Junk Drawer

words by Liah Chung, art by Ananya Sairaman

Here, a can of spam we emptied for dinner last night. I snuck it away unwashed, for when we run out of meat. Its lingering smell will bring us back to the luxury of fullness. 

Here, a bursting filing cabinet containing every newspaper from every Sunday I have lived in this house. Over a thousand packets of 20 pages neatly crammed into four drawers. Nothing can match the smell of yellowed pages, the rough, dry, nostalgic texture of old paper. 

There’s more in the other rooms. Instant coffee packets I stole from the car dealership. Mountains of 12-pack toilet paper rolls from Costco. Hundreds of chocolate Hershey’s Kisses, hidden in pockets around the house—couch cushions, bedframes, pen holders, and drawers. I still have every single tooth I lost in grade school, except the one I gave to my curious younger sister. They’re stored in a wooden jewelry box in the back of my dresser, under the thick socks of my top-right drawer. Van Gogh once said, “The best way to know life is to love many things”. I know much of life, and still I need more. More to savor, more to guard. 

My daughter makes fun of me for keeping everything, but those teeth, this room, this house, is proof that I existed. I loved and was loved. Death may knock soon, but my soul lives on in everything I touched and everything that touched me. I am infinite through the three-dimensional world. 

My daughter thinks she can solve age by disposing of it. She fears the house will collapse with the weight of memories. What she doesn’t know is that the house is already full of holes, that I’ve been digging small cavities around our yard and filling them with treasures. A broken toaster under the cherry tree. A soccer ball next to the sewer cap. Beautiful golden teeth litter our lawn. They took my sister and my parents, everyone who mattered. But when they come here, they will not take all of me. 

My daughter tries to take away my things. I scream at her. She doesn’t understand that we might need this someday, that not everybody gets to have things like this, that we have to appreciate everything we have. 

In school I learned the Egyptians buried their dead with their possessions to ensure they were equipped with all the resources they needed for the afterlife. Their most precious items were given status alongside them. I ask my daughter to bury me in this house, which has been my home for thirty years and which holds everything dear to me. Memories of my husband, laughter with my children, treasures I’ve collected for eighty years. Nothing I can leave behind. 

She says no, adamantly, but when I ask, isn’t able to explain why. 

My daughter tries to get rid of things in secret. Slowly, day by day, things start disappearing. An empty tissue box, a 2002 calendar, my sixth grade biology notes. I dig through the trash and take them out again, hiding them in my closet this time. She doesn’t understand that that was the first stick of deodorant I ever owned for just myself. These are the shoes I wore when my friends and I got stuck in a downpour in Chinatown on my birthday, 24 years ago. This was the last hair elastic I used before I had no hair left to put up. She doesn’t know that cardboard is a rarity these days, and if we put our life on the street, the thieves will rummage through and steal everything we know about ourselves. 

One day, I am too late. I wake midday up to the rumble of the trashtrucks outside, a thundering that freezes my bones and chokes my heart. I dart out of bed. I run up the driveway. The truck drives away. Our trash bin sits at the side of the curb: empty, cold, meaningless. I feel lightheaded with anger and grief. Black spots dot my vision, and the world goes dark. 

I wake late at night in my bed, cleaned and changed but full of the bullet holes only people who have lost things very dear to them will know. When she was a child, my daughter had the brightest soul. Everyone around her said she glowed. But she is a stranger to me now. I do not recognize this monster. 

For a few more moments, I sit immobile in bed before silently creeping downstairs. I burrow through our kitchen trashcan, re-discovering my hidden treasures. A sticky note with my Goodreads password. An ancient dictionary I flipped through as a child. A stack of dusty piano books. I had forgotten I even owned these things, but it’s delightful looking back at everything. It makes me feel young again, as if I can hold childhood in my hands. 

The fountain of youth lies in memory, in faith. 

Slinking back upstairs, I slip quietly into my bedroom closet. I huddle under a blanket, using a flashlight to admire my collection. When the bombs come, I will be buried with my treasure. I will take my things with me to the afterlife, and I will die remembering everything, forgetting nothing, and knowing I lived a life of fullness. 

I’ll save that pizza box, that contact lens. The hair from his hairbrush. My old toothbrush heads. I might need them someday.