Searching for Sylvie Lee

by Jean Kwok

I wear black today too, for Ma’s sake, while Pa dresses in his normal clothing. It’s not that he doesn’t care. It’s that he can’t show us that he does.

In my enthusiasm, I forget to be shy.

I exit the subway station and step out into the kinder, gentler world that money can buy.

At first, I was so hypnotized by the snow I did not notice how the cool sunlight cast a halo of gold upon the guy sitting in front of the glass. His hair curled in loose gleaming waves, unrestrained and free. He was sprawled in his chair—legs spread wide, jeans so torn I could see bits of hairy leg through the holes. I could never take up space like that, as if I had been born unfettered, as if this world were my birthright.

We’re still foreigners despite the years we’ve lived here. I may have grown up in Queens but my entire home life has been Chinese—chopsticks, bitter melon with carp on Sundays, Buddhist holidays, respect your elders—and

Of course, Lunar New Year is the most important holiday to the Chinese, but it’s hard to celebrate with all your heart when your festivity isn’t reflected by the society around you—no films on television, no displays in department stores, no friends with gifts, and no propaganda about peace and love whatsoever. Sylvie and I always had to go to school on Chinese New Year.

After they shop for groceries in Chinatown, he carries as many of the heavy plastic bags as he can, leaving as few as possible for Ma. He stands the entire day at work but if a seat opens up on the crowded subway, he guards it until Ma can drop her tired body into it. He makes sure our winter coats are warm and thick but has refused to replace his own shabby jacket for years, despite the way I catch him shivering through the bitter winters.

Now he looks up, sees me watching him, and smiles, unveiling his straight white teeth. That easing of the daily strain on his face makes him suddenly as handsome as a movie star.

Ma never went anywhere. She was afraid to burn herself with cold water.

Her hair is so light it’s almost white and, with her beside him, Lukas is transformed from shaggy wild man into sexy artist, as if she were a light cast upon him, throwing his features into sharp relief.

A group of men too old to be seen in the skintight black Lycra that they’re wearing zoom past us on racing bicycles, heads ducked against the driving rain, disappearing into the distance like a flock of misshapen crows.

That was how the mind worked, deceiving us so we could bear the many sorrows of life.

Helena’s eyes glittered with naked intensity. I could not tell if they were filled with greed or a desperate need to be loved. I was not even sure if it made a difference: it came down to hunger. Perhaps those desires all stemmed from the same place in our broken, burdened hearts.

But still, there was tenderness when they looked at each other, though it was quickly hidden away again. Ma stayed up late mending Pa’s work gloves. Pa put the choicest pieces of abalone in Ma’s rice bowl. An ocean of love, guilt, and duty surged back and forth between them, stroking both their hearts even as it kept them apart.

In love and life, we never know when we are telling ourselves stories. We are the ultimate unreliable narrators. If we desire to forgive someone, we tell ourselves one version—he did not mean it, he is sorry and will never do it again. And when we are finally ready to walk away, something else—he has always been a lying bastard, I never should have trusted him and you could always see the lie in his eyes.

Now I know why Dutch painters were obsessed with the sky. Stretched above the flat landscape, the morning boils and eddies, the roiling clouds battling a single sharp patch of obstinate sunlight.

The mysterious expanse of water surrounds us, swelling and ebbing, and a cold dampness crawls underneath my clothing and burrows itself next to my heart.

The sky stretched over the horizon, gray and clear, like the iris of an unblinking eye.

We were as cold as newly shaven sheep.

As Sylvie told me once, we are all ultimately unreliable storytellers of our own lives, whether we wish it so or not, whether we share a common language or not. The only reliable narrators are to be found in books. Much of Sylvie was hidden from me, but the loyal, generous sister I loved was also true—all facets of the same diamond: my sister, the woman without a country.