The Gift
By Sera Yu
It was hidden behind a lamp that might have belonged to a girl from a different time. My mother pushed the lamp out of the way to reveal a square wooden clock. The price was handwritten in blue ink on a small white tag. “This is perfect,” she said.
At the counter, a cashier with dark hair and shocking white roots beamed at us. “How charming,” she gushed. “I used to have one growing up but mine was shaped like a house like most of them are. Is the bird inside?”
“Excuse me?” My mother didn’t believe in small talk with strangers.
“The cuckoo bird.”
There was a little hole but no bird. “It’s not a cuckoo clock.”
“Trust me, it is.”
“There’s no pendulum, “ said my mother, holding out a bill.
The woman sighed and took the money. “Just so you know, we don’t accept returns here.”
“You shouldn’t worry about someone else’s clock.”
She didn’t examine it to see if there really was a bird stuck inside as the thrift store lady suggested. When the time came she simply covered the clock with gold wrapping paper and settled in her recliner with a card embossed with doves, bells, flowers. I found it perverse that she’d chosen such an extravagant card to go with a used clock that was likely broken. She took a while writing her message. Afterwards she passed the card to me.
“It's depressing,” I said.
My mother shrugged. “She’ll know what I mean.”
“She’s going to be disappointed.”
“I’m working all weekend. That’s what’s depressing and disappointing.”
She leaned back and closed her eyes. In a few seconds she was snoring. I covered her with the velour tiger print blanket shipped to us from across the world by a relative I’d never met. It had arrived in a box with some dried foods and a wall calendar that showcased women dressed in traditional costumes suitable for a royal bride or empress, a different model for each month. It was a feast for the eyes - towering braid crowns, majestic brocade dresses, embroidered silk headpieces, gold and jade hairpins that could double as weapons. But it was the smile that captivated me. I would get sucked in by that eternal, unfathomable grin, and the longer I stared, the bigger it grew. Once in a while my brain would configure a matching giggle.
In the darkening living room I felt like a bird waiting for the blackout curtain to fall around its cage. I turned to the wall and summoned the calendar woman. What did I want? This time her smile was different, fleeting. The mouth began moving as if to speak. I concentrated until my heard hurt trying to decipher her message. An important message, I thought. Perhaps an answer. But the mouth only curled in and out, over and over. Her expression teetered on the brink of a frown that I desperately wished would overshadow my reality. But I knew that could never happen. My life would continue to operate according to Murphy’s law, a certainty no ghost or hallucination could hold.
I turned on the antique lamp I’d convinced my mother to buy along with the clock. Under its tinted glow I finished my homework, working quickly yet painstakingly through each problem. My plan for the weekend was to watch cartoons and gorge on my secret stash of junk food. I put my books away and turned on the T.V. When Family Feud came on, my mother’s eyes flipped open. I never saw her undergo any kind of transition between sleep and wakefulness; she simply fell asleep whenever she had the opportunity and woke without any fuss. Seconds later she was already chuckling at the show’s creepy host known to kiss every female contestant on the lips. She laughed derisively and called him names each time he puckered up and leaned in, as if she were the woman on the receiving end. “Those women,” she criticized. “I would slap him.”
Early next morning, my mother placed the gift in front of Esmerelda’s door. It was a risky thing to do in a neighborhood like ours where things and people regularly went missing, but Esmerelda’s father would soon be coming for breakfast and to argue with his daughter as he did every Saturday. It was a ritual observed for many years. He always announced his arrival by calling out her name multiple times instead of a knock, and an exasperated Esmerelda would let him in as she chastised him for the yelling. The same words reverberated week after week through our shared walls, accompanied by sounds of objects being used to convey the unsaid. But that would change. She had told us that this week, on her wedding day nonetheless, they would have their final breakfast together. I went back to sleep feeling funny about it all, about something I didn’t understand coming to an end.
In a few hours what pulled me out of sleep was not the contentious greeting between Esmerelda and her father that I expected, but heavy footsteps and alien voices. I peeked through the curtains and saw my neighbor lying on a stretcher, wearing a colorful dress that covered her entire body. I could see her purple lipstick through the oxygen mask. It was difficult to tell if there was any blood because of her variegated dress, but I noticed dark ink on her hands that appeared to spell out something. Her father was nowhere to be seen.
A week later we heard the old man’s voice once more. He was standing at the door holding the clock in his arms like a dead child, disheveled and nearly unrecognizable.
“Where is the bird?” he demanded, pursuing my mother’s averted gaze. Unlike the rest of his appearance, his eyes were bright and sound.
“I’m sorry.” She shook her head in denial. “I didn’t know.”
The clock fell to the ground and came apart, releasing a small wooden bird the size of a thumb.
THE END