Every morning, I greet my mother’s ghost. Today, she is in the little, red alarm clock on my bedside table. She is defunct. The alarm clock, I mean. My mother’s ghost is very much alive. Just yesterday, she cruised in on the gust of wind that went straight for Professor McCormick’s book of annotations. A month ago, I found her tucked into the tiny, chipped keyhole in the door to my off-campus apartment. And she was there the morning Sam lifted me onto the cold, metal railing in Linsly Memorial Library and reached between my legs for the first time.

     She was a bird, then. Not a pigeon, but one of those little brown fuckers with white, puffed-up chests. She knocked madly against the single, square window, through which the last spools of autumnal sun tumbled. They left black spots in my field of vision. Negative space. Mynose itched; I hadn’t thought to tie my hair up. I didn’t realize how sweaty things could get. How sticky.

     “Wish it would just shut the fuck up,” Sam had muttered. Then giggled, though he couldn’t quite mask his nervousness at the time. He still can’t.

     “Maybe you should see someone,” he tells me on occasion.

     “I’m seeing you.”

     His fingers curl somewhere deep inside my body, and I almost forget to moan. “I mean a professional.”

     I’ve noticed she leaves, most days, with the sun. The first time, I wondered if she would ever return. But I know better, now. It is never a question of if, but when. Where.

 

     In the bathroom, I avoid looking at my reflection. I have taken to staring at the wall, every time I brush my teeth. Once in a while, I see my mother’s ghost in the foam I spit out. Especially when it’s pink. Then, I turn on the faucet and watch her ride the whirlpool down the drain.

     I am back home now, “home” meaning New Jersey. This means I pass the kitchen on the way to the living room. I do not need to look to know my father is preparing a breakfast of congee. But I do so, anyway.

     “Hi, Baba.”

     My father is the kind of man who appears small and unassuming, until you draw closer and find yourself standing, quite literally, in his shadow. He glances at me, grunts, and returns to ladling congee from a burnished, metal pot.

     Summer recess began yesterday. It is storming today. Rain comes down in needles from the heavens. Already north facing, the living room would have been dark as dusk, if not for the yellow overhead lights my father installed a couple years ago. I take a seat at the small, round dining table. There is already a bowl of congee, spiked with bits of meat and fish, waiting for me. Blue, raised designs adorn the outside of the porcelain bowl. Dragons and fenghuang and flowers. I take a bite of pork. It burns my tongue.

     My father joins me at the table. He mutters a few words in English; only the “amen” comes through clearly. Then, there is a clattering of bamboo against porcelain. My father eats loudly. Scarfs it down. It means he is really enjoying the food. Or perhaps he has yet to outgrow the scarcity mindset that comes part and parcel with an impoverished childhood in rural, 1960s China. My mother used to tease him for his table manners, that he would eventually burn a hole in his throat. She could say things like that; she’d grown up the same way, too. But I couldn’t. I could never.

     My father sighs and sets aside his empty bowl. He can never quite look me in the eye. I have trouble maintaining eye contact, too.

     “Your internship begins next week,” my father says.

     “Yes.” I managed to snag a part-time research position in the Riverly Museum’s archives department. So it’s not really an internship. But I do not have the words for it in Mandarin. I often speak English at home. As a nurse, however, my father possesses only a highly esoteric knowledge of English, which means I cannot do away with Mandarin altogether.

     “Do you need the car?” he asks.

“No. I can walk.”

     “Do you still see your mother’s ghost?”

     I stare down at my bowl of congee. “No.” Steam moistens my cheeks. I fish a bone from between my teeth. It is nearly translucent. “Not right now.”

     A loud, prolonged sigh comes from the other end of the table. (I call it the “end,” even though a circle has no end.)

     “There are no ghosts, Jenny,” my father chides. “Only fallen angels.”

     I say nothing. Only wait for him to continue. He picks up his chopsticks, then sets them back down again.

     “The minister believes you are being deceived,” my father says. Whispers, really. As if he’s worried the ground will open beneath our feet and Hell will swallow us whole if Satan knows we’re onto him.

     I eat my congee grain by sticky grain, until all I see is my mother’s ghost, peeling herself from the sides of the porcelain bowl.

     “Is that what you believe?”

***

     I went home for spring break, while everyone else, Sam included, headed to Cancún. He offered to stay behind. But I told him to go. At this point, my mother was five months dead, and her ghost had already made herself known.

     I stayed in my room until the smell of fish sauce tickled my nostrils. Dinner was a simple affair. Edible. There was a small bowl of roasted Costco chicken and a larger plate of watercress. But it was the fish that drew my eye.

     “Mackerel,” my father grunted.

     I nodded, as if we would not repeat this small ceremony the next evening and the evening after that. Steam rose from the fish in silvery tendrils. It stared at me with its one dead eye. Mackerel. Trout. Bass. I could never tell the difference. My father bought them all live from the single pan-Asian supermarket that stood within driving distance. Often, he watched, hands clasped behind his back, as the butcher hammered the creatures to death. As a child, I had watched, too. We always ate the fish whole—brains and eyes and guts and all.

     My father cleaved the mackerel in two, as he had done a hundred times before. He was going in for a second bout when my heart suddenly spasmed.

     “Stop, stop, stop!” I cried.

     My father froze, the point of his knife quivering centimeters from the fish.

     “Don’t you see her? She’s right there!” I stood, fumbled for my chopsticks, and, gingerly, peeled apart the marigold yellow sac. “Right there, in the eggs.” I was panting. At some point, I had switched to Mandarin. “Ba?”

     My father was quiet for a moment. Then, he set down the knife and murmured, gently, “Yes… yes, I see her now.” He said it to placate me. I knew this to be true because he wasn’t looking at the gutted fish as he spoke. He was looking at me.

     This time, my mother’s ghost did not leave with the sun. So, for the rest of the evening, the mackerel remained untouched. An invitation for every fruit fly in the universe. The next morning, however, the fish was gone. I felt my father watching me from the kitchen, as if the realization that he had done away with the mackerel might just destroy me. But how could it? How could it when my mother’s ghost wasn’t wading through the dead eggs, anymore? No—she was zooming between the overhead lights, sparking and popping like a rogue firecracker.

     I took a seat at the dining table and dug into the bowl of congee my father had set out. A moment later, the man himself came to sit beside me. There was something my father wanted to say. He kept opening his mouth, only to cough, theatrically, as if the words kept missing his tongue. Or maybe they were catching in his throat like an errant fishbone. Was that where the mackerel had gone? I wondered. Instead, I asked, “Do you need some water, Baba?”

     “Will you go to church with me?”

     I stared at him, uncomprehending.

     “It will be my third time,” my father confessed. His hands were clasped so tightly together, the knuckles had turned white. “It is not far from here. I can drive us. The minister… he is a very nice man. He speaks well. Listening to him… it is like music, really. They have real music, too. A choir. A pianist.” All of this, my father expressed haltingly. In Mandarin. His wrists shook, and I thought I could hear the bones rattle. My father had always been slender, but his clothes had never hung from his body like heavy drapes before. Not as they did now.

     I stared at the overhead lights. I stared until they blurred into a single, yellow mass. Then, I said, “Okay.”

 

     It was a ten minute drive away, the Presbyterian church. We could have walked it. But walking would have added another twenty minutes, and there was only so much my father and I had to say to one another. From my father, I inherited not only narrow, shifting eyes, but also delicate hips and a certain, unshakable reticence. In the weeks following my mother’s death, her absence was most apparent in the thick rivers of silence that ran through the hallways of our apartment. There was a game I used to play as a child, one that involved pretending the floor was lava. Or quicksand. It was an easy game. The trick was to not fall in. The trick was to not drown.

     Finding parking was difficult on a Sunday. Once we did, we quickly climbed the worn front steps to the church. Inside, colorful mosaics spanned one wall. Rows upon rows of pews stretched across the wooden floor. It was freezing. But no one else seemed to mind; everywhere I looked, I found bare arms and legs. I surveyed the crowd and glimpsed not a single goosebump. Only a sea of blue and green and hazel eyes, fixed, perhaps, on my brown ones. We took our seats at the very back of the church, next to a very blond family of three. They smiled, maybe a little nervously. I pretended not to see.

     The minister was a short, balding man. He beamed indulgently at his flock, fiddled with his spectacles, and opened up the heavy tome lying before him. At once, my father squared his shoulders; his spine uncurved. I could not bear to look at him for a second longer.

     The minister had begun intoning. I listened for the music my father promised and found none of it. His words washed over me like water upon a cliff-face. It would take centuries for them to leave a mark. And I would be long gone by then.

     Or maybe I would still be here. Like my mother’s ghost, which was lingering, now, in the mosaics, ping ponging between the saints’ eyes. How totally blasphemous. I laughed. The minister stuttered to a halt. My father buried his head in his hands and wept.

***

     The buzzer rings. But before I can even think to stand, my father has intercepted the intercom.

     “Who is it?” I ask. I am genuinely curious; we so rarely receive visitors. And he so rarely moves with such alacrity.

     My father looks at me, then looks away. But not before I catch the shadows in his eyes. Guilt. Shame. My blood grows cold.

     “Baba, who is it?”

     A knock on the door. Slowly, my father reaches out a hand and pulls it open. I stand. And in steps a tall, broad-shouldered woman. She nods at my father, then turns to me. Her perm is beginning to grow out. Her lips are painted a deep maroon.

     “Hello, Jenny,” the woman says.

     “Hi, Auntie.”

     She grins. I force my fists to unfurl. She has my mother’s eyes.

     “Breakfast, Zixin?”

     I stare at my father. I had nearly forgotten he was there. He looks like an abandoned marionette, with his arms hanging limply at his sides. I train my gaze on the hairline crack in the far wall. Pretend I was the one who put it there.

     “No need,” Zixin replies. Her English carries only the hint of an accent. “I brought my own.” I catch a whiff of heavy perfume as she glides past me. Lilies, maybe. Or jasmines. Seconds pass before a flicker of light catches my attention. I follow it to the tail-end of a cigarette, hanging loosely from her lips.

     Every part of Zixin is an untamed fire, from her burgundy hair to the crimson scarf draped across her shoulders. She even reeks of smoke. All the flowers in the world couldn’t mask the scent. It is not the only thing my mother hated about her.

     I glance at the fire alarm. I consider telling Zixin that it is a sensitive device, then decide against it. I almost wish it would go off. I almost wish the apartment would really burn.

***

     I was eight when I had my first real birthday party. Eight had a fortuitous feel to it—at least, that was what my father claimed. I wore my hair in two thick braids and invited everyone from school. They gasped with delight at the tiny paper lanterns my parents had put up, in lieu of balloons. We were at that age when difference still invited wonder rather than suspicion.

     “I think we have more lanterns,” I offered eagerly, and set off in search of the cardboard box where we’d shoved the rest of the decorations.

     Instead, I found my mother crying.

     She was crouched in the shadows with her fist jammed between her crooked teeth. The tears had created some sort of glue; strands of short, jet hair plastered her cheeks. She had not wanted to be found—that much I knew, even as a child. Or else, why would she have squirreled herself away in the walk-in closet, where we kept all the things we no longer needed, but could not quite let go?

     I had never seen an adult cry before. It was unnerving. I remember my hands started to sweat. I didn’t know what to say. So I said nothing. Only waited for her to speak.

     “You have her mouth.”

     I spoke to no one about this incident. Not even when I found out, years later, that I shared the same birthday as my mother’s sister.

***

     Zixin leaves for the afternoon and misses lunch. Sitting across from my father at the dining table, I consider asking him why she is here. But the words quell in my throat. I think I am afraid to know. I think I already know.

     At dinner, my father muddles through grace. He and Zixin eat loudly. With a third person, there are fewer leftovers. For a moment, I waver in the kitchen and stare into the refrigerator’s open belly. Then, I return to the living room. My father and Zixin make small talk about his nameless patients, her nameless pupils, his take on the rising price of poultry, her take on the state of healthcare in the nation. Occasionally, they bring me into the conversation. It is past eleven when my father excuses himself. He says he has to prepare his bed for Zixin. He will be sleeping in the living room, for as long as she remains our guest.

     My father leaves, and a hush descends. Suddenly, Zixin stands and strides over to the kitchen. I hear a cabinet opening, the soft rustle of rummaging, the faucet squeaking on, and, finally, the stove stuttering to life. Seconds tick by, transforming into minutes. I consider slipping away, back to my room. But that would mean walking past the kitchen. That would mean feeling her eyes burn twin holes into my spine.

     Indecision is my greatest enemy. Soon, I hear the whistle of a kettle, and Zixin is, once more, seated at the dining table. She places a plain, blue mug before me and pours a stream of scalding water into its depths. At once, the tea leaves scattered across the bottom begin their strange, underwater dance. I thank her. My window of opportunity has closed.

     Zixin hums. She can carry any tune. I suppose this is why she can charge parents thousands to teach their children “Hot Cross Buns.” I suppose this is why there was never any music in our household. She passes a hand over the open roof of her mug. There is a snowman on it. And a bit of ash on her collar. Or maybe it is only lint. I am still debating between the two when, suddenly, Zixin interrupts her own humming:

     “I see her, too, you know.”

     I tense, then fight hard to keep my eyes from rolling right out of my head.

     Her lip curls. The red, somehow, never bleeds. “You don’t believe me?”

     “I never said that.”

     “Our bodies do all the talking.”

     I say nothing. Let her read into that one. Zixin lights a cigarette and, slowly, deliberately, points at the kettle. Her lips part. Smoke rises. She speaks:

     “Your mother’s ghost is right there.”

 

     Sam is already on when I open Zoom. It is almost midnight. He holds up a pale hand in greeting. His face is five pixels. So is mine.

     Your mother’s ghost is right there.

     I press my thumb against the screen, and my face suddenly disappears. There is an easier way to do this. “Hide Self View.” For people who cannot stop looking at their own faces. Not for people who cannot stop looking away.

     Your mother’s ghost is right there.

     “Did you get your Anthro grade yet?” Sam asks. He’s wearing a Yankees baseball cap, even though he’s alone in his bedroom. Sprigs of straw-like hair poke out from the sides. He’s balding, but does not wish people to know it.

     Your mother’s ghost is right there. I shake my head. “I’ll let you know when I do, though.”

     Sam nods, but offers no assurance of his own. It doesn’t bother me; this is how most premeds are like. This is how Sam is like. We’ve known each other for two years now. He asked me out twice before I finally agreed to let him touch me.

     “How are things at home?” Sam asks. “How’s your dad?”

     Your mother’s ghost is right there. I shrug. “Good.” I keep my voice down. The walls here are terribly thin, and my father knows nothing of Sam’s existence. “My aunt’s here.”

     “You have an aunt?”

     Your mother’s ghost is right there. “How’s Connecticut?”

     His face freezes mid-speech. He has a ghastly expression on; indeed, at this very moment, he looks like one of those white-sheeted ghosts you see in cartoons. If only they knew. I laugh. He unfreezes.

     “What’s so funny?” Sam asks in a stutter. He isn’t really stuttering. The audio simply isn’t transmitting well.

     I shrug again. “Nothing, really.”

     “Connection’s kind of spotty.”

     Your mother’s ghost is right there. “Sorry. It’s probably on my end.” I glance at the wooden clock on the far wall. “Should we go camera off?”

     “No, that’s okay. I like seeing your face.”

     I search for a smile and find one.

     “I miss you,” Sam murmurs. I see his lips mouth the words before his voice follows on a lag.

     “Me, too.”

     A pause. I count the seconds. Then: “So, show me.”

     I lock the door. I take off my clothes. All the while, my mother’s ghost watches me from her perch on the hour hand, so close to 12.

***

     I tried asking her a question once. Just once.

     “Did you have to leave me?”

     She was at the bottom of my mug that day, gazing up at me through the murky dregs. The tea scalded my throat on the way down, but I drank and drank and drank until it hurt to breathe.

     And still she said nothing. I heard only the memory of my mother’s voice, ringing in my head:

     Careful, now, or you’ll burn a hole in your throat.

     It rained that morning. I think I can still taste it on my tongue.

***

     My father is already gone when I shuffle into the kitchen the next morning. Which means it is just me and Zixin and my mother’s ghost. She was in the cactus when I woke up—the small one I keep on my windowsill. She has never flowered a day in her life. There is not nearly enough sun for it.

     In the living room, I linger by the couch. There’s a pillow, a floral blanket, and, peeking out from beneath it, a gray sheet. Rumpled. Signs of life. All last night, I listened for the telltale creak of that one loose floorboard in the hallway beyond. The sky was lightening by the time I drifted off. But all I really wanted to do was curl up in the middle of the hallway. Let my body form the gate that kept us all from tumbling off the very edge of the universe.

     I spend most of the day shut up in my room, pretending to watch Netflix. I say “pretend” because I have an audiobook going at the same time and the captions off, so I haven’t any context for why the protagonist is crying. Why she is kissing that boy. Why she is gripping a loaded gun between pale, shaking fingers.

     When the clock strikes eight, I pause the show and the audiobook. In the kitchen, I prepare a fresh platter of bok choy and heat up leftovers for everything else. My father returns just as I finish setting the table. Zixin returns just as he begins saying grace. I didn’t know she’d even left the apartment; I had my audiobook on far too loud.

     Dinner is over quickly. Again, my father is the first to leave. He has had a long day, he apologizes. He is in desperate need of a shower.

     I feel Zixin’s eyes on me as she pours us both mugs of fresh tea.

     “Did you ever learn music?” she asks.

     “No.”

     Amusement lights up Zixin’s eyes. “Not even how to play the recorder?” She makes the motion with her hands, fingers pressing down on invisible key holes. “Isn’t that what American grade schools have their children learn?”

     “I don’t think it really counts,” I say.

     “So, you did learn.”

     “I don’t think it really counts,” I repeat. Louder, this time, bordering on insolence.

     But Zixin only grins and declares, “All music is music.”

     I take a sip of tea. It burns my tongue. She hums quietly, and I almost miss her next words:

     “You have a boy.”

     “No.” I manage to keep my voice steady. But there is little I can do about the heat that creeps up my neck.

     Her smile widens, and I can hear her voice echoing in my head: Our bodies do all the talking.

     “A white boy,” Zixin continues. She doesn’t really say that, though; she says gui lao. Ghost person. And I am reminded, suddenly, of Sam’s face, turned ghastly by a poor signal.

     Something about my expression must please Zixin. Her dark eyes gleam. She leans toward me and asks, in near-perfect English, “Does he make you sing like a bird?”

     “Are you sleeping with my father?”

     “No,” Zixin replies, after a brief pause. She smiles a bemused smile, but she has straightened once more; her back is to the chair now. “Your father is in bed with God. But this is nothing you do not already know.” She takes out a cigarette, holds it between two thick-knuckled fingers, but does not light it. “I did not come for him, Jenny.”

     I say nothing. Only wait for her to continue.

     For a moment, Zixin grows quite still; her jaw stiffens, her hands come to a transient rest upon the table. And when she speaks, her lips barely move, and I can almost trick myself into believing it is nothing more than the echo of her voice I hear.

     “You believe your mother’s ghost is haunting me.”

     But I have never heard these words before—not in her voice, nor in anyone else’s. None, but in my own.

     “Perhaps she is,” Zixin continues. Slowly, her body reanimates. It is like watching a statue come to life. “The problem is, you cannot really hate someone without first loving them.” She looks at me. She tilts her head to one side. Only then do I notice her hand is shaking. “But this is nothing you do not already know.”

     I go to bed with no intention of sleeping. Instead, I lie on my back, limbs sticking straight out, and watch the show. My curtains don’t close all the way, so every movement on the street beyond plays out across my ceiling. A never-ending parade of headlights and shadows. I used to make up stories for the silhouettes that scudded past. It was wrong of me; I was never the playwright. I was only ever the audience.

     When my phone buzzes, the whole bed vibrates, like it’s caught in the aftershock of an earthquake. It’s nothing so monumental, though. I know this even before I reach for my phone and gaze up at the white text. From Sam. I miss you.

     I toss my phone into the laundry bin, pull the sheets up over my head, and force my eyes shut.

***

     October recess was five days long. It was awkwardly situated and far too short a period of time for anyone to really do anything with it. I had made the mistake, my first year of college, of going back to New Jersey; in doing so, I had unwittingly set up the expectation that all my future October recess plans would involve a trip home.

     I clambered out of bed and switched on the desk lamp. White light flooded the glass panels, the skin of my wrist. I was only a month and a half into the semester, but already I was behind on my readings. Or maybe some part of me had learned to procrastinate. Learned that I could wear a mountain of schoolwork as a suit of armor. I glanced at the clock, then at the red and gold calendar directly beneath. A cartoon dragon danced in the background. It was too easy to fall into the habit of counting down the number of days until classes started once more.

     A muffled crash! came from the direction of the kitchen. I sighed and tugged on my headphones. It was impossible to get anything done here. With each subsequent trip back home, it felt as if the apartment was shrinking in size. Surely, one day, I would return, only to find myself squeezing through the plastic doorway of a dollhouse.

     “You’re welcome to visit at any time,” Sam had offered, to which I only chuckled and said, “I wouldn’t want to intrude.” I rubbed my eyes and fiddled with my pen. Sam really was a nice guy. Perhaps I should not have been so dismissive.

     I had just worked through an analysis of Hegel and was skimming a passage from my Colombian history textbook when the door burst open. Indignation already smarting on my tongue, I whipped off the headphones and sprang out of my seat.

     “I thought I told you to knock—?”

     The words were barely out of my throat when the air whooshed from my lungs.

     “Jenny…” my father whispered. He shook all over. He was red all over. “Your mother… you didn’t… Jenny, she…”

     It was impossible to name the sensation that overcame me. Only that it felt as if the ground was opening beneath my feet. Only that it felt as if the walls were closing in. And then I was sprinting for the hallway. But my father, moving with the alacrity of a man half his age, had already slammed the door in my face. For a moment, I could do nothing but stare at the obtrusive panel of wood, streaked with fresh blood. Then, I grabbed the doorknob and pulled. It barely budged.

     “What are you doing?” I whispered. Then, shrieked, “Baba, what’s going on?! Let me out!” I strained at the knob, rammed at the door, kicked at the hinges with all the strength I could muster. “Let me out! You can’t do this to me! Ma, make him stop! Mama… Mama, please!”

     My father’s voice came low on the other side, and between my own frantic pleas, I caught snippets of broken English:

     “911… emergency… my wife… kitchen… cranial trauma…”

     “Please… Mama, please… Mama… Mama… Ma… Ma…”

     “… I think she is dead.”

***

     It storms again on Saturday. When my father returns from work, he opens his plaid-patterned umbrella, sending rain droplets spattering across the living room, and sets it out beneath the far window, where my mother’s ghost peeks out between the blinds. I see the irony in it.

     Zixin is not carrying an umbrella when she pushes open the front door, but neither is she soaked through. She must not have been out for long; she must not have gone far.

     Dinner consists of steamed broccoli, defrosted char siu, and more Costco chicken. I wonder what excuse my father will conjure up this time. Perhaps something about the rain and his aching joints. Or maybe his stomach just feels funny.

     I’m wrong. He doesn’t bother with an excuse. The second his plate empties, my father rises and makes his quiet escape. I wonder where exactly he goes. Perhaps one of the two bathrooms. Or the walk-in closet. Maybe my father has learned how to make himself even smaller.

     Humming softly, Zixin takes a napkin from the rumpled stack on the table and busies herself with folding it end over crinkled end.

     “Why are you here?” The words leap off my tongue before I can stop them. Loud. Past the very edge of insolence.

     For a moment, Zixin says nothing. Only continues to hum. The ends of her hair are still damp with rain. They leave dark spots on the fabric of her green blouse. Her fingers never stop moving. They are steady, and in them, I recognize the steps to a crane.

     “She was a wonderful singer, your mother,” Zixin finally says. “Such a lovely voice. Your grandmother believed she could call down the heavens themselves.”

     “I wouldn’t know.”

     Zixin stares at me, then, and there is a look in her eyes that I cannot name. A look that forces my gaze away. And suddenly, I regret speaking.

     “Your mother’s ghost often left with the sun, didn’t she?”

     A beat passes. In the silence, I wish there was something for my fingers to do. I wish my body could become illegible.

     “She came to me at night, usually,” Zixin continues. “I’ve always had trouble sleeping, even when I was just a child. A design flaw. So many visits from the town physician. There was nothing anyone could do about it. We, humans, are such immutable creatures.”

     I say nothing. Only wait for her to continue.

     “She’s here, now, always, isn’t she?”

     I close my eyes. And in the darkness, her voice comes softly:

     “Ask me again. Ask me why I’m here.”

     But I am quiet. I don’t know why. I don’t know how I can possibly be at a loss for words when she’s already given them to me. When I’ve already given them to her. I blink my eyes open and stare down at the rows of white crescents slanting across my palms.

     Ask me again. Ask me why I’m here. And I am about to, when it dawns on me. That I was never truly at a loss for words; that I simply hadn’t found the right ones. Slowly, I lift my gaze. Her eyes flicker like twin lamps.

     “Where was she?” I whisper. “Where was your sister’s ghost when she first came back for you?”

     The lamps go out. The crane, so close to life, comes apart upon the curve of her palm. “In my metronome.”

***

     For a while, after my mother died, I took to cocooning myself. Anything went—blankets and comforters, all the winter jackets and floral drapes and Hello Kitty towels I could get my hands on. Google told me I wanted to feel, once more, my mother’s warm caress. Another theory suggested that I yearned for the sensation of floating in the womb again. Or maybe, in simulating the experience of being buried alive, I sought only to establish an empathic link to the deceased.

     I think there might be another explanation. I think, as I lay alone in the dark, I wished only to be found.

***

     When morning arrives, I pull on my last clean outfit. Three slow steps take me to the mouth of the hallway, where I catch my father with one loafered foot out the peeling front door. It is unseasonably cool today. Still, air conditioning coils in through the open doorway, creating an atmospheric gradient. When my father notices me, he steps noiselessly back over the raised threshold. He is good at moving like that. Moving through life like the dead.

     “You should eat,” my father offers in greeting. He is wearing a striped button down two sizes too big and a pair of dusty, gray slacks. I suppose this is what people mean by their “Sunday best.”

     I nod. “I will.”

     “I heated up some you tiao for you and Auntie.”

     “Thank you.”

     “Are you ready for your internship?”

     “Yes.”

     “It is also your birthday tomorrow.”

     “It is.”

     “Auntie will be leaving after we celebrate.”

     “Okay.”

     He nods. This is the most we have spoken in days. My father is halfway through the door again when he hesitates, then steps back in. A tremor runs along the length of his jaw, and when he speaks once more, as I knew he would, his voice is barely louder than the silence it breaks.

     “If you see her again, will you tell her something for me?”

     I say nothing. Only wait for him to continue.

     “Will you tell her I miss the way she says my name?”

     I wait for the front door to rattle shut before returning to my bedroom. Then, I scour the place for my phone, only to find it nestled between three and a half pairs of dirty socks. Kneeling on the cold wood, I stare down at the screen. Sam has called me twice. I’m at 32% battery. He has texted me, too:

     Are you ok?

     I’m worried about you, can you please respond?

     Are you mad at me?

     You know I didn’t mean it that way, I miss all of you

     Sam unsent a message

     I think I love you Jen

     Slowly, I rise, walk over to the closet, and dump its wrinkled contents onto my bed. I am just about to disappear when a knock sounds upon the door. It creaks as it opens, as Zixin glides past me and surveys the gutted landscape.

     “Did you sleep?” I ask.

     “No.”

     So we slip under. I’m at 30% when I open the App Store and 26% when “Digital Metronome” completes its download. In the imperfect dark, my phone lights up both our faces. I look at the screen, then at Zixin. She isn’t so red anymore. I can see why they loved her.

     “What does ‘adagio’ mean?” I whisper.

     She breathes once, deeply, and on the exhale, she speaks: “Slow.”

     I’m at 23% when I click “Start.”

 

     I know how the rest goes. When we wake, it will be dark, and we will be drenched in our own sweat. My phone will be long dead, and there will be nothing left for me to do but toss it back in with my dirty socks. I’ll remember where it is, this time. But it won’t matter if I don’t.