Things You Can’t Fit in a Box

By Stephanie (Yihui) He

Love from a mother is unfathomable. It creeps into my veins like heat rolling off sandy beaches—a suffocating relaxation, her pride a gentle chokehold on mine. Are you going out, she asks me when I trade my slippers for winter boots, and I reply, For a walk, and she says, What you are wearing is too short, too thin. Do not blame me when you get raped, she says while hefting four layers of clothing onto my skinny frame. I cave in like a stack of books too heavy to carry and let her drape the heavy cloth over my shoulders. 

Too many times of us, the careful imbalance that makes up us, ensuing in screaming matches has made me placid and pliable like water to her touch. I could have just walked out the door and she could never stop me. Yet time after time, I stay, and I scream. Why do I scream? I like to think I am brave, standing up against Mom like that, but I am scared, too—not of her, no, but of the things that make her tremble. I want to be myself, but the amount of fear that rules over what Mom stands for chills me to my bones. What if I was going to be her when I grow up? Cowering at every single disastrous possibility in this mundane life. I can feel it seeping in already. 

I barge out into the winter as if to hide away in a snowy wonderland, while puffs of frost slide down the nooks and crannies of my clothes, freezing the marrow in my bones. I hate the winter. The way ice collides in tiny pinpricks against my red face, freezing my nose so I have to gasp for air; the way I have to lumber around in thick clothes; the way my snot wipes off onto my hand-me-down gloves when I bend my head. The escape that I had pictured lasts about five minutes, in which I circle the stone building and sit on the swing—which is really just for decoration—in the backyard of our small motel. I could have run far away—so far that Mom could never find me again. But fear creeps in yet again, because try as I may, I can never picture a life without Mom. 

Sha hai zi! Mom’s voice is frantic. Stupid child, where did you go? Where are you? 

Here, I answer numbly, and circle to the front of the motel. 

She shoots me a glare and turns her back on me. I follow her as she climbs into the cab Dad hails to take us to where Great-Grandma had been left to commune with the skies. 

She had turned to stardust a few years ago, but Mom still cries herself senseless when she’s mentioned. On the way to the commemoration site, Mom winds down the cab window and I clutch her hand despite the freezing wind that gushes in. The frozen tears on her cheeks glitter as the sun struck them. Mom’s way of crying is different than any I’ve seen before. Sometimes it’s almost as if her face is unaccustomed to the foreign concept of tears. Her right eye would jump and twitch as she clenched her jaw. When the tears rolled down her sagged, rough skin, she would raise a hand to harshly wipe them away. Her throat pushed out odd scraping coughs and heaves. 

I look at her and she says, The sand is in my eyes. We ride in silence afterward. 

 

I dread seeing Grandpa again—the saggy, parched skin that hangs on his cheekbones, shining with body grease, the yellow teeth crooked and leering out from the thick lips, and the putrid smell coming off in waves from his wet armpits. 

A lorry rushes by us at one point, the back of the cart loaded with what I think are pink rubber balls at first. But then I see the dirt that greases their sides and the metal bars around the cart stained with a glutinous red liquid that can only be blood. 

Pigs. A whole lorry of pigs in a huge pen is being carted away. The truck is faster than our small cab and I have barely enough time to register that all the pigs are pushing one runty looking one against the metal bars before the truck zooms past. A steel hook plunges into the runt’s left eye, and it lets out an agonized squeal. 

I think of Grandpa as the runt, rubbed against the wire so all the warts that cover his face rupture and bleed. 

Then the truck is gone, and it all seems like a dream. 

We arrive at the monumental mound dedicated to Great-Grandma on top of a small hill littered with thousands of small mounds. We trudge slowly up the ravine, kicking up dirt and dead leaves as we go. Soon, we find Great-Grandma’s patch. The flowers we left last year had wilted away and half melted into the ground. The words engraved on the small plaque—Great-Grandma’s full maiden name—have also faded into a pale gray. Dad guides Mom before the mound, puts one of his stubby arms around her and squeezes her tight. I follow suit so Dad and I stand on either side of Mom. She swats his arm away. 

Sha hai zi, Mom starts as she bends down and lights her incense sticks. She loves to call me that, but I still feel it irk me when she does. Stupid little child, let me tell you a story. 

“When your grandma beat me for not studying,” Mom laughs through tears, “I would high-tail it out of there, run through the grass patches, the deep fields of rice crops, the cows and the sheep, and your grandpa’s little tool shed until I reach your great-grandmother’s house.” 

It is a story I have heard a million times and I wonder when my ears will rot off. 

“Then she’d give me a really thin plastic straw, just the size of your pinky,” she grabs my hand and squeezes, then jerks it up and plays with my pinky, “Then I would stick it into the center of the flowers and suck the nectar.” 

I could see it unfold in the small cave of a house they used to have. Mom, a tiny schoolgirl with straggly hair yelling for her grandma to help her; Great-Grandma, I would imagine, with a twinkle in her eyes, would offer her bedside cabinet for a hiding spot. Grandpa would arrive in a few minutes huffing and puffing from the run, carrying a thick cane and demanding to know where Mom had gone. Great-Grandma would have been sitting on her rocking chair, knitting, unfazed and confused. 

She hasn’t come, she would have said, Now be a man and help my daughter in the kitchen. 

Wo hen ai ta, Mom says beside me. I really, really loved her. It is the first time she has said that. Love. Mom kneels and sticks the incense in the soil, and as she straightens up, her hand brushes against a small wooden box hidden in an unbecoming crevice next to the incense mound. I bend over to look at it more closely. 

Is that Great-Grandma’s ashes, I ask stupidly. 

Hui qi! Mom whirls around and shoots me with such a glare that her eyes look like they are about to fall out. Unlucky words, they will be the death of you, my child. Her gaze shifts back to the box and we stare at it for a long moment. 

I briefly saw Great-Grandma when I was still a baby. I cannot remember anything now, save for the warm sunlight that streamed from thin wooden windows and the scratchy garlic-scented fabric of the dress Great-Grandma wore. I remember her kind eyes, beetle black. 

We cannot stay there for long, however, as the winds started to blow this way and that, and the snow started to billow down in big waves, catching on our winter coats, hats, and my lashes. I try to blink the snow away, but the icy tufts fall into the corners of my eyes and I swat the air as I try to get them out. Mom grabs me by the face and blows on my eyes. Now it hurts even more. 

In the distance, Dad calls to us that he has hailed a cab, which, in reality, is a rickety little truck. We can’t get real cars in the countryside—the roads are too bumpy and narrow. We ride in silence, squashed against each other in the tiny compartment. Our heads occasionally bump into the wooden roof when the truck strikes a pothole. The only source of fresh oxygen is the opening at the end of the truck, where I can see the red dirt road streaming out in front, the dead bugs the truck crushed, and the endless fields of maize stretching and stretching, their long leaves weighed down by powdery snow. 

Grandpa has decorated the house with red garlands, antithetical couplets, and the word “Fu” for happiness and prosperity. Mom narrows her eyes. It is her grandmother’s commemoration day—there should only be white, which symbolizes a peaceful death, and not red, appearing in the house. 

Grandpa, however, seems unfazed and is standing on the edge of the broken door frame, clad in nothing but a thin blazer when we arrive. Rushing over, he claps Dad on the back and ushers him in. Next, he wraps his pudgy arms around my backside and lifts me high. I struggle as he grabs my butt and pinches hard. 

Let him do it, Mom’s voice sounds in my head and forces thoughts of sexual assault from my mind. He thinks you’re a child. He doesn’t mean it like that. As always, I sense the strain in her voice and relent. 

“You’re all grown up now!” Grandpa cries, even though in my mind I have barely changed. His face, dotted with large hairy moles, is inches from my face and I want to cry. He sets me down at last, heavily, and turns to Dad again. “Come! Sit down.” 

Then, as if recognizing Mom’s presence for the first time, he glances over in her direction. Help your mother with the cooking, are the only words he throws at her.

Mom shoots him a fiery glare of death but still obediently steps into the house and starts helping out in the kitchen. I watch as Mom squeezes the sides of Grandma’s shoulder. Grandma swats her hands away like how Mom would swat my hands away when I tried to hug her. But through the reflection of dirty windows, I can see Grandma’s lips tilt downward and the faintest of tears come into her eyes. Grandma’s back is even more bent forward than the last time I saw her, and her veined hands tremble with the weight of the black wok. Mom flits around, unsure of where to put her hands. Aunt Wu, Mom’s sister, joins them in the kitchen too, looking weary. 

Mom tells me later that Aunt Wu just suffered a divorce, and Grandpa is ignoring her. 

The men of the family had already gathered in the tiny living room, pouring white wine into paper cups, clinking them together, and regaling each other with their accomplishments of the past year. 

A loud wail from the small bedroom down the hallway startles the adults. It is my brother, who had been asleep the entire car ride, that made the noise. 

Before either Mom or I could move to take care of him, Grandpa rushes into the bedroom and scoops him up. 

“My grandson, everyone!” He laughs, bouncing my half-awake baby brother in his rough arms. My brother screams louder, pleading for Mom to take him. Mom reaches for her baby, but Grandpa knocks her arms out of the way, hugging my brother closer to his foul-smelling armpits. My brother starts to kick and shove, and finally, with a huge harumph, Grandpa lets him slip into Mom’s arms. He has finally burst a tiny edge of the bubble he creates—the illusion that everyone likes him. 

Mom takes the baby in her arms and starts running a hand over his back. 

“Look at your son,” Grandpa shakes his head, running a stubby hand over his dirty black hair and scratching his neck, “Wonder what he’s going to grow up to be.” 

I look back at Grandma. She is now half a head shorter than I am, a big difference from four years back. Her eyelids droop over her dimmed surgery-failed irises as she watches Grandpa. Grandma’s eyes are beyond repair, the doctor has said, but as if sensing me watching her, Grandma slowly shifts her gaze to land on me. She gives me a wobbly smile, calls my name in a raspy voice, and turns back to her cooking. It is as if, in the short span of four years since I last saw her, she has aged over a thousand. 

The tears come small and brittle at first, as I start taking the dishes out from a rusty cupboard. I mask it by wiping my face with tap water. But then, my nose clogs and breathing becomes too difficult to do through the nose. I open my mouth and gulp lungfuls of air, but each exhale threatens to bring the sides of my lips down. Before I know it, my vision is a mask of fogged waterfalls, the pots and the pans and the rusty window by the side of the cupboard morphing into brick red and grays and the dark blue of night. My body shakes uncontrollably as I reach down and rest my hands on my knees. Amidst the clamor of the living room, I hear Grandma stop her cooking, set her pan down heavily, and shuffle over to me. I straighten up at once and try to wipe the tears away. But before I could do so, veiny arms dotted with age wrap around my sides clumsily. It felt like Grandma had never hugged anyone before and did not know what to do with her hands. Barely audible sniffles also came from Grandma, and I watched as tears, like pearls on a broken string, seeped out of her unseeing gray eyes. Holding her, I realize that I had grown and she had shrunk, and maybe it is my time to hug her instead. So I turn around, place my arms against her shoulders, and hold her tight. 

Something icy bites my sides and I turn uncomfortably to look. It is Grandma’s wedding ring, still sitting silver on her left ring finger. It’s funny how Grandma still carries it around even though my grandparents haven’t lived together for nearly fifteen years. Every few years, Grandma demands a divorce, and every time Grandpa laughs it off. 

“That woman doesn’t know what she’s talking about!” He would bellow, waving a gnarled hand in our direction, “Which man would want a woman like her?” He seethes, before promptly turning to us and in the same breath demanding, “Now what’s for lunch?” 

Then, Grandpa would go guffawing to his room and switch on his old computer. 

It’s a habit now, a robotic response to things he does not want to discuss. The yellow light of the screen would flood Grandpa’s face. His eyes would stagnate at one point on the screen then move away to look out the window. There is a hardness in his gaze after all these years, the bubble he created for himself consuming him—a house he built so he wouldn’t have to grow up. A bitterness hangs around his presence, radiating disappointment in his family, but mostly in himself. I wonder if he knows how to love at all, or is everything to him a responsibility that he would never be able to get rid of?

There were rather amiable moments with Grandpa, of course, when we watched military dramas and he would proudly reminisce about his army days. But most of the time, he would just sit in front of his old radio and doze off to its crackling. Sometimes, he would stare out the window and mumble something under his breath. Then, when he caught my silhouette reflected on the dirty, caked windows, he would shoo me away, shutting the door in my face. 

My family dislikes Grandpa. He can feel our disdain, and complains to us about our “hidden motives” while we protest all true allegations about the horrors we have endured at his hands. More so in these times, filial piety is a pain in the ass. 

Haole, wo yao qu zuo fan, Grandma finally rasps out and I let go. I need to get dinner ready.

I go out into the fading backyard, and the cold winds pierce and solidify the tears on my cheeks, turning them into icicles. I look around at the vines creeping onto every surface they can get at. There is one half-dead goldfish there, flopping in a hatful of water in a sizable crack in the ground. There used to be a bunch a few months ago, Grandpa tells me, and I bought them a great big porcelain bowl. The bowl is nowhere to be seen, save for a few cracked pieces of china laying here and there. Where did the other goldfish go? And the bunnies we used to play with as kids? Mom used to say it’s better to stay silent on matters like these, to not think about things that make us sad, and to not question what makes the world go round. 

The back door bangs open behind me. 

“Don’t you have studying to do? Don’t you have anything better to do?” 

Mom finds me in the backyard, and I could sense the frustration etched in her voice. Two seconds of peace as I watch the sun set, then everything rushes back.

“I thought we were on holiday,” I say, confused. 

“That’s no excuse.” 

“But I didn’t bring any with me! I thought—” 

“Why are you raising your voice?!” Mom is yelling now, and I see the permanent furrow between her brows deepen even more. 

I open my mouth to scream but again, no words come out. 

Dad hears the commotion and sticks his head out a side window. He slides through the door and the next moment, he’s in between us, a hand on Mom’s shoulders and a stubby finger pointed at me. 

Mama hen lei, he says placatingly. She’s tired. 

Mom’s eyes are twitching again, and her jaw is tight. I know what’s coming next. 

Bai yan lang! Are Mom’s last words before Dad pushes her into the house. You thankless wretch. 

All of a sudden, I am screaming nothingness, ripping through my throat with a guttural roar I did not know I was capable of making. I want to hit something. 

Dad’s voice pierces the haze of me choking on my spit. 

“Try making another noise.” 

The blank he leaves hanging in the air works every time. I remember how he gets when he drinks alcohol. I can still feel the cracked porcelain of the smashed teacup dig into my elbow that night I had returned home to find him drunk. Mom’s voice sounds in my head again, it’s easier to stay silent. So I shut my mouth. 

But my body wants out, every single cell within me, every atom screaming for escape. 

Dazed, I backtrack, ending up tripping on the crack, slipping on the rubbery fish, and falling hard. Pain shoots through my leg and leaves me paralyzed on the ground for nearly a minute. It feels as if I were pushed backward into a sandpit lined with cacti at the bottom. Everything stings and when I try to climb up, my limbs only move groggily in response. 

Dad steps out in the garden, reaches an arm over and hauls me to my feet. 

“Let’s take this with us back home and solve it there, yeah?” His tone is forced softness, “We can all forget about this now.” 

I shake his arm away with an exaggerated show of disgust, but before I can limp away, Dad grabs my arm painfully and twists it to the side. I cry out in pain and struggle against the opaque force drilling my arm down. 

Ni zhe ge sha hai zi! “You stupid child! I—”

I can feel spit spray onto my face but Dad cuts himself off before he says anything out of hand. Grandpa is here, and for once, I feel a tiny bit of gratitude to that old man. 

Dad releases me and I rub at my red arm. I can see his jaw work, a vein pulsing in his temple. The way he says the words rings in my head like unending bells, as if he really means every word he says, like he is holding a drill over my splintering skull and pushing and pushing. And for a moment, I realize how the way Mom says sha hai zi is different, like a caress from the wind and a hidden whisper for words she never knew how to form. Mom says that Dad tries to be a good dad. He really does try. But sometimes it just doesn’t work out the way he wants things to work out. I take a deep breath and shakily let it out. 

“You don’t understand anything,” Dad sighs, “You’ll see when you get older.” It’s been thirteen years, and my ignorance and their silence still persists. 

That night, I told my parents sulkily that I wanted to visit Great-Grandma again. Mom will not speak to me, and Dad straight out rejects that idea. 

Surprisingly, Grandpa stands up from his couch on the far side of the living room and volunteers to take me. 

“Look at you being such a child,” he guffaws at Mom, and I realize he sounds just like Dad when he grips my arm and spits in my face. “You don’t even know how to be a good parent. C’mon, I’ll take you.” 

I look at Mom and I can see the rims of her eyes go red. We really are one sort of person; when we hear berating words—especially the slew of imagined insults that run rampant here—we hear the ocean in our ears, the water rising from deep within like an uncontrollable torrent, threatening to also seep through our eyes. Our mouth stays firmly clenched; we don’t know what to say because we’ve never known what to say. 

I walk out the house. 

— 

“What do you remember about Great-Grandma?” I ask as we look over at the tiny hill. I kneel on the craggy, cold ground and take out my lighter. Freeing another hand from the warmth of my coat pocket, I got out the incense sticks. Grandpa stands a few steps away from me, watching as I light the sticks after fumbling unsuccessfully for a few minutes. He sighs, and I can see a billow of moist breath, accompanied by the smell of cigar smoke so choked up in his respiratory system that he can never get rid of it. 

“Nothing much.” 

Then after a while, he says, “She was too nice to your mother.” And I am momentarily frozen on the spot when I hear the faint tinge of worry etch in those succinct syllables. 

“Went to protest violence from the revolution. At her age!” he scoffs, “We tried to stop her and rightly so. She never came back—” 

As if realizing what he had said, Grandpa stops and laughs awkwardly. 

She never came back? I glance at the ash box, confused, but decide to focus on the first part of what he said. 

“Sounds like she gave her lots of love.” 

“Bah! Love!” Grandpa laughs harshly, “Look at what your mother has turned out to be—a middling housewife. That love killed her.” 

“Isn’t that what you wanted for her? To be a housewife.” 

“What? Of course not!” Grandpa blubbers, “Why did you think I wanted her to get three degrees? Why did you think I worked my ass off for her college tuition? So she could get out of this poverty trap that I’m—we’re in.” 

“But didn’t Aunt Wu do it? She’s a doctor, she’s making money. She’s well-off now.” 

“Don’t even mention her to me!” Grandpa swats his hands in my direction, “A failure in her marriage—and she still dares to call me her father! A shame to the household.” 

“So what do you want?” I press, my tone condescending. The image of the runt on the truck flashes across my mind, and I see myself holding a part of the steel wiring, but now poking at the rough bulging warts on Grandpa’s face one by one. What is it. A wart ruptures. What is it. Another bursts. What is it. His face is covered in pus now. What do you want?

“I want—I want…” Grandpa protests, and I am knocked out of my grotesque reverie. 

A lost, slightly panicked look flashes across his eyes but he quickly regains composure.

“Now don’t you mind what I want. You’re just a kid, you don’t understand. Get on with what you want to do here.” 

I roll my eyes in the dark, the answer is apparent enough in his silence: status and money. But I’d also forgotten that despite the feeling of immense satisfaction at the rupturing eyeballs of the runt, I had also felt pity. I feel pity. 

I stick the incense sticks next to the stone slab and bow my head one last time. Before getting up, I copy Mom, and brush my fingers against the wooden box. 

You never came back. It dawns on me. The box is too small, too light, too broken to hold you.

Mom used to say that sometimes, people refuse to realize some things. It starts becoming a habit, and slowly, this refusal becomes a lifeline. It was what she had told me, almost curtly, after one of our arguments. I like to think of it as the closest she was to an apology, or an admittance of some sort. 

How I wish you were still here. 

“That box,” Grandpa says suddenly, a slight tinge of derision in his voice, “I gave it to your mother when she was your age, you know. It’s a mystery to me how she still hasn’t realized–” 

“Realized what?” At that, Grandpa falls silent, chuckling to himself.

“C’mon, let’s head back. I know my own daughter, and she would be worried sick by now.” 

We trudge back heavily through the clumps of white, down the mound, and onto Grandpa’s rickety bicycle. He thinks I’m too young to have this conversation—they think I’m too young for everything. So now I keep thoughts to myself. 

Sha hai zi… Mom used to tell me that the most useless things I could say to her were wo ai ni, dui bu qi, and xie xie ni. I love you, I’m sorry, thank you. But the box will always be empty, as it always has been, and sometimes I wish we told each other things. 

But we never will.