Portrait of a Thief

by Grace D. Li

Who could determine what counted as theft when museums and countries and civilizations saw the spoils of conquest as rightfully earned?

This was how things changed: slowly, and then all at once.

there were moments that, with the careful precision of a knife, could split your life in two.

She had grown up in a run-down apartment in New York City, in a neighborhood that was always fighting to survive, had always known how much it took—how much you had to risk—to change a life. She had been the first in her family to go to college, the first in her family to dream of something more than this. Alex had spent her whole life achieving the impossible. What was one more time?

Ten years of friendship, of shared classes and late nights studying and talk of dreams, of who they would become when they graduated high school, college, all the ways to measure a life.

“What’s wrong with wanting everything?” he asked. The lights flickered on. If anyone had walked into the museum now, all they would see were these two siblings, faces turned not toward each other but to the art surrounding them. “Nothing,” Irene said, but her voice was soft as a warning, “as long as you know how to get it.”

He had spent these years searching for what it meant, to be the eldest son of an eldest son, to go to a school that flung open doors, but now it was his senior year and he had not yet figured out who he was supposed to be, how to become.

All the colors here felt more real. Or maybe it was just that he did.

What’s wrong with wanting everything? Nothing, as long as you know how to get it.

She might have dreamed the weekend before. But it had been two days, and Lily could still remember the rumble of Beijing’s highways, how the city moved like it was a living, breathing thing. She was used to small towns, the kind you could fly through in a minute, foot pressed down on the gas, stopping only for the fluorescent red of a stoplight, the shine of a distant cop car. Beijing had felt like it could swallow her alive. She had wanted to spread her hands out, let herself be consumed. She had wanted to leave and never look back.

Twenty years, and she was used to being asked where she was from, to giving an answer that felt like a lie. She could never be Chinese enough for China. She could never be American enough for here.

“Do you miss it?” Lily asked. “China?” “Always,” Irene said. “How can I not?” Lily had expected that answer. Still, she kept her gaze on the ceiling, the heavy dark. “Even though it’s not yours?” she said. “It is,” Irene said. In the darkness, her voice softened. “And it’s yours too, whenever you want to claim it.”

As sleep reached for her, Lily was still thinking of Galveston, those years she spent racing—or was it dreaming?—hoping to go somewhere, anywhere else. The stories her parents had never told her about China, the empty space it had carved within her. How it felt to search and never find. All these years, and Lily had never known how to love a place and not leave it behind.

Change came faster now that Alex was gone, now that she could no longer watch so carefully.

There were restaurants along the boardwalk, lights swinging low over uneven water, but somehow it was better like this, feet dangling off the edge of the pier, the world reduced to water and sky and a salt-laced wind.

Irene continued through the Chinese Pavilion, taking care to visit every room, to spend the same amount of time in each, building this palace in her head. This was how the rooms opened into each other; these were the hallways and the windows and the high, reaching archways, lined in gold and stolen history.

If she let herself be angry, her anger would spill over. It would burn her alive.

I am afraid I will get everything I ever wanted. Why does that scare you? Because what I want is not what my parents want. Because this is not the American Dream I was told I should chase.

She was at Duke, far from the hurricanes of home, from all that her parents had left behind, and yet she could never tell if she was running toward something or just away.

they would have looked like any other group of college students after a night out, all bright eyes and rumpled hair, cheeks flushed from the night air, from being twenty-one and feeling too much.

“For all that people in power claim to care about looting, it doesn’t seem to matter when it’s museums doing it.

“It’s going to sound ridiculous.” “I don’t think it will.” Lily was quiet for a moment. “There’s an auto shop my neighbor owns,” she said. “I worked there in the summers. And it’s been in his family for three generations, and when I was in high school, I would sometimes see his children and grandchildren there, and I would think that this was it, you know? This was home, for all of them. And I’m not sure where I want to be, but I know I want something like that. I’m not like you or Irene. I don’t need to change the world. I just—I want to live, and to know that it’s enough.”

“We have the rest of our lives ahead of us. There are still things we can change.”

history was told by the conquerors.

history was retold as civilizations rose, and museums had always been part of that retelling.

History is an ongoing process, though, isn’t it?” Will asked. “And what we remember has always been determined by what museums choose to display.”

“Art belongs to the creator,” Will said, his voice soft, “not the conqueror. No matter what the law says, or what treaties are signed. For too long, museums have held on to art that isn’t theirs to keep, bought more because they know they can.”

“If we could buy this art back, we would,” he said. “But museums see it as theirs by right, by conquest or colonialism.” “Would we?” Siqi asked. “Why should we be spending our money to buy back what was once ours? These pieces—they were stolen from us first.”

She had spent her whole life getting asked where she was from and trying to make sense of the answer. She did not know what was true. She only knew that, growing up, neither China nor America felt like it was hers.

“We’re children of the diaspora,” Will said. He had grown up in the US, knew that no matter how much he wanted it to be, China would never be home to him. “All we’ve ever known is loss.”

No matter how many years Daniel spent away from Beijing, when he closed his eyes, he still dreamed in Chinese, saw red turrets and crowded streets, the squares and palaces and skyscrapers that made up his city. How could he ever leave it behind?

“All parents leave their own scars. We’re the ones who have to heal from them.”

She had always known that this city, this place, was hers, but she wouldn’t forget how hard it’d been to come by, how fiercely her family had fought to make it so.

Her parents, when they spoke of China, always spoke of loss. But standing there, Beijing unfolding before her, she had thought for the first time they might have been speaking of longing.

Diaspora had always been an unmooring, a boat cast free. She did not know how to find her way back. She never had.

and though he had accepted he would never make history, he had wanted to anyway.

He was not used to missing people, but he had missed her.

There were moments that, even as they happened, you knew would matter.

“Do you think,” she said, “you’re the first guy to try and impress me?”

“Maybe,” he said, soft enough that only she could hear, “I’d rather be the last.”

If this had been home, she would have gone outside, stood before the sea and the depths of the sky. Everything else felt small when the Gulf of Mexico was spread before you, the waves vanishing into a dark, distant horizon.

Art was many things, but in the end it was a question asked: What do you want to be remembered for?

Galveston, China, all these places that were hers, by birth and by blood. They were not all she was, but they were a part of her. She would claim it at last.

Once, he had thought diaspora was loss, longing, all the empty spaces in him filled with want. He could still remember standing before the Old Summer Palace, afraid of what it might mean to leave Harvard behind, who he would be without it. But diaspora was this, too: two cultures that could both be his, history that was waiting to be made.