I am practicing addition and subtraction from 0-80, and I realize that my parents will die someday. 

I am 7. Mama is 43, Baba is 42. In 20 years they will be 63 and 62. Grandma is 60-something and she is old and sick. 

When I am 27 Mama is going to be old like Grandma. But when Mama was 27 her Mama was still young, only 40-something. 

This series of calculations fueled my anger toward my mother for not birthing me in time. I went home and laid in between my parents’ pillows. When I cried that night my Dad stroked my hair and said his sister, who is also quite old, was doing just fine. 

That same year my mom took me on a long car drive after school. I remember looking out the window in the backseat, sitting on my knees with my hands grabbing onto the windowsill. We passed all the signs and stores I knew, but she kept driving. When I asked her where we were going, she told me that she was seeing a friend. We drove out of the city, across a bridge, into another city. She fussed about the school giving us quail eggs during lunch as bird flu was on the rise. The sun had fallen far behind the mountains when we arrived. 

The friend she was visiting lived in a huge apartment complex, around 20 stories tall. Each apartment layered on top of another like kernels on a cob. A woman greeted us at the door. She was pale, her undereye red and puffy. She gestured us into her house, into the living room, the only lit place in the house. There was a single hallway trailing deep into the bedrooms, almost pitch-black at the end. Her son sunk into the sofa playing on a console, huddled by six or seven wrapped bouquets. They were yellow and white chrysanthemums, piling taller than his head, and the petals sprinkled the cushions. 

I moved the flowers out of the way and sat down to watch the boy, a couple of years older than me. He rapidly clicked his buttons as Spider-man parkours through Manhattan. My mom sat with the woman as she cried into her hands. 

“You know how he was, his heart.” The lady wept. Her voice had been strained and gravelly from days of crying. I could only gather snippets through her lament. “My son kept calling me, ‘Something happened with Baba, he’s on his bed. Can you come home?” I looked up at the woman, seeing her bloodshot eyes buried under her puffy eyelids. “‘Something is wrong with Baba.’ And he said it so calmly, sounded like nothing happened I’m telling you, and I was driving.” The boy didn’t lift his eyes from the screen, searching quest after quest with his web-shooting heroine. His mother continued as my mom furrowed her brow, I saw tears whirling in her eyes, and I turned away back to the boy. “So I told him, I’ll be back soon. What’s he doing? And my son didn’t talk. He was quiet. I asked him again, what’s going on? He just goes, as calm as before,” She choked up, her next sentence squeezed word by word through sharp sobs,  “‘Mama, come back. There’s no more air.’” 

The boy’s chest rose and fell, hidden by his hunched shoulders and lowered head. His head didn’t budge when his mom looked over at him, her cheeks wet and flushed. 

“What do I do now, son?” 

His fingers kept on clicking and twirling on his console, his gaze widened in concentration. 

“He’s so little, doesn’t understand anything.” 

His Spider-Man ran frantically in circles on a terrace, the tips of his fingers white from heavy pressing on the console.

She sighed and looked away. His fingers finally let loose, just hovering above the screen. 

I must’ve dozed off on the way home, because I don’t remember leaving that apartment. I had just closed my eyes and I was back in bed, in between my parent’s pillows. 

I don’t fear my death, I realized in a shopping mall elevator. I was 7, six months after my realization in math class. It was like the firing of a bullet, and I’ve since been waiting for it to hit the center of my chest. I looked at the movie posters pasted on the metal sides, The Croods, as the elevator rose. I realized I wouldn’t mind if I never felt anything again. 

Since then I’ve kept my intimacy with death. like a white feathered pillow, my head sinks into. It sings to me when I dangle my feet over a lake freezing over. It’s okay, the tune goes, if anything I will always die.

I'm betting on the falsehood of heaven and hell. Wake up from a dreamless slumber, from when your eyes shut to when they open again, there is a thick, thick lack of matter. I live my life praying that death is what lies in between, senseless. 

It sings to me when I dangle my feet over a lake freezing over. It’s okay, the tune goes, if anything I will always die. I hold it near, like a charm I wear on my neck. I tuck it in my inner pockets, I hold my breath, and clutch onto my trump card - I can always die. 

Sound cannot travel in space, where there isn’t oxygen. Ring and nothing, sing and nothing, scream and nothing. No waves, no traces, we are in space, aren’t we? 

There is a room in my aunt’s house where my grandma lived. I noticed it when I visited last summer. There were no doors but an overarch opening directly to the living room. The lights were turned off, so the inside was tinted grey but still visible from the living room light. In the center was a white hospital bed, with pink and orange checkered sheets and a comforter. Written behind the head of the bed were squiggly and bluntly-edged Chinese characters, mixed with some pinyin. In red crayon, my fifth cousin took up most of the tan wall in “I wish Grandpa and Grandma happy” with a plump, cheerful red heart. Below that were scattered phrases “Have the greatest hope and courage to encourage you,” “I wish grandma to live to 100 years old,” written on a bed of cartoon clouds. I stared at the wall, realizing only as I deciphered the words, how far away I’ve been. 

I’d taken the call two months ago, on a morning during spring break in Rennes. My year-long stay in France was approaching its end. My mom kept sobbing, “Mama doesn’t have her Mama anymore.” 

I sat in my bed while she cried, trying to recall the last time I saw my grandma. 

It was two summers before I went to France. I learned that hip bones can pierce the skin below when one lies in bed for as long as my grandma did. She had been staying in a different room, one that my aunt used to sleep in. My dad took my brother and me to have dinner with my aunt’s family. My mom had not made it back from America because of COVID-19 regulations. “Go tell grandma you are back.” My dad urged us. I stood behind my brother as he talked through a half-opened door, “Laolao, we came to see you.” 

My grandma couldn’t turn her head. She grunted indecipherably. I went inside to stand by her bed. Her yellowed eyes vacantly stared at the ceiling. Her mouth gaped open slightly, her scalp scarce with thin grey strands. A few croaks escaped her throat. I didn’t know what to say, looking down at her shriveled arms. 

I try to comfort my mother, but my hands can’t reach through the glass screen. 

I’ve never taken silence as solace, but I pray that she will because she can’t see my muted lips parted. She will call me a few days later and ask if I still remember her, remember when she would pick me up from kindergarten and raise me high into the air, and I’ll tell her, I do, I do.