THE ETERNITY BERRY — GRACE Q. SONG
/ “Don’t make me sad, don’t make me cry.”
—Lana Del Rey
Every night has a rhythm until Roo breaks it. One night, after I tuck the blanket under her chin and kiss her forehead, she asks about Mama. She wants to know ten things about her, and I tell her. I tell her about the Beatles records stashed downstairs, the lullaby she used to sing as a sad song. I tell her how much she looks like Mama with her ebony hair and midnight eyes. I tell her how Mama loved blueberries: the hard, the ripe, the sweet, and even the bitter ones. Like handfuls of love, she used to say. I tell her how much she loved Baba. How much she hated being his wife. He left for long periods of time, and the neighborhood wives would laugh until she was bone-bruised. I tell Roo about loneliness. Is that why she’s not here anymore? she asks. Her voice is small. I take her hand and tell her Mama loved her more than all the blueberries in the world. I tell her that sometimes, love just makes people sad. What I don’t tell her is how you’ll die if you love the wrong person. How Mama loved him until all the blueberries were gone.
Grace Q. Song is a Chinese-American writer from New York. Her poetry and fiction have been published or are forthcoming in Up the Staircase Quarterly, DIALOGIST, The Margins, Crab Creek Review, Passages North, PANK, and elsewhere. A high school junior, she enjoys listening to ABBA and Yoke Lore.
