The Emperor of Gladness

by Ocean Vuong

And it’s the very bridge the boy crossed one afternoon on September 15 in 2009. Rain pelted the oversize UPS jacket draped over his shoulders as he walked cradled in the heart of the valley, the land sweeping away from him toward boulderous clouds sinking into the horizon. He was nineteen, in the midnight of his childhood and a lifetime from first light. He had not been forgiven and neither are you. The sky a benevolent grey as the afternoon drained to evening and the cold turned his breath to fog. Under his boots the tracks hummed from steady gales slamming the steel straps. Yes, it is beautiful here, which is why the ghosts never leave. I need you to know this as the town rinsed to a blur behind him. I need you to understand, as black water churned like chemically softened granite below, the lights coming on one by one along the cobalt banks, that the boy belonged to a cherished portion of this world as he glanced over his shoulder and saw the phone lines sagging with crows resigned to dusk and the red water tower in the distance announcing us—East Gladness—in faded white paint, before he turned from this place, swung one leg over the rail and decided, like a good son, to jump.

“Hey, hey. You with me? What’s going on?” He shook her shoulders and thought he saw her nod. “Alright, easy now. Who’s the president? Who’s the president?” She muttered a few gnarled words, eyes wild in her sockets. He spoke into her opened mouth as if into a well, each syllable a knot on a rope sent down for her to grab. But her brain, like his grandmother’s, had ejected her far away from where they were sitting.

this truth, friend.” Hai took the piece in his mouth and chewed. The bread, crispy at the edges, quickly dissolved on his tongue, a salty sweetness spreading to a uniform consensus of corn, as if, incredibly, the bread inherited the essence of corn—sweet, nutty, mildly buttery—while preserving, perhaps even enhancing, that very corn-ness, despite being transformed into a baked good. It was corn bread more corn-like than any corn he’d ever tasted. The way peach rings are peachier than peaches.

It was fast into October and the leaves fell steadily over the parked cars, filling the beds of pickups lined outside the VFW and clogging gutters with deciduous trash. Down the road, a single leaf, the ochre of a dirtied Van Gogh star, clung to a girl’s hair as she bent to pour a stream of used cat litter into the sewer drain outside her house. In front of a row of track houses with broken down siding, a group of teenagers in hoodies selling dusters and Xannies were speaking to each other in hushed tones. A Camaro with no hubcaps was parked nearby, a faded Puerto Rican flag bandana hanging from the rearview. Down the road a stout white woman with sagging sweatpants that had juicy emblazoned on its backside was walking a chihuahua in the middle of an empty lot where a Citgo used to be.

“His name was Paul. Such a boring name, you’d think he’d get a long, boring life.”

pastries on the rack. “Oh, you mean our pain au chocolat? Well, it depends—” “What a name for a baked good,” Maureen said. “You people are something else.” “Flat white at the register!” another worker shouted, setting a drink on the counter. “What the hell did you just call me?” Maureen said.

he was still in possession of his one wild and precious life.

clutching Hai’s hand. The condo was spacious, the ceiling vaulted with polished oak beams. Everything was lit by dimmable sconces hung on the walls. There was so much space. That’s what wealth is, he realized: to live in a house where all the tools of living are out of sight. There were no brooms or mops or laundry baskets, no endless trays or cubbies for receipts, bills, or pills and keys. Everything, from the counter to the furniture, the side tables to the credenzas—all of it was there for decor, for the pleasure of the eyes and access of the body. Nothing was in the way. It reminded him of homes he’d seen in pharmaceutical commercials.

“Labas, I’m scared to die. I want to live a little more, just a few more years, if God wills it. I know it will be a good rest when we go—but—oh, to taste freshly brewed tea, with a spot of cream. I still want that. Especially when it’s cold outside.”

She touched his arm, her grip warm and stern. “So you’re a liggabit then,” she said, sniffling. He looked at her hand on his sleeve. “What?” “You’re—” she gestured at him, “a liggabit. Boy and boy, girl and girl. I see them in newspapers. Liggabit community.” “Oh—oh, you mean LGBT?” He wiped his eyes and let out a single disbelieving laugh. She shrugged. “Yeah, I’m a liggabit.”

These people, bound by nothing but toil in a tiny kitchen that was never truly a kitchen, paid just above minimum wage, their presence known to each other mostly through muscle memory, the shape of their bodies ingrained in the psyche from hours of periphery maneuvering through the narrow counters and back rooms of a fast-food joint designed by a corporate architect, so that they would come to know the sound of each other’s coughs and exhales better than those of their kin and loved ones. They, who owe each other nothing but time, the hours collectively shouldered into a shift so that they might finish on time, now brought to their knees in a forest to gather around a half-burnt headrest of a Nissan Maxima on a Tuesday in mid-April, their bodies finally touching, a mass of labor cobbled together by a boy’s hallowed loss—on the clock.

“She likes Stouffer’s,” Hai said. “Make sure you get the Salisbury steak from Stouffer’s.” He stood open-mouthed as the van sped off, the security car following behind, its patrol lights still blazing. “With the brownie in the corner,” he said to himself, mist swirling around him. “With rainbow sprinkles.” Gene Pitney’s voice, still playing on the record inside, was flowing through a cracked window as the car lights faded.

“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.”