it is what it is
2044.
(Present day.)
Her childhood home sits in the middle of the countryside, and from the porch facing the backyard you can see the sun as it descends beyond the horizon due west. It bathes the world in a golden fire that almost makes Yunhua forget what it feels like to be in a hospital, assaulted by headache-inducingly bright fluorescent lights and bleach-white surfaces.
Her mother brings out a tall glass of water and a plate of sliced apples for her.
“I would've tried to make something if you'd called ahead. That's okay though, I may be terrible at cooking but our house has the good water.” She picks up a slice of apple for herself. “You look disgusting. Go change first, your clothes are still in your room upstairs.”
She's not wrong. She's dressed in a size-XXL football hoodie and her college sweatpants are splattered in spaghetti stains from when Jamie was a baby. The pants are so old that the fabric is coming undone at the ankles.
“Give me a break, ma. I just spent 20 hours in a plane and another 3 on a bus.”
“That's no excuse to be a mess.”
Yunhua laughs cynically. “I'm going through a divorce. Unless you have single ladies waiting for me upstairs I don't see who I need to look all presentable for.”
“Me, you damn ingrate.” bites back her mother, an eyebrow raised. “And how long do you plan to be going through this divorce, hm? You tell me you’ve been apart for years.”
Yunhua could almost cackle. She's missed this. “I’ll be going through it until I’ve signed the papers.”
Her mother shoots her an annoyed glare. “You’re legally dead.”
Yunhua ticks her eyebrows—as though to say exactly—and takes an apple slice in her mouth.
Her mom throws her hands in the air, over-dramatizing her speech, a glimmer in her eyes that betrays the fact that she also finds some humor in this situation.
“I leave you alone in the States for a couple years—just a couple—and my 丹参花 (dānshēn huā. sage flower) has come back 单身的 (dān shēn de, single, desolate)! And you lived there all by yourself still for three years! I just wish you'd told me sooner, I would've paid for someone to kidnap you and had you back in a heartbeat.”
Yunhua sighs. “I didn't tell you because I knew you'd say exactly that I didn't want to hear it.”
She strains herself stretching her cramped shoulders and lets out a painful groan.
“...But... I guess I was also worried. Because I didn't want you to worry. And I didn't know what you would think of me when I told you what happened. I thought you’d scold me like you always do.”
“Well...” her mother thinks for a bit, and then responds slowly and quietly, like she's chosen her next words carefully. “木已成舟 (mù yǐ chéng zhōu. the logs are a boat already). It is what it is. Even if it could’ve been better, it's not, so it is what it is.”
Yunhua doesn't even try to pretend to know what that's supposed to mean. She’s not a boat. She’s just a girl.
She just takes a few deep breaths of backyard air and she feels cold and sticky.
“When did you become an old lady who speaks in proverbs?” jabs Yunhua.
“When I became a grandmother.” her mother curtly responds.
Ouch.
The words stab straight to the back of her eyes like a fucking pencil.
Her mom pats her on the head.
Yunhua starts to shiver. Suddenly the outside isn’t so soothing.
"Do you think..." her voice is a whisper. “...Do you think if you'd lost me... and you knew you could've done what I knew what I could have done to fix it... Would you have tried to bring me back too?"
"You know I can't answer that in a way that will help you."
"Why not?"
"Because Jamie is not you. and you are not me. Who you are, what you can do… you're someone... something else entirely."
Mother cups her hands gently against her daughter's cheeks. Her voice is low. "You’ve become something wonderful. I will always say that, no matter what you’ve done, what you will do.”
“I made a mistake.” Yunhua's voice shrinks into a whisper as she hugs her knees in closer. “I made a lot of mistakes.”
“Bah, mistakes mistakes. Who cares? You may be sad and pathetic and lonely but I will always love you.”
“Wow, thank you, mother.” Yunhua puts on her best doctor voice to stress the English word mother, and her mom slaps her on the thigh—“OW, mom—”
“And now you're even rolling your eyes like an American.” Yunhua's mother scoffs. “I thought I told you to never assimilate? Bah, I should never have let you marry a white woman.”
Yunhua pouts at her.
And it doesn't take long for her façade to fall apart for real because it hurts. God it hurts and there's nothing she can do about it. She falls into her mother's arms because she wants her to comfort her but she can only think of questions without answers.
Like if she's really as much of a monster as Sabine thinks she is.
If she was wrong for thinking she was ready to get married. If she should never have tried to be a mother in the first place. Because she fucked up and she doesn't know if there’s a world where it—all of this, any of this—could ever be okay, ever again.
Or if atonement means she has to leave things the way they are, if it means she has to hurt like this for the rest of her life because she doesn't deserve an out from the mess she's created for herself.
And she knows how her mom is going to answer them and she needs to hear it but goddammit all she can do is cry and weep into her mother's chest because the words stick in her mouth like taffy.
So her mother says nothing because that's all her little flower needs to hear.
And when Yunhua finally blubbers out several halves of run-on sentences it's none of those things.
“It—I tried to get Sabine's smell out of my clothes and everything. My sheets—and I couldn't do it it all smelled like her—and I couldn't get it out and I realized it—it’s because it just smells like me? I smell like her—and I’ve been smelling like her and Jamie and home for weeks and months and years, now, and God, I realized I never said thank you I just wish I could say thank you I wish I'd said it more every day and I just wish she knew that I was—
She starts hacking and coughing and gasping for breath because she didn't breathe for all of that. And all her mother can do is pet her and look away as her tears seep into her gown.
And to herself, her mother thinks—oh, my baby.
of course i understand.
i would’ve done the exact same thing.
“No, it’s okay, mom, go inside first. I'll follow you back in a sec.”
Her mom nods and quietly gets up, and she takes the plate of apples with her.
“Don't stay out too long.”
Slumped up against the bench, near ready to slide off onto the floor, Yunhua fumbles into her pocket for the envelope she'd picked up at the doorstep when she came in.
It’s addressed to one of the pseudonyms she’d used when Kingdom was still vigorously searching for her, her mother’s and father’s names with the characters swapped around. She allows herself the tiniest little smirk. No idea how that managed to fly under the radar.
A yellowed cassette tape clatters out, and a plastic card.
She recognizes the tape. Fun Mix '80s is scrawled on it in her father's handwriting.
She stuffs it into her hoodie pocket as the tears threaten to come.
The card looks like a regular regular credit card all in white, but where the chip should be is some sort of fucked up “v.” God knows what this is meant to do.
She takes a big breath and flips it over. The back is all white, except for a short message, scrawled with permanent marker in handwriting that's too painfully familiar.
You sniffle back the sting of your tears for now, swaddling yourself cozier in your giant sweatshirt and you wonder if you’re addicted to the hurt.
After all, you’re still wearing her clothes.
You wonder if you’ll fall asleep tonight, like you’ve done every other night for the past several years, caressing the empty moonlight like you did her face, your pupils dilated like you’re falling in love all over and over again, seeking out a ghost in the dark that isn’t there anymore, sinking through your pillow that smells like her to the other side of the world where you think maybe she’s still there, sniffling gently at the touch of the breeze as you trick yourself into thinking it’s her fingertips.
And on the some nights still, when your heart dares to beat ever so weakly, nestled between the two of you, brushing against your chest, the stuttering thumping against your own chest reminds you of the softest, warmest, and sweetest murmurs you’ve ever heard, happily at rest...
Because what else can you do now, besides make a fool of yourself? You do it every night. Rinse and repeat.
God, if only rinse and repeat could get the scent of her hair, now fresh again, out of your clothes. She smells like rain; she smells like the way the world seems so much deeper and shimmers in darker and richer colors when it rains.
How the hell are you supposed to get the rain to stop smelling like Sabine?
Sometimes a love story ends with the two of you driving into the sunset in a shitty, run-down convertible, serenaded by the same songs over and over again from a 70s' pop mix cassette that's been stuck in the player since before you bought it, your child sound asleep and at peace in the backseat.
But sometimes a love story ends with the same car driving off into the same sunset, to the same soundtrack, and along the same road. Only this time, you are left behind. And all you can do is watch as your memories of the love of your life and all the corny-ass daydreams you've ever had of happily ever after burn up as they disappear into the horizon.
Because for better or worse, her life goes on without you. And that's a beautiful thing. It's beautiful because it hurts. It's beautiful like a sunset is beautiful when it seems to set the world on fire.
A scratching at your throat like the monster you’d kept buried deep at the base of your chest, and hoped would stay gone forever, is clawing its way out, clamoring for sweet release.
Yunhua punches at her shoulders in frustration because stretching it or squeezing at it just isn’t getting the fucking tension out. She coughs and hacks and wretches with tears and snot and cold sweats until she’s just about ready to puke. God. Stop crying, you stupid bitch. You're not the one who gets to be hurt.
But god it still does.
It hurts that she can still feel Sabine’s soft, warm breath against her lips. Sabine, with her fingers and cheeks all cold, but in her heart and lungs a warmth like a fire. It hurts that despite everything, when Sabine pressed her wrists tight against her cheeks to stem the flow of her tears, Yunhua imagined for a moment a world where they are happy again. It hurts because she knows she doesn't deserve it. Not anymore, arguably not ever. It hurts because she knows Sabine still loves her. She loves her so much. Because that'll never change. Because it can never change.
It hurts because she knows that because of her, Sabine van den Berg, who is most beautiful when she loves, will never get to love again.
Oh.
Oh, Sabine...
And before she's had the chance to even process it, the sun's already descended past the western horizon, and the world sinks into darkness.
Fuck.
I wanted to tell it goodbye.
I wanted to ask it to wake you up on time.
and I wanted to say thank you