[A DVD clicks into place, spinning, and the video starts.]
Wobbly footage thuds slowly, drifting from room to room. Here, you can see the borders of cherry wood giving way to sandy tile and pebbled stones, lingering in the hall. On the floor, you come into view—
[The video cuts short, and the rotating disk slows to a stop.]
[Chapter One: Rising]
Hometown Legend
[Switching tapes, select “play;” begin voiceover]:
Your hometown was a year and two months. If you find it [on a map], it’s tucked away and filed in place, a straight shot north on the tollway. Its remaining landmarks are the azalea trees and rusting mailbox post, and that’s about all you can see on most days. If you do a quick search through the archives, you’ll find a little diving board [as seen pictured] in the backyard that the town’s newlyweds took on one November after working for the keys of the city; in the final days of summer, they brought the last resident up the front lawn and settled together on the living room floor, touching ground for the first time.
[On video], you can preview some of the town’s events, not exclusive to attempts at feeding and naptime. Within the first month, they dressed up the star resident as a pea in a pod (and witnessed the first of several protests thrown by one unfortunate legume, albeit within reason), and when summer came back around, the pool reopened and new residents could get their first sips of chlorinated water, which more or less remains a local secret to date.
In the archive’s [last clips], the town opened its door on the first anniversary since its ruler arrived. You’ll see the makeshift beer cooler in the bathtub, as enduringly praised by tourists; relatives jumping into the pool who exclusively appear on-screen; anecdotes and banter exchanging between families over the kitchen island, and you, from your throne on the living room floor, arms spread wide to the ceiling—light spilled out into the hallway, and from the kitchen, you took a deep breath, candles extinguishing to cheers. A [ picture frame] with your crown and blue-frosted grin now sits in a [box], stacked on the floor. [Reverse tape, resuming voiceover]:
On the town’s last day, little white squares the size of your palm remained, scattered in the carpet—traces of a world you knew in pictures, will only know in leaving. Lifted from the ground, the living room floor wanes, fades from view.
At the city limits, a small family gathers in front of a one-level brick house, watching as leaves on worn pavement rise, then fall behind a van—they turn to walk in, and one stares after the sun—dark blue sky spinning, spinning, your first memory [closes with the scene].
[End voiceover.]
Welcome to the Peach Tree State!
Just east by seven-hundred and eighty miles lie the lush green hills of your new home (population: three)!
[A jaunty tune begins to play in the background.]
Driving up the street, neighbors will watch afar from their doorsteps, and you’ll have the opportunity to meet your first of one playmate. There is a birthday party and painting and tumbling classes and trick-or-treating alone, and souvenirs of you posing for the camera. At the local park on weekends, your dad will be there to take pictures with you, and during the week, there are errands to run and shopping at the mall and smiling for your mom!
You’ll eat pumpkin pie and make sugar cookies and “help” light the menorah in the kitchen away from windows, and you can celebrate two birthdays at this special venue—
What’s that? Oh, Dada’s on a work trip right now. No, silly, he hasn’t left us—well, he has, but he’s coming back! Why don’t you go on the swings, hm? Okay.
When winter comes around, you’ll get the chance to play in your first snow, and your grandparents can fly down to visit when your parents must show at the boss’s big holiday banquet. There’ll be sing-alongs with your friends in the cartoons and going with your dad to fly your brand-new kite in a diaper and make your mom mad! You’ll wait for the sun to set earlier and rise again and welcome your dad back home and get lost on the way back from the—back from the airport and fall and hit your forehead on the bathroom floor and rush-rush-rush to the hospi-t-a-l—
[The jaunty tune distorts, fades to static. In the background, drivers licenses and photos from a wallet connect by a thin piece of thread, hanging at the edge. White paint redacts everything but a maiden name printed next to a holiday card, in which a three-year-old sits in the middle, squirming in front of the camera. Below, a grid of black-and-white surveillance footage records an empty seat at the dining table late at night, tired sighs and strained whispers behind closed doors falling to silence and rising in a high-frequency ringing, until the tune resumes—
[Neighbors wave from their windows, the sun setting in a hazy cascade.]
We hope you enjoyed your stay, and remember: there’ll always be a place for you!
The Restaurant
You don’t remember the first story she told you, but you visit there often.
At that age, you had no frame of reference for what a restaurant—or anything other than roller discos and hippies, really—in the 1970s looked like, so every time you had the urge to listen a little bit closer from the backseat, you saw her waiting tables in a dim, muggy room, chasing after her siblings through a maze of faded banquet chairs, to the Pac-Man machine sticking to little square tiles the size of your foot. In the kitchen, she’d assemble burgers and toss silverware in the dishwasher, then take the ticket from greasy hands and go—
On weekends and weeknights, she’d tuck her sister in bed and clean the bathtub and pass out until morning came. On weekdays, she’d walk fast to school and read slow, avoid the boys and eat alone. Wait tables, kick her brother, make lunch, pass out. Wake her sister, speak softly, eat in the bathroom, tune them out. Hop-scotch, sweep, skin her knee. Skip lunch, serve dinner, keep your head down. Wash dishes, dry the laundry, Chinese, Japanese. Cash the check, chat at church, ching chong! Are you right or are you Wong, learn the rules, prove them wrong, red light! Run fast, green light! Pretend they don’t laugh, red light! Make change, green light! Kill the rat, red light! Do you eat cats, green light! Wong, right, wrong, red light! Look-at-these dirty-knees, green light—I said run, chink, go!
Fall asleep at nine, rise at five. Do it all over again.
Bubble
Once upon a time, you watched the ground slip from beneath as you fell into an enchanted pool, staring at your reflection. The queen wrapped you in a towel back at the hotel, hands shaking, and you stood quietly watching the puddle on the floor.
You returned to this mystical land a few months later—of flat blue sky and sunburnt concrete, stretching farther than the eye could see. You awoke from the long journey to a children’s chorus welcoming home the rulers, as friendly giants stacked the boxes up to the ceiling, then took them down, one by one. You shortly received an invitation to a neighboring kingdom, in which you attended the birthday party of a princess your age. You lifted the parachute together and dove underneath, watching the colors balloon around you. After you helped to blow out the candles, the queen beamed beside her companion from Ye Olden Days of College, gathering the two of you in for a portrait, so you posed for her and smiled.
The days went by as you accompanied the queen on her visits to the village markets and galleria, fulfilling your duties as the royal food connoisseur along the way. You began and quit lessons in gymnastics and ballet and occasionally had a special appointment with the king for lunch during the week. When he returned from his duties, you’d play computer games in his throne room while the queen slept and go to the kingdom’s zoo and help plant pansies for the fairies outside your window. In the fall, you dictated the carving of the pumpkin and devoured the king’s birthday cake, and in winter, you helped point to the Christmas tree and waited by the fireplace and heard reindeer on your ceiling.
In spring, you embarked on your first quest for Easter eggs and the matzah, and summers would come and go until you were banished to preschool to conquer the treacherous beast of Independence. Every now and then you attempted to escape from its lair before rescuing classmates from other kingdoms, and soon, you walked with them to your first day at the royal academy and hogged the books from the library and picked dandelions for the queen. You tried to forget to venture to first-grade Language Arts in the mornings and scored for the other soccer team and scribbled eleven pages past the due date.
On weekends, the queen sometimes exiled you to a distant realm called Dim Sum to see your Poh Poh and Gung Gung and poke at smelly dumplings with rubber band chopsticks and whine about how much longer. In the summer, you’d travel with the king and queen to visit the duke and duchess of the faraway land of Los Angeles, where you journeyed with your cousins to the realm of Disneyland and had glow-in-the-dark dances before flying home at dusk.
You grew accustomed to your routine and getting better with the queen’s magical chicken soup and the wisteria growing back each spring and the three of you watching the kingdom’s fireworks down the block and swimming with the mermaids at night before falling asleep, skin still smelling a little like chlorine. You saw the king on weekends, until one day, he was summoned to a different kingdom and they packed the carriage and emptied the castle and took down the sign in the lawn and you stood alone as the clock froze, remembered it was time to go, that the children’s song had come to a close as the bubble pops.
