Everything Here Is Beautiful

by Mira T. Lee

  Essy walks, all twenty-two pounds of her tottering from side to side. She’s like some mythical creature, freshly hatched, embodying awe and delight as she stomps through a mud puddle. Stop that! It’s dirty! I hear the words in my head, but I don’t let them out. I let her stomp away.

  Natey is beautiful, cherubic as ever. Nipa glows, too. Something about her feels different now. Lighter. She’s found a new job at an at-risk youth center in Harlem, which is something she’s always wanted to do.

  I tell her about the interview.

  “Oh, that sounds perfect,” she says. “And all those Points of Connectivity. It’s perfect. You’re going to get it for sure.”

  “You think so?”

  “You think so,” she says, all go-go girl. “That’s what matters, right?”

  • • •

  On Monday I wait. On Tuesday I wait. When six days have passed, I send a polite e-mail. The reply pops up right away.

  Hi Lucia, I enjoyed speaking with you as well, but unfortunately, we don’t feel it’s the right fit for our organization. Sorry for not getting back to you sooner. I wish you the best of luck. D.

  I stare at my computer screen so long the letters start to wiggle. I blink them back into shape. First, it’s so abrupt. Second, it’s so final. Third, D?

  “We have jobs. Diner has jobs,” says Manny. “Hostess job. Dishwasher. Place across the street has jobs.”

  I don’t say anything.

  “Next one, you’ll get it,” he says.

  Next one. I lie on our futon mattress like a gutted fish. Stare up at the ceiling, the paint peels, the crisscross cracks, the dome light fixture, white and opaque, reminiscent of a silver-nippled breast.

  Aiya, Lucia, she wants to run wild. Cutting school, sneaking around with boys, never thinking about future. You think this is fine?

  But Ma, Lucia is smart. She’ll figure it out.

  I trace the cracks back and forth with my eyeballs, I look for a sign: If I find a path that traverses the ceiling without crashing into the breast, it means I’ll find a job by the end of the month. . . .

  Manny gives Essy her bath, towels her dry, dresses her in her ducky pajamas. She’s had trouble sleeping since she grew out of the bassinet and moved into our bed. When we leave the room she screams, UP! “Maybe we should let her cry it out,” I say. But he lies next to her, rubs her back, hooks her fingers on his pinky until she calms. When he sleeps, I touch the mole on his cheek. I ring it like a doorbell.

  Lucia can do anything she wants.

  I find my phone. I creep downstairs. Shaking, I impulse dial. I hardly ever speak to Jie anymore. We e-mail, and it’s sporadic. But for this, she’s the only one who will understand.

  “They know.”

  “What are you talking about? What is it, Lucia? What’s wrong?”

  She sounds frantic. I forgot, it’s the middle of the night over there. I tell her about the interview.

  “They were about to hire me, and then they didn’t. They must know.”

  “About what?”

  “The hospital. My records.”

  “Oh, Lucia.” Now she’s yawning. “But how would they know?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It’s private.”

  “Maybe I’m blacklisted.”

  “Medical records are private. It would be discriminatory. Anyway, why would you think they know?”

  I tell her about NYU and ponderance and Vietnam and bass. The Points of Connectivity. I know when a conversation feels right.

  “Oh, Lucia.” She sighs.

  “What do I do?”

  Make your bed.

  “Do I call and ask him why?”

  I can hear the whir of her professional brain, evaluating the situation.

  “I guess . . . I don’t think so.”

  Lie in it.

  I can’t help it, I start to cry.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “I don’t think there’s anything you can do. But it’s just one interview, Lucia. I’m sure you’ll find something else.”

  “But you don’t know. . . .”

  “You’re a really good writer. You’ll find something. I know you will, Lucia, it will all work out. How is everything else? Is Esperanza okay? Did you get the package I sent?”

  But I’m not in the mood.

  I head back upstairs, lie next to Essy, listen to Manny’s snores.

  Why is Lucy crying?

  Me? Who am I?

  Schizophrenia does not define who I am.

  • • •

  That night I float back to my mother’s house in New Jersey. The one with the purple swing set in the backyard, green shag carpets, basketball hoop in the driveway.

  Ma has cancer.

  What?

  Cancer. Lung cancer.

  Oh my God, Jie. What do we do?

  Spring of my junior year at NYU. Jie at that behemoth consulting firm, working with some telecommunications client (she was miserable). She took charge of everything—the appointments, the follow-ups, the endless research. I was the one living at home in New Jersey that summer, working as a temp (the only summer I didn’t go abroad), but Jie was always buzzing around. That was the summer Ma was too weak to move, knocked out by infusions, hospitalized with infections, waiting for transfusions, or, at best, resting in her favorite green suede recliner, listening to her Pavarotti. Sometimes I’d take out my tall spiral notebook. Ma, tell me a story. Or, if she was too tired for a story, Ma, teach me how to make Mapo tofu. It was the summer I learned how to cook, and I jotted down every recipe Ma could remember—spare ribs with garlic and honey and five-spice powder, lion’s head meatballs, almond cookies, char siu and shrimp fried rice. Use day-old rice, right, Ma? Yes, day-old is best. Set the shrimp on a paper towel in front of a fan. To cook up crisp, they must first be dry. On Christmas Eve, she was declared in remission. We celebrated by roasting a duck, Peking-style. To health, said Jie. To life, said Ma, and I nearly dropped my cup of baijiu. To be honest, I’d never allowed myself to think she wouldn’t survive.

  The only p-doc I ever liked was my first, Dr. Hassan, a young Iranian woman with a British accent. “Stress,” she said. “Stress and drugs are the riskiest triggers. You should learn to watch for the signs.” Signs? “Prodromal symptoms. The ones that forecast a break.”

  She focused on wellness: daily routines, proper nutrition, exercise, sleep and self-care. I never got to bed early, but I ate mostly organic, took brisk walks, practiced yoga and tai-chi. And then I met Yonah and fell in love.

  His essence? Something big. Bulletproof, with the presence of a rhinoceros, yet still unassuming, slightly comical, like a duck.

  “Hey you,” he said, that first time we met. “I am owner of this store. I give you present, you stop eating from my bulk food aisle.” He handed me a small, hexagonal-shaped box tied clumsily with red ribbon. It was filled with macadamias.

  “For one week I see you sampling my nuts. You are embarrassed now?” he said, but he said it laughing, because Yoni, only his heart is bigger than his mouth. We played chess, drank wine. I barely even noticed his injured arm; the rest of him was too alive.

  Shortly after we met, my mother died. That day at her funeral, he stood beside me, I knew he was my angel. “Why are you crying?” I said, watching him wipe his eyes. “Why you are not crying?” he said. “Your mother is dead. You are daughter with no mother. I love you. Of course I cry.”

  We got married. Divinely blessed, my thoughts popped like firecrackers, my heart swelled with happiness, my body exuded a magnetic energy. I was an aura of love, a goddess in heat, and people sought out my company to tell me their stories, even virtual strangers: Mrs. Sato, the quiet divorcée (who carried a gun as well as a Pomeranian in her handbag), preferred Indian men and anal sex; Juan Carlos, the Colombian guitarist who rehearsed in
the basement, had lymphoma, but refused to let his bandmates know; Mr. Takahara, the multimillionaire developer, invited me to his private island in the Bahamas (an impulse purchase he’d made the previous winter) to ghostwrite his autobiography. I was the hub of the neighborhood.

  “Hypomania,” said Dr. Hassan, “is characterized by a pervasive elevated state, euphoria, increased creativity and productivity.” Well, what person in their right mind would want to switch that off? I had every intention of staying that way forever.

  I didn’t catch it in time.

  The glossy sheen faded. One night I became convinced Yonah was broadcasting my life to Israel via the security monitors in our bedroom. I felt devastated, betrayed, and the world’s troubles draped over me like a heavy tarp. Mr. Takahara was falling into bankruptcy. Juan Carlos needed me to cleanse his body’s qi. Mrs. Sato beckoned to me with each tilt of her chin—I was a geisha girl, to join in her multicultural orgies. I retreated. Suspicious, irritable, overwhelmed.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Yonah.

  I couldn’t say. The words had fallen out again. And in a rush, the voices came.

  The serpents whispered: Her ovaries are shrinking. Her eggs are dying. The baby needs to be born.

  A baby, trapped inside my ovaries—an actual, teeny-tiny human, fully formed! She was crying. She needed me.

  I watched Chaka and Noemie in the store, enthralled by their baby boy. How he slept, how he nursed, how he cried to be understood but never judged or demanded explanations. I could learn. I could love. Like the rest of humankind. I only needed to hold my baby in my arms.

  Of all the thoughts I was experiencing in those days, these turned out to be the most reasonable, sane.

  I pretended along in the hospital that time, stayed quiet, played nice. Within a few days I was released.

  Sometime later, I said good-bye to Yonah. I left Manhattan. I didn’t hesitate. Here’s the thing: When the serpents come, they seize control via the heart, erase all self-doubt, and life exists only day to day. In those moments, it makes perfect sense to succumb to them and their unwavering conviction.

  Sometime later, I found myself in another p-ward up north.

  But when I got pregnant, that tiny being inside me would become my angel. I ditched the pills. I lived my life. Forty weeks’ truce—peace, the serpents in hibernation. Then my baby left my body. My bao-bao, my hija. Esperanza, my love. The serpents returned, with a vengeance.

  Last day of April, I’m offered part-time work. Copywriter for an online vitamin retailer. It’s cracker dry, but I learn to extol the benefits of melatonin and colonic cleanses and raspberry ketones. I make them sound irresistible.

  “Should we celebrate?” says Manny.

  “Why not?” I say.

  His favorite spot is the Ecuadorian buffet, but it’s so warm that weekend I’m in the mood for the beach. So we decide on Croton Point, on the Hudson, not far away, and that morning I hear from Nipa, who I haven’t seen in two months, so I invite her to meet us there, too.

  It’s crowded. A perfect, glorious day, and apparently everyone’s had the same idea. We pick a spot, unfurl our blanket. Manny has packed a picnic lunch in a real basket, with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and carrot sticks and cut-up fruit—it’s sweet, especially since he doesn’t usually like peanut butter, or sandwiches, which I say makes him un-American. It’s a joke.

  We watch the kids race up to the water’s edge, squeal as it touches their toes. We flick off Essy’s shoes, let her run in the sand. A second later, she shoves a wet fistful into her mouth.

  “No, no,” Manny yells.

  “Let her be,” I say, laughing. “How else will she learn?”

  Seagulls, bold as rats, fat as rabbits, squabble on the shore. As Essy gives chase, their tiny feet patter this way and that, the flock like an organism, a spill of water, magically changing shape.

  Manny runs after Essy. He’s showing her how to skip stones in the water when Nipa arrives, elbows linked with a big beefy white guy with a bushy beard who’s walking bowlegged like a country singer.

  We hug. “This is my husband, Winston,” she says.

  “Nice to finally meet you,” I say. Winston slogs after Natey, who has headed straight for the water.

  “Is that your husband over there?” Nipa points to Manny, feet submerged in lapping waves.

  “That’s Manny,” I say.

  “I have news.” She’s beaming. She pats her belly.

  “Are you pregnant?”

  “Twelve weeks. I’ve been dying to tell someone.”

  “Wow! Congratulations!” I say. And then I can’t help it, I’m picturing Nipa’s skinny frame being pounded by Winston, the great woolly mammoth. “How are you feeling?”

  “Exhausted,” she says. “But getting better. Second trimester is so much more tolerable, right?”

  “Right,” I say, though I can’t really remember. Pregnancy feels so deep in my own past, and I haven’t been able to think of it as a repeat event. Not with all that happened after Essy’s birth.

  “Hey, what happened with that news job? The one you interviewed for?”

  “Oh, that.” I extol the benefits of writing about melatonin and colonic cleanses and raspberry ketones. Make it sound irresistible.

  And then I hear it:

  Is that you?

  Lucy, is that you?

  The voice, low and froggy, wafts in the air, but from the surprise on Nipa’s face I know it’s real. I whip around to a shock of pink hair, tough, weathered skin, face too small for its buggy eyes. A bull, I think, or a bronco at the gate, or maybe a slab of beef jerky.

  Coco. Loco Coco. I haven’t seen Coco since the day before I left Crote Six, but it’s her all right, in a white V-neck undershirt and orange tights, still grinding away on her wad of gum.

  “Lucy! Knew it was you, baby.” Her rough cheek against mine as she hugs me tight. “This your friend? You got such nice-looking friends, baby. And where’s your little girl? Is that her? Oh my God, you’re not kidding, she is too gorgeous. Lord, how time flies. What’s it been? A year?”

  It comforts me somehow, to see she’s still the same Loco Coco with her pinball energy, all flashing lights and snapping rubber bands. Her eye. I remember. She stabbed herself in the eye with a chopstick the morning she was supposed to leave the p-ward.

  “How is everything?” I say.

  “Grand. Just grand, baby. Beach on a day like this? I’ve been living with my nephew real close by, just for temporary. You been back to the Holiday Inn lately, baby?” She winks.

  I shake my head.

  “Big Juan’s got a crush on you. Hell, they all do. Who wouldn’t, right?” She’s asking Nipa, who nods emphatically. I’m reeling from the dissonance.

  “Nipa, this is . . .”

  Coco’s over by the waves, squatting near the kids. Natey shies away. “Hey, pretty thing. Me, Coco.” She puts out her hand. Essy returns the high five.

  “Too gorgeous! Just like her mama.” Coco is back, pinches my arm, flashes Nipa her toothy smile. “Me and this one go way back, she’s got a heart of gold. I don’t want to keep you, baby. But you gonna take me to that Chinese joint sometime, right? King crab legs. Buffet style. Remember, baby?”

  “Sure, Coco. All you can eat.”

  “I’ll give you my number. Got a pen?”

  She scribbles on a napkin. “I’m right up there.” She points to the sky, though maybe she’s referring to one of the towns across the river. “Rents outta control, right? Ta-ta, baby, I gotta run. You call me. So nice to meet.” She waves, Very Royal, takes a quick bow. And then she’s gone, and the air is still.

  “A character,” says Nipa.

  “Yep. A character,” I say.

  She doesn’t ask any more, but it’s Winston who lumbers over, all pink and out of breath, huffing, “Who was
that crazy lady?”

  “Lucia used to play in a band,” says Nipa. As if this should account for such bizarre behaviors, and I’m grateful. Nipa and I talk kids, but personal stuff we still mostly hide away.

  “Nice friend,” says Manny, after they’ve gone, and I explain how Nipa and I met in the basement of the Unitarian church. I’m sure I told him before, about all the different-shaped breasts, but he must not have been listening because what man wouldn’t remember that?

  “Her and that big dude are one funny couple though,” he says, and I have to laugh. Sometimes Manny and I get each other like that. “So what do you think?” he says. He sprawls out on the blanket, all fidgety, scrapes crusted sand off the bottoms of his feet, pops a grape into his mouth. “Maybe it’s time to get married, no?”

  I blink. I look up, as if words are falling out of the clouds. He’s not looking at me. He’s chewing a grape. So I run to the water. I run in all the way up to my waist.

  • • •

  Days pass. Weeks pass. He doesn’t say anything, but I feel it in the air sometimes. About what he said, I’m not sure anymore, what the words were exactly. Maybe we should get married? Should we get married sometime? Is it time to get married? It might be good to get married? One thing I know it was not: “Will you marry me?”

  Ma, what happened to Ba?

  Your father died in an accident.

  What kind of accident?

  A car accident.

  What was he like? How did you meet?

  I was arranged to marry another man. But then I fell in love with your father.

  That’s so romantic!

  He was smart. Very smart. A brilliant scientist. He could charm a snake with his sweet talk, make a bullfrog laugh. He swept me off my feet, as they say.

  But Gong-gong Po-po didn’t like him.

  That’s right.

  Why not?

  Aiya, Xiao-mei. Very complicated. Family matters.

  But we don’t have family, Ma.

  We have three of us, Xiao-mei. Easier this way.

  Ma, from a prominent family. Gong-gong Po-po suspicious of Ba, who came from a tiny village in the countryside. But they’d married, had a child, and Ma’s family had grown fond of their new son-in-law (I tell you, with his mouth, no one can resist your Ba).