The End of Infinity

I met myself twelve years ago. She was a difficult child. She liked eating dirt off the ground, I remember, and she got so sick her cheeks started turning pasty yellow. I wanted to tell her there were much better things to eat. I wanted to buy her chocolate and cupcakes and snickerdoodle cookies, sachima and tanghulu and red bean buns. I remember crouching down to her height and staring straight into her brown, brown eyes, and she stared straight back into mine like that defiant little girl she was. She said, Mommy doesn’t want me talking to strangers. I said, I’m not a stranger, but she didn’t believe me so I looked and looked and looked at her, that same wispy black hair, that same button nose, that same birthmark under the lip. Then she said she didn’t like me because I scared her a bit, and I wanted to say she scared me much, much more. I knew she wasn't a stranger yet she felt a whole lot like one. She wasn’t me, I wasn’t her. I thought for a while about what that meant. Was she not her, or was I not me?

I told her she had infinity right in front of her but she wouldn’t listen. She liked all those neon signs in the city, the blue, green, lavender, red, gold. She asked me where the signs led and I said to the end of infinity. Is that a good thing? she asked, but I didn’t answer. I didn’t know the answer. Twelve years later, I still wouldn’t know.

She liked the glittering lights, the flickering street lamps. I told her about the moths trapped inside. That’s the end of infinity, I said. Ambition is the end of infinity. Then it’s a good thing, she replied. I asked her why and she pointed at the moths. They’re stuck forever, but they’re stuck forever in the place they want to be. She sounded as though she knew everything, and maybe she did.

There’s no new beginning after the end, she said, so if the end never ends, isn’t the end of infinity also infinity?

I looked at her for a long time. She was smart, scarily smart, and I didn’t understand why.

Rationality is the only thing that separates us from moths, I said at last.

She shook her head and took my hand. Tugged me toward the neon signs, the glittering lights.

No, she said, it’s hesitation.