I woke somehow feeling worse than I had last night. How had our fight escalated so quickly? Oh that’s right—because it was one of life’s sad ironies that it was easier to hurt someone you cared about, someone you knew so intimately you could go straight for their Achilles’ heel.
Even though it was Saturday, even though I had climbed through my window around three in the morning (and yes, almost slipping and falling straight down into Bógōng’s open mouth), I rose before eight, most likely because one can only take so much tossing and turning before their unconscious gives up.
With thoughts of turning this week’s leftover rice into breakfast congee, I padded downstairs, off my game, and, lo and behold, I almost ran headfirst into my father.
“Oh! Uh, Ali, zǎo’ān.”
“Good morning.”
We hovered on the stairs, my socks rubbing back and forth on the ancient hardwood despite the threat of splinters.
He pursed his lips to one side. “Okay, well, I have… stuff today, so… have a good day, okay?” He patted me on the head like I was a stranger’s dog, and I heard him exhale as soon as he had moved past me.
My mother was, of course, already gone, sans car, walking to who knows where to avoid the rest of us, and Bógōng was still asleep on the couch.
So what’s a kid to do with a house all to herself? I had no choice, really. The second my father left, I attacked my mother’s safe with everything I had: Chase’s lockpicks (borrowed yesterday after the Laurelson B&E), a nail file, even one of those Asian earwax scoopers. (Did we get more earwax than other races or something? Or were we more obsessed with cleaning it out?)
I was looking for confirmation—some kind of proof that my mother had dug into Chase’s family history—along with an explanation as to how everything connected to the mysterious park (or how it wasn’t connected—maybe my mother’s secret cup simply overflowethed). Also? I wanted a clue into what the bejesus was going on between my mother and great-uncle. And maybe… I just wanted to see a piece of her, the one from my childhood, somehow, somewhere, because I’d never felt as alone as I did right now.
After watching enough YouTube tutorials to ensure I was on some government watch list, I did it. I was in.
I wiped my cut-up fingers on my jeans, trying to soak up the droplets of blood.
Okay. I swung the door open. The inside was stacked with papers. Upon first glance, they appeared different from the ones I’d seen on the kitchen table. But on the top, almost floating, there it was: the picture of the park. Roh boy, had I earned my Scooby snack. I fingered the edges as if I needed to confirm it was real, and then I examined every last detail.
I’d been in such a rush last time that I’d missed the trash. There were so many scraps of paper tangled in the trees and littering the walls that at a quick glance, they appeared to be a part of the park, as if they’d fused over the years to become part tree, part bench, part cobblestone.
I put the photo aside but within eyesight to remind myself this was actually happening: I had bypassed the obstacles to dive headfirst into the cerulean, soon-to-be-clear sea.
My attention shifted to a bundle of photos. All front-facing portraits of a stranger, another stranger, and, yup, a third stranger, and then Yun. Aw, he must’ve overslept on picture day. His hair had a little untamed cowlick in the back and he still had a pillow crease on his cheek, but he was smiling so wide his eyes were almost closed. This wasn’t the Yun I’d met. Since the photo was clearly old (I mean, he still had braces, for goodness’ sake), I hoped this side hadn’t been stomped out by something.
I thumbed through more photos until I saw another one of him. This picture was closer to the Yun I’d seen recently, both physically and in stoic nature. For some reason (or I guess I didn’t need a reason), I nodded at him as if he could see me, then pushed these off to the side while wondering: Did my mother also send photos of me to family friends? Which one did she use, the one where I was scowling or the one where I was mid-blink? Did these photos of her friends’ children ease the loneliness or merely remind her she wasn’t around to watch them grow up alongside me? Also, why were they in the safe?
More digging. The papers pushed up against the side were so stained, worn, and dog-eared I half expected them to turn to dust with my touch. Gingerly, I pulled the entire pile into my lap, but then my anticipation got the best of me and I hastily pawed through, hoping for something to jump out labeled THIS IS THE KEY TO EVERYTHING.
An old, dirt-encrusted envelope caught my eye. There were fingerprints on the edges implying that someone else had handled it recently, but the letter was resealed by decades of grime. I glanced at the unfamiliar addresses, only able to read that it had been sent from China to Taiwan, and from a Chu I didn’t know to another unknown Chu. I quickly memorized the two names in case they came up somewhere else. Then, pushing the envelope aside because I didn’t want to risk getting caught by reopening it, I dove back into the rest of the heap.
Gah, the loose newspaper clippings were in Mandarin. Of course. I knew I shouldn’t have expected anything else, but it still shot impatience through me.
Channel your mother.
I downloaded a translation app, took photos, and began uploading. As the little wheel spun, so did my mind, trying to keep up. Between the mediocre accuracy of the app and my past education, I slowly began piecing together each phrase, then sentence, then paragraph—just getting enough words to be able to infer the rest.
The more Mandarin I went through, the faster the characters started coming back to me, the faster the picture began to form.
As I read about the famed Butterfly Lovers Park dedicated to Liang Zhu and located where they attended school in Hangzhou, Chase’s words rang in my head. Was I somehow a descendant of Zhu Yingtai? Except… her kids, if she’d had them, would’ve taken on the last name of whoever her husband was. Shoot. Goddamn patriarchy. If I ever married, my husband would have to become a Chu. Or we could both become Feminist or Pineapplecake or Something.
As I stared at the fuzzy black-and-white photos of angled bridges and water-lily ponds, memories flashed through my mind. My mother, sitting on my bed when I was a child, telling me stories about a park in China. It’s moved too far from its original intention now, she had told me in Mandarin, but one day it will be restored into what it was meant to be: a celebration of love, real love, the kind captured by ancient folktales and poems and songs. There had been so many fantastical creatures in her stories—a different one each time—that I had assumed it had been nothing but a figment of her imagination.
Another memory: my mother, teaching me to write Chinese calligraphy, showing me how to hold the brush straight up and down, my index finger and thumb pinching high on the bamboo and the other three fingers resting below. As she held her hand over mine—the last time she would so openly guide me—she would tell me things. I married for love, Ali, and had to lose so much in the process, but I don’t regret it. My family believes in duty, honor, and legacy, but I sacrificed everything to come to America so you could have a different life. And one day, you will bring these ideals back to China, to Taiwan, to them, and that is why you need to know Mandarin and your culture. You are my little love product, the proof, and you will show them all how they were wrong about your father and me.
I had been so young that her words hadn’t carried much weight; my focus had been on the brush in my hand and the watery ink it left behind. Why hadn’t I asked her more at the time? How was I to know that was the last time she’d ever talk about herself?
I heard my father’s words from our almost talk earlier this week: She knows what she wants and she’ll do what it takes to get it, even if it means forsaking her parents. Growing up, we rarely spoke of my mother’s family. For a long time I had assumed they were dead, especially because my mother only referred to them in the past tense, but what about when she had said, My family believes in duty, honor, and legacy… you will show them all how they were wrong?
It was suddenly so obvious: my mother’s family hadn’t approved of her marriage, and she’d chosen my father over them. Was that why my parents were so broken now? Because she had given up too much, and it created a mountain of pressure impossible to surmount?
My palm swiped roughly at my eyes, and I forced myself to return to the safe so I could try to orient the puzzle piece I’d just discovered.
The next photo grasped my heart and squeezed, compressing until tears of longing were forced out against my rapid blinks. My fingers cradled the rare treasure, which in any other household would be proudly displayed, but in our house was buried and locked away.
My parents, faces plump with youth, smiles so wide I almost didn’t recognize them. And God, the way they were gazing at each other? I couldn’t remember seeing them look at each other or at me that way, with pure, unconditional love, where the mere presence of the other filled their hearts and lives so much they would never need to look at anyone else.
Was it better that they had once been so enamored? Or worse because they had fallen so far and lost something precious?
Part of me wanted to crumple the photo and destroy the proof that there was a happier reality they’d deprived me of. The better option had been within my grasp but slipped through my fingers before I knew to grab hold.
I frantically searched for more photos, wanting clues that could maybe tell me how to find our way back to this place.
But the next few pieces took my breath away in a completely different sense. And all the gushy adjectives that came into mind arrived in Mandarin, because my mother’s paintings were so beautifully, richly Chinese—of bamboo, cranes, carp, and cherry blossoms, all painted with exquisite calligraphy brushstrokes, the perfect thickening and thinning of lines and dots in all the right places.
Did you know she used to be a brilliant painter?
No, Bǎbá, I didn’t.
When I reached the series at the end of the stack, I had to wipe my cheek to prevent the tears from ruining these pieces of my mother’s heart. Rendition after rendition of Ali Shān, my namesake and my mother’s favorite place, painted during different seasons, at different angles, both close-up and far away, a different focal point per piece: sometimes the mountain itself, sometimes the clouds, other times the trees, the flowers, the sun. The one common thread? How much this place meant to her.
Suddenly I wanted to see Ali Mountain for myself, to fall in love with it the way my mother had and maybe see the person she had once been. Was this what she meant when she talked about finding my roots? Did I feel only a piece of the whole because I was missing this part of me? Was it possible that her intentions could be pure?
My eyes flicked back and forth between the paintings and the photo of my enamored parents. I barely knew the person who had made these careful, deliberate brushstrokes, the one who had lovingly brought these animals and objects, this scenery to life, shaded in each curve, feather, and petal. Yet, sitting here among all her secrets, I felt closer to her than ever before, despite the fact that I could never tell her about finding these treasures.
I mourned for her, for my father, for me. I would never know the depth behind these shallow findings, nor see the vibrant, creative life force she once was.
The heartbreak was almost too much, and I considered stopping my search for a moment, but that feeling was quickly replaced by the need to know more, the desperation for any answer, a way to make progress of some kind. Because there had to be a fix, right? And surely, it was buried in here among all the regret, pain, and missed opportunities.
I pulled out the paper that, in my excavating, had risen to the top. It was folded in thirds but sans envelope. A bank statement.
I blinked.
Then blinked again.
We weren’t poor. We weren’t rich, but we certainly didn’t have to reuse the toilet paper, either.
Except, I realized slowly… the reason we probably had this little nest egg was because we’d lived this way.
And… the only reason my mother would put aside this kind of money was…
We’re saving it for college, Ali, I heard her say in my head, repeatedly, from when I was a child and too young to understand.
I immediately began to bawl. The snot-dripping, can’t-breathe, gasping kind of crying.
Every complaint about not getting something as meaningless as a birthday party or the toy of the month came tumbling into my head along with all the guilt. Why couldn’t she have told me this? Then I would’ve had a different reaction.
She did try to tell you.
We’d been talking past each other our whole lives, eventually giving up so I’d be reduced to sneaking behind her back and violating her privacy to get answers.
As I stared at the statement through my watery, distorted gaze, my eye caught on a very large withdrawal. I yanked the paper closer even though I knew I’d seen it correctly; I just couldn’t believe there was anything my mother would spend more than a hundred dollars on.
No details, just a wire transfer overseas. Maybe… to China? My mother’s out-of-character kindness to my bógōng, their shared looks and whispers… Was my mother the source of the lucky money? She would never give so much out of the kindness of her heart; there had to be something bigger at play.
I was looking for answers but seemed to only find question after question, the blue sea turning darker with every discovery.
I thought I had figured it out, that Chase’s family was at least in part to blame, but the wire transfer was dated seven months ago, and I couldn’t fathom how all of this could tie together.
Maybe it didn’t.
What if… going to China meant I could find a piece of myself and dig further into all of this? Even if my mother did have some unknown, sinister motive for the trip, that didn’t mean I couldn’t have one of my own.
I heard footsteps in the hallway and shoved everything back into the safe haphazardly. Shit, the lock was now scratched up from everything I’d done to get inside. But there wasn’t much I could do about it, was there?
I’d just shut the safe and buffed the lock with my sleeve when my great-uncle’s head popped through the doorframe.
“Ali?” he said, and even though his voice betrayed nothing, I knew he’d seen what I’d been doing.
What are you hiding?
But I said nothing. Didn’t move.
He shuffled in and took a seat on the bed. “I saw you sneak out last night, Ali. And I saw him, the boy.” It was stated matter-of-factly, and for some reason I found myself liking him more for not beating around the bush.
I just stared, daring him to do something about it. He stared back. I always thought this power of mine came from my mother, but maybe it was from both sides.
“You need to be careful,” he said finally.
I responded in Mandarin to match him. “You don’t know me.” My tone was softer than my words, more sad than accusatory.
“I know more than you think. And I know you need to be careful. Someone’s going to get hurt. Hearts heal, but I can’t watch a train heading for a mountain and say nothing.”
“What do you know? About the mountain?”
He sighed, then fingered his mole hair, a reflex. “I of all people am completely against taking away a person’s freedom. But I am also very familiar with feeling trapped, with no easy way out.” He paused. “Do you really want to know my story?”
“Yes,” I answered immediately. “But not here.” Not where my mǔqīn could interrupt. Besides, I had to get far away from the safe—it was taunting me from its hiding place, pointing a guilty finger and also laughing at how little I knew about my mother.
We made our way downstairs in silence. By the front door, I handed him a scarf—my favorite gray one, which reminded me of my long-lost dog and what my mother was capable of—and we ventured out into the crisp autumn air.
Side by side we trod the pebbled road, tracing the footsteps I had taken just last night.
“You hate it here,” he stated simply. I frowned at him and he smirked a little. “You scoff at everything we pass.”
“That’s just my face.” Similar to his partial denture joke from last night, I waved my hand in front of my nose, only I left behind the exact same bland expression. He belly-laughed, the rich sound eliciting a return chuckle from me.
“And you’re wrong,” I continued. “I do find some beauty in what’s around me—the changing seasons, the abundance of nature.” The—oof—fireflies. “I’m not made of stone, you know.”
He clasped his hands behind his back as he strolled. “I was once forced to be in the countryside. China is quite beautiful, with lush green grass, mountains, and winding rivers, but it’s hard to enjoy that when you’re there against your will, forced to do manual labor and denied an education.”
“You didn’t get an education?”
“Not since the war.” His voice still held no emotion.
“Well, if I compared my situation to yours, I’d be a fool, don’t you think?”
He tilted his face up to the sky, basking in the sun. “Or you would learn to see things through a different lens, one with a more nuanced, optimistic slant.”
“Like Botox for perspectives.” I used the English word for Botox since I’d never learned it in Mandarin.
“Hmm?”
“Nothing,” I mumbled, even though I had a feeling he might’ve appreciated the joke, bad as it was.
Bógōng stopped in front of a bench and tucked himself to one side of it. “My knees are struggling.” From what they did to me went unspoken between us.
I scooted next to him, awkwardly pushed against the other side, leaving a gap between us. Like the gaps in his teeth.
I waited, hoping.
And hoping.
And finally, he sighed, super long (like ten seconds), with his cheeks and mouth puffed out, and with the weight of the world exiting his broken body in a gust of fog. “Aiyah, Ali, where do I begin?”
It was a dark and stormy night.…
I said nothing.
He folded his hands in his lap and thumbed a scar that ran from his knuckle to his wrist. “My father, your great-grandfather, was part of the Kuomintang Party. Quite high up.”
I nodded. That part I knew, had heard a hundred times: how my great-grandfather had escaped to Taiwan by plane, where he’d met my great-grandmother, then had my grandfather.
And then suddenly, with Bógōng’s mainland accent ringing in my ears, it hit me.
“He left you behind,” I stated, my voice hushed. My great-grandfather had left his first family behind to escape to Taiwan, then started a new one, my dad’s branch of the giant family tree I’d previously seen only a portion of.
He didn’t ask me how I’d put it together; he just told me his past. “The day my father fled from China to Taiwan schismed my life into Before and After… and who I was Before died.” He paused. “It may sound dramatic, but I’m not exaggerating. Sometimes a piece of you must die for the rest of you to survive, and for me, I lost so much I became a different person.”
I know the feeling. On a much, much different scale, but definitely the same idea.
“I don’t blame him for leaving, not completely,” he said, his eyes not on me but not avoiding me either. He was just… absent. “Nobody knew what was happening. He claimed he was escaping capture and execution, and that after the Kuomintang regrouped in Taiwan, they would come back and fight. For us. For China. He said he could only get one seat on the plane, and that his life was most in danger. Which may have been true, but my mother and I weren’t exactly safe either.”
He used his tongue to click his partial denture off, then on again, telling me in that one swift movement what had happened to him After. I hovered a (supposedly) comforting palm over his clenched fists. He nodded at it, then eventually managed to say, “He didn’t come back; no one did. China sealed the borders. My mother slit her own throat, and I was banished to a labor camp—” He broke off, overcome with emotion, and I grabbed his hand with mine. “All while he… he moved on so quickly. I used to resent him for everything: how he didn’t save my mother or me, how he married and started a new family as if we could be replaced. And, according to your father, his new family didn’t even know about us for a long time.”
“How did Bǎbá find out? When?” I had so many questions in my head, but I limited myself to the most urgent.
“I don’t know.”
Of course. Our family had been drowning in cerulean blue for generations, playing telephone when we didn’t have to and leaking truth with every person added to the chain. So much had already been lost; I wanted to plug all the holes and scream at everyone to just fucking learn to communicate… but I was just as guilty. I didn’t know how to talk to any of them—except my great-uncle, apparently. The great-uncle I hadn’t known existed and who felt more like a stranger than family. Was that why we could communicate? Was there something about family that made it impossible to express your thoughts, be yourself?
Bógōng continued, “I spent most of my life wondering: Did he ever think of me? Did he know I was being punished for his political allegiances?”
“Did he?” I whispered, choking out the words because I could barely breathe.
“Eventually. When I was becoming an old man myself. Granted, China didn’t open the borders for many decades, but he didn’t reach out as soon as he could have.” He sighed. “He wrote a letter to the old address. It found its way to me. Quite a miracle, really.”
He paused.
“And?” I pushed, needing to know.
“I unleashed all the anger I had bottled up. My last communication with my father, and all I did was pen my hatred and demand the money I felt he owed me. All because I didn’t know how to forgive; I didn’t know how to ask for love or comfort or an apology. And… he wrote a letter back telling me to never bother his family for money, that they were changing their address, and then… that was it. I’ll never get another chance with him.”
I swallowed the enormous lump in my throat. “How did you find us here?”
“Fate,” he said simply. His eyes twinkled, but not with mischief or happiness. Perhaps sadness? Guilt?
How did you find us? my father had asked when Bógōng had shown up on the doorstep. So it wasn’t Bǎbá who had reached out.
Then I remembered it: the dirt-encrusted envelope in the safe, sent from China to Taiwan—likely the very letter my great-uncle had just spoken of. The fingerprints on it had been small and dainty, clearly my mother’s. I hadn’t realized it at the time, because it hadn’t felt like a significant piece of the puzzle. But now…
“Is Fate a tiny, scary woman who doesn’t speak much?” I forced my eyes to stay on his so I could read any tells he might have.
The edge of his mouth twitched.
“Why?” I asked. “She paid you, didn’t she? I saw the wire transfer. What did she pay you to do?”
He looked down at his lap. “I am still angry, Ali,” he told me instead. “But I am not as consumed by it as I used to be. Before, I thought the rage fueled me, shielded me, and gave me something to grasp on to, but really it ate away at my soul until there was barely anything left. After dying another death, I woke up to realize I don’t have much time left in this world.” He turned to face me. “Don’t let the same thing happen to you.”
I wanted to ask him to tell me what he knew, but a part of me also felt like it was such a small thing now. How could I feel anything but grateful living a life like this one? He fucking Botoxed my perspective, all right.
“You are even better than I thought you would be,” he continued, “but I can see that this place has taken some of your sweetness. What happened to the girl who didn’t leave her father’s side for two days after he was denied tenure? Who covered him with a blanket after he cried himself to sleep, then dozed beside him? I still see her inside your tough exterior, but she’s too scared to show herself now.”
My insides seized up. “How do you know about that?” My father would never have spoken of that time, and my mother had been too busy yelling at him to notice my presence.
My great-uncle’s eyes tightened; he hadn’t meant to show me how much he knew about my past.
“What are you hiding?” I asked, more demanding this time. “It’s about me; I deserve to know.”
Instead of answering, he reached into his oversize, pilled sweater and then hovered his enclosed fist over mine until I opened my hand. Penny-size origami turtles swam through the air into my palm—four brilliant patches of red, green, orange, and blue, so bright against my sun-deprived skin.
“Are you trying to insult me? Or wish me death?” Because of the turtle egg = son of a bitch deal, turtles were an offensive symbol, and the number four represented death due to the two words being homophones in Mandarin.
Bógōng chuckled. “I don’t believe in luck anymore—not even mole-hair luck—and I like to focus on how turtles are so resilient. Always determined to persevere. Thinking of them this way doesn’t take away the negative connotation, but both can find a way to coexist, no?”
I stared at the little fighters nestled in the crease of my palm. Looking from them to my great-uncle’s sad, weary eyes, I said softly, “I’m sorry about everything that happened to you.”
“You didn’t do anything.”
“That’s not the point. Sometimes you just need to hear the word ‘sorry,’ and that someone else knows you’ve gone through hell and back.”
“Then I’m sorry, Ali. In more than one way. Please remember that for the future.” He stared straight into my eyes, into me, as he said in a clarion call, “You’ve been given a gift—your life doesn’t revolve around surviving. You can live. Sometimes it’s hard, but you have more choices than I did. So live.”
Before I could question him further, he rose from the bench and padded home, leaving a trail of cerulean blue in his wake.