“Make sure your phone is charged.”
“Okay.”
“Is it charging now?”
“Okay.”
“Luling, are you listening to me?” she demands.
“Yes. I said I’m fine, Mom.” I glance outside through the curtains, where I can barely see through the white. “The snow hasn’t started yet,” I lie.
“Mmph.” There’s a rustle like she’s looking out her own window to check my words from four thousand kilometers away. “By the way, Missy Jin says hello.”
“Okay?” Weird to think they’re talking about me. I don’t like it.
“Rafe might be coming out to Toronto.”
“Good for him.” This means nothing to me, so I ignore the nauseous feeling that could be either revulsion or anticipation.
“You should welcome him,” she says. “You can talk about Vancouver. He can get you up to date. There are so many changes these days.”
As if. I’m desperate to get off this call. “Snow’s starting. I’d better get something to eat.”
This has the desired effect, because along withAre you warm enough,Have you eatenwas a constant question throughout my childhood.
“Be safe, Luling.”
The call has broken my concentration, but also, in a strange way, removed some of my stress. I go back to my work feeling more confident.
Time to gather the energy. It sounds simple enough, but how? It’s like telling someone that breathing is easy and all you need to do is suck in the air. That glosses over the muscles they need to contract, or how to make their lungs expand. I’d thought I managed to do it when I was twenty, but I clearly had it wrong.
I sit back, staring at a glass of water that was left on the table. The store is desert dry, thanks to an ancient radiator that knocks and hisses, and laminated rings have been etched along the sides of the glass as the liquid inside evaporated. Water.
After my failure with Ms. Kang, my mother reminded me that even Aiai, the OG Hua, had trouble in the beginning. The Peony Goddessherself had to lay out instructions for the novice Aiai, and water had been key.
After filling a novelty glass from a Chinese buffet restaurant at the tap, I bring it back to my desk and sit down with a towel on my lap. Then I pour the water into my cupped hand and close my eyes. It’s cold, but there’s nothing to feel. Water’s strange like that, like air—so present but ephemeral. I swirl my hand slightly and feel it creep up and then drip over my palm. Apparently, each molecule in the water is thrumming with energy. I need only a touch.
Try.My grandmother’s voice whispers in my ear from the past, echoed by my mother. Mom had, surprisingly, been a patient teacher when training me on both the technical side of perfumery and how to handle my moli.
“I don’t know what to do,” I say to the bottle. “I need the right steps to know what I’m doing. The exact process.”
That doesn’t matter,my mother’s voice comes again.You’re always so worried about being perfect; it prevents you from taking action. You get in your own way. That’s why you don’t succeed.
How can I not, when my entire life is based on getting the correct number of drops into a bottle? Mom liked to say precision was the servant of creativity, but it was hard to take that seriously from a woman who made me re-create a rose forty times because it wasn’t faultless.
I light a tuberose-scented candle with a mild astonishment that I’m considering praying to a flower goddess in this day and age, but it can’t hurt. After all, the power exists, and it came from somewhere, so the Peony Goddess might be out there tending her celestial gardens and be willing to help out a poor human supplicant.
Please help.I send the thought out to the universe and the Peony Goddess.Please. I’ll do anything short of moving back with my parents. I’ll give up french fries. I’ll sacrifice a bottle of wine a day, and not the cheap stuff. I think you’ll like rosé.
I try to whip myself into a positive mindset. I can do it. I want thistoo much for it not to work. I pour more water, then close my eyes and channel the learnings from the single mindfulness class I took last year to let myself feel the swirling energy. I think I feel the tingling Mom said I would, that I felt once before, and raise my other hand to touch the huo sigil.
“Please work,” I whisper as my birthmark gives off a sudden warmth.
Then I sag down, suddenly exhausted as the cold water spills into my lap and makes me twitch. That’s the way it should be, as reported by generations of Hua woman, and the way I felt when I was twenty, but it hadn’t worked then. Did it work now? What if everything I’m feeling is only mental? I shake the bottle in frustration, the bright work light gleaming on the glass. I should feel a tug from the bottle and a generalized feeling over my body originating from my birthmark, but I’ve learned I can’t trust that. Do I feel it or not? I think so? I don’t know. It’s the same as the other times I’ve tried, with Mom hovering over my shoulder, asking if I’m sure.
I close my eyes tighter to focus more, until all I can feel is the bottle I’m squeezing in my hand. I don’t feel different at all.
Nothing. Nothing.
