I am sleeping on my mother’s lap as if I have resorted back to the breast feeding stage, with my cheek close to her chest and with one arm around her waist. She is sitting on a stool and we are close to the washroom with a squat toilet that drops waste onto the railway tracks. We are in the corridor between two carts, rocking to the motion of the intercity transportation. It was a make-your-own-seat ticket, the only ticket she could get for a last minute commute from Chengdu, my childhood city to her childhood city, Chongqing, a distance of 200 miles.
My aunt is lying on the bed, a queen sized bed, in one of the rooms of my grandparents’ apartment. She has her arm over her forehead, with her eyes closed, and her nose is in a pink-rose color. Coming out of the insides of her arm is a transparent tube, a very long one that connects to this clear, glass bottle on a stand shaped like a lamp post. People are surrounding her in the room, blocking the entryway. I am outside in the common area, and my uncle who is her brother and a medical practitioner is shooing people out and inserting a thin item into the dimple of her arm.
Adults sit outside a ard during the day, underneath a temporary canopy. They play mahjong, a game they refuse to let us children play where they sit at a table, obtaining, keeping, discarding, and exchanging tiles. Others bite into sunflower seeds and chew the kernels into pieces. With their fingers, they break peanuts still in shells. The mahjong tiles are roaring, clanking, and celebrating. There are candies available for grab. My third oldest cousin and I take handfuls of and store them in our pockets, later confiscated by my mother when we return at night to sleep under the roof of our grandparents’ apartment.
One morning on a vehicle ride, I am sitting on the front seat of this truck where its windows allow me to see the entire road and I am so high above the ground as if I were sitting on an elephant. I am with an ā yí. My nose is a bit stuffy. I sniff and this ā yí who would later become my medical practitioner uncle’s third wife tells me, Don’t cry, Don’t cry; except I have nothing to cry about. I am told to hold this framed portrait outwards so anyone who sees it sees who is in the picture except I.
In this big room, she is underneath a glass box as if she were a little princess taking a nap, a very deep nap and a very deep sleep for she does not move and does not smile. I am in the arms of a different adult and I reach outward and down to try to touch her. There are many people in that room but my mother is not close to me. She is with my oldest cousin and soon the two of them recite words while holding a paper in front of them and standing close to a microphone secured on a stand. My oldest cousin speaks perfectly, having practiced beforehand with my mother by her side who possibly coached her.
The little girl in that glass box is my cousin, Lín Líng. She was killed by a truck. It was an accident. She was crossing the road; and when her mother, who is my second oldest aunt, called her name, she turned around, paused, unable to avoid the truck coming at her.
Her parents were not at the funeral nor were my grandparents. It is frowned upon for those with white hair to send off those with black hair. The gatherings to play mahjong, to eat sunflower seeds and candy were to liven the neighborhood in preparation for her spirit’s return. They also publicized her death so her parents could receive the best possible justice for losing their almost seven-year-old child.
Months ago, I came across a picture of Lín Líng and I, with our other two cousins (one whom I gathered candies with, the other who gave the speech at her funeral) taken during the Lunar New Year when I was almost two years old. Lín Líng stands next to me with her right hand on my shoulder but I have no memory of her hand, no memory of her fondness towards me.
There was a cleanup at the site of where she was buried so her grave could no longer be found. On my grandparents’ tombstone, their names are on it along with their children’s names and the first name of their grandchildren. I am listed on the stone underneath my mother’s name but Lín Líng is not under the name of my second oldest aunt. Her second child, the one born after the death of her first child is the only one listed.