Black Sparrow
3.
"You need to chop up the tamagoyaki now," Yixun instructed me in her kitchen, teaching me how to make the dish she had loved since she was a child. She was patient and it was pleasant.
So, I helped cut the tamagoyaki from an Asian store into nice pieces. She stood nearby, fanning the sushi rice, as the steam rose, hot and tantalizing.
"Now next," she pointed with her chin at the moist and sticky smoked salmon, taking it out of its bag and leaving our hands oily, "just tear it apart the way you want it." There was a pimple near her mouth hard to not notice.
As taught, I opened the greasy packaging and, surprisingly, the fatty fish was somewhat warm to the touch. The kitchen was filled with grilled wood mixing with the aroma of vinegar in the air. So fine, so good.
Cucumber chunks were ready to be thrown into the prepared cooling rice. We then tossed some black sesame and started shedding the fragrant lobster meat. I was asked to open more boxes, this time containing fresh tuna, scallops, and seaweed. My whole hands were coated in the essence of sea.
Korean seaweed. Romaine lettuce. All fresh. Basil. Some edamame. Topped with crab meat. Drizzled with soy sauce, mayonnaise, Caesar dressing, and spicy sauce she always liked. Done and perfect.
With oily hands, she gave me salad tongs to mix everything. It was my first home-made poke. It got all the rich protein and vegetables with good sauce. Really good to be with Yixun. Wonderful summertime.
We finished the entire pot of food, enjoying it with her favorite brand of kombucha. She also wanted milkshakes for us. She put nearly half a tub of non-fat ice cream into her blender and added a lot of fresh milk, the entire bottle of it. We indulged ourselves without restraint. Clean and healthy and we were so satisfied. "OMG, we're so liberal," said she.
Michelle Chen could never appreciate this way of eating out of yin and yang balance.
Her cooking was simple, established, and harmonious.
She thought of the balance of spices, rice wine, and right time. She insisted on using ingredients fresh and clean and marinating them well.
These we were enjoying were all monotonous, tasteless, and eerie.
My world after her death resembled this random Hawaiian dish in Yixun’s kitchen, though.
Part of the Michelle Chen I was familiar with was tossed into that pot. Part of a Michelle Chen I had never known was also thrown in. Part of me that I could control was there for her, and part of me that could not be controlled was there too. Stirring and stirring, some dark corners emitted light at last, and some happy memories seemed to tilt slightly. I saw Michelle Chen waiting in line at a McDonald's. She made a payment with her phone as many message notifications kept showing.
One of the text messages may have been sent from me. "I want a Big Mac, just the chicken nuggets, I'm not into the fries."
4.
Food holds a sense of nostalgia. But when I'm traveling and start missing Taiwan, McDonald's can be on my list. Everything there makes me think of the island.
The same tables (the material seems to be the same), the same self-service ordering machines.
The same sauces (some say the sweet and sour sauce is different, but I can't taste it), the same texture of the fries and its warmth.
The same lighting. Same dreams and tears and shit.
Even the hand soap and sanitizer appear identical, with the same scent.
I often imagine some good future days in a distant exotic land I have not yet visited. Maybe I will be on a business trip or to escape. I'll recall my home city and those late nights of my younger self, whose soul was nearly parched. Then I'll find that specific restaurant, get a seat and eat my food.
Many in Taiwan who grew up in the turn of the century all know that McDonald's used to be a luxury. Adults would reward us with it. It shaped a different landscape, a gateway to taste a bigger beautiful world. Whenever a blockbuster American movie was released, McDonald's would have related its meal sets and cool new toys. Every time I ate at one of its restaurants, I felt I was in an American movie, a deluxe experience, just like learning American English, speaking it, and acquiring the attitude to sound sophisticated, all part of the extravagance of the turn of the century. But Michelle Chen 's life was far from the typical turn. I could hardly picture her in a fancy department store, let alone her dining out on her own anywhere. She never had that budget or thought, and even if she did, it was meant all for us, for practical family needs.
Receipts were something practical too, for in Taiwan it functions like lottery tickets. Chances are people actually win money from them, so receipts should be kept well.
"Never forget receipts serve a practical purpose again," lectured she. It was a Wednesday, and we were celebrating my good grades from school. Michelle Chen called a taxi, and we were on our way to McDonald's. Dizzy fancy: the taxi seemed like a private chauffeur, and Michelle Chen was the lady of the house, and the driver was to take us to some lavish occasion.
She wanted me to order food. I didn't need to ask her what she wanted to eat. She always only had the Filet-O-Fish burger, and as for the combo, anything was fine. The fries and cola, things she didn't quite grasp, I ended up eating anyway. The fries were still warm and crispy when I got rid of the annoying little receipt, which upset her.
"In the future, you probably won't be of much use, much like your dad," said she. She sounded so cool. She didn't drink anything cool, and her tone was even cooler than the ice. "The devil's in the details," quoted she.
Anything she quoted discouraged me.
As that quote, from any tiny detail, you can discern a broader picture of who you are, even who you will be. From a very small part about me, she could tell I was far away from being decent. She quoted in how she managed the household, her expectations for herself, and her expectations for me. When guests came to our home, the first thing they usually noticed was how the entire old apartment was spotless and dustless. Even every bed was meticulously made.
But nothing is perfect, and any picture of perfection can't be wanted or forced. I always failed to keep the receipts, which means in her eye I was already a loser. The Chang family faced financial troubles due to a few men's reckless investments. I never quite understood what they had invested in or what high-stakes bets they had made in the late 90s.
But when it came to eating at the American chain restaurant, deep down, I was still very happy.
Hometown had rapidly spread to every corner of the globe.
Michelle Chen also traveled to many strange worlds of it.
She could be at a McDonald's in Ho Chi Minh City, contemplating the food I wanted to eat. She could be at a McDonald's in Bogotá, pondering the hamburgers I may crave. She could just stand there, staring at the ordering tablet, making an effort to maintain her composure, and then saw my reflection on the glass.
I told her that I had drunk too much last night and wanted fried chicken today.
I told her that she was the worst mother in the world.
When I needed her, she wasn't there.
Father went off to drink, and I hadn't eaten in a long time. She wasn't there.
The water and electricity were cut off at home. She wasn't there.
When I thought of suicide, or when I was addicted to alcohol, she wasn't there.
I went for an HIV rapid test alone. She wasn't there.
My brother's health deteriorated, and Michelle Chen still wasn't there.
"You are the worst mother in the world," I told her.
But she had settled the bill and neatly tucked away a receipt from the clerk.
5.
The local train swayed back and forth. On one side, there was a green mountain wall covered in broad-leaved trees, while on the other side, there were clustered, cream-colored cement huts, outdone with corrugated iron roofs in a shade of matcha green.
"I was just thinking..." Michelle Chen fixed her gaze on those colors outside the train. She paused. She was trying her best to envision the words she wanted to say, "I never really wanted to be part in the Chang’s and suffered from all your sad shit."
The pauses in her speech intrigued me. What else was she thinking during those pauses? Had she thought about who she used to be? This Michelle Chen speaking in front of me was different from the one in the past. She spoke more, and her sarcasm had increased. I wondered if her love for me had also grown.
"The black sparrow flapped its wings again," she said, staring at the red sunset shimmering between the buildings outside.
1.
Aunt Pearl was once in our life.
She was very likely Michelle Chen 's best friend when she was still around. Michelle Chen used to return to Tainan in my uncle’s car every now and then, and sometimes I would accompany her. Of course, I was there to be the good boy who helped carry things.
Aunt Pearl's clothing store was up a flight of stairs, tucked away in a narrow alley covered in sticky green moss. There was an abandoned, boarded-up house and a messy banyan tree, a row of increasingly aged shops, and her clothing store was simply named "Pearl."
"Your mom is really good to you. Don't make her worried so much," Aunt Pearl once said while looking at the bruises on my legs, muttering to herself.
She asked me what I had done to make Dad beat me like that.
I didn't know then, and I still don't know why Dad hates me so much.
One day, for some reason I can't recall, I attended an open street banquet with Aunt Pearl. The bride and groom were quite drunk, the pole dancers were lost in their own world, and there was a melancholic woman singing a sad song. I was lying on the red stage, staring at the sorrowful woman singing her heart out. Suddenly, Aunt Pearl picked me up, and we took a taxi to leave the place.
I often thought about that sad woman. I was sure she must have been through a lot, just like having an unhappy family.
When the teacher tried to call it a day by asking if we wanted to go home quickly, everyone happily agreed. I felt so sad. I didn't want to go home at all, and I still didn't understand why my family was so strange. Why was I hated? Why was the woman sad?
2.
The streets of downtown San Francisco smelled so bad. Tents everywhere.
"Have you ever thought about killing Dad?" Michelle Chen looked at me.
Her question scared me. But there was also a hint of anger.
"What if Dad gets old?" She stood in front of a black tent, her back to me.
"What methods have you thought of to murder him?" The black tent had fallen leaves covering its top.
"Why is it only me?" I stared at the black tent. It didn’t stink. There was a crack.
"Why does Dad hate me, his own son?" I imagined my hand reaching into that crack, leading right into Michelle Chen's womb.
"Just because I'm the most special among all the children," I spoke on behalf of Michelle Chen. "Even you can't accept me."
I opened that crack, walking into my elementary school bedroom. Outside the window was a gutter, emitting a familiar and unpleasant odor mixed with the smell of stir-fry, probably in the evening. Michelle Chen and her husband confiscated my sticker books and my storybooks, believing that these things were making me fond of boys.
They were gutter rats stealing rice.
I watched them with their dim little brains, the two scumbags. I crawled out of the tent. Night street of the fallen city. Dejected.
6
I've said this to many people, and I've written about it—I want to have a child. This might be an untimely laughable fantasy, and it might easily fall into political incorrectness, but I genuinely want to have a child. It is of a purpose, an inner desire.
I spent nights searching online about whether being burned to death would be painful, whether drowning would be painful, or whether being hit by a car would be painful. I worried about the death of the child I had imagined. How much pain would the death of a child cause? I spent the night worrying about the death of the child in my head. The death of my child, the suffering before the child's death, what does that feel like? I know I don't want to know, but I also know that I seem to know.
I know that Michelle Chen was once someone else's baby girl, but they couldn't take good care of her. The island in its 60s was even more brutal, and the daily life in peacetime was a torment of details: debts, social obligations, disputes, money, love, hatred, children, aging, death. Sudden death.
When Michelle Chen was young, she fell off a train, which left her unable to walk well. However, this led her to make a greater effort to walk, even more gracefully than her own sisters.
Later, in her middle age, she always claimed to see a black sparrow in front of her, not a ghost, but a black sparrow. The black sparrow didn't move and always blocked her sights, and she didn't know what it was doing there. It became challenging for her to handle even simple tasks like picking up utensils. Once she burned her hand while working in the kitchen, and on that cold raining evening I had to go out buy our dinner. By then, I was already quite grown up, but I always thought it was just presbyopia, and she was just another old woman who fell ill. Things happen, don’t they?
Until that afternoon, she tried to cast the black sparrow out of her way. She waved her hands hard, hit the bird with an umbrella, but ended up losing her balance and falling down the stairs of our old apartment building.
7.
When you woke up, you cried, and you had to wipe away your tears. You felt utterly useless, a burden to your family. Even a simple task like taking a commuter train you couldn't do right, and it ended with you in the hospital, causing a commotion. Your family considered you more trouble than you were worth. They even said it to your face, suggesting that it would be better if you were dead, as the funeral expenses would be much lower than curing you. They didn't hold back in their harsh words, telling you that you should find a way to die if you ever fall off any train again, sparing yourself from becoming a nuisance. Your mother, in particular, was stern, berating you in front of your father with even harsher language, making you feel worthless. She said that with your legs in that condition, no man would ever marry you, not now or in the future, and that you'd never be enough to be a wife. Despite her cruel words, she still cooked nutritious chicken soup and rice porridge for you. It dawned on you that she had to scold you even harsher than your father did. She knew that your father was what you feared the most.
8.
Michelle Chen was taken to a hospital for more examinations, but the results took a long time to come back. While waiting, I finished two midterm exams, attended school band practice a few times, and in the meantime, she would sit on the couch by the balcony, staring at the black sparrow that only she could see. Finally, the results arrived, revealing that it was terminal brain cancer. It was at this moment that Michelle Chen realized that the black sparrow, which had learned to flap its wings, was the terminal illness coming to take her life. And now they were to fly.
