The very first thing I noticed about the past, was that there were fewer buildings. That, and the fact that the world felt cooler. The summer, less hot. Other than that, it was the same. To me, seemingly, not much had changed in terms of the way people acted or had always been.
Whoever decided that only white flowers were appropriate for a service didn’t consider the fact that the person dying may have had a favorite flower, and would’ve liked to be buried in those instead. But at her funeral, my mother was covered in many white chrysanthemums. When her favorites were actually marigolds.
“Inori,” my grandmother called.
I stood at the entrance of the funeral hall, shuffling off my sneakers. Instead of a black dress, I had worn my bright yellow one that my mother had made me the year before. The sleeves were slightly too tight, but I didn’t care. It was the first time I was wearing it.
I sat down at the very front of the aisle, right in front of her casket. The Buddhist monks glanced over at me slightly, but didn’t say a word. My other family members were silent. Then, gently, I felt my grandfather’s hand on my shoulder.
“Don’t worry,” he said quietly. “This will all be over soon.”
Perhaps he was talking about the actual funeral itself. But to me it sounded like he was talking about something else.
I nodded. Then sat perfectly still as the monks sent my mother’s spirit off towards the afterlife.
–
Standing in front of our family grave always made me nervous. I was worried that my relatives would be able to hear my thoughts, or that they were always looking at me in disapproval.
“Say hello,” my mother would always say when we would visit. But I always found it strange to talk to a tombstone, whether it contained my ancestor’s ashes or not. Still, after my mother died, I didn’t feel nervous in front of their graves anymore.
Washing the grave was always my favorite part. I could do it in silence and not have to worry about what I was going to say or pray about. But it was then that I found my surroundings begin to change. Or perhaps, it was me who had changed, not the world.
Pouring the water down over the headstone, suddenly the sun began to shine on my back. I turned around and found that the old tree in the corner of the graveyard was gone. Only a dirty spot remained where it had been, even though moments ago, there had been shade. At first, I thought it was just an illusion.
Was the tree never there? But then why? I stood there for a moment staring at the spot the old tree used to stand, and then wondered if I had just imagined it.
Perhaps in my grief, I was forgetting things, I thought. It wouldn’t be so unusual to me.
And so in my daze, I began to walk around the graveyard, heading towards the exit after giving the ancestor’s gravestone a good scrub. And lighting some incense. I skipped the prayer with just the clapping of my hands. I didn’t have anything to say.
Next, it was the cars. The cars were all different shapes and colors. Simply put, they were vintage. It was audibly noticeable, and yet I convinced myself it was normal. Maybe there had just happened to be older cars on the road that day. All the while, I thought this to myself, and then pulled out my phone.
It was annoying that I couldn’t use it. Just for a little bit. I always figured I was pretty addicted to my phone, but I got used to it after a while. The only thing was that it made me more aware of my surroundings, and I hated that.
Like how suddenly, the sounds of almost everything made my head turn and made me want to observe it. Like the sound of electricity buzzing through telephone poles, birds in the distance, or the sound of me swallowing my own spit repeatedly. I was looking for a vending machine or a convenience store to buy some bottled water.
I walked like this for hours, and yet there was no sign of any store. Just miles and miles of neighborhood.
–
My father’s hair was frizzy and dyed. Seemingly sun bleached. I found him at his parent’s house, or rather, down by the beach with a surfboard. It took a while for him to notice me, as he kept going back to the waves and then back again. It seemed like hours before I could actually get to talk to him, and even longer for him to understand why I was there.
“So, what’s the future look like?”
“Bleak. And scary.”
“Ah, well, I suppose that’s obvious.”
I looked over at him and then back down at the sand. We were sitting on some driftwood that was scratching at my legs, and not comfortable at all. I would’ve preferred we had stood, but my father had sat down and I had followed suit, not wanting him to go anywhere.
“It’s true. It looks like the end is closer than you might think.”
“Wait, really?”
He looked over at me, and then took a deep breath in.
“Seriously?”
I nodded.
“That is pretty grim. I didn’t think you were so pessimistic.”
I smiled, knowing he was just entertaining me. He didn’t really believe that I was from the future. I had nothing to prove who I really was.
“And the future is hotter,” I said.
“Why’s that?”
“The world is getting hotter from fossil fuel emissions. It all gets trapped in the atmosphere I think, which makes the earth hotter.”
“Hmm…”
“It’s science.”
“I’m a humanities sort of guy.”
“So am I.”
“So it’s way past us, huh?”
“Yup.”
“Even if I try to understand it, I just don’t,” I said.
“But you can accept it, right?” he said. “You don’t have to understand to be able to accept something the way it is.”
“I can’t do it…”
My throat dried up. I felt thirsty all over again. Reaching over to my side, I took a sip from my water bottle.
“I get it,” my father said. “I can’t accept anything either. I want to take everything that’s in my hands and crush it. Tightly, so that it doesn’t escape sometimes.”
That makes you a bad person, I wanted to say, but didn’t have the courage to. I was always afraid of making other people angry at me. And I didn’t really believe it. Despite everything, I didn’t think I was a better person than my father.
My father then took out a cigarette and began to smoke it.
“I didn’t know you smoked,” I accidentally said out loud.
“You don’t know me,” my father said, laughing.
“That’s true,” I said, leaning back.
The smoke felt ticklish in my lungs, making me cough.
–
Usually, I never fought with my mother. I had always felt that I was a pretty obedient child who wasn’t too much trouble to raise. And yet sometimes, there were moments when I wanted to lash out at her, and so I did.
I don’t remember exactly what it was that I said, which was unusual for me. I usually always remembered words, whether it was others or my own. Rather than their actions, or the feelings that I was feeling, or the feelings of others. My memory failed me in all those ways.
The only thing I remembered was the shape and color of my words, and the general feeling of what I was trying to say. Essentially, I was yelling at her that everything was all her fault, and that she was supposed to understand me better. I ended up yelling at her for forty minutes straight, all the while she stared at me in silence. My throat was an awful wreck afterwards, but I did feel a whole lot better in my chest. I was finally able to get all the words out, and I was elated. The only thing I feared was retaliation.
Three days later, I went up to her and hugged my mother tightly. I didn’t know how to apologize. I had never been taught how to, and I didn’t want to learn anytime soon.
“Where did you go?” my mother asked me, hugging me back.
I didn’t answer. Just kept clinging to her.
–
The sounds of frogs at night sting me. Sometimes the smell of rain and plants moves me when I recognize it. When it’s something I remember smelling before, I’m quickly moved to tears. It’ll feel like a long time since I’ve experienced anything.
I want to enjoy my life too, you know? I want to not be afraid and laugh. But somewhere along the way, I became unable to even do that. I think I chose to be unhappy because it made the most sense. It hurt me a lot less to do that than to be genuine. No matter what, I can’t properly face people. Especially myself.
Sometimes I can smell the exact smell that’s causing me to remember, and then I try to soak it in. I stand very still and wait for it to leave me, not the other way around. And every time, I’m afraid that it’s never going to come back. My mother had a smell like that.
But if I hold her clothes tightly, I’ll burst into tears. Which is why I had to give them a good wash beforehand. The day she died, I realized I would have to forget all about her.
Every action I’ve taken since then has been in order to accomplish that.
It’s become my main goal.
–
I found my mother at her university’s campus by asking around for her. It took a little while to find the building she was teaching in, but there she was. Her hair that was usually tied up in my memories was down and messy. I walked up to her and pretended to look for the bathroom.
“All the way over there,” she said, pointing her finger and closing one eye. She stretched her words out as she spoke and pointed for a long time. I looked in the direction of her finger and then finally gave up and thanked her. It wasn’t like I had expected her to know me, but the thought of having to explain my arrival made me tired just thinking about it.
If I called your name now, there’s no way you’d recognize it, right? I thought. Either way, I guessed it didn’t matter. I wouldn’t be calling her name anytime soon. In real life, or my dreams. I was so sure of it.
“You’re very pretty,” she said the next time we met.
I must’ve blushed or looked embarrassed, because she then smiled as though she knew what was going on.
“Are you dating someone?”
“Not at all.”
“Are you married?”
“I don’t ever want to get married.”
“You never know,” my mother said.
“You never know,” I said. “About anything.”
“I’ve got a boyfriend now,” my mother said. “And he’s the one.”
I sucked in hot air through my teeth. Even though I knew it was a stupid conversation, I had to change the subject somehow.
“I wanted to tell you something actually,” I said. “Can you take this to heart?”
My mother leaned forward to listen, just like she always did in the future.
“You can’t get married to him,” I told her. “You can’t have children. You can’t have a daughter, and then get killed by your husband. Your daughter would want you to be happy, and not regret things. She wouldn’t want to exist in a world where you weren’t happy. There wouldn’t be any point.”
My mother looked at me for a moment, frowning. Then shook her head.
“You have a weird way of worrying about someone,” she said. “I can grasp my own happiness, you know?. It’s in my own hands, not my daughter’s, or anyone else’s. That doesn’t make any sense anyhow. No one knows what’s going to happen a minute from now, or way far out into the future. That’s not something anyone can control.”
I felt hopelessness in my chest when she said that. Then wiped the sweat from my forehead. My mother took out a pale yellow handkerchief and then handed it to me.
“It’s hot this year, isn’t it?” my mother said, smiling again. She seemed to have forgotten entirely about our conversation. “It’d be nice to go to the beach in weather like this, wouldn’t it?”
I couldn’t answer her. At that point, my heart had completely shriveled up and dried out.
Nanami Fetter lives in Portland, Oregon. Her works have been featured in The Magazine, Pathos Literary Magazine, Sapling, and Drunk Monkeys.