BEST OF ISSUE
Madeline Rosales: “This Life at Motel 88”
There is cracked pavement, passing for a sidewalk among the locals, glistening under a sky that threatened rain. Neon lights flicker above, which casts a glow from the weather-beaten sign of “Motel 88” and its boastful “No Vacancy” message. The blue paint — once bold and brash, now weathered and worn — proclaims every essential amenity of the hotel in blaring lights, yet it seems to lose its voice with each passing gust of wind. At a single glance, a helmet of a motorcyclist could reflect that the bar is 100% refrigerated, each room has a T.V., and that the office is here while the lobby is there. Those insisting colors, the manager asserts, reminds visitors of a time when pragmatism had not taken precedence over craftsmanship. Waving wildly in the relentless breeze is a flag with the country’s characteristic crimson stripes and ivory stars, proudly standing erect and defiant against the series of storms that have attempted to tear it from its standing. Beside Motel 88 is a fast-food joint, reliant on the transient trade of the motel’s occupants, holding its doors with haughty demeanor. The pavement that connects these two establishments is strewn with cigarette buds and styrofoam cups with unidentified sticky nonsense inside, also by virtue of the esteemed guests of Motel 88.
All five rooms of Motel 88 have long been rented out indefinitely by down-on-luck individuals who can’t afford more agreeable housing. The manager knows that his establishment ought not to allow stays exceeding two months, but pays no heed. As long as he receives the “rent” in full, he won’t raise a fuss. The longest serving guest is Mr. Chengyi Wang in Room 101. He is Guangdong, born and raised. However back in 1942, he was beyond ready to abandon that quaint countryside in which clouds drowsily passed through the irregular peaks of ancient mountains lapping over each other like waves, with the layered rice fields patchworks of green and gold, and sparsely spaced compounds scattered with perpetual endlessness across the land.
He recalls, to this day, that fireflies would flutter at dusk around the red and yellow lanterns, and boats would leisure through the river, and the smells of tea and fluffy white rice seemed to be wafting constantly from the doors of each home. He hears laughter from then drifting into his mind as he beats the worn polyester blanket from his bed against the door frame (“Blanket needs air.” He says, whenever he is questioned).
The youngest of nine children, Chengyi had taken no notice of the world outside his window back then. His eyes would instead be glued steadily to his physics textbook. It was beyond a necessity to take the university examinations, because although he hailed from the simple Guangdong countryside, he came from a family of distinguished academics and had thus been bred, born, and raised to achieve similarly great heights— though, he had an odd belief that he was destined to be even greater, to shatter the mold his traditional Chinese family had contrived a standard of.
There must be something more than this. He would think to himself on the especially restless days.
And only a year later, he already felt himself wafting away in the current of those dreams, alive and youthful like a green summer leaf. But the leaf was yet connected to an ancient and gnarled tree trunk that bore the weight of the world. In the days leading to his departure for the university, he felt his world more deeply… though he could always return, somehow he had felt with surety these moments at home would be his last.
The colors of the countryside around his home were then more saturated than he had ever noticed. The air had tasted sweeter, the water of the little clear stream was cooler, and the mountains, as though they were floating, had never seemed any closer to Heaven. Chengyi found himself more often looking back at the only home he had ever known; his eyes traced around every flower, the fluff of clouds that had always looked like tufts of hair, the outlines of his neighbor’s homes that he would never again revisit, and the faint figures of people who awoke early every morning to work in the fields. His heart quickly became weighed down by an inhibited love for his home and this life he was about to leave. He felt the gentle breeze upon his face and for once savored the quiet contentment of his village.
His vision was blurred with tears as he prepared himself on his final day. Though his excitement exceeded what he had once thought humanly possible, for the life of an esteemed university student awaited him, a spasm of despair had still contorted its way across his face. His mother had tightly clasped his right arm with both hands, as she would hold a dove that wanted desperately to fly off on a broken wing.
‘I’ll be waiting for you to come home.’
Turning away and taking a step forwards required a willpower so leaden that he had almost tumbled to the ground.
‘Goodbye, Ma.’
He hardened his heart as he parted with his childhood and walked out through the village gates. This was the dawn of his finest years, he was sure, after all, he already felt lighter with every step.
His mother had stood still in her place, becoming smaller and smaller as the distance grew larger. The family home was now an empty nest; not a dove in sight. Parting wasn’t especially sorrowful back then, though they hadn’t at all known that this first tender goodbye would morph to an ultimate farewell in only a few years.
It was the winter of 1947. Chengyi shivered under his patched coat and shoes punched with holes at all angles. Hailing from the South’s warm and mild weather, he was all but shock-frozen whenever the merciless winter breeze blew against his progressively pale skin. On the nights when eerily howling winds pushed against his board’s thin walls, he would wrap his arms around his increasingly frail body and shiver with longing for home. Wouldn’t there be bao steaming in a damp bamboo basket? Wouldn’t there be white tea, with its delicate green shoots bobbing on the water’s surface, boiling atop the gas stove?
The frost was fresh, the air was sweet, and the snow had sat its thick buffet on the ground and propped its feet up on the evergreens for the week. Little bluejays were perched on those stretched branches of snow, chirping a song of which there was never a more beautiful melody. Twee twee, coo coo. Their potent cornflower color was rivaled only by the sky, clear and bright and devoid of a lone cloud to contain its hues. The occasional snowflake was still falling tentatively, yet the air ceaselessly buzzed with innocence and joy.
Alas, this still peace did not last for long. Footsteps slogged across the ground’s fluffy white powder, and roars and howls could be heard from all directions, blanketing the quad. The students, clustered into shuddering packs, spoke in excitedly hushed whispers. Rapidly, a crowd had gathered in the center of campus.
Chengyi took hurried steps — shivering partly from the ice threatening its way into his skin, partly from excitement — to the ever growing group, unable to contain his own fervent curiosity. Feeling the heat and hearing the heartbeats of the masses from the crowd, he pushed forwards to get a better view and observe the commotion firsthand. And then a loud crack startled everyone in the crowd.
Three men dressed in gray, wearing gray caps embellished with a single red star, were stood upon a wooden platform. They had set off a firecracker, which was met with eager yelps and applause.
‘Da jia gong ping!’ Equality for all! One of them yelled, eyes watering and mouth foaming from his determined conviction. The other two men repeated after him as their hands pumped into the air one, two, three times, holding a small red copy of The Communist Manifesto. Revolution had come.
He had attempted in complete earnest to convince his family to defect, but they had looked upon his fears only in scorn. ‘China is changing for the better. I want to stay and witness my country’s transformation.’ They had all written back to him in response as he cradled his wrist, sore from his desperate scrawling.
With a familiarly heavy heart, he left friendless and estranged, realizing that never would he never see home; never again would he feel home. He rode on a steamship and spoke not once during the journey. He had taken a single book with him, David Copperfield, though he never brought himself to read a word of it. There was a level of amusement in the fact that he’d likely never study again. Had he known that he’d end up living in a motel, paycheck-to-paycheck, he would’ve looked up from his textbooks at least once in a while. He would have spent more time with his mother.
Now, he does not know whether his family is happier, he only knows that he is not. He’s heard stories of China’s immediate process of industrialization, though all the information is brief and shallow. It’s funny how no news articles have said, “And don’t worry, Chingyu, your mother is doing just fine.” Or “Your mother misses you every day, Chingyu.” Or even, “Chingyu, your mother is at least still alive.” He doesn’t care much for the ceaseless talk of restricted rights and religious oppression, though it was shameful, he only wishes to see his mother one last time. He finds it even funnier how Guangdong had never once presented itself as his home. It was but a backdrop to his loftier aspirations. His mother was once the tree from which the leaf learned to fly from. Just because you’re moving on, He tells himself, doesn’t mean you’re moving higher.
From his window at Motel 88, he can’t see anything but snow covered pavement and a merciless blizzard coming down upon the overbearing desolation. He is alone in body and mind. Shivering under his coat in the bleak cold, he takes a sip of liquor— inviting the warmth it brings; nestling the effect over the taste. He muses in sardonic irony of his bright eyed expectation, ill placed optimism, and feels himself disappear into the indistinguishable white flakes of snow.
And that is this life at Motel 88.
THEME AWARD
Aarika Ranjithkumar: “Pheonix Reborn”
The darkness looms larger than life,
coiling, creeping through my restless mind.
I keep silent when it comes to my strife,
a voice lost in shadows where no light can find.
Yet in the depths, a spark ignites the night,
A fragile flicker of hope, a whisper of dawn’s call.
Through cracks in shadows, streams of golden light,
Cascade over my spirit like a phoenix’s enthrall.
As light embraces, the despair starts to wane,
Emerging from the dark, I find my place.
With wings reborn, I rise above the heartbreak and pain,
A soul renewed, now soaring in blissful grace.
ERA 