Fiona Lin, Moving

Moving Fiona Lin

Lily existed on the periphery. This was a simple fact of her life, a silent acknowledgment that there would always be certain secrets that her family kept from her. As she ran through the house in search of her favorite toys, she would hear the muffled conversations between her parents through the thin walls, just loud enough to notice but not quite enough to be heard. In the afternoons, as she bowed her head and furrowed her brows over her math assignment of the day, her siblings would shoot worried glances at each other from their seats across the table. These subtle moments and gestures seemed to fill every crevice of Lily’s home, a sensation of something always just the slightest bit out of reach.

Lily did not know that the state of the economy meant that living costs had risen, that her parents’ wages from working in the rice fields were no longer enough to sustain their life, that her eldest sister was contemplating dropping out so she could help support the family, that her father was in failing health. What she did know was this: her mother was too busy to play with her, her father’s work was difficult and often left him tired and in need of rest, her elder sisters studied whenever they could, and her elder brother was the only one who had time for her anymore. This was their routine. Above all else, Lily knew that her family would be moving soon, leaving this place that they called home to move closer to the city, where everything was metal and concrete and shiny and new. Collapsed cardboard boxes had made their way into every room of the house, stacked in the corners and folded up beside desks or lamps or sofas. The words “in the city” had made increasing appearances in her parents’ hushed conversations, bleeding through their thin walls. Finally, one evening at dinner, her parents had sat them down, all four of the

children, and told them their home would be changing. Industry was booming and the need for labor was rising—jobs would be plentiful in the city. For her family, it was a necessity. For Lily, it was an adventure.

Their family had a routine, and the process of packing slowly integrated into their schedule as the days passed. In the early mornings, the parents would head into the fields, rubber boots pulled onto their feet and sturdy straw hats shielding their faces from the sun. A little later, the eldest daughter would fix a quick breakfast and pack their lunches, as the second daughter ushered the two youngest out of bed. They would have their simple meal, get dressed, and walk off to school together. In the afternoons, the children would return, the youngest sent to start on their homework with the second daughter’s supervision, while the eldest tidied up around the house, packing smaller, less-used items as she went. Once their parents returned, the father would go off to rest before dinner while the mother began cooking their meal. The two eldest children would start on their homework while the younger two ran off to play. As they drew closer to their departure, the routine shifted further. In the evenings following dinner, the mother would take some extra time to sort through their possessions. Folded stacks of clothing would go into a couple of cardboard boxes, and kitchenware would follow into another. More and more boxes were unfolded in every room, gradually filling as each member of the family deposited items within, almost as an afterthought to their movement throughout the house. Textbooks and stationery were sorted carefully into the eldest sisters’ boxes, while toys and comics were tossed haphazardly into the younger children’s.

Lily saw it all as a game of sorts. It was as if her house had transformed into a treasure trove, items that she had not known they owned surfacing from the far corners of their closets and cupboards. Instead of helping with the chores around the house, Lily poked and prodded at her family’s

progress, pulling out whatever caught her fancy. Some days, she and her brother would chase each other through the house, getting in the way of everyone else’s movement and knocking boxes out of their places. More often than not, they ended up disrupting her mother’s careful organization, and eventually, they were shooed out of the house while the others worked. On these occasions, they would move their games outside, content to chase after dragonflies and compete to catch frogs by the muddy road. They would build rockets from soda bottles and toy guns from rubber bands and bamboo chopsticks.

It was on a day much like this that Lily found the journal. She and her brother were playing another game, this time with rules similar to a scavenger hunt. Perhaps it was not the best game to be played in a house filled with boxes and scattered items, but the two children found that the mess in the house only made the hunt more interesting. Lily was in the midst of searching for a new place to hide her item—a small rabbit keychain—when she happened across their aged coffee table, pushed into the corner of the living room. The wood was smooth, the varnish worn away in places with use, and the handle to the little compartment under the top was beginning to rust. It was such an old and small piece of furniture that it appeared to blend into the chaos of the room. It was the perfect hiding place.

“Lily, are you done yet?” Her brother’s voice echoed through the house, coming from upstairs where they had agreed for him to wait. She decided not to answer, lest she gave away her position, and hurriedly yanked the drawer open. Inside it sat a journal, a thin volume with yellowing pages and a flaking leather cover. Lily stared down at it in confusion, certain that she had never seen the book in her life. It looked too tattered to be recently bought, but she could not recall ever seeing her family

with anything like this. Her sisters preferred sturdy notebooks with an abundance of paper for their notes, her brother disliked studying in any form, and it had been ages since her parents had used this coffee table. “Lily?” Her brother called for her again. In one quick movement, Lily picked the journal up and shoved it under her shirt, held in place by the waistband of her shorts. She then stuffed the keychain into the deepest corner of the drawer and closed it with a soft thud, racing up their narrow staircase immediately after to start her brother’s scavenger hunt.

Later that night, Lily hunched under her covers with a flashlight in hand, careful not to wake her siblings as she brought the old journal out from where she had hidden it under her pillow after the scavenger hunt with her brother. Perhaps it wasn’t proper of her to go through someone else’s possessions, but she couldn’t help but be curious. The journal looked so old that she was sure it didn’t belong to any of her siblings, and its aged appearance seemed almost magical to her young mind. It was as if she had discovered a secret in her house, and she wanted to be able to experience that herself before sharing it with anyone else. She opened the journal gently, afraid that she would tear the pages by accident as the paper crinkled softly under her hands. At the bottom of the first page, scrawled in messy, looping text, was her father’s name. Lily barely held in a gasp and a sensation of worry crept its way into her stomach as she acknowledged that the journal was her father’s. It felt as if in opening the journal she was doing something forbidden, revealing her father’s private thoughts and corrupting her understanding of him. At the same time, however, Lily couldn’t contain her desire to learn more about her father. They had never been particularly close, with him being so busy with work and fatigued from the stress as head of the family and her being an energetic and noisy child. It wasn’t that Lily did not love him or vice versa, it was simply that their positions within the household and their day-to-

day tendencies were incredibly incompatible. With this wish to learn more about the man who did so much for their family, Lily flipped to the next page and began to read.

I simply could not be happier. Today, finally, Meryl has become my wife. Our ceremony may have been small and simple—God knows we could not afford much more—but it is not the size of our wedding that determines my joy, but the fact that we are now able to start a family that we can call our own. We have a small place, just big enough for two, and both of us will continue working in the fields together as we previously had, but it feels as if my entire life has changed. I hope that from now on, this happiness only continues to grow. I dedicate this journal to our lives from this moment on; a new start as we reinvent ourselves in our new home.

Lily couldn’t help but smile. In her hands was a journal for the beginning of her family, a story that her parents had rarely spared the time to tell but was so clearly saturated with love in the way her father described the events of his wedding. The following couple of entries were equally as short, dated roughly a week apart each time, describing her parents’ life as newlyweds. Privately, she allowed herself to wonder if she and her siblings would be a part of the journal as well. With this thought in mind, she skipped past the next entries until she reached the ones close to her eldest sister’s birthday.

Meryl gave birth to our first child a week ago! A lovely baby girl that we named Evelyn, so small and precious it seems as though she could disappear. We were both elated to welcome her into the home, and are now adjusting to having a child to care for. We’ve been so busy with the new addition to our family that I’ve forgotten to note down how I’m feeling. For now, Meryl and I plan to save up

our wages so that soon we can move into a slightly larger house, with enough room for the three of us and for the children we plan to have in the future.

A soft warmth bubbled up within Lily as she read. Her father had always been a man of few words, and though it should have been obvious that he felt as many emotions as the next person, it had never been as clear to her as it was in that moment, with a book of his wealth of thoughts and feelings in hand. Although she couldn’t understand everything that her father wrote about, especially when it came to entries about his work and other boring matters, she could clearly see how happy her parents had been. She had, however, been reading for quite some time now, and was beginning to get drowsy, so she put the journal away and resolved to ask her father about the entries when she found the chance. It was nice reading from the journal, but she was sure it would be even more so to hear it from her father himself.

As the next couple of days passed, Lily gradually finished reading her father’s journal. The journal itself was quite thin, and the time between each entry became longer and longer. One of the final entries was one about Lily herself, celebrating her birth and their move to a larger home to accommodate for all four children.

One evening, Lily found the perfect opportunity to confirm for herself what she had learned from the journal. She caught her father when he woke up early from his nap and had the energy to spare, and approached him shyly, anxious to disturb his rest. “Dad, how did you and Mom end up marrying?” The words bubbled forth from her lips without her control, and her eyes immediately widened in surprise at herself. She slapped a palm to her mouth in an effort to hold back any further questions, but the words had already escaped, spoken into existence. She lowered her head, afraid

of her father’s response, and scuffed her foot against the floor as the silence dragged on a beat too long.

“What brought this on, Lily?” Her father’s soft voice prompted her to raise her head, and she was instantly put at ease when she saw the open and curious expression on his face. Despite her renewed confidence, Lily fumbled with her thoughts, opening and closing her mouth without speaking as she struggled to find a valid excuse. She knew she should simply come clean with the truth and tell her father about finding the journal, but she was so afraid that her father would confiscate the journal and berate her for her intrusiveness. “Well,” he continued, “I suppose that doesn’t matter much. It’s quite a long story, dear. Are you sure you want to hear it?” Lily’s face brightened and she nodded with vigor, watching as her father’s usual sternness melted away into something warm, soft with fondness and time. A small and possessive part of herself reveled in the comfort of this moment, wanting more than ever to keep the journal and its contents close to her heart, to treasure this tangible manifestation of her father and his love for their family.

Life continued as it had previously, but it was as if something had changed for Lily after learning more about the formation of her family. They moved into their new house, and her parents took on factory jobs in the city’s industrial sector. Though Lily was as unhelpful in the process as always, she found herself spending more time indoors, hovering around her siblings or playing quietly in the corner as her parents unpacked. She still played outdoors, of course, but she did so mostly in the company of her brother, and less so alone as she had sometimes used to. From time to time, Lily would crack open her father’s journal and reread her favorite entries—the ones describing her parents’ marriage and her siblings’ growth. She continued to keep it a secret, allowing herself to be

a little selfish as her father appeared to grow weaker, the factory work that he had taken on in the city taking a toll on his body. She justified her actions, telling herself that she was featured the least in the journal as the youngest child and her father was not healthy enough to spend time with her consistently, and as such it was alright for her to hold onto this part of him for herself. This secret selfishness only became more relevant once tragedy struck her family three years later.

The day that Lily’s father died, the world turned gray. Color drained from every corner of her universe, muddling together into a wash of blinding monochrome. Misfortune had crept upon them and struck as they were weak, destroying the tentative stability and joy that had illuminated their new life. A hush descended upon the house. There was no sound in the aftermath: not when the news came, not when the funeral ended, and certainly not when they returned to their empty house, dressed all in black. The silence was almost too loud in Lily’s ears; a deafening call for help that scrambled her thoughts until she couldn’t take it anymore, clapping her palms over her ears and escaping under her blankets, where she could pretend as though she didn’t exist, or the world didn’t exist, or that everything was okay.

Dinner that evening was a miserable affair. Each remaining member of the family stared unblinkingly at the food on the table, stubbornly averting their eyes from the empty chair at the head of the table, and the cutlery that had been set there from force of habit. It would have been terrible to look at, had any of them found the strength to dare even a glance in the direction after the initial realization and the choked-up sob that had escaped their mother at the sight. At the same time, however, it seemed sacrilegious to even consider removing the cutlery, as if in doing so they were erasing the memory of father and husband. The house and

everything within it seemed suddenly too big, too silent, too empty to be their home that was once filled with laughter and joy. And so, once again, they were moving.

This time, instead of the innocent wonder and excitement of a new start that she had carried previously, Lily could only bring herself to feel resentment. Perhaps if they had never moved, if they had not been so poor, if she had been older or more useful to her family … This time, Lily helped her family pack. Gone were the soda bottle rockets and the frogcatching competitions, the scavenger hunts through the house and the adventures through the stacks of cardboard boxes. This time, Lily had grown up.

She was rooting through her desk, packing away the books that she had accumulated recently, when she found the journal once again, tucked into the corner of her shelf. She opened it and ran her hands over her father’s name scribbled on the first page, finding a tightness in her throat that she couldn’t tamp down. With a renewed determination, Lily reached for a fresh notebook, sat down at her desk and began to write.

This will be a love story. Not between a man and a woman, though that occurs as well, but between four children and their parents, between a family and a home, between a daughter and her father.