The sun is sparkly in the big, blue sky. It makes everything pretty, even the dark house behind me. The long, brown grass looks shiny and alive as the wind blows it back and forth, back and forth.
I'm running. My hair is too long; it's making it hard to see. But I like it long. It makes me feel like the princess that my mommy doesn't want me to be. But she'd like me now, in my shorts and tee shirt, running. Right now I'd remind her of herself.
"TAG! YOU'RE IT!" my cousin Alex runs into me so hard I fall down. But it doesn't hurt. The long, brown grass saved me like the big, fluffy pillows on my grandma's big bed. He runs away so I can chase him.
I nestle into the long, brown grass and watch the big, fluffy clouds swirl around the edges of my big, blue sky. I watch Alex's black-haired head get smaller and smaller as he runs toward the fruit-covered ground and the green trees—away from the dark house and the barn that's falling down. I stand up, dust off my scratched legs, and then I'm running.
My mommy leaves me alone, here. And in this place from her childhood memories, in this place of life and love and joy and waving fields of long, brown grass, I become who she used to be, and she becomes who her own mom was; a mom who would leave her daughter alone to make her independent.
Mommy spends her time in Popo Ho's room with her sister and brother. They just sit there with the curtains closed to block the light that hurt's grandma's eyes. In a row along the wall, noisy metal machines with thin, dancing lines of colored lights beep in a discordant harmony as my grandma sleeps, her thin black and white hair spread in a halo around her, alone and small in the big bed that takes up almost all of her small room. But the world out here is huge and open and all for me.
We kiss Popo Ho every morning and night. I sweep into her room with all the reckless grace of the princess I am and kiss the brown spotted cheeks that will one day be mine, unless I start wearing sunscreen. I don't like sunscreen, though. The rest of them file into that room with its sickly green walls and mismatched wooden furniture, and one by one my brother and our two cousins inch forward to say hello. Under the careful glare of the nurse in the corner, the children avoid my grandma's right wrist's white cast. She broke her arm because she's sick with something that's making her bones unhealthy and the tubes sprouting like flowers from her elbow dripping drops into her arm are supposed to make her healthier. My grandma smiles at us through her lashless eyes though her mouth remains permanently fixed in a thin, straight line. With a grimace meant to resemble a smile, Mommy, Aunt Lisa, and Uncle Stuart watch us run away to explore.
The barn is cool. I like it a lot. Alex isn't supposed to go in here with me—his mom says it isn't safe, that it might fall down when we're inside it, but my mommy just says "Have fun!" She wouldn't say that at home.
My mommy's never home, at home. Instead my other grandma, the healthy one with muscles, takes care of us. She has brown spots on her cheeks too, but her hair is brown and thick and she doesn't wear a cast and she yells at us an awful lot more than Popo Ho does. I've never heard Popo Ho yell. Does she know how?
At home in LA I'm not even allowed to go places by myself. Not even into our front yard. Our front yard—a tiny, square patch of stubbly, artificially green grass, surrounded by a smooth, cement walkway that kisses the side of a steaming black tar pit where cars drive too fast—is too dangerous for me. But here, I can go where I want. There's nothing that can hurt me in the fields of long, brown grass. No mean people, no cars driving too fast. No cars driving at all. There isn't even a black tar road, just a powdered dirt one that horses like to run on.
I run down the dirt pathway, kicking pale brown, powdered dust clouds into the air behind me. My cousins and I push at the rotting wood of the barn door and a cracked, black piece splinters off in our hands. Our footsteps echo as we rush back and forth down the long corridor of the empty barn; we crush the pale gold straws beneath our feet as we gallop through the hallway like the horses from the road. The metal gates hang open leaving stalls unguarded; maybe that's why the animals don't live here anymore. Maybe they ran away. The metal diamonds are covered with dust and colored with dark brown rust and they creak when they move and bang when they close. We like to swing on them.
The wood around us groans and creaks, the ghost of my grandpa settling into a rocking chair. Through the spiderweb encrusted windows open high above the empty stalls full of the hay that smells like October wafts the peculiar stench of death. Outside lie the rotten carcasses of unpicked fruit on the barren dirt ground where clucking chickens once roamed free.
I run outside, into the smell of sun and wind, into the blue sky; Northern California air is adulterated by none of the LA smog. And here in San Jose the buildings are smaller and older and better than the uninspired steel structures looming over the freeways.
And the world out here, with our field of long, brown grass lying next to the next field of long brown grass as the sky that stretches in every direction with nothing else as far as I can see except a house where my grandma is dying and that barn that the ghosts will be haunting forever, is huge and empty and I suddenly feel so alone in this place where there's no one left to pick the fruit from the trees or fix the barn or raise some chickens ever since my mom and my aunt moved away and the ghost of my grandpa faded from memory.
Today Mommy calls us in the afternoon to come say goodnight to grandma. Mommy's eyes are watering as she leads me through the door into the room. Maybe she has allergies and the long, brown grass makes her sneeze and cry. Maybe that's why she moved away. Or maybe she left to escape all the emptiness. Today the nurse doesn't try to stop me from climbing into my grandma's bed and nestling into the big, fluffy pillows. The nurse doesn't whisper meanly to "watch out for her cast!" A hand, rough from years of working on a farm, attached to a skinny arm that used to have muscles snakes around my shoulders. I kiss my grandma's cheek and I whisper "I love you." She squeezes me as hard as she can, a tiny pulse, and lets me bounce my way out of the bed.
The others run away to explore.
"Night, Popo," I murmur. "I hope you have a nice sleep."
She smiles and closes her eyes.
I stay sitting in the hallway. The adults start talking, trading happy memories. Quiet laughter twinkles like wind chimes beyond the closed door. Echoes of "Tag! You're it!" and a guitar melody of giggles seeps through the open window as the conversation slowly winds to a stop.
Silence, a held breath. A long beep before the beeping of the machines is gone forever.
A stifled sob; then silence.
My grandma never woke up.
I don't remember the funeral, much. Maybe the casket was left open—so everyone could gaze upon her unassuming beauty: her asymmetrical eyes, her one eyebrow perpetually arched, and what was left of her thin salt and pepper hair—or maybe she was already locked inside the box of blackness where her body would decompose from now until forever.
Probably she was cremated, the way my dad someday will be.
My dad wants his ashes scattered near a tree. Letting life grow out of death. He talks about it sometimes, very matter-of-factly. I don't like to talk about it. I think it's morbid My mom hasn't said what she wants. She thinks she'll die early though: early deaths run rampant in her family, along with a long list of medical conditions like cancer.
I do remember the tears that so shocked me. The ones that streamed from my eyes and into my lap during the ceremony. I remember crying, but I didn't know what death really means. Tears filled my eyes, which had already faded from the dark blue of my youth to the dark brown of my childhood.
"What's wrong?" they asked.
How could I explain that I was crying because the air in that stupid, stuffy room was telling me to? That the speech-making voices with their melancholy pace and quivering words were telling me that something was very, very wrong? How could I explain if I don't understand?
I remember the grave, strewn with flowers a few hours after the funeral. I remember playing tag around the tombstones with my cousins, tears and grandma already forgotten, already bored with the somber day. I remember my mom, her sister, and her brother touching the still wet dirt, thinking of their parents, reunited, several feet below the ground.
Today I return to the grave, years later. This time it's just my mom and her sister. Uncle Stuart no longer speaks to them after a disagreement about what to do with the property that their mother left them to share. Aunt Lisa and Mom want to sell their parents' house, the falling down barn, and the memories of happier times. But Uncle Stuart still lives there, all alone but for the ghosts.
My cousins and brother are still playing tag, after laying a fresh bouquet atop the grave, which is now sprouting little shoots of green grass, letting life grow out of death.
This time, I don't play with my cousins. This time, I know what death means and I know why I cried at my grandma's funeral. I touch the tombstone and hurry away through the maze of the dead, trying to find somewhere to hide where no one can watch me cry. I'm running away from the death, I'm running away from the ghosts. I'm running.