Frimaire Art and Literature
H.O.P.E. VOLUME II ISSUE II
About Humanities Online Platform for Everyone (HOPE) is an independent, student-run online journal that creates opportunities for high school students in the United States and around the world who are interested in the humanities to publish their outstanding works. These include creative writings (poetry and prose), research papers, editorial reviews, and visual arts. We realize that publication opportunities for high school students interested in the humanities are very limited. Thus, we hope to create this platform to help high school students to earn credit for what they have written or created. This is not merely a journal, but a place for lovers of the humanities to express themselves and receive recognition.
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Staff Design
Lucy Lu Andy Xu Holly Zhuang Jenny Sun
Managing Editors
Tim Mei Tony He Mona Zhao Asya Lyubavina Jack Cai Seth Amofa Alice Shao Linda Pang
Editors
Slade Huang Elaine Shao Yuhui Huang Tracy Li Tina Zeng Ruosong Gao Yutong Yang
Contents To-morrow
7
Photography
2
Photography
9
Photography Anonymous
3
Collage
13
Fifty Years Later Maxwell Zhou
5
Wet Shoes
16
Photography Rayne Xue
1
7
Peter Luo
Megan Branstad
Shuci Zhang
Cheryl Li
Abby's Kintsugi Bowl Julie Chou
Rayne Xue
Cover Photography
Flossie Zhang
1
To-morrow
Peter Luo
My grandfather was a frail old man who did not have many words. He
died at 74, what most would deem a ripe old age. He never was close with anyone, not even his own son. The whole town considered him a man who has fallen behind. In his mind, he lived with deities and spirits from an obscure time, and he told tales that no one could understand. Everyone, in and out of the family, has learned to disregard him, including my four-year-old sister Margaret. Thus, when he died, everyone was actually a little relieved to be saved from his blabbering. And Margaret, not yet knowing grief, jumped in excitement at the arrival of another funeral.
On the second day of his death, my grandfather’s remains were placed
on a wooden raft and flowed down the water of Mother Elga, the great river that encircled our small riverbank town. Deceased ones’ remains have been sent down this river since the beginning of my memory to be brought to where we call the Hall of Eternity. It is a place forever the season of harvest and Mother Elga flows not of water but of the sweetest wine. Where people could devour meat every meal every day.
Well, at least that’s what people would hope to have, because meat is
meager here. A horrible plague, almost like a deliberate curse when grandfather was only a boy wiped out almost all of our sources of meat. Since then, meat is only offered on a day of grieving-a person’s funeral. My father calls it “honoring the deceased properly”. Only on these days we allow ourselves to be a little extravagant. Thus, knowing a lot of people in the town is considered to be a “survival skill”, because then you could go around and attend more funerals than a normal person would and therefore get extra shares of meat. My great-aunt Dorothy was one such person who actually managed to die fairly rotund. My grandfather, in contrast, claimed that he never had a preference for meat even before the plague, he does not usually attend funer-
2 funerals he would not take one bite of meat.
When there’s no funeral, the days were usually a lot less merry. The
whole town’s food comes from a field a thirty-minute walk away from our house. Since the whole town depends on it, families take turns taking care of it rotating once per month. The field is carefully separated into different sections by crop by the math teacher of the town, who happens to have an old nutrition book that determines the proportions of different kinds of food a person should have every day. Of course, we could almost never fill in the meat section, and the teacher suggested that we plant more crops to substitute. When this was announced, most people were disgruntled because this would mean more work. But the math teacher was a good friend of the mayor and people had faith in the mayor, so they obliged.
The season of harvest always brought more hope, at least during a good
year. In good years everything is collected and then rationed out to families according to household size and age (the rules also determined by the math teacher). And the extras, if there are any, will be locked up in the communal barn for relief during ill years. But that relief was never enough and during
Photography By Megan Branstad
3 bad years my mother had to go to the field with Mrs. Henderson and Mrs. Dubois to pick up the leftover wheat straws. And the next morning we would have straw stew, a distasteful brown mess. Because whether we have food or not completely depended on god’s will, most people try to befriend families with the elderly or the weak, hoping to get a share of meat when the funeral is held.
We try to be civilized during funerals, not revealing our carnal excite-
ment as we watch the remains flow down the river. And even as we eat, we try to act out of obligation, to honor the dead and not celebrate. There are always
Collage By Shuci Zhang
4 Margaret who are too young to be solemn, and we all just ignore that, because all of us know it is also what we are thinking inside.
The day of my grandfather’s funeral was gray, with a few strands of wispy
clouds hanging in the sky. Beneath, I watched him float down the river and then returned to the house with the rest, in a continuing silence. The guests settled down and my mother and Mrs. Henderson-our neighbor-brought out the meat they had prepared last night. They gave an equal share to everyone’s plate, and just when we were about to raise our forks, Margaret began to whine.
“This is much less compared to when aunt Dorothy passed away!”
The guests pretended to take no notice while my mother shushed her. My
father put on an embarrassing smile.
But Margaret continued to whine. My father looked her straight in the eye
and told her to be quiet because we were all honoring my grandfather’s loss. “I want to have meat!” The focus of her vision sprinting the distance between guests, she locked eyes with each of them, who were darting their glances away. She plead for recognition with what is now a scrutiny, as if— “agree with me! I know this is what you are all thinking, admit it!”
I felt her voice echo somewhere inside of me.
Margaret was taken to her room to repent for her offense.
Come evening, twilight shimmered on distant mountains like a stretch of or-
ange silk. When all the guests bid their farewells, my father sat on the porch looking into the distance. I approached him and told him that what Margaret did was indeed very unacceptable and he should not be troubled about it. But he surprised me.
“No, she’s right. We really are just here for the meat. I’m doubting if it really
is honoring the deceased…”
“I really wish that we could hold funerals like your grandfather once de-
scribed, in sacred place, with lots of people, saying formal farewells.”
Night falls. “But then his flesh would go bad.”
5
Wet Shoes Cheryl Li
Wet grey slabs of cement glistening coldly in the morning light. A drizzle, then, to suit the iciness, another sham to make my shoes freeze and God he must be laughing. Laughing his head off like a merry-go-round so he can watch me flail and flounder and make a fool of myself. Watch him laugh. Watch me watch him laugh. Half a dozen steps and already I am soaked to the bone. Small bones, showing through like brittle eggshells whenever I clench my fist, a flexing of fingers – tap tap – another pair of shoes out the door and I breathe a sigh of relief so he can’t hear, so nobody can hear, because that’s all nobody is good for, that and spewing nonsense. Which is basically sense standing on its own head, going first one way and then the other tap tap like a paint-spattered canvas, all filth and nonsense, dashing me against the rocks. Another tap. Each step squelches. Muddy water, why am I doing this to myself. Always the same question. If I had wanted an answer I would have shaken my name off, this name that is a hand-puppet I’ve been forced to contort, the wax doll melting by the stove. Too old for dolls, too old for anything I once had, damn him for making me do this to myself, what on earth am I lying for? Because a lie is a lie when it is a lie, and here I am the resident expert on density. Bell, book, candle. Oh? Ring it, then. Ring the bells for have you heard, a broken door is still a door. I can’t go back, not when there is no way forward. He knows how to use a feather. No doors behind me, and none in front. Trapped. When the sidewalk is slippery, down into a puddle and then six feet under. I know complaints are biting the dust. If I had wanted someone to lie to me I would have done it myself. Not him. He’s pathetic. He who cried when I lay on that hospital bed, reaching up to grope at the dancing lights I thought were stars. He said he would give them to me if he could. Avec ta morale de bigote, tu prends ton pied quand tu tricote. Liar. No one lies to himself, but he’s done it and now I’m doing it too. Shall I weep for you? One more corner. A car engine screeches and dies. We’re pretty the way we’re not meant to be, wet shoes and all. Raindrops drip down my neck, winces and wintry moods. The career girl without a career. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. I could keep stumbling, or else stay here until the sky and the clouds swallow me whole and there is nothing left. Pourquoi ce chemin de croix. No, I don’t see. Of what use are eyes when one is staring into a void that reflects no light? Yawning, tired. Still there. Still laughing. His scythe is tacky. Nervously I rub my bracelet, turning over each rounded pearl. Pearls are cheap these days, but they’re still worth more than tears. Two little fishes hammered out of a thin sheet of
6 silver. I am a drowning Pisces. That’s hilarious – is he laughing? Are you laughing? Because if he doesn't, if you don’t, then this is all for naught. Don’t lie to me, don’t waste my breath, I can barely walk as it is. One shoe in front of the other, when I get back I’ll turn on the air-conditioning full blast... Get back where? My graveworms are on loan. Curses don’t work here. Drink too much wormwood, and your face will stay puckered long after your hands have lowered the beaker. The things I do to live this lie. I’ve scarce the heart to plague the wretched creature. He doesn’t know. I can shut the door in his face, but then I would’ve shut myself out. Draw the blinds first. He is not my keeper. If a mistake is all that there is, then a mistake will mend the damage done. Not every stumbling woman is a hussy. Everybody knows... wine and brandy and vodka burns. It doesn’t chase away the wet. I can mutter to myself. It’s not the same as a staying silence, a flood on the floor since it’s still drizzling. Still tapping. He and nobody and the hospital lights that dance. I don’t remember reaching for them – too ill, too calm, too ready. Unlike today. The inverse functions of fortune. When God is gone and the devil takes hold, who’ll have mercy on your soul? Does this road never end I’ve lost track again. All roads lead somewhere, but I don’t remember where. This one doesn’t go to Rome. Almost. Almost is not there, not quite. A fake grin. Two blocks of ice. He must be laughing his head off, that’s what he always does. It’s all about him, and what I mean. Can fish breathe in rain? Well enough to be stared at. A hospital is no place for dreaming. Twenty-four hours of pointing my fingers at the ceiling, and I don’t recall any of it. Was I a dream too, then? Was I. Wasn’t. I do remember telling him he talks too much, because he’s a dream and one I can’t wake from. That makes him real. A looming face above, staring down at me with all the anxiety of a cat at a dead bird. I’d rip the needle from my arm if I could. Falling trees. I didn’t smile when I finally woke up, so he wasn’t supposed to either, but somehow he did. I’d rip the needle out if I could. If this is nothing, then perhaps I like it. When I walk with my eyes shut because the cold tap water didn’t quite work the way the way it was supposed to and I woke up again. Delirium Tremens. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Sometimes I wonder what could have been if I chose. Choices are lies, don’t make me repeat myself. If they don’t work then people wouldn’t keep telling them. My shoes are soaked through. A conscious decision. Grief glossed over with quick, clean strokes, trailing water all over the carpet. Lobotomy was a solution like no other. For liars like me like no other. If you lie to me, that means I can lie to him and he will lie to you. We’ve come a long way. Full circle. Still broken. Still silent. Still the Least Important Player. I’m not one of those people with white plastic sticking out of their ears.
7
Abby's Kintsugi Bowl
Photography by Rayne Xue
8 Julie Chou The constant pounding at the door eventually drove Abigail from horror into a numb trance, in which the lecture her history teacher made today on Japanese Art galloped in her mind to fill in the void. “When a bowl falls and shatters, most people toss it, considering the object ruined, yet the Japanese art of ‘kintsugi’ takes a radically different approach, using precious metal to piece the broken parts back together.” Before long, a rustling sound in the bedroom added a BGM for her recollection. Pondering over it curiously, Abigail groped her way across the hallway and then, swallowing her realization in a draught, swiftly collected herself and rushed to shove the bedroom door open. “Come on, Mom. You’re packing for him?” Abigail asked. “Well, you can’t leave him on the street with T-shirts and shorts—and—and bottles,” her mother said. She was paying rapt attention to the suitcase lying supine on the floor, a suitcase bristling with polo shirts, wristwatches, and gilded chain necklaces. “Why not?” Abigail eyed her with bafflement. “Oh, Sweetie. Wouldn’t that be too cruel for him? It’s forty-four degrees outside,” Evelyn said. In a quick moment, Abigail’s temper was frayed as she saw that what she confronted was not an inquiry but a rhetorical question that she wasn’t permitted to answer. “So what? He would’ve done this to us if this was his house.” Abigail didn’t intend to spend much effort impeding the outlet of her temper. Evelyn, lifting her eyes, cast a solemn look on her daughter. “Seriously, Abigail? You’re willing to let your father rove the streets like those tramps?” “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Abigail leaned backward and bent her elbow to hold up her palms in a stop. “What’s with your sympathy? You were willing to shut me out all night, and now you’re sympathetic to him?” She frowned and tilted her lips with faint ridicule. “Well, I didn’t forget you on purpose. I was distracted—What do you want?” “All I’m saying is that you need to stop acting like a saint every time he gets in trouble. He’ll keep coming back once he knows how soft-hearted you are,” Abigail
9 asserted. “We’ve gone through this over and over again.” “He’s your father, after all. I can’t just ditch him like that.” “I don’t even see him as my father,” said Abigail, wiggling her head in a quick vibration, “and you guys divorced like, over ten years ago...we’re barely related to him,” words were pouring onto her lips, “But you were there when he was detained for drink-driving, you were there after the juice dealers seized his house, you helped him find a basement, you got him jobs, you let him stay here—” “Abigail, listen,” Evelyn rose and approached her daughter, “whatever happened is between him and me. You are his daughter. You don’t get to decide how I deal with him,” Evelyn said earnestly. “I promise he won’t come back this time. I’ll leave him in the basement, for sure.” Abigail eyeballed Evelyn expressionlessly. “No. You can’t make such promises anymore.” Abigail declared. “As long as you guys are in contact you won’t get rid of him.” Evelyn went speechless for a moment, but the mother must say something. “Why are you so obsessed with this? I thought you wanted us to be together. I remember you blathering about how the other kids have both parents and how good their dads are.” “That’s because they have good dads! Not someone who doesn’t pay child support and never even offers to pick me up from school...and you see these bottles cluttering
Photography By Anonymous
10 everywhere, and we’re inhaling second-hand smoke literally every single day!” Abigail raised her voice. “I know he’s a jerk now but you can’t forget the old days.” “The old days?” Abigail sniggered lightly, “you mean the times he treated you like dirt or the times he almost killed us in drunken brawls?” “No, of course not,” Evelyn added hastily. “You don’t understand. You don’t know.” “I don’t need to,” Abigail retorted, “I just need to remind you that now it’s time to not consider the good deeds,” imperturbably, with a slight drawl. Evelyn paused, gazing at Abigail. “And you’re going to forget all the good deeds I’ve done for you when I get old?” She piped up, coolly. “What?” Abigail was completely thrown off by the question. Evelyn went on: “I never thought you could do something like this. I did not raise you like this, Abigail Bowen—how could you be so cruel? You are connected to him by blood, for Pete’s sake.” “That doesn’t mean anything! He’s incorrigible, and if you keep helping him you only hurt yourself. You can’t let him screw up your life any further!” “I’m not talking to you about this. I don’t talk to someone so cold-blooded.” Evelyn’s eyes flashed lighting, giving Abigail a hard stare. Swallowing her words with a pout, Abigail stomped out of the room until she reached the doorway and jerked a pair of boots out of the shoe rack. She clenched the shaft of the right boot with both hands and plunged her shin in it. Her foot got stuck in the middle and she thrusted even harder, wincing in aggravation. Behind the bedroom door, Evelyn started to go through her “making a fuss” routine just as after every spat. Each bitter remark she uttered rang in Abigail’s eardrums like buzzing wasps and threatened to sting. “Abby, is that you? Come out, I need to talk to you.” Joe’s voice came from outside the door. Abigail flung the boots onto the doormat and gasped for a minute. Then she turned the handle and thrust past Joe, leaving the door open. Mustering so much strength to trot forward, she had no energy left to make out what Joe was saying behind her. As she slid towards the apartment gate, her phone vibrated in her pocket. It was a message from Ella under “cant make it 2nite sry sweetie” on the right side of her screen, an “All right. What’s up, honey?” in a rounded corner rectangle. Ella was like a
11 small, transparent baby proofing corner guard on a rectangular table. * She stopped at the gate, fronting the right side of the street, then it struck her that in the two years she had lived in this community, not once had she turned right at the gate. The left side seemed to hold access to everything: schools, grocery stores, and metro stations that would carry her to more hustle and bustle of the metropolis. Yet Joe was there now. He shut some sort of gate to the left. Above the ledge, yellow and white squares scattered between the bricks on the facade. Abigail lost track of the one that belonged to her. Down there, Joe was still scrolling on his phone. Abigail then heard a voice echoing in her head: right, right, right. As soon as she passed the entrance to the right side in spite of herself, she felt the thief picking up her bones and putting the fragments together into a kintsugi bowl. It’s a beautiful bowl, Abby had to admit, the glazes covered a network of cracks on it. It gleamed. Abby saw it floating further away to the vanishing point ahead. She scrambled forward to chase. The pour of distance rendered the bowl far-fetched, as though every step forward was an arduous leap up a steep hill. But all that was needed was chasing it, all was simple. Forward, she soon found the street deserted. The traffic noises subsided, and the tiny, little barbs in the sky would loosen up for a while: “stars to every wand’ring bark,” exactly the way the literature teacher told her. Solely for her sake, the sporadic lampposts lit up the space. The breeze would descend to breathe life in her, randomly rippling the tops of the trees while twining itself around her footloose body as she sprinted forward feverishly. Her hair, messed up by the sultry air, resembled pouring water. She could see a part of the bowl hovering there, right there, but it stayed at a certain distance even though she accelerated. Sinking into preoccupation, Abby didn’t notice the side stitch she got until she felt it piercing through her ribs so acutely that she had to stop to bend and wheeze for relief. Perhaps it was the passage of time that the sky had turned from a pitch-black canopy to a navy blue one like the bottom of an ocean trench. As the new arrival spread across the firmament, Abby could sense the air narrowing above her. She started to lose her breath when the canopy, pressing down as low as the tree trunks, wrapped water around her entire body the way scientists pickle a baby in the laboratory. Terrified, Abby huddled, holding her body tightly in her arms, only to learn the uselessness of buoyancy. For a minute, she thought maybe this was it, but the stubborn
12 urge to stay afloat was damn strong that it turned her into a torrent herself cutting through the water, till she bumped into a huge column of light that spiked through the body of water. She clung to it, wriggling to climb up, while the light shone brighter and brighter, so bright that she had to shut her eyes to avoid throbbing pain. With a great stroke, she flung herself forward and stretched out her arms to grab. She was sure she caught something, though she did not open her eyes: this romantic notion of capture was too unmistakably intense. So, she hooked her arms around it the way a little kid held a beloved stuffed toy in their peaceful slumbers. For a very long time, maybe a lifetime, she clasped the bowl in her arms. By and by, some faint, scuffling noise rose. She chose to neglect it and continued to do so even when it multiplied rapidly. Ultimately, it turned into a high, bawling voice, and Abby’s indulgence finally gave way to let consciousness invade her again. She regretted doing so the second after she lifted her lids. She recognized Evelyn’s distant voice too fast. She hastened to grasp her bowl. A hiss ensued, and the bulk of a girl’s figure fell near her eyes, and then that of a boy. She found her and Ella’s hands intertwined and her whole body chained up in drenched clothes and some gooey leaves. Abby strained to stick out her lips for them to acknowledge a “sh”, and shook her head imperceptibly. “Where are we?” She whispered. “We don’t know, but the police said this was the route to the school, from the right side of the road,” Nathan replied softly. Abby gently turned her head left, squinting at Evelyn, who was quarreling with the police about something, something about her. She dropped her lids. When she opened them again, to perceive, the fresh, weightless air after last night’s rain surged through her. “Never tried turning right before,” said she. “We neither,” said Ella. A few feet across the asphalt road were patches of Japanese ivy hanging on a red-brick wall. A pair of thin, decrepit columns sandwiching a transparent, yellowish-brown glass plate on the top stood in front. The plate bore an irregular hole on its bottom-left corner, and tiny, triangular pieces of glass clung to its periphery. It shone perfectly, filtered through the glass, resembling long, narrow scars smeared with iodine. They were the tangling lines on the kintsugi bowl that buckled in her blurry eyes. That’s one hell of a beautiful bowl, Abby couldn’t help praising it. Though it looked darker with the glass blocking its light, it still gleamed.
13
Fifty Years Later Fifty years later, would he be the same as when I first met him fifty years before? Would his hair that once had been so dark and bright turn to tufts of silver, transparent under the blazing sun of July just as mine had shone – would he recall the golden strands of hair under the very same sun fifty years ago, that I so proudly wore upon my head. Would he remember that blonde braid that he used to unwind, rewind, unwind, and wind again with his smooth caressing hands. Or would he revisit the town dwelling amid the vast corn fields where we had strolled along the river bank, watching the last rays of evening sun dyeing the clouds red and violet and burning in the dimming sky. – Would he walk the bridge again? Would he walk the bridge with a stick in his hand, and feel with his slightly trembling feet the arch that we once stood upon, silently leaning against each other’s shoulders; listening to the finches that sang the falling of the night;
Maxwell Zhou
14 and looking at swallows that slid through the undulating waves one after another – so carefree, so joyful – and vanished in the passing time. And would he visit that antique store once more the store where he picked up a red headcloth with scattered white stars and laid it on my hair – O would he remember that moment when our eyes met, each of us staring into the other’s heart, (I remember the noon sun shone through the dusty window panes) and smiling in happiness – would he weep, O, would he weep for me if soft breeze would pass by his floppy face like the wind that brought summer away fifty years ago, the wind that witnessed us depart. Would tears flow down his wrinkled cheeks, when the last of summer wind would blow – like it did fifty years ago – like I did fifty years before – and would he think of me – No! – He wouldn’t. He can’t. He cannot have me as a part of his memory; he would not recall all those many summertime stories he wrote and composed with his own life, the stories which he would never tell to his children and grandchildren, the stories that would belong
15 only to a man’s deepest solitude (except the sometime emancipation at night in the presence of heavy liquor) and die alone within his aging heart, settling in an oblivion of faded nothingness. – But there is one thing that I am sure – I know he would – that fifty years later, when he would one day scavenge in the boxes and cupboards trying to find the times lost in the past, and hold the stack of yellowed paper from fifty years before; when he would touch the frail paper with his shivering fingers and read the lines with his glasses on under the glowing lamp light; when he would read out the words, the phrases, the lines, the long and flowing breaths of my poetry and prose, stemming directly from my soul fifty years ago, he would murmur the very sentences I once wrote, like he did fifty years before, in the cool but lonely summer nights with me by his side, my head upon his shoulders, and my hands upon his knees; in those youthful lines, he would see me alive before him again, my skin, my smile, my breath, my soul; he would feel me across the boundaries of time through his incessant incantation of the writings he cherished, the bridge from soul to soul.
16
Photography by Rayne Xue
