Types of Rain
By Lucy Zhang
Convection
Dad lifted my bike onto the rack first. The rack shook against the car trunk as he secured straps around the bike’s body and tires. He pulled once, clack clack whispered the steel frame to electrical conduit, twice, grunting as he focused his body weight into his arms and his knuckles whitened against the straps. Next came his bike. Super tight, I thought. Not tight enough to prevent the front wheel from pivoting back and forth, helpless against the momentum of my dad’s swerves as he drove us to Carnegie Lake. When we arrived, my gaze followed the flat, paved trail adjacent to waters reflecting a scattering of clouds and trees cloaked in reds and greens and yellows. As we began to bike, the cool breeze transformed into warmth–a combination of the sun shining through canopies of leaves and my pedaling. We could bike forever, dodging muddy patches of dirt determined to splatter the cuffs of our pants, onward down an unwinding trail, like nothing could ever change. Not the spread of trees, not the linear ripples disturbed by a lone canoe, not the tick tick click of a poorly lubricated bike chain, the telltale sound of my dad trailing behind me. Of course we didn’t bike forever–we returned to the car and I heaved my body onto the backseat, turning my head toward the back window, watching the mounted rack shift under the weight of two bikes and the wheels rotate minutely, hoping nothing would fall.
Orographic
The month before we went biking, dad accused me of killing myself. He banged his fists on the kitchen table as he spoke, and I squeezed my eyes shut, anticipating that it’d be my forehead next. The table vibrated, conducting a chorus of clinking chinaware. When I was little, still learning to spell numbers and colors and kept getting “eight” and “blue” wrong, he’d knock his knuckles against my forehead, the way you’d bang against the door of a neighbor who refused to tone down their speakers, whose doorbell never worked. Dad accused me of looking like a concentration camp victim, bones rattling against each other, bundled in a sack of skin, padded by atrophying muscle and layers of cotton. Dad asked me why and I kept quiet, gripping a paper towel smudged with peanut oil from stir-fried broccoli in one hand, crossed chopsticks in another, the answer stuck under my tongue, the frenulum I couldn’t see and couldn’t cut. When I retreated to my bed, I gently lifted my body onto the mattress. The bag of bones, half furious and half desperate, thought if only such thick cushioning padded linoleum floors and concrete walls and bodies, it might not mind touching things so much, might not mind being touched. But even water boiling over an eternal flame evaporates, and then, we bike under the sun.
Frontal
Physical activities like biking evolved into precarious gambles–my vision blurred to stars speckling black when I descended my bike: I bet on not fainting, not acting in a daze for over thirty seconds like I’d been caught in a purgatory between cobblestone and the unflappable pedal going round and round. I never fell when dad used to lift me onto his shoulders. I’d seen pictures of our family, me sitting high up taking in a world composed of the tops of peoples’ heads. At some point, I thought I knew what it meant to take care of someone, like your whole existence teetered on someone’s frail shoulders. And here I stood watching the distance between us grow, one argument and one meal at a time. The one trying to die would like to live–maybe if dad could understand that and I could understand him, we’d weather the boundary and whatever awaited on the other side.
Monsoon
We turned around when my dad felt tired. He never admitted his tiredness; he only mumbled about the sun setting soon and how we should head back the same path we came. If he said nothing, I’d bike until my hands loosened around the handlebar grip, until I fell, nauseous, trembling, heart racing. If he said nothing, the front wheel’s spokes would still be spinning and the top tube would press against my leg, soon to lose circulation. Sometimes I still thought it’d be nice to keep pedaling forever on a trail hiding nothing but the shiest of herons, no return in sight. The chain slipped from one gear to the next, wheel gripping the pavement and revolving around an axel, propelling me forward. Except now, on well-trodden dirt, I pedaled forward to go back.
THE END