She used to smell deeply of Tiger Balm, as if the menthol had seeped into each of the pores in her skin, and she’d become one with the Tiger Balm. She smelled like Tiger Balm when she’d shuffle up the stairs, luggage in hand, and when she’d pull a plastic house from her red fleece jacket. It was August in Chicago, I didn’t know why she needed that red fleece jacket. I think it made her happy that she was comfortable. Perhaps she enjoyed knowing that she’d be prepared for weather changes. I’d never asked why she wore it so often; all I knew was that her red jacket held the house.
The little house was only plastic, but it might as well have been glass; in my hands it was so delicate. The roof lifted off and there was a spoon in the house. The house smelled like Tiger Balm, but it was clean on the inside. When I shook it, the sound of the spoon tapping the plastic on the inside became the sound of a jade bangle on glass.
To mourn the living is a different thing: a beautiful glass house becomes plastic. The smell of Tiger Balm becomes medicinal. So when I hear the shuffle of shoes on the carpets, luggage in hand, there are two realities I’ve lived many times.
The first reality is if she comes up the stairs, luggage, in hand. She smells like Tiger Balm. She hugs me as if I were her granddaughter, which in this reality I am. She gives me a hongbao I love you and she pulls the house from her red jacket, and it is glass. She’s opened the roof and filled it with colorful candies and sweets. She brushes my hair beside the guest bed, her jade bangle tapping my neck when she winds a rubber band around my hair. Such pretty hair, she’d say. I scoop candies from the glass house and they taste like chocolate and the smell of Tiger Balm. There are five dollars in the hongbao. What a grand gesture of love: five dollars means two ice creams–one for me, and one for her.
The second reality is if she comes up the stairs, luggage in one hand, hand railing in the other. I hear the shuffling of feet and the tapping of a jade bracelet on the wooden rail. She does not hug me, she does not notice me, which is on purpose. She’s been telling people she has dementia for seven years, a questionable truth. She smells like Tiger Balm because her knees are in pain; I use Tiger Balm when mine are. Hongbao she says, handing me the red envelope. She tells me how much there is. Too much but no, it seems to mean less than two ice creams. She doesn’t have the house, and I know it’s somewhere in her damp basement, plastic yellowed. She says she doesn't remember the house. Then, she remembers other things with perfect clarity: all the ways I’ve wronged her, and I no longer know what's true. I don't know what I deserve to hear. She yells, and I listen and I don’t. It is hard to tell which I do, but I don’t listen.
And in ways I think of the old her. The times I’ve relived as a little girl where bad trips were one in ten, where plastic houses were rare. I was lucky to grow up in a kingdom of glass houses. A sad tale of good times relived over and over until they stopped coming. So I’m stuck listening to the shuffle of her feet, luggage in hand, asking myself whether or not she’s holding the guide rail. And I’m stuck in a loop where there are two outcomes, and I hope she takes the first one where I am truly her granddaughter, and I know she won’t, for I too am a different person now. 12Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhiL6DLW1XS
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