Latent Images by Elizabeth Gombert

Latent Images
(2nd place, Friends of the Rochester Public Library Sokol Creative Writing contest)
Five years before the year of my birth the population of China exceeded 900 million. Officials watched with furrowed brows as the mass of humanity swelled—pushing out against the border lines, straining under the tight confines of city walls. As you walked through the streets you were engulfed by the roar of too many hearts beating in syncopated time, too many lungs inflating and deflating, pushing recycled air through tired lungs, too many mouths opening into ‘O’-shaped caves, working themselves to grasp nutrients from meager portions; there were simply too many people to be had. In the capitol, government officials watched in fear as the population strained like a bulging waistline. In 1979, the one child per family limit was passed. Three years later I was born.

The city is a mosaic. Like snowflakes, the people come in wide varieties, each one a gem. Skin tones range from deep midnight brown, richer than the darkest chocolate to white so pale it is almost translucent. As I walk the people change from individuals into a blur of tanning brown. In the city, my slanted eyes, yellowed skin and chic black hair do not stand out the way they do at home in Vermont- instead I melt into the city, my features camouflaged seamlessly with those around me until I am nothing but a pair of eyeballs, watching.

The little girl stands at the bus stop, her saddle shoes tied tight, the furls of her white socks ruffling over the tops of her shoes. Her straight black hair spills out of her ponytail-holders. It frames her face. The ends curl gently under, tickling her chin each time she tilts her head, to examine the sky, the dew-kissed grass, the peeling sycamore bark lying in ribbons on the sidewalk. The girl turns her head toward the hills, soft and rolling like the wrinkles of her bedspread each night before Mother bends over to kiss her goodnight and draw her hand across the blankets, leveling the plain with one broad sweep. The leaves have changed color early this year, the girl notices. Soon there will be enough leaves for jumping piles. A smile brushes across her face as she remembers her father tossing her into the pile. The joy of, if only for an instant, being able to fly.

In the dark I am a collector of images. As in memory the images slide into being, slowly, carefully, so as not to disturb the air molecules around it. If they come too fast, it causes disturbances; like tiny hurricanes they blow through in an instant, yet their scars last for years.
At night in bed I stare at the ceiling, trying to imagine China- the places I might have known, the tastes that might have danced their tango across the pebbled surface of my tongue, the smells that rip open your nostrils, forcing their way inside and down your throat were you choke on their pungency, the solidity of scent.
I imagine the thousands of workers at the Great Wall. Stones pass through callused hands, until the workers grow too weary. One among their ranks falls to the ground. His face is ashen, the color of the stone. A still settles over the workers as a young man with torn coveralls genuflects, his spine curving downward in an elegant arc, the neck of a swan, to press his ear against the laborer’s chest. He rests his head as a lover might, in the dark hours of contact when humans greet each other in that strange reality, the muddy area between sleep and consciousness. The young man’s face is still, his eyes closed, listening for the pounding of blood pushing its way forward through veins, spreading oxygen before returning to the heart. Like worshipers, blood cells will always return to the heart, a temple greater even than Justinian’s Hagia Sophia, than Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel. The young man’s eyes open; they are gray and cold. He slides his weary arms underneath the collapsed laborer. The weight of the laborer is greater than any the stones the young man carried that day, yet his arms never waiver. The crowd is silent, heads turned toward the earth, a moment of peace as the young man carries the laborer toward the wall. He places the laborer down among the stones and gently arranges his limbs, arms crossed, feet together, eyes turned heavenward. The young man reaches down and slides his callused fingers over the laborer’s eyelids, drawing them closed. Without a word the young man turns and walks back to his place in line, grasps his stone block and continues; only his eyes are different than before.
Centuries later, tourists tread their expensive shoes and clean clothes across the wall. They marvel at its beauty, its grandeur, its scale. All the while beneath their feet the laborer is still sleeping, entombed by the very stone he himself placed, a digger of his own grave.

My first camera was a cheap single-use purchase from the town drugstore. My mother had dragged me along to buy shampoo and a birthday card for my Uncle Eddy and when I threw a tantrum because she would not let me have the candy bar I wanted she said she would buy me a camera instead. I wasted all of my pictures on the walk home, eagerly snapping shots of whatever caught my attention. My mother laughed when three blocks before home I ran out of pictures. I wanted to turn right around that instant and go back to the drugstore to have my pictures developed, but my mother made me wait until the next day to go back.
When at last they were developed, my excitement brimmed over, my person too small to contain the happiness. I swelled and blossomed like a ripening piece of fruit, my cheeks flushed with a new hue of liveliness. On the walk home I gave out my pictures to friends that passed by, and even strangers, wanting to share my new found joy. My mother, wise as she was, ensured that I kept a few to show my father.
I still have those pictures. They are strange indeed. A leaf on the sidewalk, a tangled kite string in a tree, a piece of gum stuck to the side of a garbage can—details that fascinated my child self for a only single moment in time, yet had lived to permeate my life almost twenty years later. My first camera taught me the importance of details. Their sharp points create wounds twice as deep as the blunt trauma of generalizations, which leaves only bruising. Details leave lasting scars, strange deformed places where the skin of memory does not heal over properly, and time collapses in upon itself.

The first time I went to the zoo, I remember the strange scent of musty fur, the pink satin of the baboon’s backside; the thin legs of the giraffe, seeming to reach as far up as the trees above my head; the ying-yang print of the panda; the hide of the dolphins, smooth like the gray marble of the counter top at home. I remember the ice cream cone my father bought me- vanilla with rainbow sprinkles and how when it fell to the sidewalk it made a jagged spot like a dying star, the sprinkles exploding off the thick cream, my father reaching down, presenting me with another ice cream. I remember the aviary- how the birds seemed to be talking to each other, laughing, how the cockatoo cried: a screech so penetrating it sent chills through my six-year-old heart and shocked the tears out of my eyes and down my cheeks. I remember the water hole where the children climbed over rocks, splashing into pools, soaking their undergarments so that when the trip ended every child’s car seat was dampened by the joy of the day. I remember the ghost my breath left on the glass as I pressed myself nearer trying to reach through my skin, to become the otter, the frog, the dolphin, the chameleon. I remember the tigers, their bright orange fur singing my eyelids, their strong jaws making me afraid to come close the cage. I remember the wolves, howling and howling at nothing, or everything, and when I was scared my mother leaning over to whisper “Listen Ellen, they’re saying hello to you.” I remember before we left, insisting on going back to say goodbye to the wolves so they would not worry that I was lost. I remember the photo booth—the fading grassland scene painted on it, the face of a monkey peaking around the corner of the booth, wide-eyed. I remember sitting in the booth on my father’s lap, my mother right beside me, smiling for the camera, her hand warm on my thigh as we waited for the “click” once, twice, three times. I remember the ride home, clutching the picture in my small hands, looking down at the three figures who stared back up at me. The faces of the man and the woman were pale, reaching back into space, their hair blonde and brown, the woman’s twisting into curls on either side of her face. The face of the child was yellow and flat, her eyes slanting upward, her nose a gently rising hill, flatter than that of the man and the woman, her hair was black and straight. I remember when I was young never finding this difference in appearance odd. To me the picture was simply mother, father, and child.

In the winter, Vermont is white; a bride walking the aisle to the altar, her beauty seems strangely holy—silent and pure. Her silence is one of submersion. It presses in on my ears as though I have just been plunged into the icy abyss of a stagnant river where the still is suffocating. My footsteps lead me through the field toward the wall of trees. Even when they have shed their leaves, the trees shroud the heart of the forest in darkness, hiding a secret from all those who do not see in the dark.
In the spring the hills will be fertile. They rise slowly and gently like the curves of a slumbering woman. I raise the camera to my face, framing the instant in my viewfinder. I pay careful attention to the edges of the image- the strip of ice gray sky in one corner, spiked tendrils of the treetops in another. Perspective is important; both the photographer and the philosopher know that the corners by which one frames an image are just as important as the center.

At the sound of a soft knock on her classroom door, the young woman looks up from her book. She picks her way through the maze of small children, tucked quietly away under soft blankets. The pretend to sleep, but the woman knows better. She has seen their eyes open wide as they stare with feverish joy at their companions, eyes alight with the wild satisfaction of rule breaking. She senses the disturbances in the air as their eyelids flutter as they hear her footsteps approach and hurriedly attempt to feign sleep.
The man at the door is the principal. He is a large man with a rotund belly straining against the buttons of his tweed overcoat. His face is rough, lined, and deeply tanned from what seems to have been many hours out in the sun without sunscreen. In one hand he grasps the fingers of a small child with surprising gentility for a man of his size and demeanor. The face of the child is flat, her nose broad, her skin yellowed like old parchment. Her hair is straight and dark, the color an odd mixture of coal and the darkest kind of chocolate. Its sheen against the florescent lighting reminds the woman of the wet centers of her husband’s irises when she looks into his face before kissing her each night. The woman has a sudden impulse to reach out and draw her fingers through the child’s hair, as though somehow it might melt away into chocolate at her touch. Through the angled slits of the child’s eyes the woman can sense fear. She reaches out to take the hand of the small child, drawing her inside and closing the door.
The child lies on a purple mat next between two young boys. She ensures that all of her feet and legs are out of sight before pulling the blanket under her chin and tucking her arms under so that only her face is visible over the edge of the blanket. She does not pretend to sleep but stares wide-eyed into space. On either side of her, the young boys are staring. They have never seen any person whose face was so peculiar as that of the new girl. The boy on the left reaches up and pulls the skin on either side of his eyes back with each of his pointer fingers so that his eyes form slanted slits like those of the young girl. The other boy smothers his laughter in the blankets and imitates his friend. The young girl does not understand what the little boys are doing.
When recess comes more of the children stare at the young girl. They reach out to touch her hair and they slant their eyes, laughing. The young woman tells them to stop, to behave themselves and to be nice to the new girl. After recess when they are back inside for classes the children slant their eyes and giggle when the teacher is not looking. The young girl does not understand. She reaches up and pulls her eyes to imitate the other boys and girls. They laugh harder; some of the children point. The teacher tells them to stop.
Late that night the young girl says goodnight to her reflection in the mirror. She reaches up to pull back the skin on either side of her eyes, but it does not make her laugh like it makes the other children laugh. That night the girl has a dream where she has brown hair and a pointed nose and her skin is the color of cream. She is just like all of the other children.

The darkroom is cool while the summer heat presses itself against the walls of the building, trying to coax its way in through the cracks, trying to perform a sort of osmosis through the solid concrete. I keep my dark room cool for preservation purposes. A refrigerator preserves food by chilling it to slow down the chemical equations that will inevitably turn the food sour. My darkroom preserves memories, images, so they too do not go sour.
The developer is my favorite part of the photographic process. The chemicals reveal the “latent” or invisible image on the exposed photo paper. In the dark our pupils expand, the blackness expanding to let in light, drawing outlines and shapes out of the darkness. The world of the photo paper is reverse. Images emerge on the paper—figures wading out of memory into solid, tangible, visible being. Out of the white shadows emerge, gray blotches that darken into figures, familiar faces, blades of grass, the rough texture of a tree. These images are fragile. Exposed too long they will only melt back into darkness, just as silently as they waded into light and the picture will become dark, an endless night framed by the edges of a photograph.

Through the slits in the banister I can see my mother reading at the kitchen table. Her hair is pulled away from her face into a french braid, revealing rich hazel eyes and thin, curling lips. I have never been told that I look like my mother.
As I descend the staircase, I listen for the familiar creek on the second to last step. My fingers trace the time-smoothed crack running down the length of the banister. My eyes trace rays of sunlight through the open window to lay in pools of the floor. The house is familiar like an old pair of pajamas.
My mother’s face turns at the sound of my heart beats closer. I can feel the blood rushing through my extremities, bringing me life, bringing me oxygen, the will to live. As I look into her face, I know that it is not her blood that gives me life. No, that gift was from another woman. This figure sitting here before me, this charlatan, has reaped the harvest of another’s pain, another’s sacrifice. Some other woman, somewhere on the other side of the globe toiled in the hot sun to sew the seeds of life, to burrow them deep into rich soil, to water them and nourish them, and now this strange woman sitting at this kitchen table has reaped a harvest that was never hers. That woman, she is not my mother.

In the city I am a lost soul. No one knows my face or my name. No one can know the thoughts that circle my head, tired runners who have no rest even in my dreams. I board the bus. My coins make hollow clinking sounds as they hit the bottom of the coin acceptor. I sit. There is a hardened piece of gum stuck to the bottom of my seat; it is smooth like a marble under my fingertips. The scent of gasoline and fast food fills the bus. I can feel the engine revving under me. Outside my window the buildings are a blur of gray. The bus loops the city once, twice, three times.
The only other people on the bus are two old men wrapped in thick winter coats. One has his head tilted back against the window, mouth open, snoring. The other is wide-eyed. He stares at the empty seat across from him, a blank stare.
We are the lost souls of the underworld. We come to this boat with our eyes blinded and coins under our tongue. Charon, the our keeper, navigates the River Styx. Again and again we are drawn through the mist, the taste of the dead pungent upon our tongues. But Charon does not dock, he does not draw up to the marshy banks of Hades doorstep, he only drives in endless circles. Not belonging to either the live world or the dead, we are lost. No one remembers us and our identities stream behind us like colorful ribbons before fading into the mist. Here we are only bodies. There is only the physical. We are only images, a photograph, no more.
After the tenth time around the city, the morning traffic clogs the street and the sky flushes pink at the arrival of the day. I pull the cord and thank the bus driver as I descend the steps to the street. His face is hard and cold as he shuts the doors behind me. I stumble out into the street.
In the early light the city is pink like the skin of a newborn child. I can hear the breathing of living souls all around me. I feel the city’s heartbeat pounding in my shoes.

My birth mother and father lived in a small rural town in China. They were not wealthy, so when my mother’s midriff began to swell like the ripening pears in spring, worry creased their brows. On the day of my birth, my parents were only expecting one child. Instead, they were gifted with two: a boy and a girl. At that time in China, it was mandated that each family have only one child. My parents, in accordance with Chinese tradition, kept the boy and set the girl away to be adopted.
Sometimes in the night I imagine my mother: how she might have stroked my thin tufts of hair and kissed my forehead, not wanting to give up her only daughter. I imagine how she might have argued with my father, telling him that they could hide the baby, keep it secretly. The government would never know. “How will we hide it when it gets older?” he would shout at her. “How?” She would turn her face away so that her husband would not be shamed by having to see his wife cry. I imagine how the next morning she might have woken to find only one child in the house and her husband gone. I imagine how she might have stared at the empty place next to her on the bed, the air particles where only a few hours before her flesh and blood had filled its place. I imagine how her grief might have streamed out of her, filling the space were the baby had been and spilling over onto the floor. When her husband returned they would not speak, but he would find his feet damp where her grief had pooled. For many years after, the woman and her husband waded through these pools, and their feet were always wet.

The streets of Chinatown stretch before me. East Broadway is alive with men and women bustling from shop to shop. Here, every face is a mirror—slanted eyes, yellowed skin. The steady rumble of the Chinese language, moving up and down the vocal chords, wafting through the scents of cooking rice and fish markets. The language is foreign on my ears yet the sounds flow through me, inspiring little shocks of recognition—somewhere in my blood, my cells remember these sounds.
A woman gestures to me and cries out from one of the stalls. She motions me over. The stench of fish runs oily streaks through the air. At night the woman will go home smelling like fish; the scent branded into her fingers, her hair is steeped in it. Later this evening when she draws her fingers through her hair, little clouds of scent bloom above her head. She speaks in rapid Chinese, assuming, perhaps by my appearance that I will understand her. My face must have betrayed my ignorance. The woman slows her speech and gestures dramatically toward a row of what appear to be eels. “Forty dollar.” She cries, jabbing the grayed flesh of one of the eels with a finger. “Forty dollar.”
I shake my head. “Thirty-five dollar,” the woman says, jabbing the eel again. I shake my head again. “Thirty-two dollar,” she cries. The woman thinks I am bargaining with her, but I do not want the eel. I do not know how to cook eel. I am repulsed by the mere scent of it. I do not know how to communicate to this woman that I have no interest in what she has to offer me.
“Thirty dollar,” she cries. I shake my head again and again. I tell her no, I do not want any, but this woman, whose words send shivers through my veins, cannot understand me. My mouth is incapable of twisting and shaping, molding the foreign words as she does. I do not know how to speak her language, a language that, had things been different, might have been mine. I feel hot tears of frustration welling up. I am a stranger to her. Here, where so many of the faces are as flat and yellow as mine, where silken hair of dark chocolate flows down from so many heads, I feel I more alien than among the pale skin and pointed noses of my Vermont home.
I am crying now and the woman is staring, the eel gray and limp in her hands. She does not understand why this young woman before her should show such vulnerability in public over the mere price of an eel.
The soft weight a hand print on my back startles me. I turn and there is a wrinkled man on the sidewalk. His eyes are warm, his hair dark. He smiles at me, his teeth crooked and slightly yellowed. “Is there a problem miss?” His words come thick, dripped in the congealed fog of his Chinese accent. However, they are English and my ears welcome the sound.
“I do not know how to cook eel,” I hear myself say. The man smiles.
“You buy it. I show you how to cook it.” He turns to the woman and says something in Chinese.
“For you,” she says, the supple skin of the edge of her eyes crinkling every so slightly, “thirty dollar.” I reach into my wallet and pull out the bills, feel the sudden weight of the eel in my hand, its stench more powerful than ever.
“Come,” says the old man. “I show you to cook eel.”

The city recedes before me. Spires on top of buildings puncture the sky. I am going home to a softer valley, to the cotton covers of my bedspread where my parents wait. My eyelids grow heavy; I let them droop. When I open my eyes, the rolling hills of Vermont will welcome me. I am home.

My hands move like ghosts in the darkness. I guide the white paper through the rust red tinge that fills the darkroom into the basin of developer. Three figures rise out of the white mist. They are standing in a small kitchen. The background is cluttered with pots, empty plates, chopsticks, a bowl of rice. A porcelain plaque painted with a dragon hangs on the wall over the woman’s shoulder—a symbol of good luck she tells me. All three figures have the same yellowed skin, the same broad nose, the same black hair. The old woman’s arm is wrapped around the young woman’s waist. Their hips touch. The old man’s hand disappears behind the young woman’s back. The photograph does not show it, but when I close my eyes I can feel the pressure of his hand rest lightly on the old woman’s arm. I can smell the scent of raw fish permeating the air around the old woman’s hair. I can taste the sting of foreign spices still on my tongue, the oily weight of my cooked thirty dollar eel moving through my digestive system.
The photograph is in the fixer solution now. The three figures are cemented into the paper for all time. They will not fade into darkness, this instant that will not retreat into swamps of memory.
When the photograph is dry I place it in my portfolio with all the other instances that have been captured by my camera lens. I turn the picture over. On the back I write:


Mother, Father, Child

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