When Fan ascended to the top of the stoop, we could all see her. Maybe some mourner inside was taking an especially long time over the casket because Fan seemed to be perched there forever. It was a sunny day post storm and she wore the wraparound sunglasses she preferred, her bob of black hair curling under ever so slightly at the ends to cup the delicate lines of her jaw, and you could almost imagine her as one of those people who end up doing something that was far beyond what we B-Mors can ever expect, such as being a programs personality or an actor. Again, Fan was not beautiful but rather distinctive in her presence, which was one of more than merely being petite but like a distillation, this purity by way of exquisite scale, and to view her perfect little hand clutching the railing, and the tense purse of her mouth as she awaited her turn inside, was enough to tap a fresh well of admiration in your heart.
For the viewing, everybody was routed through the kitchen and eventually deposited in the shared alley that separates the rear yards of the houses. Fan saw exactly what we saw: there he was, reclined in a heavy cardboard coffin in the cramped front living room, asleep in his death robes, the amazing color of his face courtesy of Tang, the senior B-Mor mortician. And maybe it was to compensate for the stone hue of his subject, or just because he’d lost his touch, but old Tang truly went too far, for poor Joseph looked as though he had just trotted off the field after a hard-fought match. He appeared too alive, (perhaps literally) flushed with lifeblood, as if he might pop up at any moment and ask for a sports drink. Then, too, someone had placed a mini soccer ball in his hand and you could see that Joseph had a real grip on it, the soft plastic surface ever slightly deformed, and though it was just a toy ball, the sensation we had as we stood beside him was that he was squeezing us, not menacingly or in admonition like the dead normally would, but with the gentlest press of solidarity.
I know, Joseph seemed to say. I know.
Then we shuffled into the adjacent kitchen where one of his aunts ushered people out to the small rear yard. There on long tables they had put out the customary feast, though this time including some homemade delicacies like Shanxi-style smoked pork belly, stuff you hardly ever see these days. The fatty, peppery scent of the dish was absolutely transporting and would have been cause for a wink of wicked glee at another wake, but at Joseph’s it was a cloud you kept wishing would blow away, so you could taste only woe. The smell was too good, too luscious, our salty tears an embittering drink for our tingly, watering mouths, and we would have tipped down the whole platter at once to repel the emptiness had his parents and now lone brother not stood right there like totems in their severe mourning costumes and white gloves. His mother thanked each of us for coming and his father, also athletic in youth if not as gifted as Joseph, received our bows with eyes not vacant or blank but very much the opposite; you could see in them how packed full they were of all things Joseph, manifold glints of him on the field and in his tank-diving training, plus whatever else everyone hoped he might have accomplished beyond B-Mor, had he ever gotten the chance.
Only his younger brother was unable to look up, for how miserably he was crying, his tears leaving whitish spots on the surface of the red lacquered offering box he held to his chest, a slide show of pictures of Joseph looping on the screen stretched across the front. It was amazing that the boy could stay on his feet. Though they were in a line of three, his parents seemed separated from him, they in their bubble and he in his, with the box he was holding serving as his partner. No doubt he felt partly responsible for pushing Joseph to take them to play outside, and though no one should ever feel right in blaming him, did more than a few make a point of shoving their envelopes into the slot with an extra-hard pat? Did we? If there was the barest audible ttok when we pushed ours in, we regret it now.
We bring all this up about Joseph and his family and our own displays because it makes us mindful of how solemnly composed Fan was as she bowed to his mother and his father, and how she slipped in her own envelope (even as her household’s offering sufficed), touching the boy’s shoulder for a longish beat. From the food tables — Fan must have been the sole mourner who didn’t eat — we couldn’t help but notice how she stationed herself an appropriate distance from Joseph’s brother but clearly with the intention of standing there with him, and though no one spoke to or made eye contact with Fan, we were well aware of her presence. After that, the line seemed to move a bit more slowly, people taking their time with their envelopes and maybe even nodding sympathetically to the boy before hustling over to the tables. The remarkable thing, looking back on it, was that nobody commented on Fan. Not a one of us uttered a word amid the glottal murmurs of chewing and swallowing and the scraping of plastic forks on plastic plates. Maybe it was because we were famished — glimpsing mortality can be a surprisingly appetizing sauce — or because we were being pushed along the buffet by the shuffling throng armed with plates, or because of what had recently happened with Reg, but our hesitance to acknowledge her became itself a part of the meal.
At some point Fan left the boy’s side and came down toward the buffet line. Most everyone noticed this and seemed to pause in what they were doing. And in a voice that surprised for its clarity and reach she said, quite oddly:
Where you are.
By now everybody had turned to her. Her hands were curled into loose fists and she said the words again, this time softer, as though she were speaking to herself rather than addressing any crowd. Again no one said a word. She then left via the back gate of the yard with those who had finished eating, leaving us to wonder what she was talking about.
The wake lasted for another hour or so, and probably would have gone on for hours longer had the skies not suddenly clotted up and the winds blown in yet another immense storm system, one that would hover for weeks in a slowly unwinding gyre, the sun blocked out the whole time so that all you could see in your waking and your sleep was not brightness or darkness but a waxen shimmer, as though everything were stuck behind a grimy piece of glass. We B-Mors are accustomed to spending time indoors and underground, but knowing that there was only grayness and mists above the grow houses or subterranean shops proved wearying. And while under this moody, thwarted light, we began to discuss, in the most casual way, what Fan’s statement exactly meant. Where you are. Some took it as the beginning of a thought that Fan couldn’t quite finish, others as mere gibberish, that she had stood too long in the line and should have eaten something. One especially misguided fellow believed she was speaking exclusively to him and was asking that he save her a folding seat!
But most of us agreed it was posed not as a question but as the ending to a phrase. Such as “Everything you desire can be found…” and “Look not elsewhere but simply…” plus other examples people came up with that, not surprisingly, accorded with their character or current outlook, like the terminally ill man who proposed, “One’s destiny lies not in the past nor the future but…,” none of which was, of course, uttered by Fan but that somehow in the end became attributed to her, at least in our feeling, which began to bloom with surprising fullness only after she had been long gone from B-Mor, a feeling that she was, in fact, looking after us, perhaps even advising us about something crucial.