Luck of the Titanic

by Stacey Lee

but to the Chinese, death is just a continuation of life on a higher plane with our ancestors.

When you live with someone whose mistress is the bottle, you say your goodbyes long before they depart.

I climb a final staircase to the rearmost deck, the ingloriously named poop deck. There again, a woman’s opinion would’ve been helpful, as one cannot help but think of the toilet every time one refers to it.

The Chinese avoid the number four, but Westerners like even numbers. The lifeboats stand pale and motionless, ghostly cradles held by skeletal arms. Four in each of four corners. I shiver. This deck is full of bad luck,

Being in the same boat does not make us the same.

“Grudges are like heavy skirts—they’re just extra weight. I design my clothes to be fluid and easy to move in, so that when life takes unexpected turns, you won’t get stuck.”

Mum always said God gave us two hands, one for helping ourselves and one for helping others.

Life is a balancing act, and the better you get at juggling, the better you get at living. You could be killed walking down the street, but you don’t let that fear stop you. You just practice until the fear is no longer part of the equation.

Life is a balancing act, and the better you get at juggling, the better you get at living. But juggling is not an act of holding tight. It’s an act of letting go—of giving the people you love the time and space to find their own orbit. And it’s an act of catching. I’ll always be there for Jamie, just as he’ll always be there for me.

Life, like this ship, continues to move forward. This tiny moment, like all the other moments happening on this ship, will transform, like ocean spray, into rivulets bearing us in new directions.

“Climb up,” Jamie says, sounding far away. “That’s enough.” Enough. A soft, treacherous word. A word that means stop, rest. A word that means you’ve done everything, but makes you doubt it all the same.

Of the seven hundred survivors of the Titanic disaster, six—of an original eight—were Chinese men, probably seamen of some sort. But little is known about them. Unlike the rest of the survivors, their stories were not reported. While every other survivor was welcomed into America and given succor, these six were shipped off within twenty-four hours of arrival.