directions.
“You two are a good pair,” my mother says, spooning fresh whipped cream onto his plate.
“Who?” says Axel. “Me and Leigh?”
My mother nods. “She cares about you very much, you know?”
Axel laughs uncomfortably. “She’s my best friend.”
Mom nods again. “It is rare you find such strong friendship.”
Axel makes a big show of cutting his two waffles into minuscule pieces. “Is there syrup?” he says.
My mother pulls a small jug from the fridge. “I’m glad she has you,” she says with a half smile.
The kitchen flickers and vanishes.
62
Forty-three days.
Six left.
I think of that last memory—Mom trying to talk to Axel about me. It clouds my head with sepia tones.
Why did I need to see it? To remember how much we’ve broken between us? I don’t get how this gives me anything useful.
I try to shake the fog from my head. Everything’s looking jagged and cracked, speckled with black ink. I know it’s just my insomniac haze, and not the actual world. But I can’t help feeling like everything is starting to break.
This morning there is no one beneath the gazebo in the park, so Waigong and I have claimed one of its benches.
All around us: the chorus of cicadas, the conversations of little birds.
On the wooden table, there’s a square tablet made of stone, with white lines etched into it, drawing a system of grids. There are Chinese characters carved across the center. It is a board game. I wonder what the pieces are—if they’re round like coins, if they’re engraved with the hooks and strokes of more Chinese characters.
My grandfather runs his fingers over the board.
And then I have an idea. I pull out my phone and swipe past the first two screens until I find the right app. “Look! Want to play?”
Waigong doesn’t say anything, only frowns at the phone.
I hold up four fingers. “All you need to do is get four in a row. Then you win.” I point to myself and then place the first piece. I take his finger and tap the screen to make Player Two’s move. It’s the quickest game, and I let him win since it’s just a demo.
There’s a spark behind his eyes. I think he understands.
“Okay, so now let’s play for real,” I tell him.
As soon as it loads, he’s jabbing at the screen with his thumb, placing his piece right in the center.
We go back and forth. I’m so focused on strategizing that I’m careless, and suddenly he’s got four in a row and he’s won.
My grandfather glows, his cheeks rounding, mouth opening wide with quiet laughter. He rocks back and forth, looking pleased as linden green.
I win the next two games, but still he grins at me, totally thrilled, as if he’s the winner no matter the outcome.
The trees along the path reach up into the clouds, leaves gently swaying. We walk slowly, searching again for the perfect flower. I look carefully in every direction, trying to come up with an idea about how to use my net. I wonder if the bird ever comes here.
It’s on our way back that Waigong stops me with an arm and points to something on the thick branch of a tree at just about eye level.
A lone brown cicada, this one alive, swelling and pulling, swelling and pulling.
It’s molting.
We watch, transfixed, as it pushes its way out of the back, where the shell has opened like a costume unzipped. Slowly, the fresh body wriggles out, a pale summery green. The new legs kick a few times, inky eyes shining like they know everything of the world. Wrinkled, cabbage-like bunches unfurl themselves from the sides, smoothing out into long wings, green at the edges and translucent in the centers, tissue paper soft.
Its husk, brown and stiff, clings to the branch. A ghost left behind.
63
Did my mother ever get to see a cicada molting?
Did she wish that she could do exactly that? Shed her skin and be someone new?
There were the days when she seemed to transform into something quieter, darker. Her colors deeper but also muted. Both her truer self, and not.
Or maybe it wasn’t a transformation. Maybe it was a momentary reveal. A peeling back of the protective layers.
A sharpening of a pencil, bringing the tip to its most focused point.
64
Back at the apartment, everything seems quieter. Waipo smiled at this morning’s flower—a single stem shooting off into a patch of tiny coral blossoms, so cheerfully star-shaped—but still. Today she looks especially tired. Her features drooping, her eyes a bit darker.
As she ladles fluffy white congee into bowls, she glances at the door.
She misses Feng.
Her somber mood is my fault. The guilt drops heavily into the pit of my stomach, and shame wraps around me like the prickly side of Velcro, sharpens the thought that I’ve done so much wrong.
Naphthol red—the color of an angry pen marking the errors I’ve made.
In the living room, I watch Waipo scrape at the head of a match. In her other hand, the long stick of incense trembles. For a millisecond, the tip takes on its own little flame before dimming to a vague touch of light and heat. A whisper of life, issuing ash and smoke, salting the air.
Waigong leans back on the couch, watching music videos with the volume dialed all the way down. There’s a singer dressed like a pirate, holding a miniature version of himself in his palm. I blink, and in the next moment, he’s dancing with a posse of guys in masks.
“Waipo,” I say. “Lai.”
She looks up at me.