Photo courtesy of the author.

The shadow wonders a million things.

The shadow wonders the exact date and setting of the photograph. The shadow approximates that the photograph was taken some time between 1957 and 1959, certainly before the Cultural Revolution. The shadow thinks the photograph was taken somewhere near a home but wonders where home really is.

The shadow studies each person. Young girls and middle-aged women. The shadow feels a kinship. The shadow wonders how many of them are related. How many of them are siblings. The two girls in the front with matching plaid shirts and overalls could be twins. The one on the right is the cutest. So innocent and unassuming. Her face is the brightest. The shadow wonders what she’s doing now.

The shadow sees itself in the photograph. For the first time. The shadow does not belong here. Almost ruining the photograph, the presence of the shadow is startling. A shadow exists by blocking light, an obstruction. A shadow should never be noticed. This shadow insists on being seen.

The shadow continues to look at the shadow in the photograph.  The shadow realizes that they are not an obstruction, but an intrusion. To look at the past is always an intrusion.

Imbued with a new desire to know, to understand, the shadow feels an innate sense of loss. There has been no language for this history. The shadow’s weak voice disgusts the shadow. Who gave a shadow the right to intrude upon these lives? The shadow feigns disinterest. “I don’t care about these people!”

The shadow starts making up stories about the photograph. It’s the twins’ birthday. All the women are going out shopping for two new pairs of shoes for the girls. There’s a saying that buying shoes is bad luck, but this family is not one to be superstitious. They should have been more cautious. The sister on the right will catch rheumatic fever in a few years. The sister on the left feels lucky that she doesn’t have to stay home in bed like her sick sister all the time. How devastated would she be if she found out that she’ll later lose one of her legs to cancer? Wheelchair bound for the rest of her life, unable to stand or walk by herself again.

To create a fiction is to sever any real ties. The shadow does not have to understand, the shadow can merely imagine what their lives were like, and that’s enough.

***

The new medication made me sick again!

I stop talking it today

My back hurts very bad and whole body aches!

Killing me

I was doing okay before I start taking medication

Now I feel bad

It is 1966. You have rheumatic fever, but you don’t know this yet. You are ten years old. You’re nervous you caught a cold from not wearing your jacket, but this sickness feels different from anything you’ve experienced before. Your mother makes mung bean soup for you, but no matter how much you eat, the poison will not leave your body. Your joints hurt everywhere, and you can’t stand up. Your chest seizes. But the fever is the worst part. Nothing feels right—you’re either too hot or freezing. You keep ruining the bedsheets and you feel the same as when you used to wet the bed. The act of wetting the bed is not that embarrassing itself, but you share a bed with your parents and younger sister. You’ve always been prone to sickness, but you don’t usually mind because you like being taken care of. You like being a baby. You smile whenever strangers think you’re the youngest of the three sisters. You think you should be less selfish, maybe you inflicted this upon yourself.

Rheumatic fever leads to rheumatic heart disease if left untreated, and you’ve since had three open-heart surgeries. No one thinks you’d ever have a child, let alone two. “Your heart wouldn’t be able to take it,” your doctors tell you. “If you want to live a longer life, do not add extra pressure to your body.” But you’ve always been good with kids. Everyone tells you you’d make a great teacher. Your voice soothes children, so sweet and tender.

Three years after giving birth to your son, you start having complications. It’s not that you have severe chest pains or any real symptoms, but you can tell something is wrong. You have an intuition that isn’t palpable but can be innately felt. Your body has let you down as long as you can remember, but this has also given you the ability to detect even the slightest changes. Luckily, you go and see your doctor early—you only need a valve repair. The procedure still involves open-heart surgery but you are young and healthy, and it’s not going to be life threatening. They tell you there is a 99.99% survival rate and you’ll be back to normal afterwards. Why not a full 100%?

***

I only recently started being able to cry in front of my mother. But never about anything important. I’m crying because this novel is sad. Or I’m crying because this movie is about a mother and daughter, and they have a fraught and complicated relationship. It’s their relationship that elicits such emotion. I remember telling my mother about The Farewell and bursting into tears—a display of emotion I’ve not had in front of her since childhood. At the time, my grandmother was in her early nineties and her health was rapidly declining. My mother’s side of the family is entirely female—my grandfather passed away the same year I was born. I do not know much about him, but I know that he always loved having three daughters. Others pitied him for his misfortune of not producing a son, but he was warm with his luck.  

My mother is the second of three girls. We’re a family of strong women. Out of all these women, my grandmother has always been the healthiest, still cooking and cleaning the house, caring for and worrying about her daughters who have daughters of their own. Unlike Awkwafina’s character Billi, I wasn’t particularly close to my grandmother, but we do share other similarities. Both Billi and I are young Chinese American women in our twenties. We write. Our Mandarin is not very good. Our extended family lives in China—hers in Changchun and mine in Beijing. Our mothers have the same name. We both slouch a little.

I still don’t know what it was about The Farewell that moved me to cry in front of my mother. Perhaps I was sad about my grandmother’s health and I was able to channel that sadness by expressing it through a different avenue, describing someone else’s life. But I don’t think that’s exactly right. There’s a moment in the film when Billi confronts her mother about not being sensitive or sad enough that her grandmother is dying of cancer. Her mother replies, “What do you want from me—to scream and cry like you?” In hindsight, I think I was envious of Billi. Still am. Despite our similarities, she has the ability to show true emotion. She doesn’t need to use fiction as a guise.

Photo courtesy of the author

The shadow fast forwards a decade. Almost two. It is October 1974. The shadow crouches behind a woman at Tiananmen Square. She’s young and she’s smiling. The shadow is also smiling, but that’s not possible to see. It can only be felt. The shadow likes time traveling.  Thinking about all the moments that make up a life. Now, the shadow wonders what the happy occasion is. Maybe she’s just saying “eggplant.” The shadow thinks she’s had a good day because she loves autumn. Normally, she doesn’t like going on walks but the weather is perfect outside. She doesn’t like to show her arms because she was always made fun of for having hairy arms. She wears a warm coat and does not have to worry.

The shadow wonders why she’s by herself. Wait! She’s not alone—the shadow is there with her. The shadow thinks they make a good pair. They’re bound to one another, and the shadow begins to understand that one is never alone. Maybe she’s smiling because the shadow tells her a funny joke or shares a secret only they understand. The shadow feels more at ease imagining the past. As if more time has allowed the shadow to recognize the resemblance. The shadow is not her, but almost. The shadow is a version of her.

The shadow still has many questions. The shadow wonders about the year 1974. Is life good then? What else happens that day? She goes on a walk and gets her picture taken at Tiananmen. She cannot walk far. She hitches a ride from a bicyclist she recognizes from her neighborhood. They’re the same age and go to the same school but are always in different classrooms. She lives on the third floor and he lives in the building to the west on the eighth floor. He asks her if she’s feeling okay. She says she’s been feeling much better since her last hospital stay. She’s thinking about going to college. She has always been a good student but doesn’t know if she qualifies to go. She never passed any physical education classes. He tells her that she can attend television college, and he’s planning on moving to the United States to study anthropology. The shadow finds this story boring and inconsequential, but aren’t moments in life always inconsequential until memory proves otherwise?

Photo courtesy of the author

The shadow continues searching. The shadow is seeing things. The shadow is with her in Tiananmen but the year has suddenly changed. The shadow does a double take. Instead of 1974, it is now 1976. The only other difference is she’s stopped smiling. She wears an armband and a pin with Mao’s face. Everyone is grieving. It is September. The beginning of autumn again. She doesn’t remember why she loves autumn. She feels the same warmth of her coat covering her arms, but this nostalgic feeling of comfort is overpowered by a collective sadness. Even if she wants to smile, she must mourn with all those around her.

The shadow smiles for her, knowingly.

***

I don’t feel good. My heart speed fast. Since Saturday.

You give birth to your daughter almost eight years after your son. You are forty. You’re with someone new. He’s never been married or had children before, and you tell him this is your ultimate gift to him. Like your father, he feels lucky to have a girl. You’ve never been happier. One boy and one girl. A perfect family.

Time moves forward. Your daughter is eight. Your doctor asks if you want the good or bad news first. Your repaired valve is still doing fine, but there’s something else. One of your valves is narrowing, restricting blood flow from your heart to the rest of your body. That’s why you feel fatigued. That’s why you fainted picking your daughter up from school.

You tell your children you’re going to have another operation. You explain that this operation is more dangerous. Last time, they wired your ribs shut and they’re going to have to open them again. Recovery is going to take much longer. You now have an 80% success rate. Your teenage son understands the odds and starts to cry. Your daughter thinks 80% is still really high! She says this aloud and gets scolded by your son. He throws his used tissues at her. He calls her stupid. His frustration pointed at her instead. You understand his hurt. Her’s, too.

You weigh your options. You’ve chosen a mechanical valve because it lasts longer than a pig or human valve. You’re still young and you’re thinking about the future. You’ll have to be on blood thinners for the rest of your life, but you most likely will not have to get another replacement. You have to be careful. Even a papercut gushes.

Now your heart ticks like an irregular machinic clock, atrial fibrillation causing unevenness. You like the sound of the tick tick tickticktick tick        tick. It means you’re still alive. You’re always anticipating the next sound.  

***

I inherited many traits from my mother, but the one that has recently stuck out to me is our love for cleanliness. I’m not sure if love is the right word. It’s more of a preference for cleanliness than anything else. I never really noticed these similarities until I moved to New York. Away from her. When I moved into my first apartment, the only activity that provided any solace for me was vacuuming. I’d vacuum five or six times a day. I couldn’t work at my desk if I hadn’t vacuumed the room first. It was the only thing that felt like it was under my control, but I’m already realizing that this semblance of control was made-up by me—of course there was a strand of hair or piece of dust that I missed.

It’s strange because I never liked vacuuming before. It was one of my least favorite chores but somehow became one of my responsibilities. I don’t think my brother or father ever touched the vacuum, but this wasn’t a concern of mine—it was a struggle between my mother and me. She has never been able to lift heavy objects or do much physical activity, and she insisted that vacuuming was on her list of things she could not do. This list of can’t-do things wavered depending on her mood, and I liked testing her. I was constantly playing a game of chicken with her, delaying my vacuuming until she absolutely couldn’t stand the crumbs on the floor so that she had to do it herself. Afterwards, I’d say, “See? You can do it. You’re just acting, pretending that you’re too sick, too weak to do it. You should push yourself more. It’s good for you to move around. You need to vacuum.” Meanwhile, she’s dizzy and breathing heavily, closing her eyes to rest, hardly listening to me. I pretend I don’t notice.

Vacuuming isn’t the only thing I’ve tricked her into doing. When I was in fifth grade, my mother brought me to her doctor’s appointment. She wanted me there so I could ask her heart doctor for a disabled parking permit. She thought if I asked, he wouldn’t be able to deny us. When he agreed, we created a fiction. I was the one who convinced him. According to the Nevada disabled parking laws, one of the criteria to qualify for a parking permit is that the patient “has a cardiac condition to the extent that functional limitations are classified as a Class III or Class IV according to standards adopted by the American Heart Association.” At the time, she was not classified as Class III or IV. Instead, her doctor qualified her for not being able to “walk two hundred feet without stopping to rest.” I thought this was bullshit. Years later after I started to drive, I’d purposely not park in handicap zones when I was with her. “It’s because of me that you got this parking permit, and we both know it’s a lie, so you better walk!” I’d park as far as possible and walk away quickly. That’ll force her to walk more. That’ll be proof that she doesn’t need this parking permit, that the doctor arbitrarily listened to a ten year old girl. 

III

Photo courtesy of the author

The shadow disappears in the rest of the photos, but the shadow knows they’re still there, somewhere. The shadow just has to look harder, be more imaginative. Get out of their comfort zone. Admit they’re creative. The shadow flips through and stops and stares at one photograph. This woman might be in her late twenties or early thirties. There’s been damage to the photograph. It looks as if the woman has a tear running down her face. New meanings derive from artifice. The woman has a restrained look on her face, like she doesn’t know how to express her feelings or can’t. The artificial tear is a truer representation than the image itself.

The woman is about to leave home. The woman has been sheltered all her life, protected by her illness. She’s never been particularly daring. Her sister is the wild one. Her sister is the one who has an exciting life. Her sister should be the one going. She knows there’s bitterness. Resentment. Jealousy that it’s her. She convinces herself that she’s incapable of making decisions of her own—there has always been something else, someone else, a greater being dictating her life. As if her true self has been floating around somewhere slightly out of reach. What does she desire? What if she doesn’t know what she desires?  That she is incapable of having desires of her own?

The shadow wonders whether this woman has ever gotten drunk. Has she ever kissed someone she yearns for. The shadow wonders whether this woman could say she’s ever lived one true moment, completely herself, uninhibited. Has she ever let herself be completely free.

The shadow wonders if her life is any less because she’s always lived for someone, something else. The shadow is being presumptuous. The shadow realizes her life is just as important, as meaningful. Regardless of the content, every moment in a life can be stitched together and meaning is only created afterwards. She means something to the shadow. The shadow will remember her if no one else does.   

***

That’s okay, do whatever you can! Miss you

I can’t wait to see you

You make me feel better!

Love you

Rheumatic heart disease can lead to heart failure, and in your case, pulmonary hypertension. You’re tired of new diagnoses, but you hear that this one is the worst. The cancer of heart disease. You translate “pulmonary hypertension” into Chinese and see that people can live up to five years with this illness. Luckily your children are grown. Your heart keeps enlarging and you keep getting more tired. You wish it’ll get so big that it takes up your entire body. You imagine your heart swelling into your throat, into your hands and feet, and then maybe you can finally relax. Wouldn’t it be nice to say you died of having too big a heart?

***

A few summers ago, I visited my parents in Reno and spent three months with them. My mother’s favorite activity is going shopping, and it is one of the main ways we spend time together. Old habits die hard and I deliberately chose not to park in handicapped parking to spite her. I was still playing this game of chicken with her. Still testing the validity of her health problems. One day we went to the shopping mall she likes, and I didn’t park in handicap parking. I got out of the car like I usually do and walked away without paying attention to her. By the time I got to the entrance, she was still next to the car. I was angry that she won this round—her stubbornness had overruled mine. I rolled my eyes and was about to go inside when I noticed she was clutching the car door handle. She actually needed my help.

I know that her new diagnosis is serious, but I refuse to believe she’s getting worse. I’m certain that if I pretend she’s okay, continue this game of chicken with her, I’ll trick her into being okay, and she’ll keep playing with me.

I wonder if you feel the same.

If you know what I mean when I say a shadow is an intrusion.

If you know I still vacuum every day.

It makes me feel close to you.