Patchwork dolls, p.3
Patchwork Dolls, page 3
Much earlier, when the erasures began, Frankie’s grandma asked how one could tell the difference between something that had disappeared and something that had escaped. “If the escape plan was successful, hopefully you won’t be able to tell,” Frankie had replied.
Now, looking at the sealed cages, each one still carrying a heavy padlock, she thought about their apartment building, the photographs and books pulverized into ash, all the obvious evidence, how humans were so attached to memory and legacy. As they walked through the zoo, she hoped to see a trace of movement, of escape. But there was nothing but empty lots, one after another.
Soon they reached a tunnel: the final passage that would lead directly to their new home. The kitschy theme park train that once ran back and forth on the tracks had vanished, and because they had been instructed to leave everything behind, there was nothing, not even a match, to guide their way in the dark. Their voices were the only way of navigation, bouncing off the algae-webbed walls, returning in a fractured singsong that told them how high and wide the space was.
Because they knew there was no one listening—no electronics to record and analyze their speech, no signals in this deep bowel of earth—the people chattered freely, speaking in and around their bodies. Frankie listened to these conversations, the rumors of old movie stars, the abruptly cancelled television shows, the songs of their youths, the days in the sun that had seemed so endless once before. She heard children asking how much longer, as if they were on a boring car trip, and couples arguing in ways that didn’t sound like arguing, just words tersed out here and there. Two familiar voices wrapped around her: her mother’s, velvet like the skin of a peach, and her grandmother’s, sharper and edged with smoke. As she parsed through the sounds, she became aware of another voice in the tunnel, small and wet. It seemed to come from the walls, and she moved closer, the sound becoming tin-bright.
It was a song, and it was wordless, pulling into her body, filling her with a new longing. In it, she recognized sounds that had always followed her: in the water rushing into their old apartment as she played with toys of things that no longer existed; at the edges of an island she used to visit with her high school friends; in rainstorms that always came down unevenly onto the pavements, ribboned with wind; and in the water in her own body, the fluid that linked her skin to flesh, to bone. It called to her with a voice that was both her own and the history of all that had come before her. She took one step, and another, and a few more, until she could no longer feel her feet, only the gravity holding her to the earth.
* * *
THE FIRST PEOPLE OUT of the tunnel coughed, stumbled, adjusted their clothing, and then slowly unseamed their eyes to the light.
“It’s here,” they called back to the others. “It’s really here.”
As promised, there was a giant inflatable slide at least six stories tall from the mountain cliffside down to the sea. A cluster of volunteers with small radars and measuring tapes stood around testing the area. Several people laughed as they ran toward it; some were more apprehensive, approaching its edges with caution, examining the almost vertical drop-off height from a distance.
Several children had walked or carried their pets up until the last possible moment and were now refusing to let them go. A girl with her face buried in her dog’s fur cried and cried, throat choked in tears. Her parents, also crying, asked her to understand that the animal would be safer on land than in the water with them. “She belongs to this world,” they said. “She can’t come with us. She will have so many other dogs to play with. She has all this food. She’ll be okay.” Frankie felt some part of her dull with pain.
“I don’t want to go,” Grandma said, suddenly. “No. No. I don’t want to go now. Sorry. I changed my mind. It’s okay. I’ll just go back. I forgot … I left some vegetables in the back of the fridge. They’ll go bad.”
“Ma, we talked about this,” Frankie’s mother said. “We already paid for your space months ago. Remember our conversations with the students? Frankie helped organize it all. Look around you. There are other people going in too. It’s okay. It’s okay.”
“I’ll just go back! You go ahead. I can’t, I can’t.”
“What is there to go back to? We burned everything. Everything! Do you remember? We threw out all my childhood photos. We got rid of all of Baba’s things, all his clothes, his books. We had to do it. We had to do it to come here. Everything, everything is gone, it’s gone.” Frankie’s mother had begun to cry.
“Two at a time only,” the volunteer called out. “Anyone?”
* * *
WHAT IF GRANDMA STAYED behind? Frankie thought. Would she disappear too? An old lady boiling vegetables alone in the kitchen, a crease of sunlight on her shoulder, the kettle singing, the lights all on—one day gone? Where did all these people go? And would it be worse than what they had to do now?
Relocating, moving, migrating, leaving, departing, new shores, fresh start. Frankie had heard every iteration of such goodbyes already. She thought of the people dancing in the square, how nobody had noticed yet that so many of them were absent. Bodies in the light. Bodies sweating. Innumerable bodies, replaceable bodies, drifting across land and sea.
* * *
ONE LAST MEMORY. FRANKIE tried to recall an important one, something from all the months of protest and hiding and planning, or even when she saw that corner store blink into nothing, but all she could think about was how many Sunday dinners she had missed with her family, before everything had happened, because she had decided to go to the beach or see her friends. Even after her grandfather and then her father died, she still didn’t change; she would show up sometimes but rush through the food, rush through the conversation. “Ma, can you please hurry up?” she would say as her mother took yet another photograph of them at the table, of their plates of food, of the new serving spoon Grandma had bought that day at the market.
“One day you’ll be grateful for these,” her mother replied, half offended but putting her camera away.
Now, here, on the cliffside, Frankie whispered something to her grandma. A word to say she was sorry, to say that there was more to this life, to say that new photographs were being developed, that the light was blurring image into view, the shapes roping themselves into existence. To say that this all might be worth whatever came out of those pictures, even if the images were obscured, hidden from them—even if, in the end, they were barely visible.
* * *
IT WAS TIME. FRANKIE’S mother and grandmother sat on the slide holding each other. The volunteer gave them a push, and Frankie watched as the hair tie on her grandma’s head flew off and her long hair unbraided into a silver carpet. The fish-children sang deep underwater as the surface of the sea met the eye of the sun.
“You’re up next,” said the volunteer, gesturing at Frankie.
She took off her shoes and laid them neatly on the ground next to the slide, as if to say, I’ll be back for you later. The sky was knife-bright, the grass soft and loose, the dirt underneath still wet from rain. She dug her fingers in—it was cool, so alive—and took two fistfuls of soil and grass. She would carry this into the sea; build a new mountain there.
To My Great-Granddaughter, Who Will Find This Letter When I Am Dead
First, find uncolonized land. If that is not available, soil that is mostly left untreated—preferably even abandoned—will suffice.
When you have found this place, build a living space near it. If there is an estuary or stream nearby, make sure to fasten stilts to your home.
Once you have settled in, it is important to begin immediately preparation of the soil. With a simple tool or, even better, a bare hand, rake through the muddy earth until it is loose, tamping it down every night so that it is ready for the same process in the morning. Called repeating, this ancient practice was taught to me by my own great-grandmother when I was very small.
After several weeks of repeating, you will be ready for growth. What follows are my notes for survival. I hope you can make use of them.
THE ALCHEMY (HOW IT BEGINS)
The process of germination begins in one’s head. You may start by thinking of what you want to grow. This takes some time, so be patient.
Once an idea forms in your mind, you can remove its seed. Using small, generic pharmacy tweezers and a hand mirror, pluck the fine hairs covering your ear canal. A light, gentle touch is advised. Once you have pulled several dozen hairs, you may inspect them to see if seeds have developed there. The seeds should be perfectly oval, roughly the size of a fruit fly, and glassy black in color. They should smell faintly of grass and linseed oil. If any carry fluid-filled mumpy dots, throw them away immediately—these anomalies can grow into invasive species and are harmful to the land’s ecosystem as well as your psychological health.
You may bury these seeds, with your ear hairs attached, in your selected area. I recommend the patch just by the margins of your home; somewhere half shaded where the sun might slip in for a few hours a day. If you are concerned about the temperamental climate in your area, you may plant the seeds in a low, long trough and bring it inside to sleep with you at night.
After two weeks, your plant should be ready for harvesting. Extract it from the soil. When you have rinsed and cleaned out all the crevices, you may invite a few friends over and make a lavish, nourishing meal using the roots, stems, crushed leaves, and flowers, vegetables, or fruits of your labor.
Cooking with these ingredients has been a source of great joy in my life. I used to prepare extravagant feasts for acquaintances and friends, most of whom have lost loved ones, languages, lands. At the end of these meals, we would each burn an inch of our hair as a way to give something of ours back to the earth. But this was before your great-grandfather was executed, before the revolution and the persecution that followed. Before we were displaced.
One springtime before the revolution, I found lavender flowers with golf-ball stigmas growing around one of my plants. I had heard that this is a very rare occurrence, and a magical one: These flowers expand as they are cooked and can feed an entire village. It was an especially cold spring that year; I invited twenty-seven people over, and we ate those lavender flowers in aspic. Although I don’t know where they all are now, I still think about our guests that day, how one woman sang for us as we cut into a mangosteen meringue pie and another showed us how to read our futures not in the stars, but by screwing a finger into the earth and seeing how the dirt clings to your flesh.
I have not been fortunate enough to find those flowers again. During the revolution, when I lived in the mountains, I made a lot of double-boiled soup from the harvests as it was the simplest way to feed and nourish a large number of guests. Many of the young people who stopped by my door at that time had no family or had been turned away by their own houses, and so oftentimes this soup would be their only source of warmth. I would set up a large cauldron on a fire outside, and while the water boiled, I would make bowls out of pulped newspaper and resin, shaped over the rocks outside my house. If more people decided to come, there would always be a bowl for them.
Double-Boiled Roots Soup with White Raix
I used to make a delicious soup with white radish, but I can no longer find that ingredient. It is much easier to source Raix, which is a canned white vegetable produced in French laboratories. It does not taste or cook the same, but it is a sufficient substitute for radish. When boiled, it turns clear and then dissolves into liquid.
Set a time for your dinner and then start preparing this dish precisely twelve hours in advance. Often, I have had to wake up in the middle of the night to start the pot, but it is worth it. At the end you will have a silky, balanced broth that stays hot even in the coldest of nights. My own grandmother taught me this double-pot method. This is also an excellent remedy for sleeping malaise, which is a condition that Western doctors now like to treat with opiates.
Recipe
Roots grown from your
Dash of salt
harvest
Water
Radish or Raix
Lemon herbs (optional)
A slice of ginger
Set up a large pot or cauldron with water and place a smaller pot — empty — inside of it. The smaller pot is where the soup will be made. Start boiling the water in the large pot.
Clean the roots thoroughly but with a light touch; take care not to accidentally remove any tiny white legs. Dry on paper towels. Open a can of Raix and drain its contents into a sieve. When the water begins to boil, add the roots, Raix, a slice of ginger, and forty cups of water with a dash of salt to the smaller pot. Cover and leave for twelve hours, uninterrupted. When you next open the pot, you should have an enormously flavorful, clear broth and no remaining traces of the roots, Raix, or ginger. It is very important to not interfere with the cooking—it should be at a full boil for the entirety of the twelve hours—and it is equally important not to reduce or extend the boil time. You may serve this with hand torn lemon herbs, which imparts a sweet, morning flavor to the soup.
The people who drank this soup were younger strangers and travelers, most of whom had heard about the soup kitchen by word of mouth. Once, I fed a community choir who were crossing the mountains together; another time, a well-known political journalist found some of his former students here.
People would try to pay or give back something in exchange for the food. I have always maintained that I do not cook for money. Once, there was a man with a three-legged dog who offered me his watch, but instead I handed him a large notebook and asked him to write down a recipe for me before he left.
Later, when everyone had gone to sleep or continued their journeys through the trees, I looked at what he had written.
Thank you for the soup. I hadn’t eaten anything in three days, and my dog is very ill. He is my only companion these days.
I am originally from Shuchi, so this is a dish that is popular in that region. I used to eat it all the time as a child, but I haven’t had it in years. I haven’t been back home in a long time. I hope you like it.
Shuchi Stem Stir-Fry
Recipe
Vegetable stems
Black vinegar
Shuchi peppercorn
Cooking wine
Safflower oil
White sugar
Garlic
Clean and rinse the stems thoroughly in spring water. Using a sharpened cleaver, finely chop the long trunks into one-inch pieces. Any browning ends should be trimmed and discarded. Keep the stems in water until you need to fry them.
Heat up a wok, without oil. While that is warming, crush five handfuls of Shuchi peppercorns in a mortar and pestle. (A note to my great-granddaughter: If you do not have these tools in the future, a laser crusher will suffice, but do not use precrushed peppercorn. It has no flavor.) When the wok is hot to touch, toss in the sediment and heat until fragrant. Remove from wok.
With a few drops of safflower oil, flash fry the stems until bright. Add slices of garlic. Add a splash of black vinegar, cooking rice wine, white sugar, and the prefried Shuchi peppercorn. You can serve this immediately or let it cool and marinate in a cold place for up to 72 hours.
I have made this many times since the man with the dog visited, especially in the summer when the heat is intolerable and very dry. The change in weather, which has only gotten worse over the years, has meant that fewer and fewer visitors came. Eventually, nobody came at all. It was me and your grandmother for a long time. I started keeping diaries.
Later, when we had to move back to the city, I would reread those diaries in our very cramped, very gray apartment and remembered how the mornings used to smell, how the birds spoke to each other. Most of the food I made came from jarred and pickled and preserved harvests from our time in the mountains.
One of your grandmother’s favorite dishes when she was a child was a furu salad. Furu, if you don’t know, is fermented bean curd, and the one I used was made by a woman who lived on my street when I was a young mother. Her name was Friya. She sold jars to us in exchange for translations: She wanted to write to her son but didn’t know how to write in his language, and he no longer remembered hers. Friya was very skilled at many things—carpentry, painting, taming horses—but languages was not one of her skills, and for that she was mostly disregarded by the city system and couldn’t find a regular office job. She sold jars of furu out of necessity; not many people remembered how to make it, and it was easy work for her. In the city, I worked part-time in an accountant’s office and was a freelance translator. I paid Friya to look after your grandmother when I was away at work, and so in essence she was raised by both of us. I always considered myself to be frugal, but Friya was an artist. She had an eye for the things that were tossed away and abandoned by society. She picked up weeds nobody wanted and cleaned them lovingly, boiling the petals into fuchsia, lavender, ink-black syrups. She found ticket stubs on the street and would wet and paste them together to make new recycled papers. She liked flyers, even the government ones, because she could collect them all and with her scissors cut and stick together an entirely new journal with her own assemblages of words and images. She would make them together with your grandmother, these found poems and collages. Friya also had excellent tastebuds. She was the one who gave me this recipe.
Herbs Salad with Furu Vinaigrette
Recipe
Herbs grown from your
Olive oil
