Memory

The cool breeze rushed past him, playing with his hair and tugging on his legs. 

Just do it.

Brian bit his lip and clutched both sides of the window frame, inching himself closer to the open air. He nearly fell as a fist banged on the front door, its owner yelling something about his right to live. His breath quickened. The crowd below looked like multi-colored dots in a Seurat painting. Maybe that’s what he’d become. He’d fall, and instead of hitting the concrete, he’d fly away into a fuzzy dream and join other pastel souls that would welcome him. “Good job,” they’d say. “You don’t have to fight anymore. You can rest now.”

He exhaled and closed his eyes. He dug his nails into the window frame. 

How did it get to this?

Tears slid out from the corners of his eyes, trailing down his cheeks and dangling at the bottom of his chin. He stared past the clouds, which hung like white paint dragged by a dry brush, and into the endless sky that reached from light blue to periwinkle to the dark serenity found in an ocean’s depths. 

Is it so wrong? Is it so wrong of me … to not want to live anymore? 

The tears accumulated under his chin and splattered onto his lap. He sat still as if in a trance, overwhelmed and powerless to the memories that came surging forth. He saw himself sitting alone at his desk, tapping his pencil on his textbook, wrestling with the problem at hand. Something red splashed onto the textbook’s page. He frowned in confusion before swiping under his nose with his finger. Blood. He tilted his head back and sniffed, tasting iron as the blood dripped down his throat. He heard the jostling of couch springs and two feet landing on the floor. Footsteps rushed down the hallway. His mother appeared breathless at his door, her face flushed with the eagerness to serve. 

“Are you okay? I heard you sniffing. Are you sick?” she asked in Mandarin. She caught sight of the blood before he could budge. “Blood! A nosebleed! Here –” She lunged into the bathroom, ripped off toilet paper, and seized him.  

“Mom – I – stop!” he shouted, pushing her away. 

Hurt flashed across her eyes but quickly dispelled. She gripped his arm again. After a few more moments of resistance, Brian wrested the toilet paper away from her and shoved it into his nose. She fell back, chewing her worn nails and looking at him with wide eyes.

“Will it be okay? Should I get you anything else? Do you want ice?”

“No.”

“Okay…. More fruit?”

He glanced at the apple and orange slices piled on his desk like a temple offering. Confusion, bitterness, and guilt always warred within him whenever his mother acted like this. He knew that he should feel grateful for her love. She was his mother. She loved him more than anyone … but was it possible for something as pure as love to smother him?

Memories swirled as he continued to stare into the still, blue sky, losing himself in its depths. He recalled the sound of breaking glass. He cowered in the corner of the room as his mother shielded him, her arms flung to either side, her voice hoarse from crying. 

“He’s a child! Leave him alone!” she shrieked, tears streaming down her face. 

He pressed himself into the corner, curling his body tighter. His father swayed on his feet then slapped his mother across the face. Brian buried his face into his hands and focused on the darkness he found there, trying to believe that everything was nothing. His mother screamed. The sound of breaking glass rang out all around him. 

The longer he stared, the more the deep, blue sky seemed to open up – enveloping him, swallowing him. 

“Dad, I need money.”

“What do you need money for?”

Brian took a deep breath. “I made it to varsity. I can’t play that well with glasses. I need more contacts,” he said, just as he had rehearsed. 

“I don’t know,” his father replied, slamming the door of the car. “Ask your mom.” 

The blue sky continued to swallow him. 

“I don’t know. I mean, it’s crazy.”

Brian sat outside with his friends, eating lunch. He nodded, faking agreement, as his friends carried the conversation. 

“So she just jumped off the building like that?”

“Yup.”

The circle of friends shook their heads in unison. 

“That’s a damn shame.”

“That’s crazy!”

“Crazy …” 

“You have to be crazy if you want to kill yourself. I mean, how do you even get to a point like that?”

“I don’t know.” 

“I don’t want to think about it,” one of them said. “Let’s talk about something else.”

Brian nodded once more. He chewed his sandwich and laughed when the others did. All the while, in his chest, he held down the silent panic that threatened to crawl out of him, unable to understand why a casual conversation about a stranger had made him feel so raw. He felt like someone had taken a can opener to his heart, wrenching at it until it strained open, hanging on by one thin twist. 

The sound of sirens reached his ears. Brian looked down at the red lights flashing hundreds of feet below. The pounding on the front door continued. He didn’t have much time. 

“Hey, kid!”

For the second time, Brian nearly fell off the ledge. He gripped the window frame just in time to steady himself then wondered why he had bothered. 

Coward … 

“Kid, don’t do it.”

A pair of gray eyes looked up at him from one of the windows below. 

“Hey, I said don’t do it!” the stranger yelled. 

He continued to wave and shout, but Brian ignored him. Instead, he stared at the dizzying drop below, tears splashing onto his jeans. One push was all it took …

“You speak English?” the stranger called.

The absurdity of the question caught him off guard. “Not one word,” Brian grumbled, still staring at the lights below. 

“What?”

Brian ignored him. 

“Kid, don’t do it. Look, I don’t know what I can do to convince you, but you’ve got to hold on. This isn’t the end. I know everything sucks, but you’ve got to hold on!” 

Even from a distance Brian could see the stranger’s knuckles turning white as he gripped the windowsill. 

What’s with this guy? Just leave me alone.

Brian placed his hands on the ledge, trying to muster the strength to push off or, at the very least, stop trembling. The crowd so many feet below was growing. Countless blurry faces stared up at him as he sat inches away from falling … from flying away.

“No!” the stranger screamed, his gray eyes widening and widening. “No, kid! You deserve to live! You need to live! It’s not worth it! Just talk to me. Come on! Talk to me!”

The front door burst open. Brian glanced at the uniformed men swarming towards him. He pushed off the ledge in panicked flight, regret stinging him as he did so. Rough fingers grabbed him. Arms wrestled him to the ground. Elbows knocked into him. His cries, yells to stay calm, static words from an officer’s radio – everything meshed together in the small room, creating a cloud of chaos that made him strive even more. 

Everyone had seen him. What would they say? His friends? His mom? How was he going to go back to school like this? It didn’t matter if he graduated now. What was he going to do? What was left for him? The window. He had to get back to the window. He had to jump. He had to jump now and get this over with. It was something he had started. Why hadn’t he finished it? This wasn’t like him. This wasn’t like him at all! Why had he been such a coward? 

He continued to struggle against the hands that sought to tame him. The breeze fluttered about the room. The blue sky stood in the distance, out of reach. Minutes passed, full of struggling and futile cries, before Brian slumped onto the floor, sobs wracking his body.

“Hey, kid! You okay?”

“Sir, step back!”

“I just want to see if he’s okay!”

A shaky laugh escaped Brian. He was surprised that he could laugh given the situation. The gray-eyed stranger had appeared at the doorway, arguing with an officer.

“Easy does it.”

A warm arm wrapped around his shoulders and sat him up. Different hands pressed down on him. Someone rubbed his back. A jumble of noise and movement occupied the room. Choking on his tears, Brian stared at the stranger, who continued arguing with the officer. An old memory began to stir in his mind, shaking off the dust of time. A memory of a fiery sun and majestic mountains wearing stoles of fog …  

Brian sat with his mother and grandmother on a sun-warmed boulder. The Huangshan mountain range sprawled out before him, fading into the distance like gray watercolors. The sun was bright and low in the sky, waiting to turn orange like ripened fruit. His grandmother smiled and nodded. Reaching over, she wrapped his small hand in hers and squeezed. Her hands were calloused from hard work. Brian squeezed back.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it, Brian?” his mother asked. 

He nodded then clamped his eyes shut, pursing his lips.

“What are you doing?” she asked. 

“Trying to remember,” he replied, straining as if he were constipated. He wanted to sear the moment into his memory so that he could hold on to it forever.

She laughed and drew him under her arm. “You don’t have to do that. Life has more than one good memory. It has many, many good memories. Just enjoy this.”

He frowned at her, disgruntled because he felt that she was looking down on him. He reluctantly turned his furrowed face towards the horizon. A stray dragonfly flitted overhead and disappeared into the vast sky. Golden rays began filtering through the forest of pine trees, creating an army of shadows and outlining each curve and edge of the mountain range. Brian nestled deeper into the warmth of his mother’s arms as the dying sun illuminated his face. Happy memories trickled past his mind’s eye. His grandmother molding xialongbaos with wrinkled hands; the pride on his mother’s face the day he had come home as an honor roll student; watching the sunset together from Golden Gate Bridge…. 

The sun sank below the mountains, disappearing behind the horizon and extinguishing the last glowing ray. Brian joined the other onlookers as they clapped. People began scurrying up the mountain trails, eager to reach their hotel before dark. Brian ran ahead of his grandmother and mother, picking his way across uneven paths, hopping over large cracks, and jumping over creeks. Darkness crept forth all the while. He alighted a small boulder and paused. Scintillating memories continued to ebb and flow in his mind as he watched his mother and grandmother slowly pant up the stone steps. Perhaps his mother was right. Life was full of many good memories. They waited up ahead on life’s winding path, ready to take form in his heart where they would live, guarded and cherished until they shone forth, sparkling not only on the brightest of days but even, he was sure, in the darkest of nights.