The Emperor of Gladness

by Ocean Vuong

The hardest thing in the world is to live only once. But it’s beautiful here, even the ghosts agree.

Gladness itself being no more, renamed to Millsap nearly a century ago after Tony Millsap, the boy who returned from the Great War with no limbs and became a hero—proof you could lose almost all of yourself in this country and still gain a whole town.

He was nineteen, in the midnight of his childhood and a lifetime from first light.

Not knowing what to do with his hands, the boy placed them, palms up, on the table but withdrew them to his lap when he realized this looked psychotic.

“When did he die, your husband?” “When does anybody die?” she shrugged. “When God says Well done.”

“You believe in God, boy?” He took a long drag and considered this. “He’s probably around sometimes.”

“You wanna be a writer and you want to jump off a bridge? That’s pretty much the same thing, no? A writer just takes longer to hit the water.”

“My husband tried to be a poet, you know, and all that gave him was Alzheimer’s.”

Aspirational monikers didn’t stop at electronics either, but extended to any cultural relic possessing social or monetary value. One of his mother’s coworkers named her daughter Simba because she had watched The Lion King on repeat while she was pregnant, sobbing each time Mufasa fell off the cliff.

One kid from the same refugee camp as Hai’s family was called MJKarlMalone Truong; rivals in life, Jordan and Malone would be united in the body of an asthmatic Vietnamese boy with a lazy eye who landed, of all places, in North Carolina, home of Jordan’s Tar Heels.

Better than Robert Frost, if you can believe it. What did he do anyway, look at trees and feel bad? That’s no way to live.”

That among a pile of salvaged trash, he would come closest to all he ever wanted to be: a consciousness sitting under a lightbulb reading his days away, warm and alone, alone and yet, somehow, still somebody’s son.

He wanted to tell her that the body was just this stupid little shovel we use to dig through the hours only to end up surrounded by more empty space than we know what to do with.

“And your father, what did he believe in?” “No Catholicism, no Judaism for him. But he did convert to Alcoholism.”

“What’s a hare-loom tomato?” BJ peered over his shoulder. “It’s when rich people think fucked-up-looking things are more special than normal stuff.”

“Who knows what happens to owls that are too fat to fly. Maybe they swim.”

“To be alive and try to be a decent person, and not turn it into anything big or grand, that’s the hardest thing of all. You think being president is hard? Ha. Don’t you see that every president becomes a millionaire after he leaves office? If you can be nobody, and stand on your own two feet for as long as I have, that’s enough. Look at my girl, all that talent and for what, just to drown in Bud Light?” Water dripped from her nose. “People don’t know what’s enough, Labas. That’s their problem. They think they suffer, but they’re really just bored.

How is it that we have become so certain that the sight of years, the summation of decades, should inflict such violence on the viewer—including family—that we have built entire fortresses to keep such bodies out of sight?

“I’m not in heaven? I’m still downstairs?” “You’re still downstairs. We all are.”

The superpower of being young is that you’re closest to being nothing—which is also the same as being very old.

Then he took medicine to make his wounds go away. He wanted too much of one feeling—and I guess his heart gave out because of it. I don’t think we’re made to hold too much of any one thing.”

“Shut the fuck up, Wayne.” BJ gave him a look you could collect debts with.

“They’re full,” she said, getting in. “Lady said there’s some sort of festival to celebrate asparagus. Apparently it packs the town every year for the whole damn weekend. Whitest shit I’ve heard of in a while, that’s for sure.”

Don’t be too sad, boy. You still have your hands. And with these what you make is yours.”

Don’t cry. Never cry in a diner. They charge extra if they catch you. Believe me, I’ve seen it happen.”

“I’m scared, Ma,” he whispered. “Of what? What are you talking about?” “Of what’s coming. Of the future—it just seems so big.” “That’s only because you’re young. Eventually, it gets smaller. But don’t be afraid of life, son. Life is good when we do good things for each other.”