by YZ Chin
“Moonlight Sonata,” the label read. Relief arrived. Twelve years of piano lessons finally coming in handy.
Katie wrinkled her nose at me.
“Tacky?” I asked, holding up Moonlight Sonata.
“Not really, but just a bit, hmm, tweeny.”
Yet another reference I wouldn’t get. I surrendered, exhausted.
“Those two are slooow,” one of our technicians said to the other in Cantonese.
I was going to apologize, but then remembered with a start that they thought we were both Americans who did not speak Chinese. In Katie’s case this was mostly true (she didn’t know much beyond “eat,” “thank you,” and such in Taishanese), so it hadn’t technically been a lie on her part. On mine, it was pure omission.
Too late now to do anything about it, because the two technicians were discussing who would be working on whom, and I heard myself referred to as “the plump one.” My face started to burn. I turned away to look out the spa’s glass doors, huge and sparkling clean. Today’s New York had a distracted buzz about it, people walking around slack-mouthed while earbud microphones dangled by their chins. I considered plugging in my own earbuds, but Katie wanted to talk.
“Did you hear back from Marlin? After you sent your letter?”
I shook my head, bracing myself. To my surprise, Katie drew me in for a lingering side hug.
“You know how I feel about you moping after him. Sorry, I say it as it is. But if you’re not gonna get the closure you need unless you hear back from him, then here’s something I do at work. You ready for this? It’s pretty good.”
I couldn’t help but smile. Katie and her schemes.
“Okay, here it is. Say I need something from my male boss by a certain time, let’s say four days from now. First I send a request with clear action items at both the top and bottom of my email. Then I wait. If I don’t hear back by the second day, I send two reminder emails with the action items highlighted, once early in the day and once at close of business. If he still ignores me”—Katie rolled her eyes—“then it’s time for drastic measures. I’ll send an email that’s all professional, like, ‘Since I haven’t heard back, I assume you would like me to take initiative. Therefore, unless you say otherwise by five p.m., I will go ahead with XYZ.’ The key is, XYZ is an idea that I already know he hates.”
I laughed. “So you blackmail him?”
“Oh, no no no.” Katie put on a sweet grin. “It’s not blackmail. It’s playing games with the male ego. He might hate XYZ because he believes it’s wrong. In that case, his male ego makes him want to correct me—there’s nothing more satisfying for him than that. He can’t let go of an opportunity to show that he knows better.”
“I see. Don’t you run the risk of him thinking you’re an idiot, though?”
“He’ll only think I’m an idiot if I insist on XYZ after his correction. If I’m grateful for his input, then I’m actually really, really smart for being so receptive to his greater wisdom. Obviously.”
“Wow.” Maybe if I’d put half her cunning into my interactions at work, I wouldn’t be up against so many walls.
Ponytail waved Katie and me deeper into the salon. We sank into neighboring chairs, so bulky and replete with buttons that it could belong to a Starfleet commander (I’ll admit, this is a pop culture reference I’d studiously learned). I must have been tense, because my technician spent extra time massaging my calves. While she did this, I tried to relax, but I also kept expecting her to say something in Cantonese like “She better pay extra for me to massage all this fat” or “Silver? So tweeny,” except then I realized I didn’t know the Cantonese equivalent for “tweeny,” and I gratefully became lost in thought.
When we were finally left alone to dry our nails under mini fans, Katie turned to me, moist-eyed.
“I just want you to be happy, you know,” she said.
I could feel tears welling too. I thought about how many of the tangled threads that made up “me” were a direct result of her influence, or else reactions/resistance to the force of her personality. Even when I judged her for things and behaviors I thought beneath me, I was still using her to propel my personhood at a specific angle.
“I just think you’re trying to intellectualize things that . . . can’t be treated that way,” she continued. “Sometimes there’s no hope of thinking our way out of problems. Especially when it comes to matters of the heart.”
She was wrong, but my deep fondness for her held. I managed a chuckle and said: “First you want me to see a psychiatrist, then you don’t want me to intellectualize things? Don’t those contradict each other?”
“It’s different with a professional, objective perspective.”
I tested a fingernail to see if it was ready. It smudged, ever so slightly.
“I’ll think about it,” I said.
She looked at me with such hope in her eyes.
After
Day Twelve (Sunday)
Thanks for saying that. No, I understand that what happened at the nightclub team outing was serious, but I disagree with you that it’s sexual assault. There has to be another word or phrase for it. But really, thank you for asking.
I have this recurring dream where I walk into a bright, featureless room, a sci-fi jail cell. The door seals shut behind me, its outline disappearing into the wall. In the center of the cell, Marlin sits cross-legged, his back to me. I plead with him to turn around. In the dream, this is accomplished by wishing very hard. My mouth never moves, my lips never part. But I send brain waves out to Marlin’s prone figure, again and again. Finally, it works. He turns, slowly, brain stalk cricking, and it is Josh’s face that I see.
IT’S A FUNNY HUMAN THING THAT WE SOMETIMES FORGIVE A PERSON when someone else comes along and does something even worse to us. That is the way I forgave my mother for the banana tree spirit story.
She called when I was fully awake, but still feeling the effects of a Marlin/Josh nightmare. Rattled, I was ready for reconciliation.
“You look terrible,” she said immediately, and I was glad for it. It felt good to have my state of mind acknowledged, without my having to whine about it.
“I feel terrible.” I told her what had happened at the nightclub. When I finished, I braced myself. Look, isn’t this what you wanted? she might say. To live a life completely different from mine? Well, chaos is the opposite of calm and order.
“Tsk, these American young men,” my mother said. The transformation of flesh into pixels always made her look younger, her skin brighter. She glowed on-screen. Meanwhile I had no idea how I looked, having turned off self view. “But don’t think too much about it. The more you think, the worse you feel. Maybe you worked in tech too long already. You’re becoming like them, always overthinking.”
I flinched. I wanted to unburden myself, but I could already sense the failure latent in any attempt to describe the terrors consuming me. The sentences “He half kissed me” and “He left me” did nothing to convey how I suffered. If I couldn’t handle my pain gracefully, then failing to describe it adequately seemed like a double condemnation of my character. I should either be the strong, silently suffering type, or a sensitive, expressive soul who brought others to tears with descriptions of my inner turmoil.
“You’re always like this,” my mother continued. “You can’t leave anything alone. You used to pop all your pimples, you remember? You’re popping all your mental pimples now. It’s like this: if you leave them alone, they’ll heal by themselves. This Josh guy, you tell him to stop bothering you and find himself a girlfriend.”
I laughed, despite myself, at the absurdity of her imagery.
“What did Marlin say?” she went on.
“I haven’t told him.”
“I know things must be rough between you two. Otherwise he wouldn’t have called me. But just be patient, okay? Don’t rush and go say things you’ll regret.”
We were both silent for a while. I told myself that if she brought up a past life st
ory now, I would hang up on her. Not because I was still angry at her, but because I didn’t want to be angry at her again, or anymore.
“You remember I said I have something to tell you?” she asked.
I shook my head, surprised, then nodded. I thought what she’d wanted to talk about was how Marlin had called her up, asking about Li Shen.
“I have a, a male friend,” she said.
I gasped audibly.
“Don’t worry! He asked me to get married, but I said no.”
“Who is he? How did this happen?”
“He’s a Pendidikan Moral teacher at that new school next to— Oh, you don’t know it, they opened it after you left.”
“How did you even meet a moral studies teacher? You had a moral quandary to resolve?” I couldn’t keep the snark out of my voice.
“Friends introduced us. You’re upset?”
“Why would I be?”
“This is not like love or marriage. It’s like this: he and I can take care of each other. Now you don’t have to worry about me. No need to leave your life in New York even when I get so old I can’t walk.”
I struggled to put a name to my emotions. Guilt. Disappointment. A feeling of being cut loose, after having been tethered for time immemorial. Fear. I connected the dots for the reason behind my chaotic feelings: if I failed to get a green card, I could no longer use “caring for my aging mother” as an excuse for why I left America.
Such vile thoughts. I closed my eyes.
“I just want you to be happy,” I said, recycling Katie’s line, remembering how I’d been touched.
My mother laughed. “Happy? When you get to my age, you don’t think about ‘happy’ anymore. I just want some peace. If every day is the same, good. If nobody worries about me, good.”
“So why did you keep asking me to move back?”
“That’s for you. When you first moved there, you said you wanted to do something with English literature, so staying in America made sense. But now you’re doing what? Computers?”
“Computers,” I admitted.
“You can do computer work here.”
The dizzying void opened up again, and I stared into it. What would my life be, a year from now? No matter what science said, the sun in Malaysia was different from the one that shone on America. By next year, what shade would I stand under, what clothes would I wear, what food would I eat? What language would I be speaking? Who would I reach for, bolting up from a nightmare at the edge of dawn?
After
Day Thirteen (Monday)
I took the day off work, not bothering to invent an illness or a family emergency. I needed to put off seeing Josh’s face in the office. Also, somehow yesterday’s conversation with my mother had snuffed out my last flicker of hope that AInstein would sponsor my green card. If she was making practical choices, maybe I should, too. I felt it settling in my body like sediment, the acceptance of my failure.
I sat on my unmade bed and went on Facebook, aimlessly scrolling through photos of my primary school friends. I had a half-baked idea of reuniting with them when I moved back, so I would have a ready group of friends waiting in the wings. But as I scrolled, I began to notice a pattern. Over a quarter of them now worked and thrived in Singapore.
Eamon called when I was opening up my eighth tab of job postings in Singapore.
“My brain is fried,” he announced. “Just got through five hours of interviews at Cachi.”
“I’m sorry.” I grimaced. “Thank you again for doing this.”
“Sure.”
“Did you see him?”
“No. But I did see something interesting when they walked me around the office for a tour.”
“What?”
“You know the purple necklace thing he has?”
For dowsing. “Yes,” I said.
“I saw it on one of the standing desks. I was walking by, and the desk was pretty much at my eye level. It has to be him, right? What are the odds someone else has that exact purple necklace?”
“But you didn’t see him?”
“No, no one was at the desk. I’m sure it’s him, though.”
“You’re right. I think you’re right.”
“That was before the interviews. I tried to look again after I was done, but he still wasn’t there. Maybe he took the day off.”
“I would think he’d bring the pendant with him, if that’s the case.”
“Pendant! That’s the word.”
“At least we know he’s still going to work. That’s good. Thanks again, Eamon.”
“Yeah, glad it wasn’t a complete waste of time.”
“Do you think you’ll be getting a job offer?”
“I was just gonna tell the recruiter that I’m accepting one of my ‘other offers,’ but . . . it might be cool to see what Cachi says?”
“I’m sure you did well.”
“Thanks! I should go.”
I hung up and rolled over in bed, feeling the minor aches that came with sitting on a soft surface for hours. I stared at the ceiling and tried to conjure a sense of relief given Eamon’s news. Nothing rose up in response. I was squeezed dry.
The room was splashed with shadows when I woke up. I blinked in confusion at the apartment’s corners, obscured by darkness. How was it evening already? The idea came to me then, in that liminal state between sleep and complete wakefulness. I tumbled out of bed and went to rummage through my closet. What did I have that would make a halfway decent disguise?
Marlin had seen me in virtually all of my outfits. I would need to dig deep, go all the way back into the cobwebbed, mothballed recesses of drawers, where there might be clothes I hadn’t pulled out for years. I thrust my arms into shelf after shelf. They emerged with homecoming shirts from college, winter beanies I hadn’t seen in months, long johns my mother had sent me. I yanked a scarf free, and something else fell out with it, entangled. I picked it off my foot. It was a Susy and Geno shirt, featuring the mascots from Sustagen, this nutritional supplement drink my mother used to foist on me. Shame-tinged memories crowded into the closet. As a child, I had begged my mother to order this shirt off a catalog delivered to our mailbox. The day the coveted item arrived, I put it on right away, delighted.
“Too big,” my mother said.
It was true; the shirt hung down to the middle of my thighs like a dress. Reluctantly I pulled it over my head and let my mother take it away for safekeeping.
“You can wear it when you’re taller.”
But by the time I grew to the appropriate height, I couldn’t tug the shirt much down beyond my shoulders. It snagged on my torso, its downward progress impeded by rolls of fat. I burst into tears.
“Cry what cry?” my mother said as she helped me struggle out of the shirt. “Just don’t eat so much. Then the shirt will fit!”
I’d held on to that shirt since, at first out of genuine hope that I could one day lose enough weight to wear it. Later, that hope dimmed and morphed into something else. Every time I moved, I considered putting Susy and Geno into the donation pile, but I never did. I think it was because they reminded me of that first powerful desire to be thin.
Standing in the closet, I lifted Susy and Geno to my nose and sniffed. There was a funk to them, but it was more intriguing than revolting. I took my sleep shirt off and pulled them on, tugging aggressively when I met with resistance. I heard the sound of a seam ripping, and I kept going. When I’d done my best, I turned to the full-length mirror next to the closet.
I looked ridiculous. I was technically wearing the shirt, but it was so obviously too small for me, riding up my fleshy arms and bunching at my belly button. But it was indeed something Marlin had never seen me wear. I bit the insides of my cheeks, both sides at once.
In the end I psyched myself up enough to do it, though I did add a hoodie tied around the waist to bridge the gap between shirt and sweatpants. I also found a gaudy bandanna to wrap over my head pirate-style, a bright yellow thing that I’d acquired once up
on a time because I saw an Instagram personality demonstrate the “French” way of wearing bandannas.
It was the tail end of rush hour when I left the apartment, when happy hours were ending and people were settling in with their Seamless dinners. Marlin was probably working late as usual, so I had decent hopes that I would still catch him. I adjusted and readjusted the hoodie throughout my subway ride, self-conscious. When I emerged at the stop closest to Cachi I/O, I walked by a street vendor packing up and bought a $5 pair of sunglasses to add to my disguise.
Picking a stakeout spot was easy. There was a construction site kitty-corner from the building that housed Cachi I/O, with plenty of steel frames and tarps that I could lurk behind. For the next hour or so I stood there, trying to focus on the revolving doors of Cachi’s office building. But it was harder than I’d assumed. Thoughts popped and sizzled like oil in a pan. I fantasized about biting into a double-decker burger, blood-tinged juice dribbling onto my hands faster the closer I got to the center. The modulo flashed into my mind, its harsh slash separating two needy, gaping mouths: %. A symbol that used to bind Marlin and me together through an inside joke, now a visual mockery alluding to our break, the slanted line a forbidding border.
I remembered the time we boarded a Chinatown bus from New York to DC. There were no vacant seats together by the time we stepped into the bus’s vibrating hull. We ended up sitting across the aisle from each other, holding hands, letting them swing with every lurch of the bus.
A man in sunglasses and a red cap walked by the construction site. I tensed back into reality and tried to get a look at the front of the cap, but he was too tall and I couldn’t get a good view. All I managed was to draw the man’s attention. He gave me a sideways look, and my paranoia took off immediately. What I was doing, did it count as loitering? Could I be arrested for that? From behind my shades I checked other passersby as furtively as I could, trying to see whether anyone else was watching me.
