Spring Cleaning

      Spring cleaning used to be the bane of my existence.  I hated having to clean, scrub, sweep, vacuum the floor and, worst of all, get rid of stuff.  I hated having to throw out anything.  What if I needed it later?  How could I get rid of something that represented memories?  Now I find a certain relaxing component to the annual clean; it took fifteen years for me to shift my thinking.  I like seeing everything look neat and organized again.  I like feeling that certain “feng shui” as it takes over a clean house. 

      One mid-morning on a spring Saturday, Yasmin and I were hard at work getting our room clean. 

      “I hate cleaning!” my little sister announces as she picks up a creased shirt to shove away in her drawer.  “Out of sight out of mind,” she declares and heads back to pick up a few more clothing items, one at a time. 

      “Why don’t you actually fold your clothing so that you can fit everything back in so you won’t have to do it again later?” 

      Yasmin’s eyes flash as she answers, “I don’t care.  You’re not mom.  Jeez, you’re getting to be like her every day, Li.”

       I sigh and give up my argument as I pick up shirts of my own. 

      “What do you think I should do with this shirt, Yasmin?”

 “Get rid of it! It’s hideous! It’s yellow!”

       “But….this is the one that I wore to that performance in Sacramento.” 

      “What are you talking about?  What performance?” 

      “You know, the one that had the dancers in gold flowing outfits? We went to see it on July fourth a few years ago.”

      “Whatever, just don’t keep that shirt.” 

      Reluctantly, I put aside the buttercup shirt.  After going away and coming back, I pick up the ebullient, cropped T-shirt and transfer it to a discreet corner of my shirt drawer. 

      My inability to let things go easily is something no one will ever quite understand about me, and I hardly understand it myself.  Just a few weeks earlier I started trying to put the pieces together as to why I keep so much junk, as other people would call it.  The reality is that the reasons probably start from a long time ago.  The closest I can come to explaining is that it is a coping tool I used for a long time.  I was unable to come to terms with possibly forgetting anything.  Everything meant some memory, thus the stalemate that plagued my room and my mind.  I have an idea deeply embedded inside me that one should not waste needlessly, nor give up anything, unless it is really worth doing so.

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      To put things simply, my life is divided into what I remember and what I do not remember.  There are few things that I remember before the time I was four, yet that time significantly altered my life.  I remember a gated courtyard where there were tall palm trees against a grey sky swaying in the heated wind.  I remember running away from the dragons and masked men at the moon festival, away from the courtyard into a room housing five beds.  I remember a woman cleaning under my bed, and being handed bananas.  These memories are strange because they itch the back of my mind and I do not know how to place them in my timeline; they lay on the cutting-room floor of my

memory chamber. 

      However important these orphaned memories are, they are no match to what I do not remember.  I don’t remember when she left me; my mother’s face was discarded in my memory chamber.  I don’t remember her tears or the sound of her heart breaking.  She loved me but she couldn’t keep me.  Her husband died of a disease long forgotten, leaving four children and a grandmother.  I was the youngest.  She watched as my body thinned out with hunger; she watched the struggle and felt the struggle.  She was forced into the hardest decision ever in her life, a choice that most people never even dream about.  My life was in her hands. I don’t remember how much torment she tolerated.  I don’t remember when she took me to the orphanage with only the hope that I would get more.  I know she realized that she had to let me go, hoping that I would remember my heritage, my family, and her decision that gave me my life.  She gave me the best life possible, but paid the price.  I don’t remember her. 

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      I was a peculiar little girl.  My new mother loved me, but when it came to my room she was fighting for a lost cause.  My room was a disaster zone from about first grade on.  The mess was exacerbated by the fact that I shared my room with Yasmin.  One could say there was everything in it but hammers and nails.  That was an understatement.  My twelve foot by twelve foot room housed everything -- clothes strewn in neat piles, toys left unattended by children called away for dinner, gift wrappings from the last event, cards, plastic covers from toys, boxes, our small red metal treasure chest, shoes, Barbie dolls, a safari of stuffed animals, two unmade beds with blankets and pillows askew, a dresser which only held half the clothing necessary, a closet that had to stay closed or else its contents would spill out like in the cartoons, a disarranged (though occasionally in order) bookshelf, and a desk with school papers from the previous years stacked on top, drawers bursting with broken pencils, rulers, pens, stationery, and collectibles.  I kept everything never knowing what could be useful.  For some odd reason, I thought that anything I got rid of would be lonely, cold, and forgotten, the way I had felt when I was left behind.  Eventually, Mom realized that all she could do was wait until I outgrew my curious phase.

      When I was younger, I wanted a unicorn for a pet.  In my mind, unicorns were the most beautiful creatures.  I would imagine riding one into the enchanted forests for hours.  My unicorn would run while gold sparkles flowed out of her hair that chased away all the evil creatures.   I also wanted to be a fairy so I could meet the tooth fairy.  One day, in the middle of my teeth-losing years, my friend and classmate, Brandon, took away my belief in all mythical creatures. 

      “Don’t you know that the tooth fairy does not exist, Lianna?”

      “No! She exists! She leaves me money under my pillow in my little purple velvet pouch.  She also writes me letters and she doesn’t have handwriting of anyone I know.”

      “Well, my dad gives me money in broad daylight.”

      Confused, I went home to my mom and I told her about my disturbing conversation with Brandon.  Shame-faced, my mom admitted the truth about my fairy visitor; Mom had written my precious notes with her left hand.  So there I was, eight years old and in shock from finding out fairies do not exist in the least.  I sat on the couch in a small pocket of sunshine and cried.  So much for my pet unicorn.  I went into my room and dug through the stuffed animals and pulled out my plush unicorn to cry with me. 

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       “Girls!” My dad’s voice rang through the house.  “Please come into the living room. Your mother and I would like to talk to you!”

      I knew it, it had been coming and I knew it like knowing the screenplay of a bad movie. 

      “We have decided to separate.  It’s only a temporary arrangement…”

      Oh god…please stop talking; it’s only making this worse.

      “…moving out by Christmas, but I’ll probably have somewhere to live earlier than that.”

      You don’t understand….I want stability, organization, tranquility, and predictability.

      With that, my emotional dam broke and I cried out in bitterness, relief, God knows what.  Crying felt so good.  And that was it.  That was the day when my fear of another broken family became reality.  Reality was when in one evening both my parents in a fit of rage made this decision.  Reality was packing boxes and moving when I’d never moved in my memory, learning and giving out new phone numbers, and forgetting the house key for the right house. 

      My life became a metronome.  The rhythmic ticks lead me through each day, through each week, through each month.  One day at life-guarding camp, my new friend, Ashley, and I took our lunch break looking over the green surface of Lake Anza. 

      “Yeah, my parents don’t live together anymore,” my voice trailed off as I looked over the glassy waters. 

      Suddenly, I realized that I would never have dreamed about saying that just two years earlier.  Every friend who had divorced parents always answered my questions like that, and now I was one of them.  Clearly I could lose the comforts of my family as it was, but still get by.  My room still needed cleaning. 

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      So there we were lying out on his bed.  Tears dripped down my cheeks, each chasing the last into oblivion.

      “I don’t think I can keep going on like this.  You need to know what you want from me.  I love you, but I’m not so sure that you do…and…I don’t think I can be enough for the both of us,” he said with his monotone voice. 

      My head was bursting.  The shock alarm was going off with a low, loud, lingering blare.

      “John…ai…dun’t want this…”

      “If you love a person, you let them go.  If they love you, they’ll come back,” John said softly.

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      The next morning I woke up with a lead weight in my chest and a screaming headache.  My legs faltered with each step.  My skeleton seemed like glass as I made my way to the kitchen when the teapot blew its train-horn whistle.  John loved tea…. my eyes started to water.  I poured myself a cup and sat on the bench rocking back and forth.  Later that day, I barged into my mom’s sunlit room and snuggled my head under her chin. 

      “How are you doing honey?”

      “Miserable.”

      “I know how hard this is, darling, but someday you will wake up and find that you’re not in love with him anymore.”

      “Well, look at it this way.  Your needs conflicted and what he did benefited him much more than you.  What does that say?  He really did adore you, but in the end, how much is he…was he actually willing to sacrifice for you?”

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      “He did WHAT?” Yasmin said incredulously.  “OH HEEEEELLLL NO! Next time I see that caveman, it’ll end with my fist in his mouth!  Nobody treats my baby girl like that!”

      Three days later at the Solano Stroll, a big annual event in Berkeley attended mostly by eager teenagers, Yasmin spotted John while she was walking with her friends.  She ran to give him a piece of her mind and would have if it had not been for her friend’s quick grab around her waist and determination that carried her two blocks away from John.  She screamed at her friend so loudly that half a block’s worth of people stopped and stared.  A friend told me later that she had seen a couple at the Stroll having a huge fight.  Boyfriends are temporary, but sisters are forever.

      For the next week I broke the news to everyone.  At least I had stopped needing to cry by the time I got back to school.  Each day, I sunk in and out of sorrow.  However, curiously, life was not that different.  How much of a role did he play in my life?  Did I play any part in his?  These questions flooded my head, confused my senses, and tied my stomach into knots.  The only difference now was that I was single.  Single…a word that I had not used to describe myself for about a year and a half.  I could flirt, hold hands with guys, play lap tag without feeling guilty, and just simply get a whole lot of hugs.  But I was not the only one who was surprised by the sudden break up. 

      On Thursday, I found myself walking across the Berkeley High School campus thinking about my little bubble of existence.  Suddenly Megan caught up with me.

      “So did John break up with you?”

      “Yeah…”

      “That’s funny, you know in the weird way.  I would totally expect that you would break up with him first.  You guys were such a cute couple.” 

       “It sucked….and the crazy thing is that he wants me to come back to him.”

       “When did he say that?”  Megan was stunned.

       “When he broke up with me……he said I needed to figure out what I wanted and go back to him when I know.”

      “Oh my god.  That’s abusive.  Remind me to smack some sense into him next time I see him.”

      “It wasn’t abuse…it was unreasonable I guess.”  Megan left me with my head tilted to left, staring at a corner in the ceiling, a furrowed brow, and full of new questions. 

      That weekend I set myself to cleaning as a distraction from all those damned questions.  While I cleaned, I pitied myself, blamed myself, but most of all, I fumed. “If you love a person, you let them go.  If they love you, they’ll come back.” He has no right to say that!  I’ve been through the ins and outs of not being able to go back.  My mother loved me so much and I loved her so much, and I couldn’t go back.  On top of that, I loved my family as it was, then it was shattered and I couldn’t make it go back.  Come back?? You want me to come back to you? How can I come back?  Okay, let me get this through your head.  Life is not a freakin’ fairy tale where everyone lives happily ever after!  You were the one who wanted to start the whole “break” thing, but you were too cowardly to actually say “we are breaking up.” I even told you that now would be the worst time to pull a stunt like this, and what do you do?  Exactly that you sonofa….. your mom’s not a bitch, but you are.  Obviously, in the end, it didn’t matter to you that I couldn’t handle this right now.  You said that you couldn’t live without me, so why aren’t you fucking dead yet? Honestly, how could you think that we could start planning to be together forever when I’m just 17 years old?  You’re almost 20 for Christ’s sake!  Don’t try and “play for keeps” yet. It makes things too serious at this age.  The average college girl is probably not looking to get married-- laid, but not married.  You were everything to me and you threw it all away.  So yes, have fun with your life and I’ll find someone more worthy of me.  But one thing is for sure I’M NOT COMING BACK!

      That night, mom was tucked in reading by the humble light of the lamp by the bedside.  I walked in and pulled the country comforter over my goose bumps and put my head under her chin. 

      “Mom, I think that I was made to love and lose; actually, we are all made to cope with losing.  But…in the end it seems that when I lose I find the silver lining on the cloud.”