A River Sings | 01 21 21 | Jade Yeung

WeChat Message / December 19, 2020 / Brooklyn, NY

[#]
Daughter daughter I worry about you.¹

[#]
You need to stock up the house.² Water. You need to buy water. You need to buy more food.³ These coming days. Now until January. I’m worried there won’t be water or electricity or internet. [in english] No wifi. No water, no internet. You need to stock up. They won’t let us leave the house. Don’t worry about me—I’m all stocked up. It’s you I’m worried about.⁴

[#]
Daughter I’m being serious. You need to stock up on food, any food.⁵ You haven’t seen what I’ve seen. A long time ago we had nothing. It caused a lot of problems. Much trouble.⁶ As long as you have food that’s all that matters. As long as a human being has food, they can thrive. Do you know what I’m saying?⁷ You’re still so young. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it.

[#]
There’ll be shortages.⁸ You won’t be able to leave the house or people will come to your house. America will have a lot of problems now until late January. Do you know what I’m saying, daughter?⁹

WeChat Message / December 19, 2020 / Jersey City, NJ

[#]
Okay, mah. I’m okay.¹⁰

WeChat Message / January 13, 2021 / Brooklyn, NY

[#]
Daughter daughter, remember to buy more water and food and candles.¹¹ Candles, the things you light. I’m scared we won’t have electricity. You need to get cash. Cash at home so you can buy food. There won’t be internet. The machines won’t work. Credit cards won’t work. So keep cash at home. Buy water. By the gallons.¹²

[#]
These next few days they won’t let us go outside.¹³Daughter don’t leave the house. I’ve stocked a lot here. I was worried you wouldn’t know what to buy. [laughs] You’re so far. You wouldn’t be able to walk over here if you needed to. Anyway. There will be nothing to eat.¹⁴ If there’s no electricity the trains won’t even run.¹⁵ You

[now in english] take care—goodnigh’

1. No one will say the estimated death toll for the Great Famine. Maybe 30. Maybe 55. Million. This body remembers even when archives lie.
2. Long Live the Great Leap Forward ! Everybody, Make Steel !
3. An estimated 100 million peasants were pulled out of agricultural work and placed into steel production.
4. Things I’ve purged: siblings, masturbation, men.
5. They said, “Capable women can make a meal without food.” Even rhetoric demands to have its feet rubbed.
6. “The difficult period,” the state’s euphemism for the famine.
7. Mom uses a word I don’t understand but sounds like 商城, which I badly translate on g**gle to “quotient city.” As in my body needs food so that I can figure out the number of cities contained in me.
8. Example monthly ration: 19 lbs of rice, 3.5 oz of cooking oil, and 3.5 oz of meat (maybe).
9. Reminders of scarcity: ziplock bags, glass jars with the labels soaked off.
10. During the famine, a farmer claimed that he grew cabbages weighing over 500 lbs each. We make fantasies for each other. We think the past isn’t watching.
11. The last time we didn’t have electricity was in the blackout of 2003. I remember the candles, the family milling around. The crappy Good Charlotte album on repeat. Brother Cop didn’t touch me that day like he did every other day. And he didn’t ask me to touch him.
12. Why does a “better life” always mean running water?
13. When I realized that playing with toys and playing with our bodies was not the same game, it was too late. I didn’t want to play anymore. I wanted to go home. But I was already home.
14. Things I’ve purged: fig newtons, cheeseburgers, doritos.
15. Some days I skipped school and slept in Riverside Park. When I sobered up I’d wander the seven miles down to Union Square. I had just enough absences to graduate.