Patchwork dolls, p.6
Patchwork Dolls, page 6
“That was a depressing show.”
“Yes, but I liked Sammy’s new works. I wonder if they’re able to come tonight.”
L pours you and herself small tumblers of wine. “I’ll miss you.” You both drink.
The party starts when people start bursting in at the doorway. L is popular, has always been—a great friend, generous, kind, a natural organizer. You know she hasn’t told many people that she is leaving, but still, so many show up: friends you know, old colleagues, complete strangers. “L,” they say, “we’ll miss you. We’re so happy for you but we’ll miss you.”
The music is loud, and is turned up only louder after 10 p.m. You try to decrease the volume, afraid that the neighbors will call the police, but a woman takes your hand away from the speakers and starts dancing. She seems far too drunk to reason with. The apartment clogs up with a sweet mix of cigarette and weed smoke, and you try to find L to tell her you’re going back to your apartment, you suddenly have a headache, but she keeps darting around, disappearing, her thick dark mass of hair merging with the cluster of bodies. Someone opens the windows, and short puffs of air find you, even in the center of the room. Suddenly, with more people in it, the flat seems enormous, the walls pulsing and multiplying.
You spot a mutual friend sitting on the window ledge, vaping. “Can you pass on the message to L that I’ll be around in the morning? I want to see her before she leaves.”
“Hmm,” he says, noncommittally. He is leaning far out of the window, perhaps too far, looking down onto the street. “Maybe you should just message her. I might forget …”
You roll your eyes and unglue yourself from the clump of people that block the doorway. You’re out, in the corridor. The lift is a relief; cold, metal, silent. When you finally get back into your own flat, ten floors down, you feel selfishly relieved you are far enough away to not hear the music at all. You’ve been plagued by migraines lately, especially when you read the news too much. You scrub yourself lazily in the shower, half asleep, the tiles drunkenly floating in half patterns. You knock over a stack of books as you scramble into bed, and you make sure to take some painkillers. You forget to draw the curtains, and tonight you do not put in earplugs. But still, you do not hear the sirens, or see the parade of blue, white, and red lights dancing on the surface of your ceiling. You forget to send L a text message about meeting her before she leaves. But in the end, it doesn’t matter. She won’t see it anyway.
This is the end of your flashback. You may go back to page 45, or you may continue to read the collection, although you have been warned: Trauma fractures all timelines.
Go home; go home; go home.
What do you mean, go home? Which home? The one you grew up in, with your family? The little apartment you now live in? Do you mean the city itself, the one that has caved in on itself? Can you really go home? Which doorway leads you there?
You must move forward. You can’t go back, otherwise you’ll become a ghost. Start again.
Go back to page 45.
The woman is looking for something inside her bag.
“Lost something?”
She looks at you, slack-jawed. “Hah?”
“Seems like you lost something.”
“Oh, no, no,” she says. “Just can’t find anything inside this bag.” She digs a little more, the thick canvas swallowing her arm. She seems flustered now, aware of your gaze. You know you are being intrusive—it is impolite to stare at someone who is floundering, unless they ask for help.
The woman is, you feel, seconds away from tossing her bag upside down and shaking it. You’ve been there: rushing toward the barricades, looking for your paper-thin Octopus card, your slippery phone, your wallet. She sighs. “Can I help you?”
“Actually, I wanted to ask if you were all right,” you say, trying to ignore the flatness of the woman’s voice. “Everyone seems so tired today.”
The train speaker chimes; you’ve arrived at the next stop.
“It’s fine. I’m late,” the woman says irritably. One last plunge: She seems to have found what she’s looking for. It’s a tiny electric fan, blue with translucent blades. She loops it around her neck and hurriedly pulls herself off the bench. “This is my stop, sorry.”
The doors open, and immediately the two crowds converge: out and in. You see the woman squeezing herself through the portal, her bag catching on a man’s arm as he tries to shoulder his way inside the carriage. Nobody is moving. The train speaker chimes frantically, and you remember how in Tokyo you watched while men in white gloves packed people into the trains, rearranging their elbows, their heads, their positions. The mass grows as more people join from the platform, pushing. The blockage starts to generate heat, and you see several figures coated in a thin gloss of sweat. You can no longer see anyone’s head.
Suddenly the tide breaks and people slip like fish onto the carriage. You see the woman scrambling out onto the platform, and the broken crowd parts to reveal the station name on the walls: purple tiles, Causeway Bay.
What time is it? You check your phone. It’s just past four. The train speaker beeps; you know there are precisely eighteen beeps before the carriage doors close. You know what the logical thing to do is, but it is the opposite of your instincts. You stand near the carriage doors, hearing the beeps, watching people slump on benches and press themselves against the walls. You see a man with a sun-faded tote bag; on it are the words: JE ME RÉVOLTE, DONC NOUS SOMMES. You call on your rudimentary French language skills. I revolt, therefore we are. But who wrote it? The bag bears a logo: Pickwick Books.
The carriage doors pull shut. You panic, you haven’t made up your mind yet. But then they open again, the beeping starting over manically; someone, on another carriage, must have kept their doors open. Is it a sign for you?
Do you follow the woman? If so, please turn to the next page.
Or perhaps you’d like to continue searching for your lost books. If so, turn to page 53.
Or do you just want to go home? If that’s your choice, turn to page 45.
You’ve already lost sight of the woman, but there is only one direction everyone is heading: up. You follow the procession, and out on the street the sun burns like your father’s glare.
You don’t remember it being so warm when you woke up this morning. You look at what you’re wearing: all black, leggings and a t-shirt. Everyone else around you is wearing a similar uniform: dark tones, sneakers, loose athletic gear. They fill the streets. A man on a podium is speaking into a megaphone and someone passes you a strip of stickers, a poster. A crowd of people slowly march forward, all holding up one hand, five fingers outstretched. On the other side of the road, you see a group of people setting up a first aid tent, their vests bright. They’re all doing something strange: One woman seems to be tipping an empty plastic bottle over, again and again. Another man is applying plasters on his arms, lining them up next to each other, one by one, although you cannot see any visible injuries. A third woman covers her face, bringing her hands over her eyes, her nose, her mouth, in a repetitive circular motion. They appear to be performing a ritual, some unspoken instruction that haunts their bodies.
You’re sure this is a nightmare, but you don’t know how to wake up. You want to go home. But instead you join the crowd, lift up your hand, unpeel your fingers from your fist. You look at the sky, and it is an unnatural, seamless blue. Your legs begin to move, propelling you forward. Somehow you know: This is where you live now.
END
The woman at the store seemed grateful that you bought something so quickly; she even packed it neatly in a small, yellow bag for you.
You find a small sitting-out area nearby and pick an unoccupied bench. Near you, a young couple eat their cold pastries quietly; an elderly man flings his arms up and down. There’s a shih tzu, flaccid on the lap of its owner. The owner scrolls through her phone, her face blurring blue, anxious. The evening is warm like a just-boiled egg.
At the store, you had read the first paragraphs of each book before deciding your eventual purchase. Were you drawn to images of windows, of poverty, of domestic violence? Or did you wake up when you read about insidious means of state manipulation, of amnesia?
You don’t have to tell us where you’re at; you just have to know where you want to go.
Take your book out of the bright yellow bag, a slice of lemon in the dark scum of nonmemory. You may begin reading. Don’t stop until you remember.
END
Find Your Spirit
The ghost of your dead twin sister visits you late on a Tuesday night when you’re boiling ramen. In your kitchen you have three old eggs, seven packets of instant noodles, instant miso soup with crumbs of seaweed, and some softly decaying fruits that your mother gave you last month.
Just a moment ago, you had been lying in bed, the blue velvet of the hour mirroring your restlessness. You got up again. You went to the bathroom. You feel hungry, or something close to it. You haven’t been sleeping well.
As the cake of noodle separates into the water, your sister’s face appears.
First, she says, you shouldn’t be eating so late—it’s bad for you. Her face shimmers like a veil of milk above the starch and steam. Second, she continues, download the app.
What app?
She vanishes into the silky broth. Outside, the sun is just waking up. You wait for her to return the second night, then the next, then every day that week. But she does not appear again. You go to work as a receptionist in a dentist’s office, eat the same takeaway bento boxes with squares of overcooked mackerel and rice. It rains on Friday. Soon you forget about the incident. You haven’t been sleeping well.
But next Monday, precisely seven days after her visit, you receive an email with a link to a new app, free for a limited period. You read through the terms and conditions, the fine print. As you drink your coffee, bitter and hot, the app downloads on your phone. It is titled “Find Your Spirit.”
* * *
YOUR SISTER IS TECHNICALLY younger than you by a few breaths, but since her death on your joint birthday last year she has remained twenty-six. At first you measured each minute and hour you were growing apart. But recently, you stopped counting. Now, you try not to fixate on the distance between you.
On social media platforms of mega-institutions and organizations, you see posts celebrating the centennial birthdays of dead authors, activists, artists, singers. It is hard to imagine one hundred. It is difficult to envision three-quarters of a century more without her, and how you must manage your own yardstick of growth, alone.
In your phone there is a tiny red dot on the date of your birthday. A standing reservation: Every year, your parents took you and your sister out for dinner at the same place. You felt it was your duty to turn up every time, but your sister was regularly late or absent altogether. Your mother did not mind. In fact, she would praise your sister’s independence, her individuality, and ask you not to be upset, although you were long past that already. Still, every time you cut the cake you prepared a fourth slice, just in case.
Yesterday, your mother messaged to ask if you still wanted to celebrate your birthday. You, the eldest daughter by a few seconds, felt obligated to rally your broken family. But even thinking about that makes you feel heavy. When you do not answer, she sends another one-line text a few hours later: Same place?
You can’t help but interpret the text as needy, even though you know your parents are struggling. Since the accident, your already-reticent father has become mute, and although your mother performs normality extremely well—she always has— you can see she is lost too.
You type and delete several sentences before sending off what you feel is a neutral response, avoiding what would have been a painful reunion. No need for dinner this year. Thank you anyway.
Your mother says okay without any punctuation, and you wonder if she is secretly relieved. You have always maintained a cool distance from your parents, although you can’t quite remember who it was that initiated this.
You have always known that your parents favored your sister. They paid off her student debts early, allowed her to travel and write in America on their retirement savings. All her successes and failures defined you. Because you were the one with a middle-of-the-path degree in administration, you joined a private dental clinic and quietly sent half the paycheck to your parents every month. It all made sense in the end. Your sister died; you are alive, and now there is money in the bank and good teeth for life. Never mind the two books of poetry you published at university, the author-professor who offered mentorship, the residency in Switzerland you had to turn down because you couldn’t afford to stop working. These were all just minor things; inconsequential, really, in the world of death and spirits.
* * *
THE APP HAS ASKED for a drop of blood. The company sends you a square, thick envelope with an empty vial and a pin. This is necessary, an accompanying letter states, to accurately perform a DNA match and to prevent interdimensional connection with nonrelatives. You turn over the vial in your hand. You should have more concerns, but you don’t. You prick yourself, the pin a surprising, sharp relief against your numbness.
* * *
A WEEK LATER YOU are scrolling through the options of relatives that the app offers. You see your grandparents, distant great-uncles and aunts, an estranged cousin who you didn’t even know had passed away. Then you find your sister. Date of death: July 21. Happy birthday.
Now that you have named your target, you can track wherever your sister’s spirit is, as long as she remains close to the earthly plane. Even invisible, your sister moves unpredictably, as she had always done in life. She takes her time. You note where she goes. Some days she does not appear at all, perhaps choosing instead to stay in otherworldly regions you cannot access. But over weeks you start to see a pattern. On evenings you usually find her at the pier in Sai Wan, walking between the dogs and couples and fishermen. She goes often to an old family-run restaurant in Yau Ma Tei, now managed by the young son who wears round glasses. You imagine her brushing her translucent fingers over the glassware, the greasy pots of chili oil, the industrial-sized fish tank now dry and filled with plants and vintage figurines. On several occasions you try to follow her, but by the time you arrive she is already gone—though you notice that after she visits a place, she leaves behind a puddle of water.
So you trace her on the app. To an abandoned building in Causeway Bay. An alleyway in Tai Kok Tsui. A field in Yuen Long. Occasionally, she takes the MTR back and forth between Sheung Wan and Quarry Bay, shadowing your daily commute— as a cruel joke or to punish herself, perhaps. Not once did she visit you at work when she was alive.
She regularly visits a small independent bookstore in Wan Chai. The shop is barely one hundred square feet, so you can’t tell exactly what she’s looking at. The location pin just shows you that she’s there. One day, curious, you visit the store before work. It is quiet, and the store assistant is busy restocking titles on the shelves. There is soft, dark music playing on the speakers; posters of literary events from at least a decade ago on the walls. You recognize them from when you used to write, the names like a dream you suddenly remember.
You roam around the store, searching for signs of your sister in between browsing poetry books, zines, postcards. When you reach the local authors section, you see your poetry books and a wall of shame hits you. You try to move away quickly, but then you notice on the floor the smallest, most perfectly round puddle.
“Sorry, sorry,” the shop assistant says. She toes a rag with her foot and sweeps it neatly over the pool of water.
She points upward. You squint; you haven’t been sleeping well. The assistant makes an apologetic gesture.
“Our air conditioner, it drips.”
* * *
THE APP’S ONE-MONTH PREMIUM service trial expires. It asks you to pay an extortionate amount of money, drawn monthly from your bank account, to continue. If you’d like to continue using the free version, it writes to you in faintly glistening letters, you can do so, but this option only allows you to view your spirit within a ten-mile radius.
Between your student debt, living expenses, and supporting your parents, you cannot afford the upgrade. You opt to continue the free trial and click on your sister’s icon, a generic silhouette of a woman with flipped hair. The app tells you: Your spirit is in Hong Kong! You try to zoom in, but the screen sticks, breaking up into square chunks and blackness. All it can do now is tell you when your spirit is in Hong Kong and when it is not; it malfunctions every time you try anything else. The app’s help chat room is useless. It is haunted by an omnipresent robot ghost who asks you what your ascendant star sign is.
A week passes, and still you check the app every day, hoping for progress. One morning the screen is a searing white blue, and you tense, nervously anticipating change. But the app is compromised. It has stifled your phone’s function, and your device needs to be reset. You make an appointment on your lunch break. But just as you are turning the “out of office” sign on the door, a woman and small child appear.
“It’s an emergency,” the woman says, flapping at you. She has thrust her daughter to the front, and you can see in her tiny, clammy hand a bloodied tooth.
Before, you might have helped, you might have opened the doors and offered them a seat in the clinic, you might have decided to wait with them, even if it made no difference to the time the dentist actually came back. But you have grown tired of accommodating the needs of others, and this small lunch break—the only respite from a long day of phones ringing, emails to insurance companies, helping people make appointments, trying to sleep at night before the alarm goes off and it all starts all over again—is something you feel you need to protect at all costs. You can feel yourself grinding down into a heavy, blunt object, immobile, unyielding.
