I Longed to Be Cherished Until My Heart Went Soft — The Night I Nearly Lost Myself

My name is Wanyi Zhong (alias), I'm forty-seven, and I work the lost-and-found at Union Station in downtown Los Angeles — night shifts, nine years. A whole wall of cabinets: umbrellas, gloves, children's shoes, cloth bags with medicine inside, every item tagged, logged, waiting for its owner. I fill four ledgers a year, in handwriting so neat it looks printed — who lost what, when, in which carriage. I remember other people's losses more clearly than my own affairs.

And that is exactly where it went wrong. Everyone who loses something knows to come to me — but how long I have lost my own sleep, I could not tell you. Nights inverted, days unrestful; my left knee, twisted on a staircase the year before last, stiffens on grey days. Places here are applied for, reviewed, waited for — and my application sat in the system a good while, like a piece of unclaimed luggage. The other day a young woman collected an umbrella and said, as she left: thank you for keeping my things so well. I smiled and waved, and sat behind the counter for a long time afterwards. It was that day the confirmation arrived, the address sent to my phone alone. This piece of lost property — me — had finally been claimed.

The door ritual stopped me in my tracks, I who spend my life receiving other people's things: slippers set at my feet, my shoes taken gently away, warm tea placed in my hands; I changed without lifting a finger, the robe carrying its baked warmth; the bath was attended throughout, the temperature asked after first. My requirements were not vague at all: announce every step aloud before you come close — don't make me guess; go around the left knee, and ask before you touch near it; the pace is mine, slow means slow, stop means stop. Each one was agreed, in a voice not loud at all, and utterly steady. The room's light was kept low; there was no station announcement, no radio crackling with urgencies. It was so quiet that at first I kept wanting to find something to do — my hand patted twice beside me for a ledger that was not there. Only then did I remember: tonight, the ledger didn't come.

Warmth arrived first at my scalp, like the great lamp in the station hall deciding, for once, to shine on me alone. Then the warm, silky Nuru liquid spread slowly over my skin — gliding, close — down shoulders and a back that had worked the whole night, to my waist, to the hands that have kept registers for nine years, around the left knee with care, and on to my calves and toes. As the warmth rose through me, the doors of that wall of cabinets in my heart seemed to close, one by one. Scalp to toes, I had been gathered up whole, once — and this time there was no tag to tie, no entry to make, no owner to wait for. Nine years I have kept other people's lost things safe and waited for them to be reclaimed; that night it was my turn to be cherished and waited on, without registering anything, without insisting 'I'm fine'. My eyes heated. I did not hold it back, and I did not hide. Being remembered, and cared for slowly, softens a heart — I learned it at forty-seven. Late, perhaps. But not too late.

The final passage, the Yoni private care, was the part I longed for most and was most afraid of being seen through. I keep the whole city's lost things; my own longing has been locked in the deepest cabinet all these years, unlabelled, asked after by no one. My terms were stated first: stoppable at any moment, every approach announced aloud. As warmth and patience opened me slowly, my heart went completely, helplessly soft. For those minutes I did not have to brace and say I was fine. I was simply Wanyi Zhong — a woman who has finally claimed herself back.

Walking out afterwards, the station hall's lights were still on, and someone was dozing on a bench with a bag in their arms. Nobody hurried me: a hot towel over my hands, warm water finished, and I stood at the door a while, fastening my coat button by button. Back home I changed my shift roster: from now on, two nights a month are mine — no covering, no filling in — and on those two nights, the only name in the ledger is my own. I asked about the travelling ritual, too: the night I stay over visiting an old friend in Long Beach, I want this feeling of being claimed booked into the room beside me. The sleep I lost for so long — I intend to reclaim it, page by page, slowly.

← I Longed to Be Wrapped in Warmth — The Hands That Weighed Medicine for Thirteen Years Finally Stopped · Eight Months After the Baby, I Decided to Save Myself First →