Where Reasons End

by Yiyun Li

But calling Nikolai’s action inexplicable was like calling a migrant bird ending on a new continent lost. Who can say the vagrant doesn’t have a reason to change the course of its flight? Nothing inexplicable for me—only I didn’t want to explain: A mother’s job is to enfold, not to unfold.

Sadness one can live with, but sadness is a helpless garrison against the blindness of tragedy.

But I wondered if he would say something clever, that people’s sympathy and callousness are like two hands wringing over someone else’s disaster. Or, would he poke fun at them on my behalf? Of course you knew it was real right away, did you not? he would say. How

can anyone ask a question starting with that silly phrase How can anyone. But he did not say anything. Isn’t it strange that her first thought was someone’s grandson, I said after the man and the woman exited the car. She just met her first grandchild, Nikolai said.

If you use fault in the sense of wrongdoing, I said, no, it’s not. But the root of the word fault came from to disappoint, to deceive.

In other words, I said, omniscience does not apply retrospectively. I kept having to refrain from saying: where you are. Dilemmas are ubiquitous, he said, wherever you are. Di-lemmas: two assumptions. Omniscience and memory: both questionable.

Omniscience is like the ability to write poetry. Not all people are born with it.

I laughed. I was always in awe that he could say anything as fast as humanly possible. As fast as inhumanly possible, that’s what you should rather use in your thinking now, he said. Of course not. Why not, if you make so much ado about precision? A misused adverb is worse than an adverb, he said.

Is that how a mother loses a child? Is that how any person loses any person, by not understanding the treachery of words, or worse, by thinking one can conquer that with precision?

Do you stay clear from where you shouldn’t be in your mind? Do you mean: Do I, or did I? It makes no difference, I said. If I’m the trespasser of my own mind I’ve acquitted myself, he said. Then I shall acquit myself, too. Don’t trespass in the first place, he said. Too late, I said. To love is to trespass. To live, too, he said. How can anyone not see it that way?

unyielding to the point of extravagant intrepidity.

Where else can one turn to but nature if one needs endless details to sustain oneself, I thought. Nature is not small, I said.

Dense and gormless were the favorite adjectives Nikolai and his brother used to describe me.

That’s nice, he said. I couldn’t tell if he was annoyed or bored or sad or angry. Tones were what we were missing now, and without tones words were floating, gravity-less, missing one another or, worse, clashing without a warning.

Still you don’t get the chocolate, he said. Oh, poor, poor you. You are not a mere piece of chocolate, I protested. Why can’t I be as daft as you and toss around metaphors and analogies? By all means, please do, I said. Then what? he asked. I gave up. I was slow when we argued. Then we become catchers in the rain. Cold, wet, soles of our shoes slippery, our fingers numb, what could we catch? Any seasoned parent was an expert at catching: toppling babies, somersaulting spoons, half-eaten bananas and apples, half-ripe blood berries. Everything breakable and unbreakable belonged to a parent’s field, but what could I catch on this gray, wet morning? Not the smile on your face, not the light in your eyes, not a blue cat, not a purple penguin, not dust in the wind, not a thought whispering in your ears, so loud that it had drowned out all the music of the world. What, my child, can I catch now, when all has become invisible? Words, mother dear, Nikolai said. We will be catching each other’s words, don’t you see?

Are all parents expert equivocators?

Time is like money. Don’t get into debt by spending what you don’t have, he said.

quixotic.

How do you compare sadness that takes over like an erupted volcano to sadness that stays inside one, still as a stillborn baby?

(Where else can we meet but in stories now?)

Seems to me, I said, a delusionist cannot take an adjective. You are one, or you are not. Any noun can take an adjective if you know your grammar. I tried to come up with examples to challenge his faith in adjectives. A procrastinating tree, a lofty shadow, an estival trance, a burdensome coda. The ineffable miasma of incompetent words, he said. What do you call an aneurysm of a mind that’s clotted by words? As long as I stay clear of adjectives I remain uncluttered, I said. Why such dislike of adjectives? I oppose anything judgmental, I said, and adjectives are opinionated words. Happy, sad. Long, short. Live, dead. Young, old. Even the simplest adjective claims such entitlement to judge. Not to mention they come with those abusive forms of the comparative and the superlative.

Tell me one person whose self is not flawed. It doesn’t work that way, Mommy. You know it doesn’t. You cannot demand that everyone be perfect. I can forgive everyone, he said, for being imperfect. But not yourself. I tried, Mommy, I did try. Can’t you see I’m perfect in only one way?

I did not want to become the kind of person recounting trifles to the dead.

prodigal.

The light changed and I turned into a street with old houses on both sides but no bushes. If you have a sudden possession of something you don’t understand, I said, is there a way to discard it promptly without understanding it? What is it? Words provided to me—loss, grief, sorrow, bereavement, trauma—never seemed to be able to speak precisely of what was plaguing me. One can and must live with loss and grief and sorrow and bereavement. Together they frame this life, as solid as the ceiling and the floor and the walls and the doors. But there is something else, like a bird that flies away at the first sign of one’s attention, or a cricket chirping in the dark, never settling close enough for one to tell from which corner the song comes. If I could say what it is, I said, wouldn’t that mean at least I have some understanding? Do you understand a tree and how it feels when you know its name?

Because a three-year-old can use stupid correctly, he said. Not so fast, I said. I happened to look up the word the other day. I encountered enough extreme stupidities for me not to investigate the word. Stupid, from Latin stupidus, be numbed, be astonished. So? So in a way the word is abused. It’s deprived of its more feeling root, I said. Something happens, and it stuns us, it numbs us, it dulls us. There is much more sense and feeling involved in stupidity.