A. MACDONALD MURPHY SHORT STORY CONTEST

2023 Runner Up

Circadian

Judy Wang ‘23

1.

Grandma once said “As a family, we are complete idiots in music.”

In Chinese, we use the four-character idiom 五音不全, or if translateddirectly,“five-sound-notcomplete,” to describesomeonewhois tone deaf. The“fivesound”alludesnot to do-re-mi-fa-so of western music scale, but to the five sound-making parts of the body— thelip,teeth,nose, throat, and tongue. To be tone deaf is to be incomplete in a part of the body, an apocalypse that prevailed amongst allofus,noneofusfreetoescape.

2.

What does it mean when you show up to the public library every morning at 8 am sharp? What does it mean when your entire belongings consist of one polka-dotted suitcase, two Tj-Maxx plastic bags, and one time-worn guitar? What does it mean when you charge your 10-dollar-instant-pot boiled with 99-cent-a-bag-ramen besides other people’s Macbook Airs and iPadPros? What does it mean when your 99-cent-a-bag-ramen spills onto the floor and everyone just looks? What does it mean when you pace back and forth, dragging your left crippled foot with uneven, uneasy steps to clean up, to make people stop looking, to let them recede behind their fancy MacbooksandiPadsonceagain?

3.

I squint. A pair of hands lay sunburnt and limp beside her pale and marked body. A palm reader once gasped at all its carved-in paths, its rough-patch calluses the drawing pins of a close-up city map. Not good, the palm reader shook herhead,asiftorid the stains on her eyes from something dirty imbued in her palms, a life too busy, too many worries.

4.

Wanna hear some tunes ladies?

It has been a few years since I’ve heard John Lennon, and a couple more since I’ve stopped my footsteps in the middle of a bustling street. The man’s thick, creased, chapped hands caressed the aged wood, all its once-pointed splinters pressed and softened with time. On what is left of his pants, the cloth covering his thighs was greased and darkened like shadows from the guitar's lengthy tenure. His left hand tapped lightly on its wooden case, as if to an ethereal rhythmunbeknownsttomen.

Tremors,maybe.Idivertedmyeyes. Wenoddedyes,andhebegan.

“Well, they shake their heads and they look at me, as if I’ve lost my mind I tell them there’s no hurry, I’m just sitting here doing time“

5.

What does it mean when you call asecond-handguitarstore,withall your 110 dollars, time and time after again? What does it mean when they tell you to dial a different number, hold, stay on the line, shut you down and you say again and again: I’m so sorry I called earlier, but I would like to purchase the second-hand Yamaha C40 that’s in your Braintree store on 255 Grossman Avenue.

6. A body of a woman marked by twenty-five years of unhappy marriage, of thirty years of raisingtwo girls and the girls of the two girls, of nights dicing pork, boiling bok-choy, and pressing halves of dumpling skins into folds and creases. A body that gulped down every dinner and shoved spoonfuls and spoonfuls of hot slimy porridge down my inflamed throat because Time waits for nobody! She yelped, her voice made hoarse by the unknownwho,where,what.

7.

What does it mean when finally somebody picks up and tells you that the guitar is in stock and you can purchase it now, on the phone, but it would cost 120 dollars because of taxes, shipping? And your pale, aged, half-scared face twists into a deeper sorrow,andyourvoicequivers, Is there any way I could get that 10 dollars to you at a different time? I just don’t have it right now, I can get it to you…could you just, just let me purchase…oh…okay…alright then…there’s no way? I…I just really…

8.

Mama said don’t look, but her frame wastoolittletocovermyview.I glanced past the shades of dark green and blue underneath her eyes and peered into the white room. White walls, white floors, white sheets,white duvet covers, white pillows, white gowns, white IV racks, white, white, white, and there lay my grandmother, the white mesh covering the just-sewed-up holes of her scalp: her armscradlingthemselves;herfacepale as ifchallengingthewhitepillowcases beneath her; her foot bent at unnatural angles, earth’s weight pulling on her toes. She lay on her side, the folded duvet burdened with her body’s weight.

I forced my eyes away from her fragile, naked body, but it was too late. The needle had already pierced through thin ice. Her once limp, lifeless body jerked from the sudden knocking of life. Her armstwistedinto themselves, bones pushing and pulling the muscles that had slept. Her legs squirmed like two white worms in the quagmire of white fabric. My breath heaved as her lungs limped with every jot. Clear fluid pulsated out of her back. I saw life forced into her. I saw nothingleftbutpain.

9.

Beyond plain sight, there was abody.

10.

I am the absent passenger on the train called the tangling and detangling of living and dying. I am the observer, watching the white lines on the monitor screen simplify a woman’s life into mere rising and falling. A pair of ears to receive the cadence of staccato beeping from the Vitals Monitor which showed nothing thatisvitalabouther.

I can’t feel her pulse… I can’t feel her pulse. Her warmth is slipping away between my fingers, the rhythm of her heartbeat faltering like my tone-deaf singing. Notes off key; heart offbeat. Her life spins outoftuneandI can only look on inafrenzy.BecauseI am a body missing its sound-making parts,twohandswithoutabatontopull her tone-deaf body out of the final cadenza of her life’s song called the tangling and detangling of living and dying. Instead, I hear this train derailing, the clanking and clacking of metal and the meager pleading of the living, the unpurchased guitar strings breaking.

I look down at my hands and see herhandsinstead.Apalmwithcity maps that I have yet to read. I see the hands of that homeless man with that old guitar, whose tremors engulfed all histenfingers,disease-conquering.

Coda.

Growing up, we hadnocoffee table in the summer seasons. Right around the time when the feverish white dream of pear flowers shatters, an army of ripped strands of napa cabbage would seize our wooden, second-hand coffee table. The pale, green pieces lay leisurely, leaving small moistfiguresonthepapertowels underneath. In a week, they would shrivel and gray into small clustered folds, as if beaten-down flower petals from a night of summer’s tempest. Before long, this batch of fallen soldiers would be collected and replaced. While fresh cabbage was stripped toitselementsthenlaid,dried, and crumpled, the eldest batch would then be “fixed” by my grandmother’s magical hands. First, the pressing––her thick, calloused palms usher the remaining moisture out of thedried-up leaves. Then, on the chosen afternoon, grandma would work her weathered fingers and sun-burnt knucklesintothe crevices of these shriveled leaves, forcing the dark and light soy sauces, fried chili oil glaze, sesame seeds, julienned ginger, and too much garlic into the folds. Fold after fold, batch after batch. Repeatingthesamemotion of pushing and pressing as she had worked her calloused hands into my back, smoothing out all the knots and itches as we drifted off to sleep, night afternight.

Timewaits.