Apocalypse by Judy Xie

[APOCALYPSE: THERE ARE 9 LEVELS IN THE AZTEC UNDERWORLD]

LEVEL ONE: The non-grieving of the non-layered hair.You can’t assume anything about anyone because people are rarely what they seem. If anything most people will be who they are not because we’re terrified of ourselves. Layers, Luc, we’re ribboned this way like cut up poultry.

I’m looking for something different–

I said– after taking a chair in the walk-in barber shop in an unfamiliar city. The old man stares at methrough the mirror. Do what you want. I trust you, which is a silly thing to say to a stranger. What Imeant to say: I don’t want to be this girl anymore. When he is finished, I do not bother looking in themirror. I nod. Thank him. Pay. And leave.

Sister observes my hair all chopped off, up to my chin. She asks me if I like it–- parentheses (are youokay). She is right to be skeptical.

What if witnessing the end of the world is beautiful? What if the sun dies softly onto the cracked earth and everyone is sitting on their porches- watching and waiting and perfectly okay? What if witness isn’tsomething that you bear but something that you birth? A wide-eyed devastation- the antithesis of dead in a ditch. Here’s the thing about growing up reading novels only ever in the twilight of human age: it makes you believe you can be okay with anything.

LEVEL TWO:The ascent of the high pony. Instructionsto the barber: I must be able to lift my hair fiercely until everything is an upward stretch. My hair can not get into my eyes- it can not get in my way, so rid it of parts. This lasted for years.

I remember a manic landscape. Giant, smoothed patios with popsicle palapas, always trimmed into fantastic shapes. Violets, roses bursting and us floating like confetti onto a wide chlorine blue. I knew then–passing beer bottles over water, floating next to thin white girls, tanning in the heat in their bathing suits burning fresh-slapped . Us, tugging at straps in oversized bikinis (because god-forbid, A-cup at 14). Laughing too hard and glancing sideways to see if the boys had noticed–I had fallen into that world. Sister says: drinking before college- my, it was only sophomore year- you played lax. What were people supposed to think? I don’t know what I expected, except to be good and expected, to be– longing a world that I was uneasy in.

I went about it all wrong.

I got my license early. The morning of my 16th birthday. This is also a sign my sister remarks. The way my hands clasped on to the steering wheel- manicured, of course- never self-done. And how every summer, runs in reverse, every year: a series of driving down I-287. A Permit. No License. A car bursting beyond capacity- some version of NEON TREES’ ANIMALS or MR. BRIGHTSIDE exploding from a beaten, run down, crazed Honda Odyssey.

But the Aztec afterlife has 22 levels 13 for Heaven-

The other 9 are for the others- the people who die drowning, ill, old-- unremarkable deaths. Where you end up depends on how you die.

This is how I die:

LEVEL THREE: It’s important to note that the high-pony meant I could do absolutely nothing else with my hair. Apologies to the missed bangs and mohawks.

There are some rules you learn early on in suburbia. (1) eating is inherently just fat (this is because we don’t walk anywhere). (2) Playing sports means dreaming about the day when you can finally stop, thinking maybe it's college and maybe then you could have bangs (this is because we have fields and fields and soccer moms). (3) I could tell you about how the lacrosse girls would sit with piles and piles of food in front us and the 2.9 hours of the 3 hours we spent together would be caricatures of frozen faces staring and not eating and the way/ after a certain point all the faces will look the same/ frozen into the dead earth. But this narrative exhausts me. It never truly worked or maybe I never truly worked in it. (Sister says because I chose it).

But I didn’t choose you. You happened and that is what makes us disturbing. Effectively/ subconsciously I fell into “other” this time.

I’ve always had trouble with hair-cuts. You know this. You know, how, until I met you– I would sit bravely in Flushing’s 7-dollar barber shop–and my lip would start quivering midway. And when the hair-dresser pulled out the dryer– turned the setting from hot to cold–I would dissolve. Leave with an apologetic man holding his scissors (it was never his fault) and a certainty that now I was unlovable. We were 14? 15? When we first met. I was the girl who showed up to Honors Bio, 10-15 minutes late every morning. Coffee in hand. Loud. Sat at a table with them. (I am sure you hated me then too. You deny this.) Well, you did ask stupid questions and you thought you were so smart- still do. You’ll say this while driving, one hand on the wheel, a sideways glance, your lips pursed half-smiling. And you. Well, I didn't know you existed– until the teacher offered up a Charles Darwin sock puppet to the highest test score. God, I still remember the rampant goading, the 3 separate, unique Quizlets my friends and I made leading up to the test. How our group chat “no uglies” was certain that we were also “no dummies”. How we were convinced that as a friend group we had the highest collective GPAS and attractiveness. How I was the biggest bitch in high school (by association), and how we meant nothing to each other. And then you got a 101, and I got a 98, and Julia a 91, and Noah a 96, and we stopped our endless comparing to stare at you–

We’ve told this story to each other a million times. But it’s not how we started–how we met– (that is too dear for sharing).

I’m dying. I’m dying and dying and dying and I don’t know if I care anymore. In the Aztec underworld to get to the Mitclan’s ninth level you must undergo many trials. Being with you felt like that. No. Not like walking through hell (you know that’s not what I mean). It was more like walking into an open cathedral, bright and glorious, a place as breathtaking as the sculpture of ecstasy as beautiful as the person you fall in love with knowing they will break your heart. It’s like that. Dropping all the way to the core of the earth like the skeletons excavated with their arms wrapped tightly together.

LEVEL FOUR: A classic- cutting off the dead ends.Some things you can grow out of -your identity, your beliefs/ culture, maybe even your skin.

Haircuts became our thing. Although I am not sure you noticed. But I never did give you enough credit about these things.
1. The barber shop in Denville- after school.
2. The barber shop in Denville- between your off periods (I skipped class for this).
3. The barber shop in Denville- closed on the weekends. We got ice cream instead.
4. The barber shop in Denville- right before closing- after losing states.
5. The barber shop in Denville- post track meet- we got used to smelling horribly with each other.
6. The barber shop in Denville-
7. The barber shop -
8. -
9. After you left the haircuts stopped. This was also around the time that I discovered the difference between a barber shop and hair salon. In Flushing, they are interchangeable.

Boot Camp. The academy. The letter, finally, finally coming in. They made you shave your head, a week before you arrived. We stared at each other. Both nervous. But fuck it- it’s just hair- in the barber shop of Groton CT, 15 minutes later- 20 dollars short- you are different.
And us–

Before college, my sister has never been kissed. Not under the bleacher, not in the backseat of the Honda Odyssey. She is glad for this.
And I– envious.

Out of the corner of my eye I could see the bumblebee rising erratically like a soap bubble barely holding its shape. In the falling amber glow of the evening everything felt more real than usual. The white flowers in your mother’s garden now edged with gold. You, staring at me. Your eyes bright, and shining, an endless blue. Your face coming closer and closer and-

I can’t take any of it back.

The way my mother and father cannot explain me. Their eyebrows furrowed as they try to describe a daughter who doesn't know to only order the lunch special- or failed to study for the ACT- someone who will grab a fork before she does chopsticks. All of this, coming to the surface at a dinner table for their friends and their children, like my sister- all dutiful and brilliant. And in voices perfectly hushed and unhushed they will say, under their breath, in clear-cutting Chinese:
“She did not deserve to get in.”
And everyone will stare at me, a thousand pairs of glinting eyes all asking the same question–how–

And I will sit awkwardly in a crowd of people being loud and easy in their own skin, and I do not know what to say.

You used to tell me: god, Judy, fuck them. You shouldn’t have to apologize for living. For us. Fuck what they think. And I thought I could. I believed you. I thought I could just middle-finger, walk away- easy- but it’s

not like that.

Four is an interesting number. In Chinese it sounds like death. Si, si, si, si. And death-bad so therefore taboo. Knock on wood knock on wood. I find that dying emaciated, excavated in the ground, is heavy and hard and long-

LEVEL FIVE: A eulogy for the jagged hair shrewn onto my back porch and the tombstone arriving at the back of my neck. The discovery- mirrors are not always your friends and for the most part hardly necessary.

It’s been 8 months.

We think we are done, and that- odd. Odd like how mold grows and infects what is already hurt. Odd like how boys with new haircuts look more vulnerable. Odd like state-hopping to escape myself. You’ll tell me, driving distances doesn’t mean I’m growing up. But I am stuck here alone. And I’ll tell you– I’ve met someone:

Someone and I went for a drive the other day. We miss an incoming deer by inches. The car next to us is not as lucky. It swerves to the left and the highway slams its breaks. The deer rolls off the hood and darts into the woods. It grazes in the grass as if nothing happened.Do you think the deer knew it almost died? Do you think the deer wishes it could undo all this: wind-unwind itself? Before it's a limping mess, before it makes this mess and everything is damaged?

The highway is a one-way road- darling.
He’ll say this. And we’ll drive down this road all the way to the Adirondacks. He grows mad at the incoming traffic. There is no reason. None. For us to face headlights racing at 80 miles an hour. I thought, I had always liked the hoard of beams coming at us–like strobe lights just waiting to take us over. In this way, we are different. He laughs.

We stop at a grocery store, and he takes my hand. While I skip across the aisles, he drags the cart behind us. I do not pause for the coupons; I didn’t even know they were there. This is entirely wrong to him. How I missed them/ and how I pluck blackberries from shelves without reading the margins. He will tell me jokingly: You really aren’t Asian. Your white-town raised you. In the car, under the streetlamp’s glow we will exchange Rice Purity Scores. So? What is it? Like all those summers, I will stare at the number on my screen and do it in reverse.

My favorite of the nine trials is the Obsidian Mountain. You see, it opens and closes two mountain ranges that leave each other and come crashing back again and again. Violently destroying any dandelion, grass, upturning all the dirt that has grown between. The trick is to not get caught in between.

LEVEL SIX: the diligence of a girl who has learnedthe striking anger of threading. This is an ode to the unibrows and the cuticles of hair stubborn, growing right above the eye-lid.

I’m telling you. I can’t middle-finger walk away from this. Because when I meet his mother, I feel like a slut on the corner of Barron and Wills St. I am not a slut, but I am a freak and the weird ones, the outcasts let me stand with them because no one else will. How else could she have imagined me? I know, in the way her eyes float away, so I can’t be sure if she is looking at me or the blank wall. The way English rolls off her tongue with mild disdain.A pregnant pause so that she can stare at the afternoon sun slipping in through the living room blinds. A good excuse not to look at me and think about her son in dark cars, grateful she didn't have to see me away with anything except safe travels and a box of chocolates. Grateful that there will be no afterwards.

She is right of course. Because I am still here. And him there:

After the Obsidian mountains is the Obsidian winds. Checycayan, 8 mountains covered with pure snow, snow that falls on and on whipped by the wind. My mother always said once you’ve been with someone you lose a part of yourself forever- even if it’s just a kiss. Once you’re in the Obsidian mountain it is said that the winds in these moors are so cold, so strong, it cuts the body into obsidian blades.

LEVEL SEVEN: There is a pandemic and everyone has taken to cutting their own hair. I am no longer special or alone in- misshapen-hazardous- brutal stripping of length, hair time. It is all blurring together.

By the tenth 100 raised days in a row, I was desperate to leave to go into the air and the trees and the crickets. And so, when the sky pinked after dinner, I told you to put on your jacket— we were going for a walk. “Okay,” you said, “but I want to go somewhere different, some place we haven’t been before.” You were hoping, I think, for an actual Different Place, strange and beautiful, somewhere with mountains and a live- action remake of your favorite video game and maybe Beignets.

The closest I ever got to impressing you with a Different Place was the storm drains. This is because it looked like the post-apocalyptic bunker of Metro. It is in Clifton NJ across the train tracks.To get there you first first have to lower yourself down a rock covered hill with a rope - it is very steep. Once you’re at the bottom you can see the tunnels. They are covered in graffiti and the dry parts have broken glass everywhere.

“I imagine this is what it is like to have full creative license.” I say as my boots grip the final rings of the ladder. Across the dirty sewer water you are already at the cavernous entrances. I feel like I am running into hell as I come up next to you. The sounds close in around us and there is nothing except the spilling water and current running at our boots. A dead mouse floats by. But we are laughing and you are making funny poses and in the center of the tunnels surrounded by strange bugs and tepid smells you pull me towards you. You turn off your phone flashlight. It is dark. We are alone. I can feel the water lapping into my rainboots despite its high rims. You kiss my forehead. I am happy.

The last stop in the first part of the journey through the underworld is called Paniecatacoyan. It is a moor. The dead must walk endlessly to cross the flat desolate land- with nothing else to do but go on. Trudge forward. It is miserable. And it makes me think of mountains and the summer and how lucky I am to have lived in elevation.

LEVEL EIGHT: My scalp covered in castor oil begging for a miracle.

Later that day you take me to fake-prom. Fake-prom is set up by a 100 dollar catering fee. Run by parents who have yet to out-grow high school. There is a no mask policy. I did not get the memo or rather - no one else did. I did not ask for this or to go -These are not my friends and the parents here give me strange looks. I tug at your arm. “I thought it was a casual event. Small.”Someone makes a remark to your mom and you pull your hand away from mine. There is a professional photographer and you refuse to touch me. He asks if I came here alone.

Another guy steps in.

I am miserable. There is a 2 hour slide-show of you, these people, and this mean and terrible town. I text my friend as I sit in a corner chair by myself. She decides to be my Prince Charming. Her car makes a halted shriek. She is blaring “Fuck You” ( the unadultedred version) through her car speakers and the whole driveway quakes. I think this is a triumphant exit.

But when I get home-
I am shaking and shuddering, and ugly crying in heaves. I ball my fists into the dress and press my forehead to my knees and I curl up and I cry and cry and I feel so stupid.
“How was-”
Sister runs into the room and holds me. She strokes my hair and presses her face up close against mine-“You’ll never be like them, but you already are so unlike us.” She frowns.

I am angry. I am so angry and I have no idea what to do with it. When you enter the underworld, you learn about the following places: the place where people’s hearts are devoured, the obsidian place of the dead, and finally, the place where smoke has nowhere to go.

LEVEL NINE: I have no hair. My bald brain is smoke filled, there is no outlet, no miracle, and now no hair- This is the ending. This is ending. This is- my summers running in reverse.

Which means, when the sun rises for the last time, you will find me sitting on our concrete ledge meant for stop-lights, looking
over I-287, my feet dangling above the highway. There, I will wait for the morning fog to roll in, cold but awake and watch the
drivers. The bobbing heads, a glimpse just beyond the glare of the headlights, I am sure it will make me think of you. But of
course, it isn't. It wouldn’t be. Not this far. Not coming for me. You wouldn’t come looking for me. Not here. Not back here.
I see that now¹.

¹There are no natural disasters, only social ones. Apocalyptic catastrophes don’t just raze cities and drown coastlines; these events, in David Brooks’s words, ‘wash away the surface of society, the settled way things have been done. They expose the underlying power structures, the injustices, the patterns of corruption and the unacknowledged inequalities.’ And, equally important, they allow us insight into the conditions that led to the catastrophe.- Junot Diaz; Boston Review

Judy Xie’s (she/her/hers) writing has been nationally recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, both Rider and Ringling University, and the Festival of Books. She is an editor at The Columbia Review and attends Columbia University. Her work has been published in PolyphonyHs, The Columbia Journal, Into the Void, and Noble / Gas Qrtly, among others. However, she is most known for consisting of at least 50% ice cream.