Chapter 4 #3
“Well, I think we’re both kind of uncomfortable around each other.
Sometimes this space feels actively hostile.
I have tried to talk to you about it, and I thought we could move forward, but I don’t think it’s getting any better—like, just the sound of your footsteps triggers my anxiety, okay?
And at the end of the day, I do have to set some boundaries.
My living space should be a safe space for me.
So I think the best thing for us is if we spend a little time apart, meaning, I think you should look into some different living arrangements. ”
She had obviously practiced this speech.
It wouldn’t have been so bad if she had just come right out and said those things, because at least some of them were fair.
I agreed—the apartment felt like a war zone.
Her footsteps triggered me too! But the way she said it—the full sentences, the therapy-speak—made it obvious she had workshopped this speech with other people, and that meant she had been complaining about me to other people for a while.
Probably they had all pitched in with some lines.
Tell her about the boundaries. Tell her about your anxiety.
Probably they were all waiting for her to tell them how it had gone.
So since I knew I was not having a fight with Anna but with a whole group of traitors of which Anna was the figurehead, I was less inclined to compromise.
“No.”
“Sorry?”
“You can’t just unilaterally evict me,” I said. “Fuck—fuck you. No.”
“Oh my God,” said Anna. “Can we be mature about this?”
“You can’t kick me out with nowhere to go.”
“Don’t you have lots of places to sleep? Like, can’t you stay with Andrew?”
“Anna, that is fucked up.”
Anna and Margrit exchanged a glance. Clearly they had been talking about me before I got here—perhaps they had even discussed that I might react this way.
“Anna, come on. My grandfather just died.”
I spoke the words like I was testing them out, seeing if I could even make them fit on my tongue. They didn’t seem like words that belonged to me. I was just trying on the role, seeing what kind of reaction they got.
Anna squinted. “What?”
“Just now,” I said. “My mom texted me, she said—” My throat tightened. I had not said it out loud until now. I had not known how difficult it would be. Speaking it made it true. “My grandpa is dead.”
“What does that . . .” She frowned. “You really mean just now?”
“Yeah.”
“Like when you were in Beitou?”
“No, this morning,” I said. “A few hours ago. I don’t—at least, I found out a few hours ago.”
Anna kept squinting at me. She was trying to determine whether I was lying, and perhaps I did sound like I was lying, but I didn’t know how to utter those words in a way that felt true.
I could just imagine how she would spin this to the others, to all those traitors waiting for her debrief.
So I brought up the bed thing, right. And you won’t believe what she said.
“I am so sorry,” said Margrit. “That is a terrible loss.”
“Thanks.”
“Were you close?” asked Anna.
I blanched. “I mean—he was my grandfather?”
“Are you going to the funeral?”
“I can’t, I don’t have a visa.”
“I see.”
For a moment nobody said anything. I leaned against the door frame.
I felt dizzy. This encounter felt staged, uncanny.
It felt as if we were all uttering lines off a script we’d never seen before, but there was no director, and no one was inflecting in quite the way they should.
The stakes were so random and unexpected.
How were we supposed to behave? The silence held another moment, and then Anna turned to Margrit and asked, “Can I stay at yours tonight?”
“Oh—yes, sure.”
Anna stomped around the room, shoving more things into her backpack—some clothes, some cans of Off!
, an assortment of toiletries. I wondered if she’d dare take our shared body wash.
I wondered how long she would stay away.
“Okay, let’s go,” she told Margrit, and they made their way toward the door.
Margrit ducked her head as she passed me.
“So sorry for your loss,” she said again.
“Anna,” I said.
She turned around. Her face was very pale, and there were two bright spots of color in her cheeks. I could have told her then that I was hurting, and I needed her, and I was sorry. But that demanded more words than I had at the moment.
I pointed to the table. “You forgot your notebook.”
NOW THE WAR WAS WON, AND I HAD THE APARTMENT ALL TO MYSELF.
I washed my face. I cleaned my phone with an alcohol wipe. I changed my shirt and stuck it in the washer. Then I sat on the couch, wondering how to make the hours pass.
It was so dark inside this apartment. The incinerating beam of morning light was gone; now I was swathed again in the shade.
The ceiling lights barely worked. I pulled back all the curtains, but that didn’t help.
Our window opened onto another, taller, apartment building, and we sat in its shadow.
This was the problem with Taipei: so little space and all these people, and buildings to house the people; they had nowhere to go but up, and we were trapped in walls against walls.
How had I spent so many weeks in such a dark little box?
I sucked in air, expanded my lungs as far as they would go, and still I felt like I was suffocating.
Every worldly problem culminated in the dimness of this apartment. Modernization was a mistake, overpopulation was a mistake, apartments were a mistake, climate change was making Taipei unlivable, and all these things had conspired to make me, in this specific moment, miserable.
I opened my messaging app several times and closed it.
Those texts were still there; I hadn’t imagined them.
I’m sorry to tell you Gonggong has passed away.
I always did this with bad news. It had never worked.
I always tried to convince myself I was in a nightmare, and I was so disappointed when I didn’t wake up.
MY GRANDMOTHER DIDN’T KNOW YET THAT HER HUSBAND WAS dead.
Popo’s health hadn’t been good for a while, especially after her stroke.
I remembered seeing a video of her rolling out in a wheelchair and feeling stunned by the transformation.
In my memory, Popo was vibrant and clever, always poking fun at my mother and sisters.
Popo liked to go on long walks, pushing her arms at her sides in a way I associated with eighties aerobics videos.
Popo was not this thin, white-haired creature whose face was all slack, drooping on the left.
When she’d lived with us, Popo had been so proud of how good she looked, even at seventy.
She’d still had a head of black hair that she wore short, professionally permed, and she never went outside unless carefully dressed in a smart blouse over trousers.
“I kept my figure,” she would tell me, running her hand up and down her waist. “I look younger than everyone my age, don’t I?
” 身材—stature, physique; I knew this word early because my grandmother and my aunts used it so often.
They were so concerned with how to 保持身材, how to maintain that good physique.
Practice tai chi daily. Be moderate with sweets.
The Chinese word for “muscle” was also engraved in my memory, because Popo talked about it all the time: 肌肉.
It sounded just like the word for “chicken,” 雞肉, so that when she showed me how she slapped her arms and legs to keep the blood circulating, I was forever picturing her as a raw, supple chicken.
I asked my mother if they were keeping the news from Popo because they were afraid her heart couldn’t take it. It was a stupid question, but I had to know. I couldn’t leave anything to inference or translation. I wanted to know every detail and its implications.
“I really don’t know,” said my mother. “Gonggong was her whole world. They were together all day, every day. You know, he was looking after her when he fell.” This was the third time she had told me this.
Every time, she uttered it in a dazed voice, like she still didn’t know what it meant.
“He was turning around, looking to see if she was all right, and then he fell.”
THE NEXT MORNING, I WOKE UP AT FOUR THIRTY AND CALLED A cab.
I could afford it; I had been hoarding my scholarship cash.
The internet cautioned that the ride to Taoyuan could take between half an hour and ninety minutes, depending on traffic.
I could not be late. I left hours early just in case.
But there wasn’t any traffic at all, and the drive was eerily smooth.
All the lights were green. I fell asleep shortly after I got inside the cab and was disappointed when the driver told me I had arrived.
Only thirty minutes had passed. So much more day stretched before me.
I’d never seen an empty airport. It looked unreal; most of the lights weren’t on yet.
I stepped inside and tried to see if I could make the airport transform into an open soccer field.
I was playing mental games with myself again.
I still thought that if I could concentrate hard enough, I could convince myself that none of this was happening, and that this dreamscape would disappear.
In the past, I had occasionally been able to achieve lucid dreaming in the middle of a nightmare: I willed, and then I could fly.
But the linoleum flooring was too solid. I couldn’t turn it into grass.
My mother’s flight came up on the arrivals board: San Francisco to Taipei, on schedule.