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Final Girl Party

Sprinkles and icing whirled in sparkly glimmers at Kristie’s eleventh birthday party. We jumped and twirled while a popular song played on the radio—a song we’d heard a million times, relegated to backdrop music, just sounds, really. It had a thrumming, pulsing beat, but all I could think about was sugar and prizes and cake. Iridescent Pegasus wings poked out from one of Kristie’s gifts, and I wanted to run my fingers across the shine, feel the plush, hold it close between sips of cherry punch and more twirls until the edges of the rec room blurred. Toys, the color pink, and faraway adventures that lived on fluffy clouds were still well within reach, as far as I knew. But when I stopped spinning to take a breath, amid the shrieks and giggles, Tanya said, “Watch this.”

Tanya danced, swaying her hips from side to side, thrusting her pelvis back and forth. She placed her hands on either side of her body and dragged her fingers down the length of her hips. Then, she rubbed her hands across her chest and backside. Her lips puckered as she continued moving to the beat. With one hand, she undid her ponytail, letting her hair fall loose, her hips keeping time with the music, her pelvis undulating, her wild hair spilling over her shoulders. 

Every eye was on her, but we didn’t say anything. We didn’t join her, either because we didn’t know how, and we weren’t ready to learn. There was candy to eat and ice cream, too, and I sense we just couldn’t understand how Tanya could keep dancing like that, when every slice of cake at Kristie’s party was perfect. How could there be anything else? 

ONE MISSISSIPPI

I loved my father most during thunderstorms. We’d stand in the doorway of his bachelor pad on Drinkwater Street, wrapped in a blanket, his arm around me, and we’d count the number of Mississippis between the lightning and thunder, so we’d know just how close the storm was. One Mississippi, two Mississippi. Bang! Sometimes we’d count alligators instead, but I loved the rhythm of Mississippi, the way it rolled off my tongue and bounced against my lips. Mis-sis-sip-pi. Sometimes I only counted as far as one Miss– and then the thunder would roll through the air around us, and I’d jump. But I knew I was safe, because Dad was there to protect me.

Daytime rains were even better, because they meant popsicles, chocolate or grape or orange. We’d drive to the Pinto Store to buy them if Dad didn’t have any in the house, then dress up in black garbage bags with holes cut out for our heads and arms. We’d take off our shoes and run out to the sidewalk to race our popsicle sticks down the overflowing gutters, catching them just before they went down the sewer grates, then running back to the top of the block to race them all over again. 

By the winter I was seventeen I’d forgotten how much I loved storms, or even that I loved my dad; depression tore through me like a tornado, leaving in its wake closed curtains, sudden tears, clandestine scars, and downcast eyes. I never knew when or where it would touch down next.

But one snowy night I woke up to the crack of thunder, and a few moments later my window lit up with lightning.

I’d never heard of thunder and lightning in a snowstorm.

Dad was snoring in the next room so I got out of bed and shouted for him through his door.

“What?” he called, before falling back into another snore.

“There’s a storm going on!”

“So?” His mattress groaned and squeaked like he was turning over, trying to get comfortable again.

“So let’s go watch it!”

“It’s the middle of the night.”

“It’s thunder and lightning!”

I kept pounding on his bedroom door, a little kid again, the electricity in the air shifting my neurons into something like happiness.

We threw on our coats and walked out into an apocalypse of blinding snow and biting wind. Lightning arced across the sky.

“We need popsicle sticks,” I shouted over the wind.

“Stay here,” he hollered, and disappeared inside. When he came back out he was carrying two giant garbage bags. He held one out to me. “We can race these.”

Imagine holding open a garbage bag to fill with wind in a storm. Now imagine letting it go, watching it tumble down the snowy street under the glow of the streetlamps. I whooped, not caring that it was the middle of the night and I might be waking up the neighbours.

At the bottom of the hill, as I balled up my garbage bag before trudging back to the house, a pickup truck slid around the corner and skidded to a stop beside me. The driver rolled down his window and said, “Are you okay?”

How did I look to this man as I stood in the middle of the street in a snowstorm, a teenager wearing her pyjamas and a coat, holding an empty black garbage bag?

I laughed, marvelling at the unfamiliar way my smile stretched my skin, then pointed up the hill. “It’s okay,” I told him. “I’m with my dad.”

If We Were Reborn As Peregrine Falcons

Imagine soft down on our chests, plumage on our backs. Imagine our heads beaked, keratin claws crowning our feet. Imagine tail-feathers, our hips and bones fused gently so we can fly. Imagine the currents of air, ourselves newly aware of these, newly cognizant of the wind. Imagine us, lifted up, each layer of airstream bearing us towards the highest part of the convex sky. Imagine our wings flapping once, and then a soar. Imagine swoops and dives and the twirl-swirls of our bodies through the air. Imagine a quick low skirting through city park trees, around benches. Imagine dips and darts, a playfulness as we slip around skyscrapers. Imagine our falcony giggles, our birdlike fun. Imagine our aerie homes on the roofs of skyscrapers, atop the tallest arches of bridges. Imagine the two of us, our hearts expanding expanding expanding the way they are now but bigger. Imagine our wings spread wide, every feathery part reaching out as far as it can. Imagine the heavens around us, all that space, that wide spaciousness. Imagine how far our hearts have opened and still the tips of our sharp pointed wings are touching. Imagine our amazed astonished delight remade in bird form. Imagine wonder. Imagine joy. Imagine me and you in love, our arms wrapping around each other, both of us saying the words, both of us repeating them, I love you over and over, all of this as we take flight.

Disco Cinderella

For Mom

Laces tied tight, Ann laps the roller rink, arms outstretched like wings, the dragonfly tattoo on her right shoulder gliding along for the ride. It’s ’70s Night, and she could skate till dawn, boogying in her hand-knitted halter top, bell-bottoms and vibrant blue eyeshadow — a disco Cinderella. Except this time, the footwear stays on, sets the overtoiled woman soaring, wheels spinning, hips swaying.

Ann knows she can’t stay long. Tonight, a mirrorball moon glittering her skin, the tender voice of Thelma Houston imploring her not to leave this way. Tomorrow, a harsher slice of light beaming down, the clang and whir of an MRI machine.

Ann lifts her face up toward the rainbow hues of the rink’s spotlights, shimmies the tension from her shoulders, finds the beat again. One more time around, arms stretched wide as wings. Dazzling like a disco ball, like Cinderella at the ball. Like a dragonfly.

The pine tree

There is a park near my home, with a long, winding path running through it. When I was in elementary school, every afternoon at four o’clock, my grandfather arrived outside the iron gate of my school, riding his worn-out Forever bicycle to pick me up. He then took me to the park even when my mother objected, insisting that I should go straight home to do my homework, that textbooks were the only proper way to learn. My grandfather smiled and said, “Let Lan look at the trees first. The trees are teaching her too.”

In the park, my grandfather held my hand and guided me to look at different plants.

In spring, he pointed to the golden trumpet trees. At first, only a few scattered yellow blossoms appeared at the tips of the branches, but within a week, the entire tree was covered in brilliant gold.

In summer, we often sat on the grass beside the crape myrtle bushes. The flowers bloomed in small clusters. Pale pink. Light purple. Milky white. Like clouds of color diffused across the sky. My grandfather said, “A few bloom today, a few more tomorrow. That’s how the whole summer passes.” We waited there, watching to see which new blossoms had opened that day.

In autumn, the fragrance reached us the moment we entered the park. The scent of osmanthus came in waves, drifting in and out with the wind, lingering faintly around us. At those times, my grandfather spoke very little. We walked slowly and breathed deeply.

When winter arrived, the plum blossoms bloomed. The trees, once full of green leaves, shed them without notice, and then, on some cold morning, burst into pink and pale white blossoms all over their bare branches. When the breeze passed through, petals spun as they fell, scattering across the withered grass like a spill of soft-colored paint. I always wanted to pick them up, but my grandfather said, “Let them lie there. They’re a gift from the tree to the earth.”

I thought my grandfather loved flowers most, but that wasn’t true. Each time before we left, he led me past the flowers and brought me to a quiet corner of the park. There stood a single pine tree. Tall and upright. Dark green needles layered upon one another.

My grandfather patted the rough bark and said to me, “Look. Spring comes and autumn goes, flowers bloom and fall. All the liveliness belongs to them. But this pine tree stays the same. Green in summer, green in winter; the same in the rain, the same in the sunshine.”

“But Grandpa,” ten-year-old me asked, puzzled, “if it looks the same all the time, isn’t it boring?”
He touched my head, the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes deepening as he smiled. “You’ll understand one day,” he said. “The world rises and falls, but there are always things like this pine tree that remain steadfast.”

I couldn’t understand why not changing mattered. I loved novelty, change, and exploration.

Years later, I left the small town with the park behind and went to university in the unfamiliar city of Guangzhou, then lived and worked in Shanghai, Beijing, and Hangzhou. I broke up with a boyfriend I had loved for six years. My mother passed away suddenly from a bout of influenza. Three pregnancies ended in three miscarriages. Many of the things I once believed I could rely on disappeared, one by one. On countless sleepless nights, I thought of my grandfather, and of the pine tree in the corner of the park.

This Qingming Festival, after returning to the town to visit the graves of my grandfather and my mother, I walked into the park. I went straight to the deepest corner. The pine tree was still there. It seemed a little thicker, a little stronger. I placed my hand on its rough bark, my grandfather’s words echoing in my ears. And I realized that perhaps what he showed me back then was not “unchangingness,” but how, amid the inevitable turning of seasons, wind, frost, rain, and snow, one learns to root life deeply and retain the strength to keep standing.