Lovers in a New World

In Chengdu, Sichuan province
near the top of a red-roofed apartment building
where the elevators are broken far too often
my grandmother and grandfather spend their days in the pandemic on the couch
their arms around one another, watching the dramas on TV.

Every year, every picture I see
every video call on WeChat
they are a little grayer
a little more stooped.

There was a garden a floor up that my grandfather tended
full of blooming hydrangeas, succulents, and verdant stalks of bamboo.
An oasis high above the stained and broken-tiled cityscape.
Now, it’s bare
the plants all given away
too much to keep going up and down those stairs
to bend and water and grow.

In Queens, the ICU rooms at Elmhurst Hospital are sparse
and the bones of this building and the staff that fill it are tired.
On a bed too big for her body, GuiYing Ma lies among pulsing monitors
her heartbeat measured in the slope of rising and falling green lines.
Her breaths exist in harmony with the tide of the ventilator
air hissing and humming through the tracheostomy site in her throat.
The right side of her head is divoted and soft
where they’ve removed the fractured bones of her skull and evacuated the bleeding
after she was struck with a brick on a sidewalk in her neighborhood.
By her side, her husband strokes his hands up and down her swollen limbs
and tries to remind her of the life they shared.
They were lovers in a new world
coming from dirt roads and rice paddies
wide-open skies and provincial valleys
to the cramped alleys and sidewalks of Queens.
Money for their son
opportunities for their grandchildren
a mother’s love across time and space.

The beeps from his wife’s pulse oximeter measure moments in time:
young again—working in the factories and the farms
old again—leaving early every morning for work
switching out grease traps in restaurant kitchens
while she sweeps the sidewalks and watches the neighbors’ kids.
Here again—in their one-bedroom apartment 
cigarette butts pressed tight into the ashtray
smoke rising in an empty kitchen
his hands sinking into wet grains of rice
and the water streaking milky white.
He’ll eat it alone, with eggs and tomatoes
pickled vegetables on the side
one of the only dishes he knows how to make.

After her heart finally gave out
the Chinese dream came to an end in America
the components of the equation all wrong:
the son flew to the city
buried the mother
and brought the father back home.
And as the plane took off from the tarmac at LaGuardia
America faded away behind them.

In their little apartment in Chengdu
my grandfather settles into the couch
and wonders if he should start a new garden
this time on the windowsill on the first floor
one that’s within closer reach.
He is the survivor of a billion diverging paths.

Read more from Issue 22.2.