Patchwork dolls, p.5
Patchwork Dolls, page 5
There is something unsettling about the scene—how long have these people been here? Hours, days, weeks?—but the possibility of entertainment calls to you. You go through the motions and buy a bag of twenty coins from a gruff lady behind the counter, the weight in your palm tingling, and you walk the perimeter of this hazy dream space, looking for a game to play.
You see a man playing a competitive fighting game alone, the seat next to him empty. Watching, you see him win against the computer twice, three times, and the fourth time he takes a cigarette out of his pocket and lights it, his right hand never leaving the sticky console.
He turns to you and gestures impatiently to the empty seat. His expression is goading—Well? Are you playing or not?—and you feel both embarrassed and irritated by his invitation, as if your vulnerabilities are too obvious. You are too female, too young, too lost.
You sit, choose a character, and begin to move around on the keys, familiarizing yourself again with the game. The man’s character bounces idly, waiting. When you begin to fight, you are struck back rapidly by his blows, and then you are dead. Out of the corner of your eye, you saw him perform a precise choreography on the buttons to kill you.
He gestures: Again. You both insert another coin. You play and die, again and again and again. You burn through your coins; you buy some more. You’re not sure now if you’re interested in winning anymore, but the game is safe, it feels like a comfortable palliative, and the man is a willing executor. You have a suspicion he has been there for years, waiting for moments like this. Again and again he elegantly destroys you; the ending card plays and the game restarts. You keep going. You keep dying. You can stay here, forever.
END
There is a door behind a door; and behind that second door is the bookstore. The double portal doesn’t confuse you: It is how most entrances function in this city. Even in your own flat, you must open the door to leave, then a gate, then get in the lift to exit the lobby, which also has its own set of doors. In the dark, dark woods, there was a dark, dark house. In that dark, dark house, there was a dark, dark room.
The bookstore is empty. A woman with blue hair dressed in black is rolling down the blinds. “We’re already closed,” she says sternly, although you look at your phone and notice that it is still only 5:57.
“I’m so sorry; I won’t be long,” you say, hurrying over to the shelves. You’re suddenly one of those people you swore you would never be: entitled, convinced your time is worth more than others’. But today is a personal emergency, although you don’t even have the time to explain this to the woman who is now sitting behind the desk.
“Five minutes,” she says, making a point to turn off the air conditioner, the music.
What are you looking for? The store is divided into sections: fiction, nonfiction, local interest, Asia, politics, economics, law, art, humor, comics. What was in the dark, dark room? A dark, dark box. You’re looking for your box; you’re looking for your ghosts.
You somehow manage to hyperfocus. You zero in on a shelf labeled Fiction. From there you can make your choice. You check your wallet—you forgot your credit card. You only have a couple hundred Hong Kong dollars, maybe not enough to buy even two books. But it’s a good place to start; you need to restock your empty bookshelf. Perhaps a small jolt will recover your memory. Margaret Atwood, Han Kang, Carmen Maria Machado, Yoko Ogawa, Elena Ferrante, Mieko Kawakami. You recognize the names, but you cannot remember the contents of these books. Which will you choose?
If you would like to purchase one of these authors, please turn to page 70 or 81.
If you want to keep looking, please turn to the next page.
The woman behind the desk is now standing up and openly glaring at you.
“We’re closed already,” she says.
You feel dread begin in the shriveled, small base of your stomach. You can’t leave, not yet; you haven’t found a book, you don’t remember anything, you can’t go back home without this. You are not ready yet.
“Just one more minute,” you plead. And then because you are desperate, “Is there anything you recommend?”
To your surprise, the woman seems to smile a little. Her hair glows in the dimly lit store. “Of course,” she replies. She walks calmly to the back of the space and pulls out a single, thin volume in periwinkle from a shelf. “Here you go. A local author.”
Somewhere in the small of your mind, you feel a memory stirring to life. Is this the book you’re supposed to read?
The woman takes your money, and as you leave with the periwinkle-colored book she shuts the door behind you, so fast you feel the air push out of the store.
It is ten past six. You walk to a small local diner and order some warm food, a drink. There is no one else around yet; the waitstaff are watching the news on the flat-screen by the kitchen. Men and women in stiff, structured outfits march up and down the screen. A politician with ramen curls recites a press release. Children play with toy guns; the slogan appears again. After you have eaten and wet your lips a little, you open the book.
You are now free to peruse this collection. Of course, if you are not ready and would prefer to start over, then please turn back to page 45.
Doctor Wong’s office is couched within a residential building and is within walking distance, but halfway there you remember you didn’t renew your health insurance policy this year.
You reach the office, unsure of whether it’s wise to go in. One time, you worried about a sandy node on your breast, and the X-ray cost you a few thousand dollars; another time, you thought you were losing your leg to unbearable spasm pain, and you left with a few Xanax tablets. Doctor Wong knows you so well by now; she always asks first what is making you anxious this week. You visit her far too often, but there is something soothing in the finite clinical definitions of this small, clean space, how healing it feels even though you suspect you have an incurable sickness.
The waiting area is full of patients. A toddler plays on the old weighing scale. You give the nurse your name and take a seat. Opposite you is a poster: We squander our health in search of wealth. We toil, we sweat, we slave; then we squander our wealth in search of health, and only find the grave. You don’t recall seeing this poster before; it seems far too ominous for a doctor’s clinic, although you remember an expat once telling you how morbid it was that his neighborhood hospital faced a hillside cemetery. You felt strangely obligated to defend the city’s urban planning then, but the only argument you had was for space: There simply wasn’t enough. Don’t you know we live on top of ghosts? But you knew better than to waste your breath.
The nurse calls your name, but at that moment two women enter the clinic. One is dressed in a silk shirt and shorts set, the other in a suit. They sit down across from you and look at one phone, together, their bodies pressed against each other. You can’t help but notice their hair: The woman in silk is sporting a 1920s-style finger wave crop; the one in the suit has a sharply structured ponytail that reaches all the way down to her waist. They look familiar to you. The nurse calls your name, again.
If you’d like to see the doctor now, turn to page 68.
If you’d like to stay and talk with the women first, turn to the next page.
“I’m sorry, I feel like maybe we’ve met before,” you say to the couple. The nurse calls you a third time, then moves on to the next patient. You can always put your name down again, later.
“Oh!” one of them says, looking at you closely, “I remember. We met at a reading last year. In that bookstore. What was the name? Pickwick Books.”
“Oh yes,” the suited one says. “At that local author’s book launch. Terrible what happened to her. Ten years in jail.”
The reading, the bookstore, the book launch. All these things that were a part of your life; their memories, vanished.
“Remind me what the title of the book was?”
“Oh, I can’t remember,” the woman in silk says. She turns to her partner. “Can you?”
“Ah, I can’t either,” the other says. “But it was an essay collection about resistance and survival through literature.” Her voice drops. “I’ve been reading a lot of those books lately. It’s the only thing we can do, you know?”
“I’m Athena, by the way.” She offers her hand; you notice a constellation of thin jade and gold bands. “And this is Michelle.”
You give them your name.
“What an unusual name,” Michelle says.
“Yes, I haven’t heard it before,” Athena adds. “It’s beautiful.”
You tell them your mother was a poet; it’s the only answer that makes sense to people who ask about your name. You do not mention your father.
“That’s so interesting,” Athena says. “And didn’t you say you’re also a writer?”
“I am. Do you write?”
“Michelle does,” Athena says, pulling her ponytail toward her lap. “But not me. I’m a lawyer. She’s rhyme, I’m reason.”
Athena and Michelle already feel like old friends, although you wish you had thrown on something other than your threadbare t-shirt and jogging pants that morning. You are so comfortable in their presence that you feel compelled to tell them what happened. Somehow, you know it isn’t just amnesia.
You tell them the story, from the beginning of what you remember: waking up, the mold, the loss.
“How strange,” Athena says. “And you don’t remember any books at all? Not even the ones you read as a child?”
“Nothing.”
“I would try looking at a book that I might have loved before,” Michelle suggests. “It could help jog your memory or something.”
You’re rather surprised at how nonchalantly they seem to be reacting to all of this. They’re both smiling kindly, relaxed. Perhaps it’s normal, you think, perhaps you’re just blowing everything out of proportion. People lose specific memories all the time, right?
“Yes. Yes, I’ll do that.”
“Do it before all the bookstores disappear too,” Athena says, still smiling.
“I’m sorry?”
“Before they close. It’s almost six o’clock.”
“Right.” You clear your throat awkwardly. “Are you just here for a regular checkup then?”
“Oh, no, no,” Athena says, laughing. “We used to live here. We’re just hanging out today.”
“Live …”
“Here.” Athena says it again, but she does not elaborate, does not gesture. Here, you think, does she mean here, in the neighborhood—or in the clinic? The room compresses. Where did the nurse go?
Don’t you know we live on top of ghosts?
“And you, are you pregnant? Or planning a little one?”
What?
You look around you. The child on the scales has vanished. You look for a clock, but the walls are empty except for the one poster. The desk where the nurse used to sit is vacant; on it you see a small plastic model of a uterus. Yes, of course. Doctor Wong is your gynecologist.
“Are you feeling okay?” Michelle says with concern. “You look pale all of a sudden. Perhaps you really should go in to see the doctor.”
A door suddenly opens: A perfectly happy, heavily pregnant woman exits. “Thank you, doctor,” she says. She waddles out of the clinic, humming, clutching her stomach.
“Now’s your chance,” Michelle nudges you. “Go see the doctor.”
“Don’t force her,” Athena says. “You could also just go to the bookstore. I’m sure you’ll find what you’re looking for there.”
You sit, your head pounding.
Do you want to listen to Athena? If so, leave the clinic now and turn to page 53.
Or perhaps you’d rather take Michelle’s advice. In that case, turn to the next page.
There’s also a third option: You could always just go back home. If you’d like to do that, please turn to page 76.
As you approach the doctor’s office door, you hear a soft voice. “Please, wait a moment.”
You wait. Turning around, you see the other patients have all disappeared.
The voice calls you in. The room is large, sumptuous, with glassy wooden shelves. The doctor sits behind a table. Her hair is so dark it almost has no definition.
“How can I help you today?”
“I’m lost,” you say quietly.
“Oh, yes,” the doctor replies. “I can see that. Poor thing.”
“I stay up all night worrying, and then I can’t do anything during the day. I can’t remember anything anymore. I don’t remember what year I’m in. I have migraines all the time. I feel like my head is exploding. I’m sick.”
“Have you tried leaving?”
“Leaving where?”
“Leaving the city.”
“I can’t.”
“Well, there’s the door.”
“I don’t want to leave,” you say. “I want to go home.”
The doctor looks at you, her eyes flashing. She starts to write something in her small notebook, something precise and short. She sighs deeply, then brings her hand over, folding it on top of yours.
“All right,” she says gently. “Here’s your prescription.”
You close your eyes—you are so exhausted—and when you open them, you are back in your apartment. Your books have been restored; you have all your memory back. You remember the ghosts, the heaviness of your body. You feel dead, numb.
It all comes back now.
END
In the end, you buy one book, and you return home hurriedly. You have two hours before your deadline. It’s possible, you think, you can read the whole book, and then you can write the essay. You’ve done things like this before, surely. You have blurry memories of people emailing, messaging, asking you to file reports and essays and think pieces almost simultaneous to a political event. You don’t need time to process, you convince yourself, you just have to get it done.
But you are hungry. In your kitchen, you scrounge for some leftover scraps. The vegetables look strange though, wan and ghostly. You scratch the skin of a carrot. It bleeds liquid on your chopping board. You tear open a mesh bag and find the onions have faces. A small block of tofu slides around in its carton, slippery and angry.
What happened to the women in the books of Margaret Atwood and Han Kang? you think. They became vegetables to hide from the brutality of memory, to find themselves. But then they grew only hungrier, the loneliness eating away at their flesh and bone.
In your fridge, your food whispers literature, poetry, lyric essays. The deadline, the deadline, they remind you.
Did you know that if you bite off your finger, it will be no more difficult than biting down on a carrot, you remember someone telling you when you were a child. Chomp chomp. What a strange, violent thing for an adult to say, you remember thinking. In your mind you thought not of the growth of your adolescent jaw, but of the finger itself—crunching, oozing in your mouth.
If you listen really carefully, you can hear the vegetables speaking to you.
On your countertop you peel an ear of corn reciting Theresa Hak Kyung Cha and tell it to be quiet. You shave the sugary kernels off and gnaw at the cob, unsatisfied. The fallen gold bits look like teeth; each one is singing a different ancient Chinese proverb. You find yourself licking the tips of your fingers, where the juice merges with skin. You suddenly realize what you have to do to finish your deadline.
In that first draft of blood, the iron-rich liquid streaming into your mouth, you feel moved to tears. Relief rushes into your lungs. You eat your entire pinkie, then your thumb, then all of your fingers, one by one.
END
Perhaps you made the cake. You inspect the crumbled slice: It is a citrus cake, buttery yellow and bright.
But when you look through your cupboards you see pristinely wrapped rectangles of flour, unopened tins of baking powder. Your measuring spoons are all sealed in plastic. You haven’t baked in a while, not since you moved. You lived somewhere else before this. Where?
You’re suddenly aware that you are in your friend’s apartment. You’ve been here many times before. You sat on this very sofa, drinking small cans of beer. But now the flat contains all your possessions: your table, your television, your clothes. Where is your friend? Why are you here?
Your friend: She left. She planned to move to New York. Something small and quiet grieves in your body.
Now you remember.
Turn to the next page.
A week ago, your friend L met you at 7-Eleven a little early, because you needed to buy some wine for a party.
“I feel like I should be buying you something a little nicer, since you’re leaving,” you had said, scanning the dark bottles of Australian reds.
“Don’t be silly,” L replied. “Any wine is good for me. I don’t know what everyone else is bringing.”
You wanted to tell her again how heavy you feel, but you stopped yourself. L is the fifth friend you have said goodbye to this past year. She is also your neighbor. You lived in the same building; now, you’ll take over her larger apartment while she starts all over again in New York.
“Have you finished packing?”
You carry two bottles and a Pocari Sweat to the cash register.
“Almost. I sent off most of my books already. Apparently freight shipping takes up to three months.”
Back at the flat, you help L prep the snacks and cups. She looks content, if not a little too relaxed for someone about to leave. “Oh, look,” she says. She holds up a pamphlet for an artist’s exhibition that you both visited last year. “I don’t know what to do with all these leaflets.” She unfolds the paper.
“Trauma fractures all timelines,” she reads. “We live on top of ghosts—the ghosts of our ancestors, the ghosts of violence, the ghosts of ourselves. We exist as palimpsest. If we write, if we paint, we also erase.”
