“Dad, can you look at something for me?” My fingers tighten on the lid of the small marigold-orange box. The edges of it are burned up from the day I brought Waipo into the smoke. But the characters are still readable.
This, I know, is also real. Which meant the incense had to have been real. Which meant the memories were real.
He finishes unzipping the worn corner of his suitcase and throws the top open. “Sure, what is it?”
I show him the incense box and point to the characters in red:
“Zui nan fengyu guren lai,” he reads. “Oh. It’s a phrase from the Qing Dynasty. A line from something a scholar wrote, basically a poem.”
“What does it mean?”
“Zui nan fengyu guren lai,” he says again, more slowly. “Zui nan means the hardest. Feng—you know feng, right?”
I blink for a second. Feng? Does he suddenly know who she is after all?
He continues. “It means wind. I thought I’d taught you that, but maybe I didn’t. And yu means rain. So fengyu means wind and rain—in other words, bad weather, and metaphorically, bad times. Guren means loved ones, friends and family, and lai means for them to come. String it all together, and it means it’s an incredible blessing to be able to see your loved ones during the most difficult times.”
101
I remember it all. The bird. The incense memories. The way the world began to fill with black cracks. The falling. Feng.
And since the forty-nine days have passed, something has changed. Dad is different. During those absent years, his presence had turned a hard and icy blue, but now he brings with him a warm, reassuring yellow ochre. He’s been trying really hard. We’re learning to actually talk again, the way we used to. Inside jokes are resurfacing. We’re remembering how to smile together.
It was the final gift the bird could give us: the remembering.
The pieces of my family history glued back together, so that I finally know and understand. And a reminder of the love that we’ve always had, even in the times when it was stormy, when it was hard to see.
I want you to remember
I will. I’ll remember.
102
One day I make the commute back out to Feng’s address. I step up in front of those steel doors and push the same button: 1314.
After what feels like forever, I hear the sounds of feet coming down the stairs. One of the doors creaks open and a man pokes his head out.
I recognize the birthmark before anything else. The watercolor cloud on his cheek.
“You again?”
I take a step back. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bother you—”
He scowls at me. “So why do you press my doorbell?”
It wasn’t Feng’s address that she’d left in that box, on the pink Hello Kitty stationery. It was Fred’s.
“I’m really sorry.” I’m already down the steps and turning away.
“Wait for a minute,” he calls to me. “I have something for you.”
The door clangs shut and I hear the sound of him climbing back up the stairs. A few minutes later he comes back holding a red envelope.
“I can’t accept that,” I tell him. The thought of taking cash from— He shakes his head. “It’s not money. It’s Chen Jingling hair. I never burned it. You can have it, for you to remember her.”
Then the red pocket is in my hand, and he gives me one last look before shutting the door.
I guess that’s that. There’s no Feng here. But still, I can’t quite bring myself to leave. Standing at the corner where she found us before, I thumb open the red pocket and look. There’s the dark and shiny loop of hair, tied off with an elastic and a ribbon. There’s also a photograph. An old one, but in color. Two young women, standing in a park, smiling straight into the camera. On the left, my mother, in a simple yellow dress. I recognize those plastic glasses from the memories I’ve seen. This must’ve been taken when she was already a university student. And beside my mother is her sister, Jingling, wearing a dress covered in flowers of varying reds and pinks and purples.
Jingling. Or the woman I knew as Feng.
Now I remember what she looked like. Now I can see it, clear as day. Jingling’s face was fuzzy in every memory—but still. How did I not realize it before?
I scroll through my phone again for that blurry photo from the day we went to the top of Taipei 101. It was Feng’s idea to take the picture. Was that her attempt to tell me that she was a ghost?
The sky is beginning to darken, so I know I have to go home. I turn in a circle, looking one last time. Hoping for a glimpse of a floral blouse. Hoping she’ll materialize and offer to take me to try some new delicious food at the night market, and explain to me everything that’s happened.
She doesn’t.
“Bye, Feng,” I whisper.
A breeze gathers up before me, and it rustles the leaves of the trees.
The next morning, we hire a car that drives the four of us to Danshui, to the sea. My father carrying a small wooden box he’s hidden from me all this time. My grandmother carrying the ceramic urn with the blue dragons.
There, in the water, we scatter the ashes. My mother’s. Jingling’s.
The wind rises up to claim the gray.
And then it’s gone. We’re left with the colors of after. The colors of now.
103
Dad decided to let us stay for another week. We’ve gone with my grandmother to the hot springs, despite the ridiculous summer humidity. We’ve sat beside my grandfather and watched wrestling and game shows and music videos. And he’s gotten pretty good at Connect Four.
We’ve gone back to a couple night markets to eat all the foods. In memory of Feng, I’ve been more adventurous—I’ve tried pig’s blood cake, chicken feet, oyster omelets, barbecue eel soup, even fourteen-day-old stinky tofu. They’re surprisingly good.
On the days that we’ve accompanied Waipo to the market, I’ve learned that the sweetest papayas are those blushing a bit of red. The best pomelos are found by smelling them, feeling for the heaviest ones. Some dragon fruits are white on the inside; some are red. The bunches that look like grapes but with tough brown skins are longan fruits—“dragon eyes”—and their peeled centers are candy-sweet. The most delicious part of a guava is the very middle, dotted with crunchy seeds.
Though I can’t understand much of what Waipo says, I love our quiet moments together. I like to sit at the dining table and watch her cooking in the kitchen, watch the careful way she has with each ingredient, like it’s something precious. And I can tell she loves listening to my conversations with my father, even if she doesn’t follow. She sits beside me in the sunny afternoons, looks on at my fingers sweeping charcoal across the sketch pad, pours me cup after cup of tea.
Sometimes Waipo says something, and I can feel Dad tense up beside me. In those moments, even though I don’t understand exactly what’s being said, I know it’s something about Mom, something he doesn’t like. I nudge my hand close, so he remembers that I’m there with him. And then I watch his shoulders unwind just a bit.
There are still things to be worked through. There’s no way to speed through the grief.
There’s still a mother-shaped hole inside me. It’ll always be there. But maybe it doesn’t have to be a deep, dark pit, waiting for me to trip and fall.
Maybe it can be a vessel. Something to hold memories and colors, and to hold space for Dad and Waipo and Waigong. And Feng, even though she’s gone.
I can’t tell if Waipo remembers the bird. If she remembers that day that I pulled her into my room and lit the stick of incense.
During our last few days, I sketch out what I can recall of the bird. Of the memories I saw. Feng, from different angles. As much detail as I can manage. When I show my grandmother the sketchbook, her hands turn the pages slowly. I watch as she stops for a long time on the picture of her and Feng kneeling in the temple. There might be a glimmer of recognition in those eyes. It’s impossible to know for certain.