The Astonishing Color of After: Chapters 45–66

He leads us to a bench, where we sit for a spell, watching two little kids chase each other around the small playground. On the other side, there's a gazebo over a table.

Feng describes something with her hands, drawing wide circles, looking almost like a caricature.

The album cover shows a rosy-cheeked woman, her black hair curled and fluffed, the expression on her face soft and demure.

There are also sautéed greens I don't recognize, red sausage slices, and ruddy blocks of either a paste or tofu.

"...her mother pulled her aside and said, ‘Yuanyang, you don't have to marry him. You've been such a good daughter. You have such a good heart. Do what you want. Live your life and be happy.' So their betrothal was broken."

I try to imagine a provincial life spent on the mountains, picking tea, not going to school.

She taught her how to coax the chickens back after they'd had a scare, how to bind up strands of firecrackers to sell for Lunar New Year.

If I close my eyes, there’s a strong sense of vertigo, like I'm free-falling through a huge, dark chasm.

Behind my eyelids, I can see my mother’s careful hands roving over the keys, feeling out the tune and its roots and its peaks, her eyes closed, the expression on her face suffused with the sepia hues of nostalgia, with viridian music.

"From when you were still...living in Taiwan?" I asked tentatively.

She had a handful of melodies in her arsenal that she'd made up or something, and she would play them again and again in different ways, sometimes with a little smile tugging at the edges of her mouth, sometimes with her eyes closed, looking wistful.

It’s like my old Coffee Grind recordings in the back of the office closet—who the hell wants to listen to a bunch of derivative crap played by mediocre twentysomethings?

And normally this was the moment when I would pull on the gauntlets and steel myself for a fight, but I needed him in a good mood if he was going to answer any of my questions.

“I even remember what she was wearing,” he mused.

"Our first Valentine's Day she actually called me at eight in the morning—that was when she was back in Taiwan and I was still in Chicago—and she said she'd written me a poem and would I like to hear it. I told her of course, and she proceeded to read me this little ditty. It was about lips and flowers and bees."

I’m sick of remembering. Weary of the shadows and storms being tugged to the surface of my mind, mauve spilling into raw umber.

I need bigger waves, a looser weave, a larger net. I have to get this right so I can catch the bird. A sigh of frustration, and fingers relinquish their grip.

Those tiny fingers tear at the paper, stripping it off with noisy gusto to reveal a beautiful leather case.

Glass cases have been set up to display three-dimensional things: abstract wire sculptures, papier-mâché, glazed ceramic pots and vases.

Mom walks past every piece of art—even the ones that are obviously not mine—hunting for the corresponding placard and checking for my name.

It was a blustery February day, over halfway through my freshman year.

I'd seen her like this before, listless and unresponsive, but this time it felt dangerous.

I had the fleeting thought that everything would be right again.

His fingers traced the edge of a cushion that had begun to fray.

He seems to be in charge of a steaming vat: Little golden rounds float on the surface of a dark soup.

I'm seething so much my stomach is clenching and my insides hurt and I want to spit out every furious thought that comes to mind.

“What, about this"—I gestured to my pajamas, sketchbook, and half a dozen pencils strewn out next to my breakfast—“indicates that I'd want to go somewhere totally not interesting, and make fake new friends who I'll never speak to again, and be away from my actual friends, just to do a bunch of trust falls and get eaten alive by diseased mosquitoes—"

Axel dumped out the contents of his bag. "Provisions!”
We sat cross-legged on the bed and feasted on handfuls of Frosted Flakes and salt-and-vinegar chips.

Why would Axel do that? Axel, your best friend, and pretty much the world's most upstanding person.

Somehow in the last few years his wiry limbs had thickened and toned up.

“I didn't want to upset you, all right? There's a lot of stigma surrounding it, and there was the possibility of side effects—"

“Shock treatment is very much misunderstood. I needed the doctor to explain it to me, too. They gave her a muscle relaxant, and they put her to sleep. Then they applied an electric current to induce a quick seizure, change the brain chemistry. She doesn't even remember it."

We watch, transfixed, as it pushes its way out of the back, where the shell has opened like a costume unzipped.

Did my mother ever get to see a cicada molting?
Did she wish that she could do exactly that? Shed her skin and be someone new?

A huge gale sweeps past us, blowing hair all around my face and making my grandmother’s tunic billow violently.

She gestures emphatically, pointing at the spilled ink. It takes me a moment to understand: She recognizes that piece of paper.

My father carefully folds these things into a protective folio, paper-clips his letter to the outside, and slides it all into a large yellow envelope.

“I will," Jingling says to mollify her mother.

Strewn throughout the ashes: flame-eaten letters, leftover corners that used to be whole photographs. A singed length of string that must have tied together a bundle of envelopes.

That net I wove from my shirts has been half consumed, and what's left of it is charred and disintegrating.