How High We Go in the Dark

If I had socialized with my aunt and uncle's Filipino meet-up group instead of going to the movies, maybe something could have been done. Instead, I opened my eyes in darkness where I could barely tell if my lids had opened. I cried for help, for some teenage usher to turn the lights on, for the elderly woman sitting in the row ahead who shooshed me when I opened my contraband gummy bears. The charged air felt like how a child might imagine clouds feel—substantial enough to rest on yet capable of being traversed, an infinite expanse and cocoon all at once. Above, the air felt lighter on my fingertips, as if gravity had dissipated, but such physics would suggest a grounding force, and waving my hands beneath my feet, I could not find where my body found purchase in the dark.

I suppose I need to continue telling this from the first day, whatever time counts for here, if you're to understand the predicament we're in. Other voices soon came: Where are you? I can't see you? My phone won't turn on. Mine, too. Everybody keep talking. Arms outstretched, bodies walking toward sound until they converged—chest against chest, heads bouncing off each other like billiard balls. At first, we counted six. Some of what we remembered:

"Getting ready to leave for work. I was eating cereal with my daughter."

"Kissing Jennie Mitchell in a closet at a senior party."

"Made it to level 28 in Knights of Honor."

"Talkin' on the phone with my grandchildren."

"The CDC asking me about side-effects. I told 'em I kept having dreams of my face disappearing."

"I was alone at the movies," I said. I had been getting the runaround at inoculation centers, trying to get my aunty and uncle vaccinated against the climate plagues. The miracle catch-all cure had been pumping through my veins for weeks, thanks to my Japanese-American father who split after my mother died while bringing me into the world, but miracles weren't for the undocumented. When Aunty Reyna and Uncle Alejandro called me to come home and say hi to their friends, I wanted to pretend everything would be okay.

"Come back and have fun with us. You're always running around," Aunty Reyna said.

"Maybe later," I said.

"You make any progress with the shots?" Uncle Alejandro asked. But before giving me a chance to reply said, "It's okay. Your uncle and aunty are a bunch of old farts, yeah? We don't go anywhere anyway. No bad air, no bad sun. We'll be okay."

The few of us in the dark took turns introducing each other. Names, professions, cities, family situations, as if these details would help give us form. Lawyer—family practice mostly. My wife and I have a little girl. I'm on the track team at King's Academy. I'm doing time for breaking into my own damn house to get shit my from my ex. I don't do much really except play video games. I work for an at-risk youth after school program and I'm getting a degree in social work from Berkeley, I said. Later, I would tell them I have an honorary degree in avoiding everything Asian. I got bits and pieces of my heritage over the years, but my relatives didn't want me to choose sides, which had the unintended effect of making me choose nothing at all—no miso or lumpia—All American all the time. I traded Adobo and Donburi bowls for the Trader Joe's frozen section even when my aunty made the effort to "culture me."

When we ceased to talk in what we called "the void," the silence made our ears ring and we became abundantly aware of the unnatural state of this place.

"Maybe there's a way out of here," I said.

"But what if we're supposed to stay."

"I'm not just going to wait here."

"What if we get separated?"

"We hold onto each other," I said...