Until After, Memory
Huina Zheng
Until After
Amid nights ablaze with flickering neon and the rhythmic dance of shadows, we glide, bathed in the radiant glow. The lights from the disco ball sketch out colorful and ever-changing spots and beams in the dimly lit dance hall, dancing and spinning on the walls, floor, and bodies of the dancers, just like countless stars in the night sky. The music’s relentless cadence reshapes our heartbeats into unfamiliar forms. We’re forever poised between numbness and efficiency, but what of it? The boy with the ponytail, his eyes as gentle as a horse’s, strides through the bar’s obscurity to his station, vanishing into the street’s mist only after the final patrons have departed. His nametag displays the English name he chose for himself, John Lin. Night after night, we pass by each other, nodding, smiling, liking each other’s posts on WeChat Moments. He teaches me how to navigate the intoxicating brightness and merriment, like a wily cat avoiding trouble, yet always emerging when most required. In the years to come, his tale will be recounted in a dispassionate newsreel. In an unforeseen altercation, he will step in to defend a girl from a thug’s harassment, only for a blade to puncture his chest, staining his shirt with crimson. The nametag will be soaked in the same hue. But a new rumor about him will emerge. It will be said that photos of him in an affair with a married male government official were captured, and that his untimely demise is no accident but the result of hired gangsters. For years I will seek to mend his wounds within my dreams, assembling his enduring, youthful countenance from the fragments of memory, whispering his name softly. He remains forever young, forever dancing beneath the strobing lights until the music’s final note and the dispersal of the crowd.
Memory
She remembers the lengthy bus journey with her dad, a rhythmic sway as they moved, stopping and starting. The fragrance of a lady with flowing straight hair in the front seat enveloped her, and she nestled in her dad’s lap. She remembers her dad waking her up, guiding her hand as they crossed the zebra crossing, and the “Guangzhou Zoo” sign not too far ahead. She remembers a small snack stall near the zoo’s entrance, where her dad treated her to velvety tofu pudding with rich, golden caramel syrup that melted in her mouth. She remembers a boy’s cries after he dropped his ice cream, his mother’s loud scolding, “Quiet! This is a public place,” as if her rebuke wouldn’t disturb anyone else. She remembers the bustling panda enclosure and her dad hoisting her onto his shoulders, allowing her to witness the plump pandas sound asleep. She remembers the petting zoo area teeming with kids feeding llamas carrots, corn, greens, and grass, the air filled with a potent, pungent aroma. She remembers the moment when a llama nibbled the choy sum from her fingers, its moist lips brushing against her skin. Startled, she quickly let go, feeling the unexpected, slimy sensation. Her dad stood behind, shielding her from other children. A multitude of animals paraded through her memory—Yangtze alligators, Siberian tigers, brown bears. An array of species. She remembers their stances, feeling that the world was a place brimming with vitality and wonder, and believing that her dad would remain her unwavering support—these memories are bright spots against a darker canvas she rarely acknowledges.
Her memory skirts unsettling echoes from the past, grasping neither their weight nor whisper. These fragments she pushes away, preferring instead the zoo’s vivid hues and laughter. So, she doesn’t want to remember the jarring slams of the anti-theft door as her dad returned home late, or her mom’s hushed instructions for her to go back to sleep. She refuses to remember her dad’s curses and her mom’s soft pleas as she cracked open the bedroom door, or when she concluded that the unsteady, flushed-faced man wasn’t her father—it was just her imagination. She doesn’t remember her dad striking her mom’s head against the wall, or ripping her mom’s nightgown and pouncing on her. When she strains to remember her dad, all she can remember is the sunny day at the zoo—a warm, blurred image of the man so important yet absent in her life. However, she still remembers the night when her dad snored on the couch and her mom led her away. She retains the sensations of fatigue, confusion, and fear as her mom took her away to a place so far, far away she felt she would forever separate from him. And in the deep, silent stretches of her memory, she realizes she never did—and never would—see him again.
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Huina Zheng has a Distinction M.A. in English studies. She is a college essay coach and an editor at Bewildering Stories, and her stories appear in Baltimore Review, Variant Literature, and elsewhere. Nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, she lives in Guangzhou, China, with her family.
