The real estate agent leads him up five flights of a narrow, circular staircase that spirals forever upwards, the ceiling like a pin needle poking the heavens. He wonders what it’s like up there, hidden in the clouds, but he’s stuck on the lower levels with the creaky floorboards and tiny windows that only face the frowning fire escapes of neighboring concrete buildings. Curse his past self for scheduling a tour so early on a Saturday morning. If only he could time travel an hour into the future when this whole mess is over with and he could melt into his dorm bed once again, ignoring the impending doom that lurks forever over his shoulders. But the rent is cheap, and the apartment is close to a subway station, so he follows the real estate agent upwards and hopes the light switches work.
He nearly crashes into her when she stops before a blank wooden door. She gestures enthusiastically, her bright red lipstick and pointed nails cheering, “Welcome to your new home!” The door creaks with mocking laughter as she wrestles with her keys.
The apartment is dark and dreary and smells like dust, but the light switch works, and she lets him look around.
He feels like the lone customer of an empty retail store, wandering through the aisles and trying not to pay mind to the shopkeeper who’s pretending not to be watching him. His footsteps follow a slow, agonizing rhythm as he walks down the hallway, passing by empty rooms like he’s window shopping, focusing more on maintaining a pleasant demeanor rather than interest in the apartment. The hallway is long, not unlike the hallways of his family friends’ houses he waited in as an awkward teenager, or of the empty houses he had to visit as a kid and hoped his parents wouldn’t buy, or of all the dorm buildings he rolled his four suitcases down, hoping he’d packed enough of his life with him to live for the next few months. He steps into the last room of the narrow hallway and turns on the lights.
He walks into the kitchen.
But it is his grandmother’s kitchen.
With sunlight streaming through the translucent curtains, revealing glimpses of the rolling hills outside. The dining table is shoved into the corner of the tiny, tiled space that smells like dust and orchids. There are bowls of fruit sitting upon every counter, each one lovingly picked from the garden she had been cultivating for decades—a practice she had gotten into after immigrating to San Francisco and after finally getting enough money to buy a house. He wonders if she used to garden back in China, or if her country was too shaken up from war and occupation for anyone to tend to the flowers. He puts on the slippers that sit at the door—soft green ones she had deliberately set out in preparation for his visit—and goes to make eggs on the gas stove. She reads the Holy Bible, translated into Chinese. She wants to have her grandchildren all gathered under this holy roof of hers, if only for a moment, but his Cantonese is too poor to tell her he needs to be on his own.
He finishes the eggs and goes to wash the dishes. His grandmother stops him. She says she’ll take care of it. He leaves.
When he enters that hallway again, those rooms that once seemed so empty are whispering for him to enter like the fragrances of Hong Kong street food stands on a wintry evening. He hears laughter and the clinking of glasses in the living room, and it’s his cousin’s living room, filled to the brim with family members he doesn’t know, has never known, but who know him because he’s his father’s son, and they know his father much more than he ever has. He can smell the celebration of Christmas set out on the dining table, the heaps of steamed fish and roasted duck and stir-fried noodles tossed with bok choy beckoning him to take a bite. And though they’re devout Christians, their ancestors lounge about the space, resting their heads on the red altar hidden in the quiet corner next to the fireplace. He never quite understood the logistics of placing oranges on the little plates, so he sits quietly and eats his food. The room rings with the sounds of Cantonese and 台山話, the tongues of his family members moving seamlessly between the two. He wishes he could speak his family’s languages, but by the time he was born, his sister’s preschool had already cut out her Chinese tongue and replaced it with an English one, so there was never any hope for him anyway.
The party winds down, and he goes to leave, but not before his aunties shove leftovers into his arms. He knows it’s Chinese tradition to deny the gifts at first—an act of humility— but he always thought that was a little silly. He walks into the hallway with a pile of Tupperware, the plastic warm in his hands.
The bathroom is across the hall, and it is the bathroom of his 婆婆’s apartment in Hong Kong, his matrilineal line running through the pipes. The sink, shower, and toilet all sway around each other because when he was last here, he was nine years old and feeling homesick for the first time. The homesickness bleeds from the walls now, impossible to be scrubbed away. His mother gives him her phone to call his father, who’s still stuck at work across the Pacific Ocean, and they talk for a bit. He doesn’t remember what he says or what his father says, but he thinks he feels better afterwards. At the end of the call, he goes to find his mother. He remembers that she’s at the funeral of her father, his 公公. The phone feels heavy as he puts his father on hold.
He sinks his feet into those soft green slippers and takes the phone and Tupperware and enters that hallway once again. It buzzes, filled with the adrenaline of his family line. It’s the same hallway he used to wrestle his sister in when they were younger, back when they still enjoyed fighting each other. It’s the same hallway his mother would carry him down after falling asleep during a late-night road trip. It’s the same hallway he and his father played soccer in, and that his father and his late uncle used to play soccer in before one of them kicked the ball too high and killed the light.
He stumbles to that final, unopened door—the bedroom door—and he’s desperate to turn its handle and see what lays behind. Will it be his parent’s old bedroom, the queen-sized bed like a pirate ship on the Pacific? Or will it be his sister’s room, where he used to sit and read as she played violin—an instrument that all the children of the Chinese-American diaspora seemed to fit comfortably under their chins, except for him. Hell, even give him the guest room, whose closet holds boxes upon boxes filled with beaded figurines crafted by his grandmother.
But if he’s lucky, if the ancestors that run through these walls have mercy on him and deem him worthy, let him see — at least a glimpse of it — his childhood bedroom. With the cozy walls that would cradle him asleep. With the soft carpet that he could lay upon and see glow-in-the-dark stars overhead. With the sturdy desk that welcomed doodles of cartoon characters and whispered to him that he would make it someday. Let him see his room once more, and he’ll be content. He’ll sign the lease. He’ll get the real estate agent her pay. He’ll tend to this space like a loving caretaker, placing slippers at the door and cooking meals for his guests.
He opens the door.
It’s empty.
There’s not even a bed frame. He recalls that this apartment comes unfurnished. At least the light switch works.
The hallway is dark and cold. The real estate agent looks at him expectantly, her cheeks trembling from how long she’s been holding her smile. He looks at the exit behind her, but his feet don’t move.
“幾時可以再見你?” his grandmother would always ask whenever they called. When can I see you again?
The only light in the apartment now shines from the kitchen, illuminating the space like a halo that’s slipping further and further away, returning home to the rolling hills of San Francisco. His feet pound on the floorboards like a panicked heart, the rooms of the hallway merely doors to nowhere spaces that pass by in a blur. He runs. He sprints. His hands touch the door frame, and his toes touch the entrance of his grandmother’s kitchen.
His grandmother, his 人人, looks up from her Bible and smiles as he pushes the Tupperware towards her, the food still warm from Christmas.
“唔 使,” she says. No need.
Because she’s Chinese at heart, no matter how many miles she moved from Guangdong, and he’s an American boy with his body split by an ocean of time, so he stands there with the Tupperware digging into his palms. He gently sets the phone on the table, his father still on hold, and nudges it toward her because he knows she will always take the chance to speak with her son. She squints at the screen as her aging eyes search for the right button.
Hundreds of words like flowers grow in his throat, words that he could never fully choke out but he has a whole lifetime to try.
“多謝,” he says. Thank you.
She seems a little confused but smiles anyway.
“唔 使.”
She takes the phone off hold and begins chatting away with her son. Quietly, he places the Tupperware into her fridge and slips off those soft green slippers, leaving them at the entrance of his grandmother’s kitchen.
He walks back to the real estate agent. She asks him if he’s interested in the apartment. He tells her.
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