He’s rocking her shaking body, feathering kisses along her temple. She can hear his heartbeat in her ear; it’s louder than the pounding of the room. He’s crying; she can see the clear beads of water that roll over sharp cheekbones. His tears are luminescent. They’re fucking beautiful. She reaches out a trembling finger to catch the tears and he leans into her touch. His apologies trip over themselves. He’s 200 pounds of pure muscle wrapped around her, shuddering in her arms, and yet somehow, he’s the vulnerable one in this. She feels powerful in knowing this. For the first time in four years, 27-year-old Grace Li feels like 23-year-old Grace Li, the artist who kissed James McIntyre on the balcony of that rooftop bar. She feels fucking immortal.
He’s whispering promises. I swear, I’ll never hurt you again. I swear this is the last time. I’m so sorry. I’m so lucky that you love me. Stay. Please stay. If you leave, I’ll kill myself. I can’t do this without you. I promise this is the last time.
She knows that he’s lying because she’s an expert in lying, but she smiles anyway. Maybe it’s because she loves these moments. She loves the way he looks at her in these moments: like she was all he had. She tells herself that these moments make all the other moments worth it. Maybe she likes the performance of suffering: midnight visits to the ER, velvet lies to the police, learning the difference between green and nude concealer. As if this suffering will one day spill across her canvases and into greatness. Maybe parts of 23-year-old Grace Li, the artist, are still there after all. Maybe she’s still a great artist like her professors at NYU told her. She’s an expert at lying, even when – no, especially when – she’s lying to herself.
Under the fractured moonlight, James and Grace share a matcha-flavored Pocky, a kind of aftercare tradition after violence, while Grace listens to the breathing of the room. Grace nibbles at the matcha-covered stick and suddenly she’s choking, coughing so hard she can barely breathe. Her eyes water and her chest heaves ups and down. Wheezes flutter out of her chest and she shivers uncontrollably while the moonlight highlights the beads of sweat.
Through fractured eyelids, she first sees a mug, then the hand it is connected to, then her grandfather. He doesn’t say anything. He merely reaches over and pushes her up by her shoulder blades, helping her take small sips of the green tea he had boiled minutes before. The moonlight softens the hard contours of his face and she doesn’t know when he leaves. Instead she falls asleep, drunk on green tea, and wakes up in James’s arm, drunk on matcha-flavored Pocky, shards of moonlight scattered like stars in the black of her hair.
***
Héng. Shù. Pié. Nà.
Again.
Héng. Shù. Pié. Nà.
Again.
Everything is in Nà.
All my brustrokes are in Nà.
Everything is sideways.
My characters
…they’re in Nà.
I am sideways.
I am in Nà.
My world has turned sideways
and I wonder what happened to my character
why I’m just a jumble of jagged Nàs
why my character can never be 规正
perfect, proper.
I am in Nà.
I am writing in Nà but I
am not using pen or maobi but silver;
I’m engraving the characters
in red on flesh.
into me.
I am in Nà.
I am bleeding out in Nà
in blue and bursts of bright red
and Yeye, grandfather,
I will not forget even if I can only write in Nà
I will remember in Nà.
Nà. Nà. Nà. Nà.
Again.
Nà. Nà. Nà. Nà.
Again.
yeye, grandfather, did you know the walls have skin?
Thank you for reading part 5 of Becoming Woman by our columnist Amanda Chen! Stay tuned for more works by Amanda in the future and read more about her here. The final part of Becoming Woman is scheduled to be published next Monday, August 22nd, 2022.