Dear Mother,

Recently I found your marriage license. I know so many things now. I know you were twenty-four and Father was twenty-six. I know Father was a project engineer at General Motors, and you were a research assistant in the physics department at the University of Michigan. I know you went to the county to get married. I know your parents’ names: Pao-Lan Jin and Gee-In Chang.

I wonder about your witnesses and where they are now. Wen-Jei Young and She-Zuan Zang. They lived at 2214 Yorktown Drive in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Were they roommates? Were they dating? I’ve never known if you can determine gender in a Chinese name. I never thought to ask before.

I wonder where the two county clerks are now—Luella M. Smith and Carol A. Miller. This language slips right off my tongue. I know these are both conventionally women’s names. I know that Smith and Miller are common American names. I know the middle letters are middle initials.

I now know the year was 1966, three years before my sister would be born and four years before I would be born. I can’t read the judge’s name, but I think the judge was a man. I know his name is in cursive. I wonder what he thought when four Chinese people came into his court. I wonder if he felt a kind of prickling on his face. I wonder whether he was happy for you.

I imagine you, sweating under your nice dress. I imagine the dress was a pastel blue. I imagine the horizon that day bending toward the countries you left. I imagine you were relieved. That you felt wild. That you were scared.

I wonder why you never spoke of this day. I wonder how much of this day was about being practical. I wonder how much of this day was about love. You had come to this country on your own. Who would marry you? Probably not an American. How would you find a Chinese man? How would you survive here by yourself? With no language. No money. Only secrets. You can’t buy anything with secrets.

Father lived at 1021 Church Street in Ann Arbor. Google Maps brings up a little red house the color of a blush I might wipe on my face. I wonder how many Chinese people lived there. I wonder if he ever stood on the pretty porch. I wonder, when he came down the steps, if he turned right or left, I wonder if he picked that house because it was red.

You lived at 825 East University Street in Ann Arbor. Google Maps brings up a dilapidated yellow house with a gabled roof. According to Redfin, in 2016, the entire building underwent wall-to-wall renovations. I imagine them painting over your fingerprints.

I wonder why you never told me you lived in Ann Arbor, that you worked at the University of Michigan. Even when I went there myself, you never said a word. I wonder why you told me so little. Or maybe I wasn’t listening because your past was unimportant, something to be forgotten.

I wonder whether memory is different for immigrants, for people who leave so much behind. Memory isn’t something that blooms but something that bleeds internally, something to be stopped. Memory hides because it isn’t useful. Not money, a car, a diploma, a job. I wonder if memory for you was a color.

When we say that something takes place, we imply that memory is associated with a physical location, as Paul Ricoeur states.^ix But what happens when memory’s place of origin disappears?

I imagine another kind of mother, an American mother, who might have walked me to 825 East University Street, arm in arm, finger pointing at the crow on the roof of the building. Telling me about Father, about her first kiss, about her crushes—secrets I could swallow.

Just two weeks ago, apartment #3 was for rent, the one on the second floor. I wonder what floor you lived on. Whether you had a nice view. If you had Chinese roommates. I wonder what you made for dinner each night. I wonder so hard, I can smell the rice cooker and hear the steam.

Google Maps tells me you lived two minutes from Father. I imagine Father visiting you, walking up Church Street, taking a left on Oakland Avenue, and then a right on East University. I imagine you walking down the stairs, no, flying down the stairs to open the door for him. Your heart in your throat by the time you reached the bottom. I imagine your cheeks tacked with desire.

I look on Google Maps to see if there’s a ghost of you somewhere, of your leaping, of your dress lifting open. In this moment, your imagined happiness covers my grief like an eyelid.