…And The Ocean Carries On

      If there is anything Hazel knows about her life in L.A., that’d be she is not happy. And it is never easy for her to draw a clear picture to her therapist—what is the problem? Ms. Sen would ask. Hazel tries not to pick on her nails and thinks really really hard. “I dunno. Maybe I’m just too tired.” She would eventually say, and Ms. Sen would put down the pen and suggest she take a break to go somewhere. Like “a break” is so easy to reach; like it is just blowing a balloon, and you know exactly when to let go to make it race up high as a rocket. Hazel is not a rocket.

      “Promise me to go somewhere during your summer break. Go. Make friends, or talk to the old ones.”

Ms. Sen is a nice person; Hazel thinks on her 15-hour flight back to Shanghai. But there are things that stick in people’s lives like silver push pins, marking who they are and who they can never be. Sometimes it is just painful to know your loss but not know how to fill it. 

 

***

      It was the second summer break in college when Hazel came back to visit family in Shanghai. Pengfei Lin looked much lonelier than when he hid his tears from her at the boarding gate nine months ago. Hazel smiled and waved to him in the crowds and patiently accepted the awkward big hug that her dad always insisted on special occasions. 

      “You are so thin now. So thin.” Pengfei mumbled repeatedly, stealing the suitcase from her in a swirl. And Dad, Hazel thought, you are so old now.

      There is always not much to say to Dad, or about Dad. A single father who raised his only child for nineteen years and never complained about life; a short, stout Chinese businessman:the type that makes you proud at home and embarrassed in front of friends. Hazel loves him, but she is so lonely with him. When she is away from him, she misses him. When she is by his side, she craves to get away. 

      That’s why when Pengfei Lin suggested a trip to her never-met grandpa, Hazel didn’t show much surprise or defense. “Believe it or not, the old man called me last month, after twenty-one years. You know he never agreed to the marriage of me and your mom…stubborn old man.” Hazel could see her dad’s fingers tremble when he tried to pick up the peanuts with his chopsticks. “He said he wanted to see you.”

      Hazel thinks Dad might be a bit sad when she said yes without much hesitation or questions, for that night he drank a bit too much and coughed a bit too loud. Hazel couldn’t say she was waiting for any sort of explanation, cuz things just don’t work in straight lines between her and Dad, but when it was time to get on board the late-night flight to Kowloon, she was truly getting nervous. She opened up her favorite Eileen Chang book on the plane and started to draw connected swirls on the margin. “Grandpa, this is Hazel. Hazel Lin, Pengfei Lin’s daughter. I am here to see you.” She thought to herself again and again. In her dreams between one swirl and another, the Pacific Ocean melted into the huge plain of yellow dirt, and in whatever direction she tried to follow, a white angelic sun hung above.

 

***

      There was a time when Pengfei Lin tried to recount stories of his birthplace. Hazel cannot remember them vividly, and the word “Hong Kong” ceased to come out of Pengfei’s mouth after she started elementary school. But yes, there was a time. There was a time when he would talk about all the vast waters, the lonely skyscrapers, the narrow uphill lanes, and the music of Leslie Cheung that permeated the old British colony. He even mentioned his dance with Azura on a cold autumn night, but that one could be Hazel’s own imagination. 

      It is hard to cut the fruits of imagination from the cake of reality in a place like Hong Kong. Hazel stared at the passing shadows of mountains and construction towers from the train windows and thought to herself again: “Hi Mr. Lin, this is Hazel. Hazel Lin, your son’s daughter. I am here to see you, and I need a place to sleep over.” When she dragged her luggage out of the train station and felt the humid evening air wrapping her up, that sentence already stuck to her like a melted piece of gum. 

      So this is Hong Kong. The nightfall rubbed the skyline away, in every corner of the street there seemed to be a new web of directions waiting to be followed. Hazel checked her phone and turned right on the narrow sidewalk. Grandpa’s address is somewhere among the intricate alleys in Taitzi; the more Hazel turned and chased the blue spot on the map, the more neon signs showing “Herbal Retail” and “Furniture For Sale” flashed by her eyes. For a second, she wondered when Dad was finding his way in this city twenty-something years ago, did he sweat and was he lost?

 

***

      Lin’s Perfume House doesn’t close until midnight. It is an old habit of Baichuan Lin to get himself a pot of hot chrysanthemum Sydney tea and sip-sip-sip behind the counter with the quietness of the evening streets. Once in a while, there would be weird customers stepping in to look up and down the rusty shelves around midnight, and Chao would get up from his corner to introduce their incense and fragrance, knowing it was all just wasted effort. He recognized it as one of those days when the heavy sound of luggage wheels stopped in front of the store.

      “…Hello? 你好，有人吗？” 

      Chao glanced at Baichuan with the tea, seeing him making no move, stood up to smile at the girl at the doorstep. “Welcome in, Lin’s Perfume House.” The streetlights cast deep shadows on the face in front of him, and the girl looked confused rather than interested.

      “Grand…I mean, is there a Mr. Lin here?”

      That was when Baichuan softly put down his steaming tea and put on the glasses hanging around his neck. Chao backed away and the orange lightbulb shed warming waves on the old man. He stood up with the bamboo fan in his hand and walked to the doorstep to check on the guest. “Ah,” he exclaimed loudly, “You look like your mother. You are very late, Lin Haize.” 

      It had been quite some while since the last time someone addressed Hazel in her Chinese name—the “original” name. Perhaps it was that slight shock and discomfort that made her forget her greeting sentence, and when the dark skinny boy took the suitcase from her, Grandpa was talking again. 

      “Your room is next to Chao’s. Go follow him up, make comfort. Try to be quiet, I have very light sleep.”

      The staircase rising behind the tiny tinted door that smelled of old forest and rolling ocean waves. Hazel took a deep breath and tried to follow the boy’s footsteps closely. She could tell that he was very curious about her, but was polite to not ask. Grandpa did not follow. This place—this little cramped house of weird-smelling bottles and ancient wooden furniture—would become her homestay for that entire June. Chao stopped after thirteen steps of stairs and unlocked another tiny mousetrap with dangling keys. “谢谢.” Hazel smiled awkwardly. Under the kernel-shaped light bulb and low ceilings, she could see the soft traces beneath his eyes. He must be no older than she herself.

      “Don’t be nervous.” Chao pushed her suitcase through the opening, shutting the door behind him, “I am Meng Chao, I’ve been working for Mr. Lin for four years now. This is family.”

      Something weirder than a stranger claiming to be family with another stranger who is actually family was that there was no room for her ALONE. A thin wooden screen cut the sleeping area in two, one side belongs to Chao, and the empty side: clearly hers. The roommate was fiddling with a notebook on the small foldable table and explaining something about Hong Kong’s housing prices, but Hazel did not listen. She sat quietly down on her bed and breathed the room in. It was old and moist, but it was peaceful. She didn’t hate it.

      When Chao turned back and handed her the notebook to write down her name, Hazel shortly forgot about school, or L.A., or pills or dad or flights or the summer heat. “There are two versions of my name,” she carefully touched the strokes under the flickering light, “one given by my mother and one by my dad. Hazel refers to the color of my eyes, and Haize means the blessings of the ocean.” So Hazel, or 林海泽, drew a tiny smiling face under the lines and handed it back to Chao.

      “So beautiful. Your parents must love you very much.”

 

***

      On the third night since Hazel’s arrival, Baichuan decided to make her a unique bottle of perfume. It was around the ending time of Victoria Bay’s regular fireworks show. The Sydney tea was burning on the stove, turning the tiny house into a steam room. Chao was on his day off, so Hazel sat in his corner eating a slice of watermelon. It was sweet. “With the essence alone, it will not work. When you get back home, add 75% alcohol into it and it would be good to use.” Baichuan threw the bottle to her across the room and sighed heavily by the counter. He didn’t turn back to look at her. “It’s getting hotter. Don’t stick around during the day. You are of no help. Go somewhere, explore the city, and tell me stories when you come back.” 

      Hazel tried not to smear the sticky watermelon juice on the amber bottle. Hazel tried not to feel empty. Ms. Sen’s words started to haunt her again: Make friends. Find connections. Be whoever you want to be. She pulled out the wooden plug and sniffed carefully: it reminded her of old-fashioned cheongsam dresses and a pool of soft yellow moon. It was beautiful; it was tender. She looked up at Grandpa again, but he was already dozing off in front of the burning Sydney tea. 

      The next morning, Hazel got up early and went downstairs before the first customer of the day showed up. Grandpa was already doing his noisy account managing with the giant abacus, and only mumbled a faint “goodbye” when she walked past. The house smelled like a cozy warehouse that morning. 

      There was no specific destination on Hazel’s mind, but she took the train and headed to the ocean. The last stop of the line took her to the Middle Ring, and from tshere she started to roam the alleys. When she was a little younger, Dad was serious about her going out alone: in fact, never allowed. All the controlling parent’s curfew stuff. Hazel never told him that it didn’t need to be such a big fuss. She had nowhere to go, nobody to see, no desires dangerous. However, when her soles kissed and parted the old pavements of the East Queen’s Way, there seemed to be something rising in her emptiness. A gray church invited her to come in, but there were no signs showing its name or origin, and no traces of ant-like, photo-searching tourists. Hazel stopped in front of the gate for a second and felt the cold little perfume bottle down her neck. She felt peaceful. She stepped in.

      The church was empty but glorious on its own. Old-fashioned benches and heavy paperback Bibles, trees of candles lit the space and the chandelier glimmered low. Hazel took a seat on the second to last row, right beside the donation box. She identified as an atheist, but took out her purse and stuffed a coin into it anyway. The coin hit the bottom of the box hard, and at the same time, a string of soft music rose in the church. Hazel looked around in its uncanniness and soon realized the source of the noise: A young woman was dancing alone among the benches, her singing soft and soothing, her face bright. The woman looked around her mid-twenties, a green hair clip resting on her golden hair and a silk green dress draped to her ankles. She spotted Hazel at her next dance move and stopped her entertainment to smile at her.  

      “Hello,” she held out a hand naturally, her green dress flowing softly in still air, “I’ve been waiting for you, Hazel dear.”

 

***

      The woman introduced herself as Lanyin, a research assistant at Hong Kong Chinese University. There was no explanation of how she got to know Hazel and there were no questions asked. For some reason, Hazel felt like she might break something important if she did. Patience is all she had in life, and the questions could wait. For then at the moment, she wanted to see what Lanyin had for her.

      “We need to hurry, for time is limited. Everything is limited here.” Lanyin sighed when she grabbed Hazel’s hand and led her to run deeper into the woods behind the church. There was a narrow stone-paved lane leading somewhere unknown, and Hazel followed the path with a little bit more caution, catching her breath hard. The tiny perfume bottle dangled in her collar, the coldness tapping her breast softly with each rising movement, echoing Lanyin’s running steps. Her hand was also cold, cold but soft as a mother’s touch. It was weird that Hazel could conjure up a metaphor like that. 

      The woods cleared eventually and a vast world of aqua embraced the skyline in front of them. It was the ocean. Lanyin caught her breath and grinned at the sealine, all absorbed by it. She sat down on the stone platform and gestured for Hazel to join. “I wanted to watch the seabirds with you.” The green wrinkles on her dress gathered and smoothed, just as the rolling waves came and scattered. Hazel nodded her head and took a deep breath. “I love the ocean.” She said for the first time, “It feels…reassuring. It makes me feel like I belong to something bigger.”

      Lanyin turned to Hazel quietly. She held out a hand to sweep her hair behind her ear and smiled sadly: “You belong to something bigger, Hazel.” A merchant ship ripped across the ocean slowly from the far end of the waters, the peeling white paint on it saying “建祥号”. Hazel stared at the characters with all her focus and reached for her perfume bottle again.

      “That one is beautiful.” Lanyin pointed at the necklace with her chin. Hazel looked down and took another deep breath. This time it smelled like faraway tropic plants and warm herbal ashes. “My grandpa gave it to me.” She replied gladly, “He makes perfumes. He looks kind of serious but he’s actually very caring.” 

      “Keep it close and safe. Blessings are treasures of life.” 

      “Thank you. I will.”

      Hazel waited for the ship to disappear from sight and the waves to do their crashing for a while, and then asked: “It is Tuesday today. Don’t you need to stay on campus?” 

      “I am taking a break from life.”

      “I see.” 

      Silence blended in again, and for a few minutes, there was only the sound of the ocean’s chorus. Hazel leaned back on her arms and squinted at the bleak sealine. There is an ocean and beachline in L.A. as well, and she even went to the Santa Monica Pier with classmates once or twice. But it was different. It was as if oceans have their distinct personalities, and the Pacific Ocean just doesn’t give a shit about her. Here the Shenzhen Bay seemed to listen and seemed to care. Maybe it was just because of Lanyin’s presence, but there also must be a reason that she appeared here instead of elsewhere.

      That was when Hazel decided to ask the questions that should be asked in the first place, and that was also when a school of seagulls swooped down from above. Lanyin stood up all of a sudden and pointed at the flashing white birds to Hazel, her azure eyes shining in pure joy: “Hazel! Look! They’re here. Do you want to join? Do you want to fly across the ocean?”

      Dazzling groups of birds started to cover the sky, all of a sudden Hazel couldn’t move her eyes away from them. Dad’s story started to dwell a new shade of meaning now: When the flock of seabirds covered the skyline in the bay, he met a woman dressed in green on Hong Kong Island. He invited her to dance and fell in love with her under the swirling birds. She had azure eyes and a melancholy smile. 

      “What’s your actual name?!” Hazel yelled. She was starting to grow feathery wings on her back and it was painful and the birds whispered dizzy welcoming tunes in her ears.

      Lanyin held out a hand and grabbed her fingers before Hazel was about to drift away. She pressed a kiss on her fingers and stuffed a tiny thing into her palm. 

      “ ‘Lanyin’ is a gift from a dear one, just like Haize bears the love from your dad. Take care, child, when you follow the waters’ lead…The world is vast, but you have my blessings.”

      That was the last thing Hazel remembered before she was carried away with the birds and drifted away in the wind. When the hurling wind smashed off the little perfume bottle on her neck, she finally remembered to look down in her palm: a round emerald stone lay cold and firm. Hazel started to weep and hiccup and scream in the wind. Grandpa’s bottle was breaking away when she started to fall. Azura, Azura, she screamed silently. Azura, don’t leave me alone. Lanyin. Mother.

 

***

      Hazel woke up on her bed upstairs at the Perfume House when the nightfall was just starting to creep in. The flickering lightbulb made a low humming which disturbed her much, and it took her a moment to gather herself up. Meng Chao was sitting next to her bed, looking worried but not scared. He nodded at her when meeting her gaze, and started explaining: She had a high fever and a bad dream. Mr. Lin and he are worried about her. Now that she’s awake, she should go down and have some cold fruits and tea.

      That was no fever and no bad dream. Hazel felt her shoulder blades and there still lingered the warm feeling of new-grown wings. She met her dead mother by the sea and joined the seabirds. She was alone on her way to somewhere far…

      “Come.” The hoarse stern voice of Grandpa rose at the door, and Hazel was already walking down the stairs before she figured out whether to refuse the invitation. 

      It was only seven o’clock in the evening, but no customers lingered in the house. Two cups of Sydney tea sitting on the counter, and slices of watermelon were ready. Hazel stood still in Chao’s corner when Grandpa struggled his way behind the counter, crushed down on his rocking chair, and made the typical sighing noise of old people sitting down. 

      “Have a cup of tea. Now tell me, what do you have for me?”

      Hazel accepted the tea and held it in her palms for a few seconds. It felt warm, unlike the emerald from Mother. She already checked all her pockets and bags, there was no glimmering magic, but a tiny piece of sandstone. 

      “Sorry that I lost your gift.” She started slow, “I…I don’t think it was a dream. I wandered into a church and met a woman. She took me to the seaside and gave me a thing…it was a beautiful gemstone. I think she was my mother. Then I flew away with the seabirds. I don’t know… I have never felt anything like that before.”

      To hide the uneasiness on her face, Hazel took a sip of the tea. That also didn’t taste like any normal tea. It was sour but not bitter; it felt like condensed tears of someone’s entire life. 

      Grandpa did not chastise her for being delusional, which was for some reason not too surprising. The old man waved at her and squeezed a smile for the first time since her arrival: “Don’t bother about the perfume. It worked its way well. If you want another dose, come back next summer and we’ll figure it out. Keep whatever she gave you close and safe, because Blessings are treasures of life.”

 

***

      Later that month, before Hazel was ready to pack up and leave for Shanghai, she took a visit to Hong Kong Chinese University. It was a long train ride from the Perfume House, and showering rain soaked her from head to toe when she climbed up the hilltop. There was no way for her to ask if there was a Lanyin among the faculty, but when she closed her eyes in the rain and felt the far-away ocean breeze sweep through her short wet hair, Hazel found it not necessary to validate anything. The sandstone sat quietly in her pocket; Grandpa’s tranquil perfume still haunted her. The magic will end when the time comes, but it is nice to know that she could have wings and she was blessed. Hazel opened her eyes again and she could see the hazy sealine sleeping beyond the peninsula. It was so near, so near that she reached out her fingers and gently brushed on its outline. Maybe when she gets back to L.A., she can tell Ms. Sen about Hong Kong and Grandpa and the blessed flight with the birds. Maybe she should give Santa Monica Pier one last try when the emptiness starts to destroy her again.

      A flash of lightning ripped open the sky. In Hazel’s pocket, the sandstone shimmered a faint shade of beautiful green.

 

THE END.

 

Yuhe Shen is pretty amorphous. She can be a funny person who writes weird things and a weird person who writes funny things. She studies Creative Writing and Narrative Studies at USC to bubble up more weird and funny stories. Her current goal is to explore the philosophical concept of home and to finish her second book. She has a publication of her novel collection from 2020 to 2022, which is pretty depressive but it means a lot to her.