Chapter 1
After my relationship with Thorn ended I felt as if nothing of value was lost. He was both trashy and prissy, which was very unattractive to me. I hated that he cut up his meat when we went out to eat, claiming it was a “texture thing”. Even though I am a very agreeable drunk, I still got annoyed by it. How can you be both picky and pudgy? He wore square-toed boots in the summer that clacked like women’s shoes. He would probably be very fat a few years into a stable relationship. But it was summertime and I had nothing better to do than drink and talk about novels and past relationships with this divorced thirty-four year old. His teeth were bad, rowed with silver fillings and he smelled good.
I don’t think I am better than anyone. I just get annoyed very easily. Having lost my good male friend due to complications in our tumultuous relationship, I was out of male escorts for the bar. At least this weathered man had hobbies and liked to read.
I left him a random day at the end of summer. I woke up one morning and thought “I can’t take it anymore!” We met at a dingy little cafe and I told him I didn’t want to be with anybody, I just wanted to spend time by myself. That was a lie and he knew it. His eyes darkened but he just said “okay.”
As I walked home I felt lighter than I had in months. On summer evenings I could appreciate the true beauty of the neighborhood, the hour between the electric lights going out and the total night. Candlelight blinked out of the greenly-nested little houses. I peered at families as they moved across their hazy yellow windows in a softened state.
Walking down the streets I grew up in, I felt a sudden pang of heartache. Despite having never lived anywhere else, I always felt on nights like this like I had returned after being away on a years-long journey.
If that had been my circumstance, I would give up resistance and not feel resentful. But then I could only feel deep disgust and disappointment at the idea of buying my own home in this neighborhood, in this city, even in this world. But it was beautiful.
When I arrived home we still had twenty minutes of power left. My aunt would be shutting down the Ceremony Hall for the next hour. She liked to keep guests until the last possible moment, hopeful of selling another bottle of liquor before darkness and heat drove them all out. I would have time for a bath, a warm one, if I ran the water now.
Sliding gently into the cracked tub, I thought of Thorn’s teeth. Hot, damaged porcelain. A smile of relief broke out on my face. We had met on the platform of a train while waiting to go in opposite directions. When we were together I would ride for two hours to visit his home. While it had seemed inconvenient, I was happy that I would likely never see him again. He had only been in the city for a funeral, he rarely left his neighborhood.
I sat in the tub, watching the red powder I’d rubbed on my knuckles loosen up in the crevices of my skin and dissipate into the milky, mineral- packed water. I removed my heavy makeup with oil, slipped out of the bath and laid naked in my low bed, smiling when I heard my aunt come in, close the door, and retire to her own room.
“Mira, are you awake?”
Aunt Xira stood outside my room the next morning. She sounded so close I thought her lips might be pressed against the door. Annoying.
“Yes, I’m awake. I have been.”
“Good. When you are ready please come down and I will explain what I need you to do for the day.”
“I’ll be down soon.” I said cheerfully, still feeling pleased at the sense of freedom I had gotten after breaking off what would have soon been an engagement the night before.
I used to sit at my wooden dressing table for hours, facing the small balcony. The wooden table’s drawers would swell in the summer heat, requiring much effort to yank them open to get to my face powder, pencils and oils. My room was in the second story of the small house. I was considered very lucky to live in a house with two stories. Admittedly, it was a source of pride for me to have my own room, a small bathroom, and the mothy linen closet where I kept towels, games and unseasonable shoes. Unlike the downstairs where Aunt Xira slept, the upstairs walls were not painted. The dark wood was illuminated by a single yellow light on a shell-pink sconce on the wall.
That morning when I went downstairs Auntie was counting out dull coins on the table in the kitchen. I remember she looked worse than usual- her sunspots penetrated deep into her cheeks as if they were tattooed. She hadn’t plucked the hairs on her lip or under her chin.
“This is what I need you to do for the day, are you listening? You didn’t look like you were listening. Go to the candle shop, and buy four candlesticks. The cheap ones. Do not buy anything scented, they give me a headache and the smell mixes with the food. If you want anything else, anything fancy, you buy it with your own money.” Business must not be doing well, I thought.
“Okay.” I said.
“Then, if you don’t mind,” I did. “Go to Layien’s house and pick up the fabrics I left with her. I was going to have her make me a new dress for work, but I have changed my mind.”
“Okay.”
“And please, will you not stay out all day? I need to know where you are.” She slid the coins from the table and shoved them at me.
My aunt was a bitch, and that is why her ceremony hall was not doing well, at least, that’s what I thought. She tried to be fake and gooey when people came in to get married, or enjoy Wall Celebration Day, but hardship wafted from her in fumes, and it made people uncomfortable when she tried to put on airs.
Due to the consistent power shutoffs, our neighborhood was lined with candle shops. Every week I would go to the cheapest store- it was really a stall- and buy in bulk cheap paraffin candles that Aunt Xira preferred.
The best candle I ever had was a square, two-storied house, obviously meant to emulate a foreign structure. Lit from two chimneys on either side, it wilted down to reveal a little porcelain family inside: father, mother, and seven pebbly babies. When I received it for my twelfth birthday, the house was tucked away into a paper-lined powder blue box painted with red birds and tied with a ribbon. I loved it so much I didn’t burn it until I was eighteen, when I got drunk one night and lit the dusty wicks. It was better then than it would have been when I was a child anyways.
The streets were disgusting. They reeked from sewage and trash and constant flooding. On particularly wet days, I had to remind myself that I should be grateful for our rainy climate, because I remember when the World almost ended.
That is how I remembered it. There had been a drought, unusual and lengthy enough to drive even the most skeptical of my fellow countrymen back to the temples in droves. They packed into the holy places of wood and stone, murmuring in front of different representations of God, rocking back and forth on their knees with hands clasped around lit candles or sticks of incense. At six years old, I was too young to go alone, so I accompanied Aunt Xira to the Ordinary Leaf Temple, a creaking wooden structure of three stories.
The original dark red paint had faded to a peely dull brown, but in my eyes it was magnificent. The courtyard was lined with tall but ordinary oak trees, darkly canopying a gritty path of well-maintained white sand. Under such a thick cover the sand glinted like metal under moonlight. Passing under a doorway carved into gold-painted swirls, one was immediately choked by the stench of incense, body odor, and desperation. I would copy Auntie and the other patrons in front of statues of God-Likenesses (The Ordinary Leaf Temple hosted twenty), and join them in rocking of and forth, whispering fervently: ”Please, send rain. Please, send rain. Please, send rain, Please, rain.” It was customary to close your eyes during prayers, but I could not help but look straight into Ashmaya’s eyes, who was Aunt Xira’s preferred Likeness. The dull lead whites of her eyes contrasted against the sharp black eyeliner of the statue. Her mouth consisted of two fat bright red petals. Her cheeks were flaming. It was Ashmaya that I based all ideas of beauty and femininity upon, and would try to emulate for years to come. After two hours of this we would emerge from the musty hall, drained, thirsty, and almost delirious.
One night during the drought, a fire finally broke out.
