JEN SOONG
Reunion
Mama, mama, mama. He stands close enough to her face in bed so that she can feel his warm breath on her eyelids. Mmmhmm, she murmurs, her hand reaching out on instinct to stroke his smooth head. A second earlier, in a dream, she was perched on a woven fringed blanket watching snowy plovers duck their heads into sand, a thundering ocean matching her heartbeat. The sun was blinding.
Did you know a fly buzzes in the F key? She blinks her eyes open. His eyes are wild and hungry. No, sweetie. She tugs at the heavy winter weighted blanket, the one that holds her restless legs in place at night. The pair of framed cranes on the wall above her queen bed is slightly askew. The sunlight peeks through broken blinds; they can no longer hold their own weight. Is it early, or is it late? She closes her eyes. She wants to return to the ocean. Stillness.
Did you know a cat has 36 bones in its ear? She groans, pats the bedding next to her, hoping to lure him into bed, quiet his questions in a toasted cocoon. Snowy plovers did not ask for anything. The ocean wanted nothing in return.
C’mon, mama, mama. He jerked her arm; she outweighed him by two or three times. Get out of bed, breakfast time, pancakes. He pulled harder, stubborn. Are you sick? She stared into his eyes, tried to read his blinking thoughts, desperate to slow the gush of questions. Too late. I love you, Buddy. Her refrain. Mama needs rest. She sniffled. You always say that. Always landed hard on her chest.
She coughed, full of phlegm, and reached for the tissue box with her bony claws. She had lost a pound a day. She didn’t know where disappearing cells had gone. Spider webs of her onyx hair had clogged the shower drain. He took two steps back, away from her coughing cloud. He was wearing a red t-shirt with their alma mater’s insignia and a bear mascot, two sizes too big, that her husband bought on his reunion weekend with the guys. She wondered if she would be around when the tee finally fit him. They never got around to writing a will. Scatter my ashes at Big Sur, she told him. She liked to give him instructions about what to do when she was gone, as if that made death more palatable.
The problem is, her pulmonologist told her, is you live on earth. He laughed, diagramming her lungs on the thin paper covering, writing acronym letters she didn’t recognize with a Sharpie. That’s funny, she snapped. I always suspected I should live in a bubble. He sketched a flame inside her lungs. The burner is always lit. He didn’t say she was dying. But wasn’t she? She was forty-two, which translated into old, busy in the business of dying. Children are the opposite, stirring the earth, refusing sleep, awake dreamers. Her eyes closed again. The soft, rhythmic ocean waves called. Sleep beckoned.
Mama, mama, mama. Her boy chirps again. A never-ending song. Didja know didja. There’s a poisonous butterfly in Asia that can kill 6 dogs. Hmmm, where did you learn that? Her eyes opened, lips closed. She disliked the idea of violence, even a butterfly defeating Goliath in winged combat. His lower lip quivered, fearful. Daddy says you’re depressed. He says to leave you alone.
She remembered his birth, a moonless night. He was due on the winter solstice yet arrived two weeks early. When the nurse laid his wrinkled body, hardly bigger than a butternut squash, on her exposed chest, she felt a familiar warmth. His cry was soft, barely a protest. Skin to skin, they breathed together—to the rise and fall of her chest—in harmony. He was named for his ancestors. The one who will remember.
Baby crickets don’t chirp. Adult crickets chirp by rubbing their wings together. He is waiting to see if she heard him, a sign of recognition. Give me your hand. Their palms met. His was half the size of hers. His eyes were lighter brown than hers, but they shared the same moon shape. She stared at his melon head, mesmerized by the curve of his long eyelashes. He was hers. He smelled like citrus, like home.
Breathe, she commanded. A part of her, muscle memory, returned from that faraway place. She remembered snowy plovers camouflage their eggs on the sand. Unknowing beachgoers have trampled them, killing their babies. Her lungs awakened, they had not rescinded their duty yet. Breathe. She cleared her throat. She is thirsty.
Okay. Her voice warbled at first, but then grew richer, more sonorous. Did someone say pancakes? Do orangutans eat pancakes? Do they like them stuffed with bananas? Who would win a banana pancake eating contest—you or the orangutans? His eyes lit up, he smiled revealing the gap in his front teeth. His mother!
Gingerly, she sat up and pulled on a grey plush bathrobe, cinching the belt around her waist. She slid her bare feet into a pair of soft wool slippers. She stood. The room pitched onto one axis. Before she could resist and collapse again into her nest, he grabbed her hand and yanked her through the long hallway, hopping over scattered wood blocks, to the kitchen, a postponed race on a course she knew by memory. She smelled coffee. The ocean waves faded in her eardrums, her heartbeat continued stubbornly on its own.
The daughter of Chinese immigrants, Jen Soong grew up in a small town in New Jersey and has been on the hunt for extraordinary stories for as long as she can remember. An alum of Tin House and VONA, her writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Audacity, GAY MAG, Manifest-Station, Entropy, Jellyfish Review, Cosmonauts Avenue and Waxwing. She holds an MFA in creative writing from UC Davis. Her memoir-in-progress is about family ties, depression and the silences we learn to break.