The steamed dumplings were two dollars, the noodles were five, but the happiness was free. Every morning, you would walk to work, and I would walk to school, but we both hated our morning meetings, and we both loved breakfast. It was a race against the clock. The pastry shop was small, but the stacks and stacks of food whose aroma would fill the entire block with the small of cooking oil and scallion made up for that. It was a classic Chinese cangying’guanzi, a “housefly shop.” Plastic benches, bad service, horribly unhygienic, but nevertheless packed with sweat and chit chat every morning from wall to wall. I always got the sugar pancakes, because I liked my breakfast sweet. You got the bean curd, because you told me sweet things made your teeth hurt. The music of the sizzling pans was the prelude to a perfect day. Those were my favorite times with you.

That was back when you would still wake up in the morning, sober.

It started with the dinners for work. You forced drink after drink down your throat. You drink with your team to greet them, then you drink with your superiors to pay them respect, then you drink with your rivals because you need to wish them luck, then you drink with your partners to bring yourself luck. The rush of alcohol burns your throat every night, but you told me that it was fine, that it was what you needed to do. “I drink for work, not for anything else,” you slurred, waving your hand at me as if you were swatting a fly, jabbing a thumb into my forehead. “Where else are we going to live? Who else is going to pay for your education, huh? Your clothes? Your food?” You were walking up the stairs, but you could barely move your feet. “Next time you ask about drinking, you can go starve.” You held onto the banister, your head spinning out of sync from the rest of the world. “Did you hear what I said?” “Yes,” I whispered, because what else could I have said?

You work for a living, but every time you’re working, you’re dying.

They say that you can’t remember what happens when you are drunk. That the world is suspended in a misty haze, a sea of gold and light pink and fuschia, a buzz softly ringing through your head. Almost like something is cushioning your eyes, making the world appear drowsier and more confusing than it really is. I wonder sometimes if you remember, if you ever look back and regret hitting your wife and breaking her nose. Did you see the spinning lights of red and blue, or was your world still spinning pink and fuschia? Did you hear her howl, like the sound of a kitten when it’s plucked from her mother, or was it just another distant ring that barely registered in your drunken ears? Do you remember waking up your son, just one year old, his plump legs carrying him through the house as he ran to my room then to yours, not knowing where to go or what to do?

You say that the alcohol helps you find yourself, but I think you’ve become lost in your alcoholism.

When you were on a business trip, I raided your cupboard full of vodka and tequila and all the other things you liked to drink whenever you got sad. I thought that if I hid your drinks, you would be able to hide your addiction as well. I carried them up to my room one by one. There were so many bottles it took me an entire afternoon, up and down and up and down. They clinked against each other, little ding ding ding sounds as I climbed up the stairs, two flights at a time. You weren’t supposed to be back for another two days, but I kept looking behind me as if you were about to walk through the doors at any time. Goosebumps dotted my skin and they rubbed against the cool glass of the bottles, their smooth necks under my little fists, smooth necks that I wished I could just squeeze and break. But I was too weak. I hid the bottles under my sink, where it was dark and musty. You never found them, but two weeks later your alcohol cupboard was full again. 

I still have those bottles under my sink, I don’t know why.

I walked past the pastry shop a few days ago. The street was now lined with convenience stores with beautifully decorated windows, their shiny billboards lighted up by electricity and prosperity. An ugly iron door, bolted shut, stood where the pastry shop had once been. It was a sore thumb among the row of new stores, the once homely pink paint of the storefront was peeling off, and someone had removed the giant menu stuck right next to the door. For some reason, no one had bothered to knock down the little shop. The little store seemed to shrink into its narrow corner, crumbling in upon itself, as if it was praying not to be noticed. I had never seen the shop closed before, but for some reason, the tightly sealed iron door made it lose all its former appeal. The scallions sizzling against the cooking oil in the big iron pan, the crowds of happy people greeting their friends in the early morning, the guilty pleasure of shoving carbs down for breakfast. All that was gone. In its place, all that lingered was the smell of alcohol, piercing my senses.

But I still love you.