The technician hooks electrodes all over your head; there’s a faint hum, setting your teeth on edge.
As the technician finishes placing the last of the electrodes on your head, certain parts of the brain on the panel light up, ebbing and flowing, a small chunk in the back active; you try to recall the areas of the brain from biology classes in university, and, while different parts of your brain start to light up, you still don’t remember the names of any of the regions.
The technician flips a couple switches, then types a few commands. The sensation that crawls over you is less of a shock than a tingling across your scalp. Thoughts flash through your mind too fast for you to catch them; you glance up at the monitor and see light firing between the areas the technician pointed out, paths carving through the brain and flowing back and forth. The lights flash faster and faster until they become a single blur, and as you watch, your world goes white.
The technician and nurse keep you at the institute for a few hours to monitor your side effects: slight disorientation, but that fades as the time goes by. They ask if you have anyone picking you up; you insist that you’re fine taking public transportation by yourself, and the technician and nurse relent. The accountant pays you the first installment of the money, and soon you’re taking the steps down from the institute’s main doors, a cool breeze whipping at your hair.
The bus ride home is… strange. As you go from west Los Angeles toward the San Gabriel Valley, the English dominating billboards and signs starts to give way to Chinese. Although you can still understand the balance of the characters, know when they’re backward in the rearview mirrors, you can’t actually read them—they’re no more than shapes: familiar ones, but indecipherable ones. You suck down a deep breath and will your heart to stop beating so quickly. It will take time to adjust to this, just as it took time to adjust to being thrown into a world of English when you first immigrated to the United States.
A corner of the check sticks out of your purse.
You’ll be okay.
Your family is celebrating Chinese New Year this weekend. You drive with Lillian over to your mother’s senior living apartment; you squeeze in through the door while carrying a bag of fruit. Your mother is cooking in the tiny kitchenette, the space barely big enough for the both of you. She’s wearing the frilly blue apron with embroidered teddy bears on it, and you can’t help but smile as you inhale the scent of all the food frying and simmering on the stove.
“Bongmong?” you say in Cantonese. It’s one of the few words you can remember—as the days passed, you realized that some of your Cantonese had been taken too, its roots intertwined and excised with your Mandarin.
“(???). (???????),” your mother says, gesturing toward the couch. You and Lillian sit down. A period drama plays on the television. The subtitles go by too fast for you to match sound to symbol; Lillian idly taps away on her phone.
A few moments pass like this, your gaze focused on the television as you see if you can pick up something, anything at all; sometimes, you catch a phrase that jogs something in your memory, but before you can recall what the phrase means, the sound of it and its meaning are already gone.
“(???)!”
Lillian gets up, and you follow suit. The small dining room table has been decked out with all kinds of food: glistening, ruby-red shrimp with caramelized onions; braised fish; stir-fried lotus root with sausage; sautéed vegetables… you wish you could tell your mother how good it looks; instead, you can only flash her a smile and hope she understands.
“(?????????), (?????????),” your mother says.
Lillian digs in, picking up shrimp with her chopsticks; you scold her and remind her of her manners.
“But (??????) said I could go ahead,” Lillian says.
“Still,” you reply. You place some food on your mother’s plate first, then Lillian’s; finally, you set some food on your own plate. Only after your mother’s eaten do you take a bite.
Lillian converses with your mother; her Mandarin sounds a little stilted, starting and stopping, thick with an American accent, but her enthusiasm expresses itself in the vibrant conversation that flows around you. You stay quiet, shrinking into yourself as your mother laughs, as Lillian smiles.
You’re seated between Lillian and your mother; the gap across the table from you is a little too big, spacing the three of you unevenly around the table. As the syllables cascade around you, you swear the spaces between you and your mother, between you and Lillian, grow larger and larger.
After dinner, as your mother washes up the dishes—again, she refuses your help—you and Lillian watch the Spring Gala playing on the television. An invited pop star from the U.S., the only white person on the stage, sings a love ballad in Mandarin. You don’t need to know what she’s saying to tell that she doesn’t have an American accent.
“I bet she bought her Mandarin,” Lillian says. It’s an offhanded comment, but still you try to see if you can detect any disgust in her words.
“Is that so bad?” you ask.
“I don’t know; it just seems a little… (appropriative?), you know?”
You don’t know. Lillian doesn’t know. You were planning on telling her the instant you came home, but you didn’t know how to bring it up. And now… you want to keep your sacrifice a secret, because it’s not about you—it was never about you. But it’s only a matter of time before Lillian finds out.
You don’t know how she’ll react. Will she understand?
Lillian rests her head on your shoulder. You pull her close, your girl who’s grown up so fast. You try to find the words to tell her what you’d do for her, how important it is that she has a good future, how much you love her and want only the best for her.
But all you have is silence.
IN THE SHARING PLACE
DAVID ERIK NELSON
David Erik Nelson is a science fiction author and essayist. He has written reference articles and textbooks, such as Perspectives on Modern World History: Chernobyl. He builds instruments, as he chronicles in Junkyard Jam Band: DIY Musical Instruments and Noisemakers. His short fiction has been featured in Asimov’s, Fantasy & Science Fiction, StarShipSofa, and such anthologies as The Best of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded, Steampunk III: Steampunk Revolution, and The Best Horror of the Year, Volume 10.
“In the Sharing Place” deals with the stages of grief in losing the world one has always known.
CHILDREN ARE brought to the Sharing Place because a loved one has died.
You must always use the present perfect tense and passive voice: “A loved one has died.” Not “A loved one is dead,” and never “this killed a loved one” or “a loved one was killed by that” or even “a loved one died because of the other thing.”
The actual circumstances of the death are inconsequential. They have nothing to do with why children are brought (note the passive voice) to the Sharing Place, nor when they will leave the Sharing Place.
Children are brought to the Sharing Place because a loved one has died and, despite being young, they may very well still suffer Rejection if they fail to process this grief.
And just about the only thing we can do for our children now is help them avoid Rejection.