a short fiction.
The Front Window
There is not a single soul on the street. The road is stretching itself out all the way towards the riverside. The heat in the air keeps rising, twists, and blurs the vision. The only tree across from my window is still flourishing, birds are resting on it and singing, and this isn’t like any summertime or anytime, but she is still waking up at the same time.
She is not sitting up, instead of lying on her right side of the bed. She looks out of the window, staring at the birds moving swiftly while slowly waiting for her body to wake up.
I know the first thing does when she wakes up is to fill up the kettle in the kitchen. She will leave it on, then go to the bathroom to take a shower. That part I can’t see, from my window I can only see her bedroom that connects with a kitchen plus a living room. This is not a spacious apartment, but she made it spacious by only placing a couple of pieces of furniture; an 18th-century writing desk with a small wooden chair, a black leather couch, a queen-size mattress lying on the floor with pure white sheets. The bathroom is on the other side of the living room blocked by a wall, and I often imagine that I can hear the water splashes when she is in the shower, imagine her blurry body shape through the steaming glass, then she comes out naked, dries herself, then stands in front of the mirror and gently applies the toner and cream on her face, all the way down to her slender neck. Her gestures are slow and elegant; all grown-up women, to me, are elegant. They become different creatures when they transform from girls.
She spends most of the morning reading and writing at the desk. The phone screen will light up constantly, but most of the time, she won’t pick it up. I like the concentration on her face. She has this cute, serious face and a frown from time to time, and occasionally she will burst into laughs, leaning her head back just to let it all out. It must be something really funny, I guess.
Every 12:30 at noon, my mom will urge me out of my room to have lunch. When I come back by the window, she is gone, and often I will find her at the kitchen eating her salad at the countertop. She doesn’t have a dining table; most of the time, she eats while standing barefoot. She leaves a space for the yoga mattress, but I didn’t see her doing yoga that much. Maybe she just likes the emptiness of the space.
The afternoon is another reading and writing session. She will pick up a couple of phone calls and chat with somebody. I guess they must be her colleagues or friends, not a boyfriend, I am sure, who wouldn’t live together during quarantine as a couple? She must be single.
In the evening, the room is empty. She will go out for a long walk, around two hours. When she comes back, she will stay in the kitchen cooking dinner and lie on the couch reading for the whole night. Before she goes to sleep, she will stand beside the window, contemplating, breathing in the fresh evening air and all the quietness. I will be on my single bed wondering, what’s in your head? What are you thinking? Who are you thinking about?
The Rear Window
My grey hair is growing contagious. It is its own army occupying one area then expanding to the next. Only a year after I divorced, I am officially an old man.
The night is quiet; from my bathroom window, under the orange lamplight, she is resting on a tiny brown leather couch. I can see her feet and head are swaying outside the couch handles, reading a book. The book cover is an oil painting of a young man from the 18th century, and I assume it is an English classic. She occasionally scratches her legs and checks her toenails. I like the way she tilts her head and bites her lips while frowning at the book, like a teenage girl stubborn enough to figure out something she couldn’t comprehend. She flips the page back and forth until her face lightens, then she puts one book down and picks up another.
This summer is stuffy and brutal, like I try to breathe in something but nothing is breathable, like we are living in the vacuum that the air has been drawn out. I see she gets up and goes back to the bedroom. The bedroom has been blocked by the wall, that part I can’t see, but I find myself imagining her lying on the bed, checking her phone, the blue screen lights up her face. She may be watching a movie or texting somebody. She might have a white silk pillowcase with her initials on it, and I don’t know why I would think she is the person who treats her sleep as a gate towards another universe.
Every early morning, I will find her in the kitchen, cooking something from a small pot while making boiling water for her French coffee pot. She will casually pick up a piece of carrot from the chopping board and put it in her mouth, or carefully taste the soup from a silver spoon. Then she will stay in the kitchen for a while, swaying with the music from the radio. I will forget the date by just looking at her, forget how unbearable the days are.
Somehow, she reminds me of my ex-wife recently. She must be so happy, trapped with her new young lover in one tiny apartment and having nothing to do but fuck each other. I find my teeth are grinding while I think that, and now my whole world is this empty apartment and the tree in front of it. The tree reaches its peak in the summer, but it’s an ugly tree, it has way too many dark green leaves, and the branches are reaching out everywhere, not trimmed, no shapes, a wild being, an untamed beast, living in the city among other savages.
By looking at her I found comfort, believe me, I know what this looks like. Me, peaking at a young woman every day from my rear window, nothing could be more creepy than this, but what’s the harm anyway, people watching the stupid movie just because they like some random celebrity, people like people with all kinds of reasons, and people consume people, that’s how we secretly wired to be a social being. No, I am not ashamed, I have no shame left.
Do You know what was the real shame? that has been left alone, has been forgotten, has been old and forgotten. I don’t know what is the point to live a life like this, but we all find hope, right? A slight light in the darkness, a vague image of a sunny day, and a light scent of spring, that we keep on moving.
The Round Window
I was born here, yes, on the goddamn spaceship. I am not sure it’s god’s realm anymore. I was born from a fertilized egg a hundred years ago on earth, and the sperm from my dad was being collected almost at the same time.
My unknown parents are probably somewhere on earth rotten into the mud.
I have been working in the human database center for nearly ten years since I graduated from college. Basically, my job is just sorting and organizing the digital archives: by timelines, by locations, by religions, by political relevance. Putting them in order, sending them to exhibit, or any department that needs to study them. This year is the anniversary of the “Space Survival”, all 250 space centers that were built 200 years ago which forecasted the end of the earth planet, all celebrated together by lighting up every room with blue lights, the blue being the color of the earth.
When I was in school, we watched a lot of videotapes about life on earth. We have similar classrooms, similar shopping malls, similar theaters, similar food markets…but not the waterfall, never the ocean, and the mysterious jungle. Instead, we have gardens and parks, but I guess they are not the same thing.
I imagined life on earth like people on earth were dreaming of life in space. The two would never cross each other; the only few people who still have faint memories about the earth are lying in the hospital counting their days. I often look at all the familiar yet strange faces in the tapes and search for the face of my mom. I know it sounds silly, without the accurate information, how could I know who she was in those documentary tapes? They are just random people or historical figures. My mom wasn’t famous, but I do know she is Asian. She was born in Shanghai, China, in 1983, grew up there, moved to the U.S. later, and died therein… most of the other records are gone.
The big migration from the earth to space was complicated, long, and brutal. It took nearly 35 years to complete; losing a couple of egg profiles compared to this is as trivial as dust.
I paid more attention to those documentaries that talked about China, Japan, or Korea. I am desperately searching for a face that might have a trace of my face, just to imagine someone is my mom, imagine her life, the place she grew up, the way her voice sounds, and the smells she has. I imagined my tiny baby hand grabbing her neck and my tiny nose resting on her shoulder, sniffing her smell, herbal or floral. Leo asked me why I wasn’t obsessed with my father. “I don’t know,” I answered. I just feel a strong connection with my mother. My father’s profile was nicely preserved, probably because he was a rich white man. “What’s wrong with the rich and white?” Leo asked again. I probably read too many political reports on earth; I am not sure which society is better, before or now, our population is too small, we can’t afford to be racist, every human being is precious. Leo reminded me that I should try “mind meeting”.
How serious and how random the name is, meeting someone’s mind in a certain space at a certain time. Can minds talk to each other? Does that change anything? On earth, there is nothing right now, all frozen, climate change happened much earlier than humans could predict, and the pandemic lasted three waves, finally wiping out most of the human beings.
After a week, I found myself sitting in front of the weird machine that looked like a round window. I was hooked up to a strange headset, then was told to put down two groups of digits one by one. The first group is altitude and latitude, and another group is time, date, month, and year.
It is a simple concept that finds any time anywhere on earth.
The theory is inspired by ancient Chinese wisdom, QICHANG, which means every human being is radiating some energy around them, and by overlaying two people’s energy together at once, people will feel each other’s existence, and you can hear vague words or see blurred images. If you both have strong QICHANG, you might be able to communicate.
My only clue is a registered utility bill of an apartment she lived in, in Brooklyn, New York. After typing the digits, I pressed down the button, and my head started to feel heavy, then I slowly fell asleep. When I wake up from my blurred vision, from the round screen, I see a woman’s silhouette sitting on the bed looking at an old version of a computer. She rubs her eyes, yawns, then turns the laptop off and buries her head in the pillow, muttering something to herself, then a minute later, she falls asleep.
The bedroom has an 18th-century writing desk, a queen-size mattress on the floor with pure white sheets. Outside the huge bedroom window, the night is quiet, and there is a big tree swaying in the wind.
