Patchwork dolls, p.16
Patchwork Dolls, page 16
T’s apartment wasn’t too far from Jill and Hannah’s house— which made them neighbors too, technically—but she was grateful for the ride. She had forgotten how utterly dark it was here, how it felt like the thick velvet night was moving against you, blotting out vision. As the car pulled up to the end of her block, a strobe light flashed on somewhere, and T thought she must look so washed out, so dry and small. She wondered if Marta was home yet, if anyone was in the apartment building at all, or if they were all out celebrating with their own friends and families.
“Can I ask you a question?” Hannah said.
“Sure.”
“Can I ask you what living there was like? I don’t know anything about it.”
T looked at the young girl next to her.
“You really don’t know anything?”
“I don’t. I know that it used to be different. That’s all.”
T thought about a message she had received from a close friend just before she left.
Did you see one of your neighbors has been arrested? the friend said. Did you know them?
After a long while, T had texted back, Maybe. I don’t really remember them.
Be careful. I heard from someone that the police have a list of people they’re targeting.
T thought of the hollow of her building’s staircase at night when she took out the trash. The Earth immigration letter she received, how it felt like a hallucination, and even in the days and hours leading up to the shuttle’s departure she couldn’t fully convince herself that she was leaving, leaving it all behind. But she did not think of the policeman who had knocked on her door, the yes–no questions he had asked, the names he made her write on a piece of paper before he said she was free to go. She tried not to remember how her friends treated other traitors. She just carried around the same feeling she had when she was nineteen—watching the man steal, knowing everything around them was festering from the inside out anyway.
In the obsidian night outside, there were animals hiding in the trees, veiling themselves from predators, eating others. On her home planet, there were cars that patrolled the streets, thickets of men in uniform lining the walls of train stations, apartment buildings. There were things she had done that seemed to be of another person’s life, like the way one might look at photographs of their mother and father as teenagers, recognizing the origin of something that was already a phantom. But she wasn’t there anymore. She was here, and this young person was looking at her, waiting for an answer.
“Maybe another time,” T said. “Thanks for the ride.”
She got out and felt the warm air hit her tongue, her skin, a blank touch. Everything that had once thrilled her about this place—pictures of first snow, the highway lanes of supermarkets and pharmacies, the weedless suburbs—felt like a memory of a memory of itself, a videotape wiped over.
Outside, simple colors chartered the skies, pulling heads of smoke from their hazy, bright constellations. Sparklers ran across the lawns, and T knew there were hands attached to them, but because of the darkness, it looked as if they were floating circles and spikes, sputtering fast into oblivion. When one firework ended, another began somewhere else, and she imagined the entire neighborhood lighting up like one of those old telephone switchboards, the exchange of laughter and air and sweat like lines in the grid.
In that lit-up darkness she imagined herself calling her mother, just as she used to when she was in school and her parents were still alive, her father calling out, Can someone get the phone? and her younger sisters playing games over too-loud music, a party every night. Yes, my darling, what is it? I’m making dinner, her mother would say, and she’d tell her, I’m coming home this weekend—see you soon, and in the background, she would hear one sister scream, You’re cheating! and the other huff angrily. Her mother would say, What—I can’t hear—be quiet! What did you say? and the line, only a few kilometers’ distance between them, would spit and fizz, threatening to drop out on them, on this memory. Hold on, she would say, hold on. I’m coming home, Ma. Wait for me.
Acknowledgments
The following stories were previously published:
“Mycomorphosis,” The Rumpus, Aug. 29, 2022
“Please, Get Out and Dance,” © 2021, Ysabelle Cheung, as first published by The Margins, the digital magazine of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop
“Patchwork Dolls,” Granta, Aug. 18, 2022
“Galatea,” Slate, Oct. 29, 2022
“Herbs,” Joyland, Dec. 8, 2022
Gratitude:
To Yanyi, for a year of mentorship, and your lessons of self-care and survival.
To Kaitlin Chan and Karen Cheung, eternal members of the Marmo Fan Club, for your keen eyes, friendship, and Lactaid.
To my readers, who generously gifted me their time and patience: Eunice Tsang, Özge Ersoy, Jacqueline Leung, Siqi Liu, Mimi Wong, Tochukwu Okafor, Ophelia Lai, Brady Ng, David Walter, Meg Charlton, Jessica Kingdon, Peter Molesworth, Ben Bertaccini, Alex Elias, Vicky Woo, Larissa Abaidoo, Ned Carter Miles, Susan Blumberg Kason, and Marshall Moore.
To Bleak House Books, which inspired “The Reader,” and Jia Tolentino, whose essay “The Age of Instagram Face” inspired “Patchwork Dolls.” To Joyland, Slate, The Rumpus, Asian American Writer’s Workshop, and Granta, who published earlier versions of the stories inside this book.
To my agent, Jade Wong-Baxter, who believed in these stories. To Robin Miura, Lynn York, and the team at Blair, who published them.
To Willem, for encouraging me to begin again.
And finally, to the teacher who said I would never learn to read; the magazine publisher who made me doubt my own words; the men who followed me home from school; and the authoritarian figures who dictate what we can, and cannot, write and say. You gave me a reason to write these stories.
Ysabelle Cheung, Patchwork Dolls
