He looked down at his hands. “Trying to be … better. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to be helping me with?”
The backs of her shoes hit the lower cabinets, causing the doors to rattle. “I don’t think it’s our job to make you better. Our job is to get you through the door. We give you the time to make peace with it, but anything else beyond that is up to you.”
“Okay,” he said helplessly. “I … I’ll remember that.”
She stared at him for a long moment. Then, “Before I came here, I didn’t know how to bake.”
He frowned. What did that have to do with anything?
“I had to learn,” she continued. “Growing up, we didn’t bake. We didn’t use an oven. We had a dishwasher, but we never used it because dishes needed to be handwashed, and then put into the dishwasher to be used as a drying rack.” She grimaced. “Have you ever tried to whisk eggs? Man, that shit is hard. And then there was the time I made the dishwasher overflow with soap until it flooded the kitchen. Felt a little bad about that.”
“I don’t understand,” Wallace admitted.
“Yeah,” Mei muttered, rubbing a hand over her face. “It’s a cultural thing. My parents emigrated to this country when I was five. My mother, she … well. She was fascinated by the idea of being American. Not Chinese. Not Chinese American. American. She didn’t like her history. China in the twentieth century was filled with war and famine, oppression and violence. During the Cultural Revolution, religion was outlawed, and anyone who disobeyed was beaten or killed or just … disappeared into thin air.”
“I can’t imagine what that’s like,” Wallace admitted.
“No, you can’t,” she said bluntly. “My mom wanted to escape it all. She wanted fireworks on the Fourth of July and picket fences, to become someone different. She wanted the same for me. But even coming here, there were certain things she still believed. You don’t go to bed with wet hair because you’ll get a cold in your head. Don’t write names in red ink, because that’s taboo.” She looked away. “When I started … manifesting, I thought something was wrong with me, that I was sick. Seeing things that weren’t there. She wouldn’t hear of it.” She laughed hollowly. “I know you probably don’t get this, but we don’t talk about stuff like that in my family. It’s … ingrained. She wouldn’t let me get help, to see a doctor, because for all that she wanted to be American, there were still some things that just wouldn’t do. After all, what would the neighbors think if they found out?”
“What happened?” Wallace asked, unsure if it was his place.
“She tried to keep me hidden away,” Mei said. “Kept me at home, telling me that I was acting out, that nothing was wrong with me. Why would I do this to her after all she’d done to give me a good life?” She smiled weakly. “When that still didn’t work, I was given a choice. Either her way or the highway. She said it just like that, and she was so proud of it, because it was such an American thing to say.”
“Christ,” Wallace breathed. “How old were you?”
“Seventeen. Almost ten years ago now.” She gripped the countertop on either side of her legs. “I went out on my own. Made good decisions. Sometimes not-so-good decisions, but I learned from them. And she’s … well. She’s not gotten better, exactly, but I think she’s trying. It’ll take time to rebuild what we had before, if that’s even possible, but we talk on the phone a few times a month. In fact, she was the first one to reach out. I talked it over with Hugo, and he thought it might be an olive branch, but ultimately, it was up to me to decide.” She shrugged. “I missed her. Even with all that happened. It was … nice to hear her voice. Toward the end of last year, she even asked me to come back and visit her. I told her I wasn’t ready for that, at least not yet. I haven’t forgotten what she said to me before. She was disappointed, but said she understood and didn’t push it. Still doesn’t change what I see.”
“And what’s that?”
“People like you. Ghosts. Wandering souls who haven’t yet found their way.” She sighed. “You know bug zappers? Those electric blue lights that hang on porches and torch the bugs that fly into them?”
He nodded.
“I’m sort of like that,” she said. “Except for ghosts, not bugs, and I don’t fry them when they get close. They’re attracted to something in me. When I first started seeing them, I didn’t know how to make it stop. It wasn’t until…”
“Until?”
Her eyes slid unfocused as she looked off into nothing. “Until someone came for me and offered me a job. He told me who—what I was. And with the proper training, what I could do. He brought me here to Hugo, to see if we’d make a good match.”
“The Manager,” Wallace said.
“Yeah. But don’t worry about him. He’s nothing we can’t handle.”
“Then why do you seem so scared of him?”
She startled. “I’m not scared of anything.”
He didn’t think that was true. If she was telling the truth and was human, she’d always have to be scared of something. That was how humanity worked. Survival instinct was based on a healthy dose of fear.
“I’m wary of him,” she said. “He’s … intense. And that’s putting it mildly. I’m grateful he brought me here and taught me what he knows, but it’s better when he’s gone.”
From everything he’d heard about the Manager, Wallace hoped he’d stay gone. “And he … what? Made you this way?”
She shook her head. “He fine-tuned what was already there. I’m a sort of medium, and yes, I know how that sounds, so you can shut your mouth.”
He did.
“I have…” She paused. Then, “It’s like when you’re standing in a doorway. You have one foot on one side, and the other foot on the other side. You’re in two places at once. That’s me. He just showed me how to lean into one side of the doorway, and how to pull myself back.”
“How can you do this?” Wallace asked, suddenly feeling very small. “How can you be surrounded by death all the time and not let it get to you?”
“I wish I could tell you it’s because I always wanted to help people,” Mei said. “But that would be a lie. I didn’t … I didn’t know how to be. I had to unlearn so many things I’d been taught. Hell, the first time Hugo hugged me, I didn’t hug him back because that’s not something I’d ever really had before. Contact, much less physical affection, wasn’t something I was used to. It took me a while to appreciate it for what it was.” She grinned at him. “Now, I’m pretty much the best hugger.”
Wallace remembered how her hand had felt in his the first time, the relief that’d washed over him. He couldn’t imagine going an entire life without knowing something like that.
“It’s like you, in a way,” she said. “You need to unlearn all that you know. I wish I could just flip a switch for you, but that’s not how it works. It’s a process, Wallace, and it takes time. For me, it started when I was shown the truth. It changed me, though definitely not right away.” She hopped down from the counter, though she kept the distance between them. “I do what I do because I know there’s never been a time in your life when you’ve been more confused or more vulnerable. And if I can do something to at least alleviate that a little bit, then so be it. Death isn’t a final ending, Wallace. It is an ending, sure, but only to prepare you for a new beginning.”