Times When My Life Didn’t Feel Like My Own/Moments of Clarity
Exiting the movie theater to find the day is still light.
Stopping by roadside diners on vacation.
Going to the city.
Going to shopping centers.
Being in crowds—it’s so hard to remember the taste of the real world when I spend all my time on the internet trying to avoid my mind and other ugly truths—
Elevator music.
Skyscrapers.
We’re back to the city again. I once wrote a poem at one a.m. in the morning in bed on the Notes App on my phone during a week where my mind assaulted me with images of what the world would look like if I was born someone else, and the city was in that too.
When I was very young I used to wonder if I would wake one day and find out I’d dreamt my whole life up.
When I was very young I used to startle into awareness, awareness of my existence—this is me, I am a girl named Lillian Fu, I exist—
This doesn’t happen to me anymore.
When I was very young I used to wake up sometimes to the image in my mind of white gossamer curtains on a balcony beaming with white light, a man and a woman smiling above me, white teeth and white skin and hair washed out by that white light, I the white baby in their arms, I’ve never seen a ghost before but I imagine it’s a lot like how I used to wake up with that image in my eyes when I was very young.
China, maybe more than anything, makes my life feel like it’s not my own.
What I mean is willow trees and cicadas and the color grey; the tiny, dirty stacks of cement blocks my grandma lived in
What I mean is the adults always call it ‘going back’—Did you go back to China this year? But that country is not mine to go back to, that country is not mine at all just like this country is not mine at all
What I mean is my dad never goes back with us.
What I mean is I’ve never met anyone from his side of the family but sometimes I hear him laughing from behind his closed bedroom door as he talks to one of his dozen cousins on the phone, and behind the closed door of her bedroom my mother went when my grandma died, and I never saw her cry over that—
And it was like when I was very young and I would startle into awareness the moment I realized she was hiding her grief from us because we had no right to it. Her mother had not been my grandmother long before she died, since the day in second grade where she left me for the airplane going back to China—
And my dad tells us stories of his childhood with his family, enough family to fill a village, but I don’t even know their names—
I think what I mean is that I thought it was just us four—Mother, Father, Brother, me—that this was all that any of us had. But that’s not true for them. They belong to other things too.
What would I be writing about now if I was born in that ghost of a dream, that ghost of a memory, if I was born to white gossamer curtains and white gossamer parents, if I was born swaddled in white light knowing that, even as a baby, there was already so much that I owned.
The queen of half dreams
comes to me on the edge of sleep and she tells me i can’t stay long as she sinks me into her river kingdom and i watch her through the liquid as it rises above my face and fractures her features like so many half-held breaths. and she tells me not to blink like always and she reminds me i can’t stay long. and i try like always. and her crown tangles in my hair and her fractured body morphs into cranes that swim through the sea with glass wings and jewel beaks. and i try like always to do as she says and like always she tells me my time is short and her voice is soft like down and perfumes the water around me with the cut of its sharp edges. and infinity has always existed in the briefest moments. and the queen of half dreams is the queen of the in between which is to say she is the queen of brevity which is to say she is the queen of eternity which is to say she comes to me on the edge of sleep and takes me to where i wish to be and tells me that i can’t stay long. and like always i try not to go too far and like always i try to keep my eyes open as she swims the sky in her dozen bodies and weaves her crown jewels through my hair. and she tells me that she is just the queen of half dreams which is to say she is the queen of half nothing which is to say she is less than nothing which is to say i can’t stay long. and i try my best. but like always my eyes begin to sting and
i blink her stars from my lashes and she is gone and i am asleep.
Hong Kong/Protests/Tiananmen Sacrifice
(written during the 2019-2020 Hong Kong protests)
Have you seen what they’re doing in Hong Kong?/Have you heard what the news says/have you seen the pictures/do you know what’s happening in Hong Kong?
All I know/is it’s strange my dad hasn’t brought it up yet/Marcus two seats over in my Chinese class is from there/he keeps making jokes about it/he visited home over winter break/he’s always made jokes in class about things he thinks are funny/I was watching him/there was something serious about the way his face didn’t change while we laughed/made my cheeks feel like sticky rice cakes
All I know/is it isn’t strange my mom hasn’t brought it up yet/my dance teacher graduated from Beijing’s biggest performing arts school/she thinks they’re taking it too far/she told us about an old taxi driver the protesters killed for boarding the wrong passenger/she moved here when she was twenty-four/seven years ago/I’ve known her since then/I don’t know what drove her to leave her life like that/just that/Beijing is gray and thick with the things in the smog
All I know/is thirty-one years ago/Mom sat on night watch in Tiananmen Square/weeks after the other girls in her dorm left for home/Dad stood facing their tanks/armed with nothing but ideology and rage/Mom knew he was in the protests/didn’t know he was one of “those idiots”/the ones that got shot when China was done stalling/she never told us she was in the protests until winter break/he first told us about the protests when I was in elementary school/his eyes bright/some fragment of the youth he gave to that blockade/twin fairies tugging his cheeks to touch his crow’s feet.
All I know
is that I think a lot about the things
I would be willing to give my life for,
and neither China nor America are one of them.
Bubblegum Baby
On our eighteenth birthday, my sister learned to fly.
I spent that morning in the kitchen of our family’s diner with Ma, like I do every morning. My sister was still dead asleep in her room; she wouldn’t wake up until three minutes before we left for school, like she does every morning.
I used to be bitter about that, when I was younger and the difference in our cooking aptitude was first making itself known. Then, my skill only meant more time practicing with Ma and less time playing with Hailey, while she only had to help waitress when the restaurant got really busy. But as I peeled potatoes that morning, I couldn’t imagine Hailey in this kitchen, my kitchen, next to me. Where would she stand? Which knife would she prefer? I used to wonder about these things all the time.
Now, I was just glad I would never be able to find out.
“Ma, I’m going to a party tonight,” I said as I finished up the potatoes.
“Hailey going with you?”
I resisted the urge to snort. “No.”
“Alright.”
“What, no curfew? No lecture?”
“What’s there to lecture about? You’re a responsible girl, sugar. Boil ‘em potatoes if you’re done peeling.”
I got the water started, cleaned the peeler, then leaned back against the counter and tipped my head to the ceiling. A static buzzed in my ears and the base of my skull.
Ma glanced over at me. “You good there, sugar?”
When Ma asked if you were ‘good,’ you could only really answer ‘Yes.’ In our family, not being good meant one thing and one thing only, and it was quite a bit worse than just ‘not good.’
I gave the right response to Ma, and she took another second to glance me over before turning back to her work. A moment later, she flicked on the old stereo on the counter.
We usually never worked with music, but it seemed an allowance could be made for a birthday. She used to do this more, when she was younger and less strict than she is now. She’d been firm still, but there used to be more shine to her, more give, more ease to her smiles.
Unbidden, Hailey’s voice rose in my head: There used to be more of you, too.
--
They called my sister Bubblegum Baby. According to Aunt Cassie, Great-Aunt Parla’d slipped Hailey a stick of gum when our teeth had just grown in, and it’d been love at first chew. Hailey spent months trying to get me to pick up the habit too, but I was never able to get into it. I much preferred my chocolates, candy you could actually eat.
But that didn’t deter Hailey. Since I can remember, she’d always been chewing gum and blowing bubbles, so much so that the entire family and even a few regulars at the restaurant had taken to calling her Bubblegum Baby when she was younger. She spent all her waitressing money on gum, and knew every bit of trivia about brands and the gum-making process and whatnot. She was a fanatic.
The nickname bled over into school, and all our classmates started using it as well. They made a game of how many hours she could go chewing gum in class without the teacher noticing. Then, as she got better at it, how many days, weeks, months, until eventually the game got too boring to keep up with.
“Bubblegum Baby” wore off in middle school, partly because we were getting older and the nickname started seeming childish to us, but partly because Hailey stopped talking to our classmates, and stopped talking to me too.
But when she was still Bubblegum Baby and I was still her twin sister in mind and not just body, Hailey and I used to sneak out to this old candy shop a few blocks from home, run by an old man who seemed like every cartoon grandpa, all kindly smiles and free leftover lollipops. Of course, Ma didn’t know we went; she’s never allowed us to eat candy. For good reason, too. But to a pair of foolish, invincible little kids, candy trumped reason any day.
The store closed when the old man passed away and his son sold the business a few years after we stopped frequenting it. Still, when I think of my childhood, I think of afternoons at the candy store with Hailey before I think of my house, Ma and Aunt Cassie and Uncle Randy, and certainly before I think of the restaurant.
I think of how I sat at the curb outside the candy store with Hailey eating popsicles, and how Hailey told me that she wanted to be an astronaut. And how I said to her, “Then I’ll be a marine biologist. If you’re going to space, then I’ll take the sea.”
And, God, we have the same faces, the same bodies, the same damn number of eyelashes, but I’m certain I’ll never look like she did in that moment: as if the sun was a hop and a skip away, and flying was as easy as blowing bubblegum.
--
A conversation between the twins, 12 years old:
“Hey Diana, I got your stupid chocolate for you—”
[Hailey stops dead, then drops the bag, runs to Diana, and grabs her arms.]
“It’s nothing, Hailey.”
“Diana, is this…? It’s not, right?”
“Hailey…”
“No. No, no, no, oh God—Diana—”
“Shush, Hailey. Listen to me, okay?”
“—what are we gonna do?”
“You can’t tell anyone, Hailey, you can’t tell Ma.”
“No, we have to tell Ma, she’ll know how to help, we have to—”
“No! Hailey, you have to listen to me, you can’t tell Ma. Ma can never know. Okay?”
“But—”
“You can’t. Just, please, Hailey. I’ll… it’s gonna be fine. I’ll figure something out,
okay?”
[Hailey shakes her head, mute. Diana’s voice hardens.]
“Ma won’t have to know, cause I’ll fix it myself. Promise.”
--
I believed that, in a human’s life, there is always one or two things that they can trace all their issues back to. For my family, that was our Condition.
For no reason anyone knows, our bodies changed according to what we ate. Small things, small shifts—crumbly skin if you ate too much bread, or a gleam to the nails after some shellfish. If you’re careful, it’s not a problem. And for the most part, we were careful. Ma kept us all on a strict diet, making sure we’re not eating too much of one thing so our Condition doesn’t get out of hand. And as long as we followed it, we could live normal lives.
But sometimes—more than sometimes, maybe—one of us falls to a Craving. Like Uncle Randy, who ate so much beef stew he melted in the bathtub, or Great-Aunt Parla, who cracked walnuts until her body cracked to pieces.
When you’re Craving, you lose all sense of yourself. You hear the words others tell you, you register them, and you ignore it all. Not because you want to, but because you can’t stop. The world narrows down to just your next meal, just the growling of your stomach and the ache of your tastebuds, just more more more more more until you are nothing but hunger. Cravings don’t last long, but almost no one can overcome them.
And if you do manage to, the Craving takes something from you. It removes your hunger, the part of you that wants things, and you are left with only ghosts aching in your bones.
Fitting, I guess. No one ever Craves twice.
If I was being honest, I’d known Hailey was falling for a long time. But I couldn’t ask her; we’d barely been talking to each other by then, and her case was special enough it took me years to truly recognize it for what it was.
It didn’t look like a Craving, not one short period of mania, consumption from the inside out like a trapped beast tearing itself free from your body by its teeth. And I knew I was the only one worried; not even Ma was concerned, and Ma worried about everything, so it was probably fine. Even as her skin stayed pink through the winter, and the spring, and the summer, hidden beneath long sleeves and a sudden fascination with makeup. I told myself it was fine.
It had to be fine. After all, it was only bubblegum.
--
A conversation between the twins, two months before the current events:
[Hailey’s room, 11 pm. Diana clutches a receipt for two dozen helium balloons in her fist.]
“What are you planning to do with them, huh? Fly? This isn’t Up, we’re not in a Pixar
movie. Hailey, you—”
[Hailey is silent, not looking at Diana. Diana sighs.]
“You’ll die. Even if you manage to take off, the balloons would pop a few hundred feet in the air and then you’ll fall and die. Even if you made it all the way to the goddamn stratosphere, you’d burn up on entry, and then you’d die before you ever made it out.”
“No. No, I won’t.”
“What do you mean you won’t? That’s not how it works, you can’t just say it—”
“I won’t. I’ll hit the stratosphere, Diana, I’ll hit Heaven and I’ll pass right through, and I
won’t stop until I’m in space. And if I burn up, it’ll be after I’ve seen all there is to see in the whole damn galaxy, and I’ll be happier than you will ever be stuck here.”
[Silence. Heavy breathing]
“You’ll see. You’ll see, Diana. Watch me.”
--
The family diner always had good business, a steady flow of regulars and a takeout system that forced Ma to call me into the kitchen instead of waitressing with Aunt Cassie and my sister. It was a small place, furnished with an eclectic mix of styles that our patrons puzzled at, but to me were just reminders of my family: Gramma’s throw pillows, Grampa’s mismatched collection of wooden chairs, Aunt Cassie’s thrift-store bohemian rugs. The scent of Ma’s cooking, as apparent as any piece of furniture or decoration.
In the restaurant, Ma, like in most other aspects of our lives, had full authority. That included the menu. The regular items were mediocre, the expected stuff you’d find on diner menus across America. And they were cooked to perfect mediocrity as well, so bland you’d forget the flavor the moment after you’ve finished your meal.
But every week, she’d have a different Chef’s Special, and you’d swear you’ve never tasted anything better. It was the kind of cooking that should’ve landed her in a Michelin star kitchen instead of a diner in the suburbs. Our patrons flooded the restaurant every Sunday night when that week’s Chef’s Special would be first served.
No one in the family is allowed to eat the Chef Specials, in case any of us get hooked on a dish; she changes them every week in case she herself falls to a Craving. We eat the mediocre stuff instead, following the portion sizes dictated by Ma’s diet chart.
Ma tells us she only makes the Chef Specials to keep up the restaurant’s appeal, and keep the family financially stable. But Aunt Cassie told me once that, when Ma was eighteen, she’d applied to every big-name culinary school in America. When the acceptance letters came in, she didn’t even open them before tossing them away. Aunt Cassie fished them out secretly later, and kept them all in a shoebox in her bedroom.
--
I left the party just past one a.m., my friends stumbling half drunk around me, sing-shouting “Sweet Caroline” between peals of laughter. We were a walking menace to the neighborhoods, all cooling sweat and excess youth.
I was sober, myself. No one in my family is allowed to drink, not even on holidays. I was walking ahead of my friends, half-embarrassed by their antics and half just because I wanted some air. The after-party buzz was shaking me up, that ringing in your ears after hours spent gripped by the heavy bass from the boomboxes.
It was my eighteenth birthday. I didn’t expect it to feel momentous, but I wasn’t supposed to feel so off. Like I was waiting for something to happen, for the other shoe to drop. Like the sidewalk was made from popsicle sticks.
So, when I saw her on the roof of our old elementary school building, all I thought was: It’s Hailey. And when I saw the veritable canopy of helium balloons she was gripping the strings of, all I thought was: So it’s today.
She was staring hard in front of her, her face in profile lit orange from one side by street-lights and white from the other by the moon. My friends were still singing, but she didn’t notice us. That was Hailey for you, always wrapped up in her own world, not giving a damn about what’s going on around her. Even if it was me.
I guess it didn’t feel real. Not until one of my friends said, “Hey, is that…?” and the singing tapered off as the others turned and stared at my sister, my twin, as she ran across the roof and leaped off the edge of the building.
For just that moment after she jumped, my vision blurred, and a few memories rose to the surface of my mind with startling clarity. Me, at six, watching Ma shake with sobs through the crack of her bedroom door. Me, at eight, with Hailey on the curbside holding our popsicles and promises. Me, at ten, sitting with Uncle Randy the day before he died and thinking about how he wouldn’t stop smiling.
Me, at twelve, behind the old candy store, breaths coming quick as I stared at the patches of chocolate on my arms, melting in the sun, Hailey crying besides me—you can’t tell anyone, Hailey, you can’t tell Ma—and then afterwards, long dizzy months and the cavity of my gut, and then nothing. And then peace.
Me, at fourteen, hands gripping the edge of the sink, staring at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, thinking to myself, “You are not a hungry person, Diana.” And it was true. Maybe I had been, once, but I wasn’t anymore, and I was fine with that. I didn’t mourn it. Me, the four years after, watching as Hailey mourned it for me.
Then the moment passed and my vision cleared and there she was, her skin bubblegum pink, hanging from her balloons and rising through the sky. I thought, How beautiful. I thought, Of course. Then I ran across the street, across the parking lot and the schoolyard until I was right below her, and screamed, “GET DOWN! WHAT ARE YOU DOING? HAILEY, I SWEAR TO GOD IF YOU DON’T GET DOWN THIS INSTANT, I’LL—”
As I shouted up at her, with all the profanity I knew, I understood something. This was the difference between my sister and I: while I fell and Craved and tore myself apart for my hunger, then killed it all in one go, she’d nurtured it. She’d chewed bubblegum everyday for years; she hadn’t lived off it the way I did with my chocolate, but she’d kept at it with this day and this dream in mind. She’d manufactured her own demise into victory.
And I understood this, too: she was flying. She was leaving me, yes, but God, she was flying.
What else could I do? I screamed and screamed and screamed at her. She was looking down at me, smiling that same smile from all those years ago. As she rose higher into the night sky, she mouthed something—maybe I’m sorry, maybe goodbye, but probably not My sister was never one for apologies, and much less for farewells.
So, when she and her cloud of balloons were just a suggestion of shape and color in space, I let my shouting break off. I rocked back on my heels and tipped my head up, squinting, following the pinprick of her figure as it got smaller and smaller.
In that moment, I was her twin sister again, every inch of our souls the same. I was bubblegum and helium balloon too, swelled up with something immeasurable, something higher than Earth’s atmosphere. My chest heaved, my hands shook, and I realized I was smiling.
In a voice just loud enough for myself to hear, I said, “Come back home sometimes, Hailey.”