The Pulse
Emory University 2019
ANTHOLOGY IX
The Pulse Anthology of the Arts Emory University 2019
The Pulse is Emory’s premier arts organization. With the focus of promoting the creative arts on campus, we publish an annual Anthology filled with writing, art, and photography submitted by the student body. Each semester, The Pulse also runs Symposium, a collaborative event that includes a visual arts gallery and a setting for students to showcase their musical, theatrical, and literary talent. Throughout the academic year, you can find members of The Pulse encouraging the arts on campus through a variety of open events. Beyond being an organization, we are a family bonded together by our love for each other and the arts.
Copyright Š 2019 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in review, without permission in writing from the authors/publisher.
Editor: Tamar Sidi ‘21 Cover photo: Chloe Luo ‘22 Front and back jacket: Marina Hojman ‘21 Heart image: Brian Shan ‘21
VOLUME IX
PRESIDENT: Nava Amalfard ‘19 EDITOR IN CHIEF: Tamar Sidi ‘21
A LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT: Dear Reader, Thank you for choosing to read this magazine. It is the product of one woman’s vision and her relentless tenacity to complete a powerful body of work. As the vacating leader of this club, I have seen The Anthology transcend from a club’s obligatory duty to a passion project, a carefully crafted medium that highlights Emory’s most talented writers and artists. None of this would have been possible without Tamar, our beloved Anthology chair. It is her diligence and determination that has spearheaded this shift and thus left us with this magnificent magazine. Her vision has remained steadfast: the poems and visuals are to weave a story of controlled chaos, a non-linear coming of age. I hope that in these pages you find not only this narrative but perhaps remnants of your own. Best, Nava Amalfard ‘19
A LETTER FROM THE EDITOR: Dear Reader, It is my joy to share with you the ninth edition of The Pulse Anthology. In these pages you will find a variety of artistic works submitted by the talented Emory student body. From poetry to prose, and photography to drawings, there is surely a source of inspiration for all. In curating this work, I found myself fascinated by the tension between calm and chaos. The selected pieces play with this balance, delivering bright, colorful, and frantic visuals alongside soft, composed, and calculated work. I challenge you to consider the relationship of these words as you sift through. This anthology was a group effort and wouldn’t have been possible without the relentless support of key individuals. To the contributors, thank you for believing in this project and sharing your outstanding creations with the rest of us. None of this would have been possible without you all. To the rest of my Pulse family, thank you for your unyielding commitment to promoting artistic self-expression on campus and being a welcoming community of creativity and growth. To Nava, our graduating president, thank you for leading the Pulse with your passion, wisdom, and love. We are immensely proud of you and will miss you dearly. Lastly, thank you to you the reader. Thank you for putting life on pause for the slightest moment and gifting yourself with the time to get lost in this work. You are our motivation! Best, Tamar Sidi ‘21
CONTRIBUTORS: Angelique Gomez ’22, Aniketh Khutia ’22, Beverley Sylvester ’22, Brian Shan ’21, Chloe Luo ’22, Erin Oquindo ’20, Isabel Slingerland ’21, Jasmine Cui ’20, Jasmine Williams ’22, Katie Hwang ’22, Laila Hasnain ’19, Marina Hojman ’21, Rebecca Neish ’20, Rehnuma Islam ‘21, Talia Green ’19, Tamar Sidi ‘21
Gardens
Talia Green ‘19
Gather me in bundles of my backyard garden – my red radish elbows, my honeycrisp palms, the lavender leaves budding along my jawline, chardonnay grape vines wrap wreaths around my wrists – thorns prick my forearms, but care for them. Rake me clean of the bindweeds germinating behind my ears, harvest the black cherry pits spittled down my arms, tuck them under my shoulder blade, in its safety, under shade, water them with sweet words, and cherish the seedlings you’ll see sprouting, in time. Left: Angelique Gomez ‘22
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Elegy for Savta Talia Green ‘19
My grandmother’s house counts her breath on one hand – body barely held by flimsy stone and stripping yellow paint, veined with brittle pipelines and heaving ventilation. Moss and a barren pine raise phantom flowers to a garden that bore fruit. Once. Hungry neighbors wait for her walls. We hear their feet tap from inside her crumbling kitchen, hear their mutters over moans from cupboards that don’t close, gorged with enough rice and tea to outlive the finger-count. And still, she stands as their bulldozer puffs smoke towards us from across the paved road.
Right: Tamar Sidi ‘21
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Both: Jasmine Williams ‘22
Sino Ako?
Erin Oquindo ‘20
I have a recurring dream where I find myself in the Philippines, sifting through faces, looking for her. Is she by the coconut trees? I twist my feet and dig my toes into white sands until I can’t see where it ends and I begin and ask the Titos and the Titas who glisten with the fruits of their labor, and they say “Mestiza! Maganda girl. There are none like you here. Treasure your light skin.” Is she in the city center? I jump on a jingling Jeepney and, in the crowded company of those who came before me, I ask the driver, who flips change between his fingers. Glinting pesos look like wedding rings and they appear and disappear like magic. “An American?” He laughs. “You are not American.” Is she in Manila’s slums? I peek through curtains sewn into cardboard ceilings and ask the folks who work, stacking paper homes to make the misshapen distant relative of childhood play, those castles of misfortune, home to bare feet and raw need. “You will never know what it is to be here.” They tell me. Is she even here at all? I come to Lola’s tiny house, defeated. By the door, a potted portulaca closes its petals for the evening. I feel that they are me, but they know that I am not of them. The milky chances and acts of alchemy that breathed me into being curse me to an everlasting limbo of an almost-belonging. Lola opens her door. “Maligayan pagbabalik my child. You must be tired.” And, although I am, I have found her. ako ay ako. Art: Rehnuma Islam ‘21
Chrysalis
Beverley Sylvester ‘22 (Find her book of poetry Five Stages of Morning available in print and as an eBook)
In each of our lives there is a day When we realize our parents are people and not infallible beings of silk and fire When we realize forever friends don’t always last forever When we realize good people don’t always stay good And happy people aren’t always happy And the ideals we clothe in omnipotence and absolutes Crack and crumble beneath the weight of all the grayness that swells within perspective Morality When we stop being afraid of the monsters in the dark And start being afraid of the darkness in the monsters For it is what we cannot see That is the biggest threat to our comfortable realities Which we so casually and staunchly defend There is a day when each of us realizes that a lot of the best art was birthed from pain That sometimes to learn more about living you have to let your lungs fill with secondhand smoke And your nostrils flare around the acrid scent of Jack Daniels and hot breath To walk across a dirty floor strewn with peanut shells and shadows To cry alone for no discernable reason To see the unforgiving deconstruction and humiliation and degradation of slow death Because we spend our lives building up bulwarks Thickening our skin To hide all the parts of ourselves that sting when we touch them So sometimes the biggest gift you can receive Is for someone to let you see them wince There is a day when each of us realizes that sometimes we need to let ourselves wince Let ourselves exist beyond the walls we call home And breathe Because the world might be uglier than it seemed when we were children But a chrysalis is uglier than a caterpillar And no one ever cares about that part When looking at a butterfly
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Laila Hasnain ‘19
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My ship cuts against the tide, Braving the waves with its overrun. With travellers on their stride, And goods that belong to none Aniketh Khutia ‘22
Rebecca Neish ‘20
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Jasmine Cui ‘20
Left: Jasmine Williams ‘22 Previous: Marina Hojman ‘21 Next: Chloe Luo ‘22
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The Song of the Saxophone Tamar Sidi ‘21
A man with kind eyes welcomes me with a smile and a handshake and motions to the bar to make me a drink. The red velvet curtains are draped over every wall, and the familiar smoky, woody, boozy air seems to protect me in a cloud of comfort. Framed black and white portraits of great jazz musicians clutter every table surface and line the walls on either side of the bar. A treasured trumpet signed by C.J Davis sits crookedly in a glass case above the many bottles of liquor, overlooking the evening’s scene. It’s an intimate space, lit only by candles and old vintage lamps. The orange, golden hues of light mingle with the red of the walls, taunting the room with their shadows. I take the last place at the very front on a cushioned corduroy seat and look up upon the face of Bud Coleman. He stands before me in all his magnificence with his lips pressing vigorously against the saxophone, creating the most marvelous noise and sending shivers up my spine. I watch him move with the instrument, dancing with it almost, supporting it, loving it, sharing it, feeling it, I can see every bead of sweat that drops from his dark skin. Bud’s face is curled in a fury of passion, his eyes squeezed tightly shut and his nose scrunched up. The rest of the band chimes in, the drummer, the trumpeter, the pianist; I am submerged in a wild state of excellence, in an electric feeling of flavor. My Harley Davidson’s join the collection of proper dress shoes (mostly Oxfords), leather boots, and dainty heels in tapping against the wooden floors, embracing the music and allowing ourselves to be transported into no world other than that of Bud Coleman. He launches into a solo right before it happens. It is a deeply twisted melody, soulful and dark, that seems to disguise the tearing of a thumping heart in a blanket of brass. I hardly feel the shot when it comes, it hits fast and heavy like I knew it would. I fall to the floor with a final blow. I hear the jazz, so faint, fuzzy, and beautiful through the wood. It’s an urgent tune, full of life. I can’t hear each note, but I can feel the passion vibrate through the floorboards. My ear is pressed desperately against the floor, everything else is muted …. it’s absolutely divine. I try to cling to the world just long enough to hear its end, I almost can, and then everything stops abruptly, without warning, and the song of the saxophone leaves me in a bottomless black.
Left: Marina Hojman ‘21 Previous art: Isabel Slingerland ‘21 Previous photo: Chloe Luo ‘22
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I Cannot Take What You Cannot Give Katie Hwang ‘22 Art: Brian Shan ‘21
“I don’t buy bad memories.” The boy’s brow furrowed, and his eyes began to shine. Ana slowed her breath, forcing her face to remain neutral. She never liked customers crying in her shop. It made her look bad. She kept the rules of purchase pinned neatly to her door: no bad memories, no returns. “I’m not asking you to buy it,” he pleaded. “I’ll give you the money. I just need it gone.” She shook her head. “I don’t deal with sadness. Find someone else.” “There’s no one else,” the boy snapped, jerking to a stand. He sent his wooden chair skittering back. It rocked back once, twice, before settling upright. She narrowed her eyes at him. “It has to be you. It has to be.” “Memory moving is a tricky business—” “I just need ten minutes of my life gone. Only ten. I know you’ve done more.” “You’ll find that a happy ten minutes is much different than a grim ten. I won’t do it.” The boy—he couldn’t be more than fourteen, she thought—made a low noise in his throat, and his hands wound through his hair, pulling at the strands. He was too pale, too thin. There were dark circles beneath his eyes, and a tremble in his hands. He never made eye contact with her. “Look,” Ana began, pulling out a sheet of paper, and a half-empty black pen. “Madame Zhu, on third avenue, might be willing to buy a bad memory. Mondrian might be. And both are cheaper than me. Check with them.” She turned the paper toward him, and tapped her nails against it, twice. He shook his head. “Can’t.”
“They’re just a bus ride away.” They both worked in the poorer neighborhoods. They took small happiness, gave generous sums in return. Ana hadn’t spoken to them in years. She didn’t care for their business. She didn’t care for taking happiness where there was less of it, didn’t care for disease and dirt and desperation. They thought her a snob. She’d lived with being called worse names. “I can’t,” the boy repeated. He was crying now. Ana pushed a box of tissues across her desk. “I asked already. They wouldn’t take it.” “You’re not offering enough.” “It’s everything I have.” She’d heard the words, said them, a thousand times before. They’re no different now, she told herself. No one knows what their everything is, not until they’ve already lost it. Children least of all. Her heart ached, just for a second. The feeling was gone as quick as it came. A child shouldn’t be in her shop at all. She knew that. But his age didn’t matter. He wanted to be a customer. His memory was what mattered, even if it was coming from a pathetically small set of choices. “I don’t know what you want me to do,” Ana continued. “I can’t take your memory.” “I can’t live with it.” “You have to. It’s yours.” His cheeks were flushed. His dark eyes were ringed with red. His clothes were tattered and his wrist was swollen and Ana forced herself to look away. She couldn’t let herself start guessing. It wasn’t a memory mover’s place to guess. The boy came back a week later, with no more money than he had before. His shirt was clean and hole-less. He reeked of guilt’s heavy rain-and-iron scent. “I won’t take it,” she told him. She had an appointment in an hour. She was to exchange the man’s memories of his second date with his now ex-wife for ten grand. The date would go to Charles Garon, a widow up in Cherrypeak. She didn’t have time for a miserable child. She already had herself, she thought, suppressing the urge to smile. Memory movers didn’t smile. “I can’t sleep,” the boy said. “I can barely think. I went to Madame Zhu’s and Mondrian’s and they won’t do it. I need you.” There was a text notification on her phone. The divorcee would be fifteen minutes late. Bad traffic on the I-75. “Do your parents know you’re here?” Ana pressed. He looked away. His hands curled into fists. She would not guess. “It doesn’t matter,” the boy said. “It’s a beautiful day. Waste your time somewhere else. I have a business to run.” He left. The door chime chattered behind him. The third time that the boy came to the shop, he didn’t say anything. He sat in Ana’s reception area, opened his history textbook, and left when she’d announced that it was closing hour. Both of Ana’s patrons that day—Gabriel, who was giving up receiving his first car for money to fix his yard, and Eliza, trading a trip to the amusement park for 200–had muttered their condolences to Ana when they came in. He’s gotta have a terrible life, they said, with voices like pity’s quiet alto, if he’s here so young.
The fourth time was a month after that, and Ana felt hot annoyance creep up on her. “I don’t know what you’re doing,” Ana said. “Are you trying to guilt me? I don’t feel guilt.” “Toward anyone? Or just not toward me?” He kicked one foot onto her desk and set to tying his shoe. Her blood was violent beneath her skin.
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“I’ll indulge you,” she began. “Memory movers are to seal off most of their memory, when they work. Much of the empathy goes with it.” She took a book, and swiped his foot of her desk. He stumbled. His shoes looked new, too. He took a seat on the floor, like one of those self-immolating protestors. She dismissed the image. A ring of bruises sat on his wrist. For a second, she could imagine a matching one on her own, twenty years past. It didn’t matter anymore. She didn’t feel the hurt. “So you have, like, amnesia? You don’t know where you come from, outside the shop?” “I know the memories are there. I could tell you them, if I wanted to. I don’t feel anything about them.” “You’re plenty annoyed now.” “It doesn’t get rid of your feelings. It just mutes them, when you look back.” “Can you put the feelings back?” “I can.” “Do you?” “You still haven’t read my rules sign.” His mouth drew into a thin line. Ana sighed. A man passed by her shop. He peered through the window glass—perfectly clean, she was always sure to keep it perfectly clean—and directly at the filthy kid, sitting on her floor. He stepped away, with a flourish of his heavy, black coat. Pity. She turned, an admonishment on her lips. “Other people accept bad memories,” the boy noted. “Every memory mover has their own policies.” “Why don’t you?” “I don’t want to see them.” It was getting late. The sun was orange on the horizon, casting lazy gold over the streets. It was an hour’s bus ride home. She’d probably have the leftovers for dinner. There wasn’t much else at home, and she wasn’t feeling particularly inclined toward making the hike toward the market. “I’m going to go home,” Ana announced. The boy bit the inside of his cheek. “Can I stay here?” “I don’t have anywhere for you to sleep.” “I’ll sleep in the storage closet. Or in your office.” “I don’t have any food.” “I brought some.” “It’s illegal.” “I don’t care.” He stood, and slung his backpack over his shoulder. “Do you?” “I put my feelings in a jar,” Ana said, holding down a curling smile. “Everything I have, everything I am, is in this business.” She smelled rain and iron again. “I’m not going to give it up, for you,” she finished. Not for anyone. Not anymore. She locked the shop behind her. She ignored the boy on her heels. He was her second shadow for three blocks, steps almost soundless. He turned away from her on Waterway. Dread’s rusted scent and mournful rumble pierced the air. The fifth time she saw the boy, she’d brought a bag of clothes for him. They were new. The store clerk helped her pick them out. She hadn’t looked for boy’s clothing in a decade. She told him that her friend had been giving them away, and ignored the smell of disbelief. She didn’t tell him that she’d dug through her own home for an hour before going out to buy them. That she’d emptied the drawers in the empty bedroom, stacked them into a paper grocery store bag, and then shoved them back into drawers That she was hoarding useless clothing but she couldn’t, couldn’t make herself get rid of them. The boy’s eyes went wide, and he’d stumbled out some thank you. A customer entered as he’d hurried out of the shop, bag clutched tight to his chest.
“You shouldn’t deal with children,” he said, frowning. “They don’t have much to lose.” She didn’t need him to tell her that. She just needed his pet dog’s first birthday. “He’s a family friend. Not a customer. I assure you.” He nodded. “I’ve met less gracious memory movers.” “The profession attracts that sort, unfortunately. Would you like a drink, first?” He didn’t. He took her instructions easily. She pressed her fingers to his temples, and he didn’t as much as flinch. Ana eyed the jar on the table—a small one, for a small memory—and the silver rings on his hands. His thoughts were already half greyed out. She minted new keys that night. The boy did not come to her shop for another three weeks.
The sixth time she saw him, he was walking to school, wearing clean clothes.
The seventh time was two weeks later. She offered him a summer job. He accepted.
The eighth, ninth, twentieth times. Clock in at nine. Set to work dusting the shelves—they don’t need to be cleaned, Ana—and arranging her files—you tear them apart anyway, Ana—and running to buy her coffee—you don’t even drink this, you can just give me a regular lunch break, you know. He followed her home on a Wednesday night. She hadn’t said anything to him, just laid out a blanket on the couch, accidentally made two servers of dinner. It wasn’t something they talked about. Not a kidnapping, the boy insisted. Not not a kidnapping, as far as Ana was concerned. Not something that the police would be sympathetic to. Not something that his parents would be. His parents weren’t sympathetic to anything, the boy had huffed, grief’s blue waves, the smell of salt, radiating off him. “You cost me enough money,” Ana noted, five minutes away from her house, the boy close behind her. “I won’t be able to pay for a lawyer, if I get caught.” “You said that your friend was giving those clothes away.” “ “The first few weeks you hung around. Kids drive away business.” He huffed. It didn’t hide the guilt thrumming in the air around them. She heard the beginnings of syllables, like he was chasing a sentence that wouldn’t come home. “I didn’t know you were mad about that.” “I’m not anymore. Don’t remind me.” He took up his spot on the couch again. She had another bedroom. Down the hall, she’d tell him. Second room to the right. The floorboard in front of the room creaked, and she was sure he’d say something about it. About how she kept her shop clinically clean, kept a new vase of flowers on the desk every week, but couldn’t keep her house in order. He’d say it with a laugh, remind her that she was a doctor of literature, not of people. No one would be performing surgery on her office floor. Or he wouldn’t. He would narrow his eyes at the posters on the wall, too outdated for someone his age, too young for someone hers. He’d feel around the drawers of clothes, and the shelves of books. He wouldn’t know about the school she went to for work. He was the boy from her shop, but he was not her boy. The thirty-fourth time. “You didn’t label this one,” the boy noted. Ana lifted the jar from his hands. The glass was cool to the touch. White fog drifted within it. It darkened at her touch, pressing against the walls of its containers, trying to claw its way back to her fingertips. “This one’s mine. Don’t touch it.” She settled it back on the shelf, between Lyra Reeds and Alma Reid. Lyra’s high school prom was to be given to a college student. Alma’s completion of her last chemo treatment was headed for a mother just diagnosed with the same thyroid cancer. For a visualization exercise, the father had said. Ana had nodded along. It wasn’t her business to know. 26
“Do you ever open it?” “No.” “Do others?” “Zhu does. Mondrian doesn’t.” “Why not?” “I don’t want to see it.” The boy pushed one of the jars deeper into the shelf. “You put everything away because it made you upset?” “I’m not taking your ten minutes.” His mouth turned down, shoulders tensing. “What if I took it myself?” He looked impossibly small, there. He wasn’t much shorter than her. He’d gotten a nicer haircut, wore the nicer clothes she’d given him. He spent most nights in her office. She’d bought a mini fridge and propane stove top and she hadn’t asked a thing about his parents, about the family that should be worrying about him, about the way that he’d sometimes disappear for days on end, without a word. If you have a problem with it, he’d said, fire me. “I can’t make you a memory mover.” “Madame Zhu said she could.” She bit the inside of her cheek. “I didn’t know that you’ve been speaking with Zhu.” She focused on the boy before her, with his tangle of hair, with his feet planted on the linoleum floor, his skin lit by the dim glow of memories. The light cast freckles of shadows on his face, made his hair look lighter than its bark brown, made his eyes a little wider, his features a little younger. “You paid me. I was going to use it on something. She said she wouldn’t take it, but she’d teach me.” “And Mondrian—” “Hates kids.” Ana steadied her breathing, settled her pulse. “Zhu lies. She just wants your money. No one can make you a memory mover.” His face twisted, mouth screwing into a scowl. “Someone made you one.” “No. I made myself one.” “Don’t lie to me. I know—I know you do training and get certificates and—” “You can’t become one. That’s all there is to say.” The boy’s eyes went wide. His breath hitched, striking the air like some awful chord, and his arm lurched toward the nameless jar. The fog was turning white again. He pressed the thing to his chest, slammed his hand over the lid, and jerked the metal cap to the left, never once taking his eyes off her. She lurched toward, hands grasping for the thing, her fingers just beginning to glance the steel. She heard a clammer of steps. She heard the rustle of fabric and the sound of the boy hitting the floor. She felt the press of the linoleum against her skin and her heels leaving the floor. And then she was ten years younger again, and the air was thick with the smell of antiseptic. The halls were white. She remembered the white before anything else. The halls were white, and the doctors rushed around in green and purple, silver peeking from their pockets, red splattered like beacons across yellow and black beds. Her own clothes were black. She wished she hadn’t worn black. Her son never liked when she wore black. The ringing followed. Awful, piercing ringing, siren bells and voices yelling and the blare of electrical charge. The nurses’ empty promises and the quiet groans from other patients. Her own voice, harsher than she knew to recognize, demanding things not even God could give her. The clatter of wheels. The thought of the man who gave her her son, the rings of bruises on her wrists and a haze in her head, and how he wasn’t here now. He’s never been there. Not since he found out she was pregnant. Not there when she asked if he wanted to see her son in the hospital taking his first breathing, and not there when he was in the hospital now. Then a silence. A silence, and the nurse approaching her with drum beat footsteps. The woman’s mouth moving and moving and moving and Ana understood nothing. She wouldn’t. She couldn’t.
Her shoving past the woman, the feel of the nurse’s sweat damp scrubs, ignoring the echoes of sorry and you can’t go in and please because she didn’t care, she didn’t care about anything or anyone in the world except Alex and Alex couldn’t be gone, not really. His skin was still warm and freckled and there were a thousand awful things sticking out of him. His skin was stained red and his body was twisted in ways that it shouldn’t be, and she was pleading the doctors not to take the awful things away, because they were helping him, weren’t they? Wasn’t that their job? Wasn’t hers to be his mother, wasn’t hers to keep him safe and away from streets with drunken drivers and their swerving cars? The metal lid screeched against the glass. It was the storage room again. Metal shelves and ugly floors. The boy who looked too much like her boy, the boy who shared his name. Tears ran down his cheeks. Snot dripped from his nose, and his face was flushed red. A softer red. Ana felt herself reach out, stretching the fabric of her sleeves over her thumb to wipe at his face. She was crying, she realized, feeling the warmth along her face, seeing water drip onto the floor. She’d stop soon. He swatted her hands away. “Alex—,” Ana began. He stood, and sprinted out the room. Eight days went by, and Alex did not return to her shop. Ana bought a safe for her jar. She closed the shop for two days, spent one of them at the cemetery. She passed by the block where Alex said he lives, and stared at the broken-down homes, like one of them would open as easily as her jars. The cancer patient got her jar on time, the widow did not. Ana prepared Alex’s pay—cash sealed into an envelope—as if he’d been working full time. Her son’s grave was small and simple, and she knew he would’ve liked something a little more ornate. She didn’t have much money when she made it. She didn’t have much tolerance for thinking about it. She didn’t have much of anything, anymore, just hurt. Just iron and rain. Ana ran her hands over the letters of his name, over the beloved son engraved beneath it, and a span of years too short for anyone. It poured. It scattered across her umbrella, drum-beat sure, and leaked onto the ground behind her feet. She’d brought him flowers, orange ones, and lined them up along the headstone, like a barrier. The drops clung to the petals, but the color only looked brighter for it. “I’m sorry I haven’t visited recently,” she said. “I miss you, but I made it quiet. I’m sorry.” She couldn’t write after he died. She couldn’t do anything but feel, and her feeling had always been touch and sound and color and fire on the horizon. It made her a good memory mover, Madame Zhu had said, in those early days, when she was still pulling wisps out of heads and hardly anything out of hearts. She was lucky that the feelings were so tangible. Shame that she wasted her gift on trying to feel happy. Shame that she thought she deserved that. “I met someone with your name. I made a mistake with him. I’m sorry.” The headstone didn’t respond.
The thirty-fifth time she saw him, it was the eighteenth of August, and he gave her a letter. I’m sorry about your son, it read.
The thirty-sixth time, he had new bruises, and he wouldn’t take his pay. “Teach me,” he said. “How to become a memory mover.” She thought of her Alex, who never made it to thirteen years old. She thought of coming back to a home without him for the first time, of the clothes that sat in his bedroom for ten years. She thought of the days he’d go, thought of the hours she’d spent feeling other people’s happiness like it might become hers. “You were happy,” Alex said, stepping toward her. “You lost everything but you still—please, Ana.” Her Alex was dead, her Alex was alone in a grave and she didn’t visit him, her Alex lost his mother twice over because she was selfish and hurt and terrified of that hurt. 28 “I can’t do that,” Ana said. “I’m not happy. You can be.”
