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“Things I Almost Remember” was a short-listed entry in our recently concluded 72nd Short Fiction Contest, and is published with the consent of the author.
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Görkem Dalgıç/via Pexels.com
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Things I Almost Remember
by Ye Eun Lee
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Four and a Half
…..It must have been the day before my summer break; I recall the absorbing warmth of sunshine on the top of my head. There were crowds of mothers and fathers calling out to their kids, telling them to hurry up or they would miss their flights. Dogs were panting and sticking their droopy heads out car windows, trying to catch the slightest breeze in the thick, humid air. Cars had black buckles strapping luggage down onto their roofs. Kids were running around with the ancient Egyptian diorama projects they had been working on all year. Dad was coming home this weekend from who knew where he spent most of his time, and I had hoped to build for him a perfect Egyptian pyramid, but I was never able to make the tip pointy enough. So the whole thing sat in my locker under a pile of other unfinished art projects, dust sandwiched between them.
…..The teachers celebrated the last day of school with ice popsicles. There were lots of people lining up behind a big white truck. It was probably the same truck that they had sitting on the side of the road during the move-up ceremony. If it was, I must have been four-and-a-half, going into Kindergarten that fall.
…..Sweet. Savory. Cold. I wish I could capture the rollercoaster of emotions I went through in the duration of eating that ice popsicle. The bright red dye stains on my fingers, my tongue numb from the iciness, and my fingers sticky, none of which I minded. I never want to forget what I felt that Friday. Or Thursday.
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Stargazing
…..Whenever my mom decides she needs to tell me the story of my accident again, she offers some new tweak or detail, which sometimes makes me wonder if she’s suffering some kind of memory loss herself. This time, we’re at the dinner table and she’s eating in silence. Usually, she’ll ask me questions about my day, like she’s checking up on me. Yesterday, she asked me who I sat with at lunchtime, and the day before that she asked me to list the names of all my teachers. But today, I decide I’m going to be the one to question her. I ask her if Dad will be coming home next weekend.
…..Silence. She pokes at her pasta noodles and twirls them around the plate. Every now and then I hear her fork scratch against the porcelain.
…..Mom has a list of things that always annoy her, like when she wakes up late for work and doesn’t have time to make her cup of coffee. In an effort to lighten the mood, I ask her if the mailman, the one who always mistakes our house number, 223, for 232, delivered someone else’s packages again. Mom’s face softens and almost, just almost, offers the tiniest smile across the corner of her mouth. At that moment, I’m hoping that Mom will laugh, but instead she sighs heavily and murmurs to herself, and I realize it’s going to be one of those dinners again, where it all circles back to me somehow. She looks up at the ceiling, takes a deep breath, then pauses before she begins telling the story again.
…..We always start from the same place, the same setting. The same old story gets told. She was walking me home from school. We were side by side, holding hands. It was pouring rain that day. When she describes how I pointed and yelled when I saw Dad across the street, I remember how he stood by the crossing signal, and how my heart leapt a beat. He had come back for my mom and me. I started to run, my hands stretched out in front of me. Dad was only a reach away, a few steps, when everything happened. First, I saw headlights and a glimpse of Dad running at me, trying to grab me or push me away. Then, there were flashing lights, my mom’s voice trembling and the loud mumbling of paramedics asking me, “Are you okay? Are you okay? Are you…”
…..Sometimes when she tells the story, she’ll add that glass was everywhere and that she screamed my name, but I swear she imagined that part. I think she adds those details to help me remember, but I would rather not. Every time my friends ask me about that day, I start to tell them Mom’s version, that I was on rainy streets, but soon my mind draws a blank and I have no more words floating in my head. All I see is black and darkness; I think I can almost see the stars.
…..While still looking up at the ceiling, Mom reaches for her glass of water and leans forward to take a big gulp. Clearing her throat, she describes how bright and dark the red crossing signal was. She tells me that I yanked my hand out of hers and bolted off the sidewalk. Mom looks deep into my eyes to make sure I know how serious she is right now. “At the hospital, you kept asking where Dad was. Every single day for a whole week, until you forgot about him.” Mom says that the truck driver was drunk and had slipped off the brake. The doctors thought it was a miracle that I wasn’t also killed. They said I had some memory gaps but they hoped I would have a slow recovery.
…..“But still, you kept looking for Dad,” Mom says, her gaze still on me, “asking for him, asking where he went.”
…..There’s a slight trembling in her voice when she says Dad’s name. She pauses for a moment, and I ask, “So, where is Dad? He’s coming home next weekend like he used to, right?” He’s been gone so long, I don’t remember what he looks like anymore. He’s become a fading memory, erasing itself as more and more time passes.
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Sticky Notes
….. Five. Four. Three. Five. Four. Three. Four? I count my wrinkly fingers that are aching again, but I can’t keep track of what number I’m on. This is…maybe a Thursday afternoon, while my mother is driving me back to the place I now call home. People question why I would call such a place that. But I live there pretty much all the time, now that I’ve graduated college, however many years ago that was. Mom only takes me out during the holiday season and brings me…home…
…..Counting fingers, or anything else I can find, gives me a sense of safety. I’ve always felt that I could rely on numbers. Numbers don’t drift like words. Feelings. Places. They shouldn’t. But today in the back seat of the car, even numbers have started to blur. My fingers that once moved so swiftly now falter and clench. I start re-counting, but I get frustrated that I can’t remember the last number I said after…three…?
…..So I start writing them down, hoping this will help me.
….. Why am I writing these random things on sticky notes?
…..My mom remarks, “Why don’t you just put those away for now,” and I start crying. I promise her that next time I will remember the number that comes after three, but I feel like I’ve failed even myself. I really do try. But I have spent too much time among white walls with people coming to my room every hour or so, sometimes handing me a cherry-flavored popsicle and asking me if I ever had one before. Or interrogating me about the time I was walking home with Mom in the rain, as if something important happened. Or what I feel about a picture they show me of Mom with darker hair standing next to a tall man who’s holding a little girl’s hand. The longer I stare at it, a sense of déjà vu begins to gnaw at me and gives me flashbacks: the sound of rain pitter pattering on the streets, a truck honking, and a man running at me, maybe to grab me, maybe to push me away. Then darkness. I’ll hand the picture back to the woman and shrug. There is something familiar about the man in the image, but whoever he reminds me of stays just out of my reach.
…..“Maybe it’s just the way the girl hangs onto him,” I conclude.
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Ye Eun Lee is a senior at a New Jersey high school with a passion for creative writing and music. In addition to writing short fiction, she has been playing the violin for nearly a decade.
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Click here to read “La Fontaine,” Ashlee Trahan’s winning story in the 72nd Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction Contest
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