The Emperor of Gladness

by Ocean Vuong

something. You lose the dead as the earth takes them, but the living you still have a say in. And so he said it. And so he lied.

A man, wrapped in a sleeping bag, was texting on a flip phone. His face, lit blue and blasted, all teeth and beard, was so absorbed at whoever was on the other side, he didn’t notice Hai’s footsteps. As Hai made it down the road, the man started to laugh, and the voice, amplified by concrete, bounced across the night, making it seem like the valley itself was laughing behind him.

Grazina Vitkus,

the hall to his bedroom, fished the contact lens case from his jacket pocket, and, having been sober for forty-seven days, tossed the Perc and codeines back in one gulp, then returned to where Grazina lay slumped in the jeep.

“No Catholicism, no Judaism for him. But he did convert to Alcoholism.” She bit her lip and shrugged.

The Peace Treaty, Maureen told Hai as they sat on milk crates in the freezer, a slab of frozen mac and cheese balanced across her knees, was a food exchange between

HomeMarket and the employees at their arch rival, the Panetta down the road in Millsap.

Don’t that make you wanna punch a toddler?”

He was not at war with them; he was only alive inside pieces of mistakes that gravity had collected into a life raft called the present. He was in a catering van, heading downriver, toward whatever iceberg lay ahead.

Panetta and HomeMarket.

Panera and Boston Market

Then Sony said something, just under his breath, either to Hai or to just give it to the air, he couldn’t tell. “Why do I feel so terribly sad?” That was it.

Welcome to the Stonewall Jackson Historical House and Museum! My name is Carol and I’ll be your docent today.

“Jackson even allowed one of them, Albert, to work and give over his wages, thereby purchasing his own freedom in the end.” A woman in the group touches her chest with admiration.

“The president’s Obama, yes?” she said, her eyes cartoonishly open behind her glasses. “That’s right,” he said. “And it’s December 2009.”

“Of course, Labas.” She poked at the envelope in his hand, where her name was printed from an old statement

from East Gladness First Eagle Bank. “What’s this? Lina sent me a letter?” Clocking her lucidity, he flipped the envelope over, hiding her name. “It’s just my pay stubs. For taxes and stuff.” He sh...

But he would survive, he decided once and for all, the money pressed against his wet skin. He was the richest he’d ever been.

I don't like him.

A nineteen-year-old who still reads must be dumb enough to willingly refuse the wide-open book-free utopia of adulthood.

You don’t need to be beautiful to make other people beautiful, she once told him,

How could he put an end, in a few short steps, to this version of his mother he’d never seen and yet had wanted, his whole life, to witness? And perhaps most sickening, how could he do it a second time?

Then, the catastrophe dawning on her, she bit her lip and pointed a finger an inch from his face. “I knew you’d fuck up—just like all the other trash around here. And I know it’s my damn fault too. I chose to raise you in this town when all the other Viets went off to California and

Texas. Everybody had the brains to go to better cities, but no, I thought only of my son, not wanting to uproot him again after coming all this way. So I stayed in this snowed-in hellhole.” Her hair clip had come loose and her hair floated about her as she spoke.

now he was here, in this house where Grazina was sleeping just a few feet away, and he was still in possession of his one wild and precious life.

And that’s how Christianity came to Japan. Through pork. That’s why they call them ‘emperor hogs.’

Hai wondered if he was too old to take something made for children. At what point does childhood sadness become adult sadness anyway? Does the tsunami get larger as the figure grows? Was his wave already twice the size of the one in the poster?

“This is not a spaceship,” they chanted. “This is not a spaceship! This is not a spaceship!” Until their voices broke off and they were swallowed by the oncoming valley and all was dark save for the faint blue etches of ice, crystal veins creeping across the road in their wake.

In somebody’s life the train whistle blew through the late afternoon as it headed to Marlborough on the first day of winter.

through the speakers as she metal-screeched through a rendition of “Bodies” by Drowning Pool.

samovar

She was the kind of person who would say “You look tired,” her head tilting with feigned concern, and mean that you were actually ugly.

Will you just ask her the thing?”

“This better be the last time, Lucas,” Hai heard Clara say as they closed the door to the powder room.

When he opened the door, Lucas was there waiting. “Hey, Mom.” He bent down so he was eye level to his mother, his face now open and soft. “You doing okay in there?” In there, Hai thought, as if she were in some kind of box.

“You going to the Lithuanian mass at St. Peter’s tomorrow?” Grazina asked. “Your stepfather used to take me—”

The tray of stuffed peppers, still full, sat like a cinder block in Hai’s lap.

Then she reached out and brushed aside his bangs. “Tu esi mano draugas.” “That some sort of Christmas prayer?” She shook her head. “Then what’d you say?” She stared at the water, saying softly, “You are my friend.”

Hai took a Dilaudid from his jeans pocket and popped it

in his mouth. “You want one?” he offered BJ. When she shook her head he slapped the second down his throat.

“But truths don’t ever change. Only lies do.” “Did some dumbass general say that?” “No, BJ did.”

“Okay.” Hai nodded, but his mind was somewhere else. “Hey. Do you think a life you can’t remember is still a good life?” The question sounded almost silly aloud. “I mean, like—” “Yes,” said Sony.

“Why’s that?” “Because someone else will remember it.”

He told of Noah’s barn, where they knew the wrong inside them was the only thing that made sense of where they grew up, where the gods, after flipping

the table from losing their bets, left them alone to make a fugitive life. That a boy beside a boy could form an island called “okayness.” “With him,” he said, “it wasn’t that I was happy—but that I was okay. And okay was even better than happy because I thought it had a better chance of lasting.” He turned and was startled to find her staring right at him. “Okay is underrated. You know what underrated means, right?” “More than what the Lord planned,” she said. “Yes. And we were very underrated. But we were also very okay.”

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.”

“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.” “A liggabit soldier,” she said, her head slipping to the side. “Must be rare.” “Sure.”

“Tu esi mano draugas.” She blinked.

“You are my friend. Right? Did I say it right? Am I doing it right?”

“Grazina. You’re Grazina Vitkus.” “I don’t know who I am. Wait a minute. How can that…” And like that the world was falling away in slabs, rinsed and pooling at the periphery.