Jennifer Wang
Ah Bao tells me that I’ve lost this game. I don’t believe him, but he’s the one who taught me the rules. I didn’t play many card games when I was living, and my wife was always better than me at mahjong. So it was a lot to try to follow this new game, and I might not have made the best choices. He did offer to give hints. I’d refused and said I wanted to play for real.
“Why be so hard on yourself? We’re dead.” he says. “This game is complicated. It took me a few years to master.”
“Actually, I was curious why I couldn’t just absorb the rules instantly.”
It’s another thing that reminds us that we are both still new here. The way things work–we’re still unsure. The other day Ah Bao tried to fly, or rather, jumped up, anticipating a weightlessness that never occurred.
I don’t know why we had this notion that the afterlife would make us superhuman. Movies and TV were probably to blame. Our bodies didn’t even revert back to a more youthful state when we arrived here. And for those who did die due to severe injury, it seemed that the physical aftermath did not get reversed, but was made unnoticeable instead. One day, we met a woman whose leg was amputated to prevent the spread of infection but whose body ultimately succumbed. While she indeed did not have one leg anymore, the fact simply did not register to me or Ah Bao until she’d explained how she’d gotten here, and only then did our minds see that she was different from us with all our limbs intact. What’s more, her mobility wasn’t affected at all. She had a true phantom limb, but without any pain.
So this afterlife is at least merciful. We’re grateful for that.
—
I didn’t expect Ah Bao to become my friend–if he’d call us that–in our afterlives. He’d immigrated to the states from Fujian, and I from Shanghai, areas nearly eight hundred kilometers apart. Stereotypes of his home city immediately crowded my mind, some non-complimentary. But now that we were dead, it seemed wrong to think this way, so I worked to suppress my assumptions.
When I died and came-to here, I’m embarrassed to say that of all the questions on my mind, the first was wondering if I would cross paths with Xiao Ming again. We’d both immigrated from Shanghai but didn’t know it until we worked as servers together at Jade Garden. In our new country, his ambition was to become a mechanical engineer, taking classes around his schedule at the restaurant. I was struggling through English classes so that I could re-become an accountant. It was clear he had a babyface, but upon learning his age in one of our early conversations, the force of my jealousy surprised me anyway. If I had emigrated at his age, I thought, I could be so much further along by now. In truth, I hated grammar lessons and did not have a memory for vocabulary.
After a few years living in his cousin’s home, Xiao Ming eventually graduated and got his first engineering job, low on the rung but nonetheless white-collar, with benefits, in an office. For some reason, seeing him succeed only reminded me of how far I had to go, not what I could also hope to achieve. Just the idea of such a journey exhausted me. And for all his success, even he couldn’t escape death—by car accident. But frankly, long before being shocked by the news about him, the allure of making a paycheck right away from restaurant work had pulled me away from pursuing my education. That was my greatest regret. But at least I could serve as a cautionary tale for my daughter, Hannah.
That’s the first thing that Ah Bao and I learned about each other: both of us have daughters, or had. His is named Victoria—Vicky—and older than Hannah by four years, almost legal to drink when he’d died. After I’d arrived here, I found a bench and sat on it, taking deep breaths, trying to look calm and like I knew I was meant to be here, when he walked up and asked me what I was thinking about. I didn’t really make small talk with strangers back in Houston, so at first I didn’t know how to react. Ah Bao claims that I scowled at him, but I don’t think that’s true. I do remember Hannah telling me once that she saw my “mad” face often. For a week or two after her comment, I asked my wife to check my expressions. She scoffed at me for letting our daughter get to me this way; she said that Hannah was too sensitive.
Since then, Ah Bao and I have gotten together for a drink a few times. Everything seems to be provided for in this afterworld, so we have time to shoot the shit. It’s been a real adjustment from the constraints in our past lives.
Today I’m in a curious mood. I ask him if he had ever let Vicky have some beer or wine at home, with his supervision. It feels a little nosey, but I want to know what kind of father he had been and whether how I went about being a father was typical, if not right. Before, I didn’t know who to ask. Actually, it didn’t feel like something people asked at all, or if they did, I would guess they’d probably ask their own fathers first.
Ah Bao shakes his head. “No. Did you? Let your daughter drink?”
“Just a sip of my beer bubbles. The foam made her laugh, but she didn’t actually like the taste. Soda was her favorite.”
“Vicky, too. Then in high school, she started asking for energy drinks. Said she needed them for getting through homework, club activities, so busy all the time. We dropped her off at college with a wholesale case of them in her favorite flavor—kiwi strawberry. My wife didn’t want to after reading more about the drinks, but I said Vicky was a smart girl who knew her limits.”
“Hannah loved kiwis. Even when they were sour, she smiled as she ate them.”
Ah Bao laughs. “Were you also like this when you were alive? Always ending up talking about your daughter somehow.”
“There wasn’t much else I talked about with everyone at Jade Garden. We’d all work like dogs, dealing with all kinds of diners, and go home as soon as we can.”
“What about the news? Politics? Sports?”
“Sports, not really. Or maybe when the World Cup was going on. But news, politics, well. Once someone talked about Taiwan during a break. Pretty soon a shouting match broke out, and the few diners at the time stared at us. The boss shut us down and told us to offer them dessert on the house, you know, cheap ice cream. Then when we all started getting smartphones, the only issue was reminding people to use earbuds whenever they watched videos.”
“Vicky cried for a week until we ‘finally’ got her a phone for her thirteenth birthday. We were originally going to make her wait until high school.” Ah Bao does a great impression of his daughter’s eye roll.
“I get it. I wasn’t good at saying no either.”
—
On some days, I do not accept my death very well. For one thing, this afterlife doesn’t look so different from the life we left behind. There are houses and parks and roads, a sky above us and the ground beneath us. Some things though, such as the sensation of hunger or its opposite, being too stuffed, don’t apply here. Ah Bao and I have never felt our bellies bloating or faces warming, even after a long drinking session. As a result, time blurs.
Ah Bao has been more than patient with me. He says he went through the same process, that it’s unavoidable. Still, he’s not a saint, and today I know I’ve been difficult.
“I wish I didn’t have an afterlife. What’s the point without my family?” Off Ah Bao’s look I add, “No offense.”
He laughs at me. “What was the point of life?”
I don’t think he meant to affect me this way, but I feel outsmarted. Although I have more time than I ever did while living, abstract subjects like philosophy were never my strength. Maybe the afterlife was forcing me to contemplate.
Luckily he doesn’t seem to press me for an answer. So I ask, “Have you ever come across people you used to know?”
“Like who?”
“Don’t play dumb, Ah Bao. Like relatives, friends. People who died before you. Or even people who died after you, but you didn’t find out until seeing them here.”
“Last week I saw my first wife.”
I shouldn’t have scolded him. He’d mentioned he left behind a wife when we first met, like me, but I hadn’t known she was a second.
“She died of cancer before we could have a child. And so yes, Vicky is me and my second wife’s.”
I grapple for words. “Did you talk?”
“A little. Just to confirm who each of us were, and wish each other the best.”
“We’re dead.”
“You know what I mean. We can still be polite.”
“Did she know you remarried?”
“She’d encouraged me to remarry before she died, but no, I didn’t tell her I did. What does it matter now anyway? We’re both here.” He mimes cutting his throat.
“Ha. But do you think you’ll see her again?”
For a moment it appears I’ve stumped Ah Bao.
“I’m not sure. I might remind her of the life she lost. And if that upsets her, then there’s no reason for us to meet again.”
“Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked about this.”
“No, it’s okay. Being interviewed by you somehow makes time go by faster.”
“We don’t have anywhere to rush to, but I’ll take that as a compliment anyway.”
—
“OK, my turn. I have a question, but you don’t have to answer it if you don’t want to,” Ah Bao says to me later. We’ve had two beers each; the empty bottles form a sort of centerpiece on the small table. Last time when we got together, they disappeared before my impulse to clear the table could kick in. After a life in America of serving tables, this has been the most wondrous part of this afterlife — seeing food appear and disappear without me doing anything.
I pat my belly, if only out of habit. “Alright. Go ahead.”
“Do you have a grave?”
“No. I’d asked to be cremated.”
“In a will?”
“No, I didn’t have one when I passed. But I’d mentioned to my wife that it would be what I wanted if I had to go.”
“Was that a tough discussion?”
“Not really. We were both on the couch after work. I think I was having a beer, and my wife a juice. She had healthier habits. Some guy was dying in a bad way in a war movie we were watching. The way I saw it, he couldn’t choose the way he died, nor the way he’d be dealt with afterward. I didn’t want it to be like that for me.”
“That’s wise. Hey, are you alright?”
I touch my face, find the wet spots under my eyes.
“My turn to say sorry. I shouldn’t have brought this up,” he says.
“It’s alright. It’s stupid. I know that I’m here, and my family’s not. There’s nothing to be done. And I want them to live their lives. I don’t even want them to burn offerings for me.”
Ah Bao doesn’t raise his voice to match mine. “You don’t mean that.”
“Fine. But I really thought that I’d stop suffering here. It didn’t seem so unreasonable to assume that.”
“I don’t have the answer, but I hope your pain won’t last long, and I won’t be far away if you need me.”
I gather myself, thank him and say maybe I just needed rest, as if that wasn’t all we did here. He says it’s a good sign that I can maintain a sense of humor.
—
Instead of the usual blankness that accompanies my sleep, I am standing in the backyard of a home I don’t recognize. The house is three stories with barely any space between it and similar houses on either side of it. A firm wind threatens to whip leaves off the older trees along the yard’s edges. And the fog overhead, so thick and fast-moving, as if it were racing to cover the land.
Ah Bao never mentioned anything like this happening to him before. I look around for him or anyone else to explain why I’m here and what I should be doing.
After another minute, the wind and rustling die down, and through the stillness I notice a woman framed in the second floor window, partially hidden by the blinds. I track her by her head of long dark hair as she moves around. She seems utterly focused on her task, neck craned at such an angle that I feel pained just seeing it.
I take a step forward to try and get a better look, then stop myself because I wonder if I’m even supposed to be here, or supposed to remain hidden.
Behind her I see a young man approaching her, smooth and silent like a cat. I don’t know if she knows him.
Although she may not be able to hear me, I can’t help myself. I open my mouth to alert her, but before I can find my voice, just then everything ceases to be.
—
Same as when I was alive, I am no good at hiding things now. We’ve barely begun our walk when Ah Bao directs us to a table under a tree and offers to talk about what’s on my mind. I laugh at first because I’m suddenly reminded of an old wall decoration back at Jade Garden. It was something mass-produced, featuring a painted scene of old Chinese poet-philosophers stroking their long beards, admiring the trees and other nature around them. Who knows how many times I walked past it, not giving a damn, rushing from table to table with orders and checks? And here we are now, idling.
“Yes, last night, I saw something,” I start. Ah Bao listens patiently as I describe what I saw. “Then I was grabbed or tugged away, hard. At one point, it felt like I was choking. I don’t even remember dying being so painful.”
“A very vivid dream.”
“I don’t think so. I remember what dreaming is like. I could feel things. The dampness in the air, and all the sounds.”
After a minute he says, “Whatever it was, you’re not meant to be there.”
Sometimes I wish he’d unfurl without me having to pry. I have to resist the urge to snap at him, but I need to know more. “There, as in back where we were alive? How do you know?”
“Did you recognize the woman?”
I decide to be honest. “I didn’t get a clear look at her.”
“What about anything else where you were?”
“Not really. The weather for sure was nothing like Houston’s humid heat.”
“Very interesting.”
“What?”
“I thought that people only appeared in places they’ve been to before, or had some sort of connection to.”
“So you’re saying this has also happened to you then?”
“I’m not trying to give you any ideas.” Ah Bao can’t hide the pride in his voice though. “I got to see Vicky at her university. She’s about to graduate.”
“What was she doing?”
He shakes his head. “It wasn’t for me to see.”
“Did she notice you? Did you try to make yourself known?”
“I was too shocked to say anything.”
The nosy part of me wants to know what he witnessed. It’s not good of me. Instead I say, “But it was your daughter.”
“It wasn’t right. I don’t want to intrude on her like that. She could feel a presence. She was afraid.”
It’s hard for me to not recall a family drawing that Hannah once brought home from school, something she did for art class in second grade. She’d placed me in the middle and topped my stick figure body with an angry face, a wide letter “v” for my eyebrows. But to Ah Bao I say, “If she had known it was you, she wouldn’t have been scared.”
“I thought you understood that we are here, and our families are there. That’s how it’s meant to be. I mean, how it is now.”
“Do you know how to go back?”
“No.”
“I feel like you know more.”
“What does it matter? It won’t give you peace.”
“And sitting here aimlessly as the hours, days—time passes by. That’s peace? I’m going insane. Wait, I get it now. This is actually hell, isn’t it?”
Ah Bao turns away, leaving me. I want to follow him, but I’m rooted to my seat, feeling a little dumb and ashamed after my outburst. I took him for granted. It’s disappointing to see that dying didn’t dampen my temper, though perhaps it was a little foolish to have expectations for the afterlife in the first place.
—
I’m no good alone though; Xiao Ming crosses my mind again. It annoys me to admit it but Ah Bao would like him, as they’re both the intellectual type. Back in our Jade Garden days, when Xiao Ming wasn’t studying during breaks, he read science fiction novels to challenge his English skills. I was always drawn to the bright covers. He would offer to let me borrow the few he owned, but I told him his reading level was far above mine. So instead, he talked to me about them.
Once, he got to explaining alternate universes to me. He’d been in an especially good mood because he scored well on his semester exams, and he spoke almost too quickly for me to keep up with. I’d also just finished with a fussy table that had left me no tip. The night before, we’d taken Hannah to walk around the mall and she’d called us poor for not buying her a dollhouse she wanted. Really, it was my fault. We should’ve gone to a park, only it was chilly outside and she’d just recovered from a cold. As a parent and in life, sometimes you make a choice and hope for the best. That wasn’t what I got that day. So as Xiao Ming chatted away, all I could think about was how I wanted to close my eyes and dissolve.
“I’m sorry for boring you,” he said.
There, I had done another thing wrong. He was the only one at Jade Garden I could speak in our native Shanghai tongue with, and he could have chosen to leave me by myself and read during his break time. I could at least listen to him.
“Sorry, but alternate universes and dimensions and things like that are hard for me to grasp,” I said.
“Just imagine you, but different.”
“‘You, but different.’ Me, but different. Like what, in another universe, I’m rich?”
“Sure. Or worse off. Or about the same, but something else in your life is different.”
“How far does it go? Me but with another hair color? Me but not Chinese? And this different me will never know about or see the current me, and vice versa?”
“I think so. Look, it’s a theory. It’s just fun to imagine sometimes. Pass the time.”
Xiao Ming and I never talked about the concept again, and he quit Jade Garden not long after. He was going to work in an office, which may as well have been another universe to me.
The last time I saw him, it was in passing at a Chinatown grocery store on the weekend. My wife and I had just picked up Hannah from her ballet class. Xiao Ming was alone but told us he’d gotten married, and that they were expecting a child. So much development! We exchanged some small talk about how busy they’d soon be, but the conversation didn’t last much longer because Hannah fussed about picking out her choice of snack.
So when Xiao Ming died, I couldn’t believe it. He had finally gotten everything he had hoped for: degree, job, family. I was so angry for him that I forgot I’d been jealous of him, and the fact that I had been also quickly turned into a source of private embarrassment.
There was no sense in that universe. Yet we’d both made something of it in the time we had.
I don’t know if Xiao Ming would agree with me, but by being here and having the experience I had, I have no choice but to believe in the ideas of his books. The notion of existing alongside our previous world, instead of being removed from it forever, is easier for me to accept. Ah Bao said finding a way back wouldn’t give me peace. What he didn’t understand is that just the hope of another chance is enough for me. Isn’t that what got us through each day of our lives?