“It begins like this” by Ala Fox
The year I turn twelve, Mom and I talk a lot about death. Ever since my older sister, Shira, learned about the concept of infinity in school, she’s been scaring me with ideas about the universe and what happens when you die. I get terrified thinking about it, but Mom says not knowing is the scariest part, so we muse about the afterlife together.
We imagine what age you live at after you die. Whether we are all old, or all young, or can choose to spend forever at the age when we met the person we loved most in life. I tell Mom I would choose this age, forever. I would always be her child.
We muse about the Fire, whether it’s like an endless tunnel slide. You speed past openings from which voices you recognize ring out in laughter, but you can never stop and reach them. You’re stuck in a downward spiral, unable to catch a glimpse of the faces you long to see.
We wonder whether souls can get lost in Heaven. If Heaven and Hell are actually the same place, but Hell is never finding your loved ones again, and Heaven is when you do. We wonder about the holding place—a waystation for the departed, everyone waiting to board their train in order of arrival.
I tell Mom that if I die first, I will wait for her. I will let all the trains pass until I see her face appear. I will be the first to greet her, and we’ll never worry about getting lost. My mother tells me she will do the same.
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
It begins like this:
Our last weekend in the old house. To me it is already the old house, because Mom, Shira, and I are moving to the new apartment next week. Mom’s already signed the lease, and Dad isn’t coming. Dad’s staying behind, and I like that just fine.
Dad is here this weekend to help us move. He’s back from China where he spends most of the year doing I’m-not-entirely-sure-what. I was only four when Dad quit his job, with dreams of starting his own business back in China. In the eight years since then, we only see him a few odd weeks at a time. Years ago, Shira made a rule that we have to say a prayer for Dad every time we see a plane overhead. I followed along for a few years, but now I just pray the planes will stop bringing Dad back.
Since Dad is here, I have to sleep in my own room. Usually I run over to Mom’s room when I can’t fall asleep, and she’ll fling back the covers and beckon me in: “来吧!” Come on! We stay up for hours whispering, telling jokes until Mom notices the red numbers on the radio alarm clock. Then she remembers she’s the parent and shushes us both, pulls the blankets up snug around our shoulders. She turns her face to the side, so I can rest my hand on her cheek. We have a name for this gesture, it is so common between us: “摸脸.” Hold my face.
I’m not good at sleeping alone. But tonight when I call Mom from her doorway, Dad wakes up too. He says, “Agh, twelve years old and still need Mom to fall asleep!”
But I like knowing Mom is there beside me. Mom crawls into my bed and whispers, “Don’t worry, go to sleep.” She turns her face to the side, and I lay my hand on her cheek. I know the texture of Mom’s face perfectly, know the scent of the moisturizer she puts on before bed. I close my eyes with Mom’s face in my palm.
Friday morning. Mom is downstairs, ready to take me to middle school where I just started seventh grade. Shira already left for high school downtown; her side of the bathroom shows evidence of her morning rush.
Mom drops me off at my carpool, then rushes to work. The other kids in my carpool, two eighth grade boys, are sad they won’t get to ride with Mom after we move. Mom is all our favorite carpooler. But the new apartment is walking distance to my school, so Mom won’t have to worry about driving me anymore. Which is really good, because she already drives two hours each way to work in Mankato.
I haven’t seen the new apartment yet, but Mom likes it, so I like it. There are only two bedrooms—Shira will get her own, and I will share with Mom. I don’t mind. Mom and I are happily planning the decorations for our new room. She’s always dreamed of traveling the world, so we’re going to buy maps for the walls and stick pins where we want to go.
I tell Mom I would choose this age, forever. I would always be her child.
No one talks about what it means that Dad will stay behind in the old house. Part of me suspects this is also why there are only two bedrooms in the new apartment. So that everyone understands: Dad is not coming with us.
Late Friday afternoon, we all go to the local mall together. Mom, Dad, Shira, and me. We need some last things for the move, and Mom thinks it’ll be nice for us to eat out. It’s been a while since we all went anywhere together. I think Mom wants us to share this last outing as a family, before the definitive break.
At the mall Shira and Dad walk in front, and Mom and I walk behind. We always pair up like this, and not just because Shira and Dad are tall, and Mom and I are mini. These are our teams for Scrabble and tennis, hiking and amusement park rides. Shira was eight when Dad moved back to China, and I guess those extra years with him made a difference. Shira makes it seem a given that we should love our father, even though I’ve seen her face streaming with tears while he rips up her homework, watched him throw her out the front door because she played a wrong note on the piano.
Mom asks where we should eat. There are so many options in the crowded food court—Panda Express, Potbelly’s, Sbarro. But Shira wants one thing, and I want something different. We bicker, then Dad’s face drops and that’s the end of it. Before he can erupt, Mom cuts in: “算了”, forget it, and ushers us back to the parking lot.
As soon as we get home, Mom turns on the stove to start cooking. I want to apologize to her as she warms up the broth for noodles—because it was my fault. I was the one who started it, who wouldn’t agree with what Shira wanted to eat. I was the one who didn’t want to sit with Shira and Dad in the first place and was happy to go home.
Later, when I think of Mom’s face, I wish I had given her this. Just one, last happy memory of the four of us together.
Looking back, it’s hard to find any happy moment of us four in the years leading up to this weekend.
While the move to the new apartment would have signaled a definitive break in our family, in reality things had been broken for a long time. From the first time Dad hurled his dinner plate like a discus, and it missed me by a hair before shattering against the wall. From the fifth time the neighbors called the police to report on the screams coming from our house.
Everything was tense when Dad was home. It was like his dark mood settled over each of us, imbuing us with the anger and frustrations he carried. When Dad returned every half-year or so, Shira and I pressed pause on our games as if by some unspoken rule. No blanket forts in the living room, no sleepovers under our desks. No running up and down the stairs when Dad was home. We kept our voices low, and I kept out of the way.
By the time we were supposed to move and leave him, Shira and I had already ended all our games, anyway. It happened on our last visit to China, though I can’t remember what argument set things off. We’d screamed at each other across our grandmother’s home in Beijing until I said, “Why don’t we just end everything, then?”
By this I meant abandon Spy Club, Environmental Club, Komitadee—our own invented martial arts—and all the other games we played together. We’d both made this threat before, but this time we actually followed through. I even ripped out all the pages of my “conversation journal,” a twin of one my sister kept, which recorded years of our shared reflections.
Shira always said I was bad—a bad sister, a bad daughter. She called me selfish and mean, like when I lied about asking her to come run errands with me and Mom, so I could have Mom to myself. Or when I angled to get the best pieces of food, not caring about others.
I didn’t hate Shira. I grew up following her—she dictated the games we played, and the terms of our secret clubs. She’s my older sister.
So when Shira said I was bad, I believed her. When Shira insisted Dad was part of our family, I thought I must be wrong for wanting him gone. So I never said it out loud, and neither did Mom. Really, I thought I didn’t need my father at all. I only wanted Mom, I only wanted Mom to be happy.
I was content in the divide pushing our family apart. And then I was alone on my side of the canyon.
Saturday morning, I wake to the familiar sounds of Mom in the kitchen: the sizzling of hot oil in the pan, an audiobook playing over the stereo.
I think Mom wants us to share this last outing as a family, before the definitive break.
I yell out to Mom from my bed and she calls back, “来了!” Coming! I hear the click of the gas stove turned off and the clink of a lid on the pan, then Mom bounding up the stairs. I shout in greeting and fling my covers back, so Mom can lay in bed with me to start my day. This is another ritual of ours.
Mom’s volleyball league has a game today. Mom has more after-school activities than me—she takes guitar lessons, sings in a choir, and plays volleyball. Even though we’re moving today, Mom doesn’t want to miss the game, and even got Dad a spot as a sub. Dad has already left to warm up, taking Shira with him. I don’t want to go, and especially don’t want to hear Mom’s volleyball friends question why Dad isn’t moving with us, as if that’s a bad thing. I stay home to pack, and Mom keeps me company for a bit.
It’s my favorite time just me and Mom. I eat breakfast at the kitchen counter, 鸡蛋饼, unaware this is the last time I will ever spread creamy peanut butter over the egg pancake and roll it up like a flauta.
I’m on the floor in Mom’s room while she gets ready for volleyball, when Mom gives me the rings from her finger: her wedding band, and the sapphire ring she loves. She twists the gold wedding ring in circles until it comes loose, pulling hard until it breaks free of her knuckle. I observe the red imprint left behind, a reminder of where the ring used to be.
Mom holds both rings in her palm. She balls them in her fist; her other hand grabs my own. She takes my hand between hers for a moment, then unlocks her fingers so the rings are cupped between our two hands. She says, “好好帮妈妈看著.” Keep good watch over these.
My mom has never given her rings to me for safekeeping before. In fact, I’ve never seen her without both on her finger. I clench my fist and enjoy the weight of the two metal bands, still warm. I brim at the responsibility. It eases the familiar guilt that I am as Shira says—bad, selfish. Here, Mom trusts me. Here, Mom loves me. I know Mom will always choose me.
Downstairs, I wave at Mom from the door as she backs down the driveway. We shout to each other: “Love-ee!”, our version of “I love you.” I wave until she’s out of sight, then run to check on the rings. I slip them onto my own fingers, but they are too large and slide right off.
They are still too large.
Later, Shira will say Mom knew everything that would happen next. Shira will attribute a prescience to my mother, say Mom could sense events to come. I will not believe Shira, because Mom would never choose to leave me. I will not believe Shira, except when I remember the rings.
Later, Shira will make this claim not to me directly, but to my father with me present. It is often like this between the three of us, in the years after. There are few conversations between my sister and I, or my father and me, in which we’re not screaming at one another. Sometimes it’s easier for them to talk around me.
Only once, Shira will ask me if I know what happened to the rings. And I will lie, because I do not want her to take them from me.
Even now I fear Shira will lay her claim upon the rings, demand her rights to half my mother’s love and legacy. Even now I hold tightly to these two metal bands, reminders that once there was someone in this world who loved me, just like this.
Saturday afternoon and I’m home alone, waiting. Mom, Dad and Shira should have been back by now.
Before this, I’ve never been afraid of the empty house. Most days I’m the first one home, and I get to play on the computer until I hear Mom’s car in the driveway. But today I’ve exhausted all my home-alone activities far past their enjoyment. I’ve already snuck up to read Shira’s diary, which details her own recent trespass into my diary. I’ve logged onto several chat rooms I’m not supposed to be in, and sent messages to all my friends.
Now I’m listening for the familiar sound of a car pulling up to the house, with an unfamiliar sense of dread. As the late summer day drags on, I wait for the roar of the garage, the soft crunch of gravel. I am anxious to hear my mom’s greeting: “妈妈回来了!” Mama’s home!
When Shira said I was bad, I believed her.
When I finally hear a car pull up, I run outside. But it is not Mom’s car, or Dad’s car. Aunt Isa is here to take me to the hospital.
It begins like this:
A nurse leads me to the room where Shira and my father hunch over my mother’s bed. My mother is unconscious; a plastic tube down her throat pumps oxygen to her body. I’m late to what’s happening. I had no idea I would find her here, unconscious. By the time I arrive, Dad and Shira have already processed a reality I cannot yet grasp.
In a few hours my mother will be dead.
I don’t know this yet. I only know my mother is unconscious, my father and sister aren’t speaking, and I am lost. Only later do they tell me Mom complained of a headache during volleyball, then collapsed.
I want to say something, to demand answers, but nobody is speaking. Dad stands in the corner, his mouth a thin line. Shira sits next to Mom’s bed and spares me no glances. I’m nervous around them but still, right now, I need my sister. I turn to Shira with a plea, a truce. I say something, the first thing that comes to me. Something like: “It’s not even funny.” I can’t remember what’s not funny. “Is this a joke? It’s not even funny,” or “I’m so scared, it’s not even funny.” Or maybe, “What is happening? It’s not even funny.”
I am twelve, and it is the wrong thing to say.
Shira looks at me, and I recoil. I’m not crying yet, not yet aware a world without my mother could possibly exist. Will not only exist but will surround me forever, inescapable. When Shira looks at me I think only: she hates me. My sister hates me. I do not think: this is how it will be for the next ten years of my life. I will always say the wrong thing, and Shira will always hate me.
When I meet Shira’s eyes, I don’t know this is where it begins: my life.
Some weeks later, Dad, Shira, and I move into a new apartment. Not the one Mom found, but a three-bedroom downtown Dad rents in a hurry. He stays barely a month before he’s back in China, leaving Shira and I alone. We are sixteen and twelve.
Sometimes I don’t see Shira for days. The evenings she’s gone are a constant replay of the worst day of my life: me waiting alone, listening for a sound at the door, anxious for anyone to come home and greet me.
During a fight one morning, Shira locks the car doors after getting in the driver’s seat. I punch the top of the closed trunk and scream at her in the parking lot as she drives off to school without me. It is one of many, many unexcused absences I’ll have that year.
Sometimes when Shira disappears without a word, I’ll regret whatever argument passed between us, though I’m not brave enough to say so when she inevitably returns. Instead, we glare at each other and say nothing. I eat peanut butter out of the jar for dinner and for the first time in my life, I’m skinnier than Shira.
More than ever before, I’m scared to fall asleep.
Another beginning:
For a long time, I worry about the promise Mom and I made: “I will wait for you.” I imagine Mom in a crowded station, all the other departed passing her by. Only she stays behind, waiting, held back by our promise from somewhere Divine.
But I prayed and prayed, and now I am certain my mother is exactly where she needs to be. Now, I only worry about the vast expanse of the afterlife, the old fear of whether I can find the one I’m looking for among all the countless souls who wait for Judgment Day.
So I’ve made a deal with myself. I will rack up so many good deeds, I will die with such a long record of goodness that it will be impossible for me to end up anywhere but the highest levels of Paradise. I will give to the needy, I’ll take care of the young and old, and I’ll repent for every bad thought I ever had. I’ll make up for every ill wish I ever made.
And if for some reason there’s a mistake and Mom was left in a Garden further below, I’ll split my rewards with her and all her friends too, so we can be together. I will beg for the right to intercede; I will testify to the angels on their behalf: “They’re with me! They’re with me!”
I’ll have so many good deeds still left over, I’ll bring Shira and Dad along with us. That way, it won’t matter if we haven’t said all the things we wanted to say to each other in life. There, we’ll have time to say everything. There, we can clear up the misunderstandings and mistakes. We’ll redo the food court and the mall. Shira can choose from any of the endless fruits of Paradise, and I won’t argue at all. I won’t argue with Dad either, and I’ll give this gift to Mom, at last.
There we’ll begin again, anew. There we’ll begin again:
“妈妈回来了!”
Mama’s home!
