Yiyun Li - Where Reasons End

Mother dear, Nikolai said.

I was surprised. He used to only call me that when I wasnt paying attention. But here I was, holding on to my attentiveness because that was all I could do for him now. Ive never told you how much I loved you calling me that, I said.

What did you call Grandma?

When I was your age? Mamita, I said.

That was endearing, he said.

You have to get the name right when you find the person hard to endear, I said. Endear, I thought, what an odd word. Endear. Endure. En-dear. In-dear. Can you out-dear someone?

And fancy seeing you here, Nikolai said.

One of us made this happen, I said.

I blame you.

I laughed. Ever so like you, I said. I then explained the liberty I had taken to get myself here. For one thing, I had made time irrelevant.

I could be sixteen like you are, I said, or twenty-two, or thirty-seven, or forty-four.

I would rather you are not sixteen, he said.

Why not?

I dont want to feel the obligation to befriend you.

We can still be friends even if I am of another age.

I dont like making friends with older people. Besides, one cant really be friends with ones mother.

Can one not?

No. The essence of growing up is to play hide-and-seek with ones mother successfully, Nikolai said.

All children win, I said. Mothers are bad at seeking.

You did find me.

Not as your mother, I said. Dont you notice the sign there (though I knew he couldnt haveI had hung it up while talking with him): Do not let mother dear find us.

What are you then?

Oh, a runaway bunny like you. How else did we end up here?

Here, as I watched my neighbor leave, a box of fresh-baked chocolate cookies in my hands, was a place called nowhere. The rule is, somewhere tomorrow and somewhere yesterdaybut never somewhere today.

I was neither the White Queen, who sets the rule, nor Alice, who declines to live by the rule. I was a generic parent grieving a generic child lost to an inexplicable tragedy. Already there were three clichs. I could wage my personal war against each one of them. Grieve: from Latin gravare, to burden, and gravis, grave, heavy. What kind of mother would consider it a burden to live in the vacancy left behind by a child? Explicate: from Latin ex (out) + plicare (fold), to unfold. But calling Nikolais action inexplicable was like calling a migrant bird ending on a new continent lost. Who can say the vagrant doesnt have a reason to change the course of its flight? Nothing inexplicable for meonly I didnt want to explain: A mothers job is to enfold, not to unfold.

Tragedy: Now that is an inexplicable word. What was a goat song, after all, which is what tragedy seemed to mean originally?

Would you call it a tragedy yourself? I asked Nikolai. In the interim between talking with my neighbor and returning to this page, I realized the world might think I was becoming unhinged.

I was not. What I was doing was what I had always been doing: writing stories. In this one the child Nikolai (which was not his real name, but a name he had given himself, among many other names he had used) and his mother dear meet in a world unspecified in time and space. It was not a world of gods or spirits. And it was not a world dreamed up by me; even my dreams were mundane and landlocked in reality. It was a world made up by words, and words only. No images, no sounds.

Would you call it a tragedy? he said.

I would only say its sad. Its so sad I have no other adjectives left.

Adjectives are my guilty pleasure, he said.

I know. You may have to supply me some, I said. Which one word, I wondered, would he come up with to describe my nowhere-ness? Then it occurred to me that he wouldnt give me a word. No matter how much liberty I had taken in this world, I could not change the fact that I had made this meeting take place. It wasnt his choice so he was limited by my ability. I had no words but sadness.

Do you want me to feel sad for myself, too? Nikolai said.

I thought about the question. I didnt know the answer.

Im not as sad as you think, he said. Not anymore.