I was one of the interpreters/co-navigators with a DeafBlind writer at a residency program, so we spent a lot of time together, and in between chatting about books and writing, we folded origami. I’d grown up folding paper cranes, but to fold with my DeafBlind friend required different techniques than making the folds by sight.

I obtained a degree in clinical psychology, which helps, but I’ve always been adept at imagining other people, the conversations they might have, their reasons and motivations. The degree helped me understand the underpinnings of disordered behavior, but I don’t think it would’ve had as much impact if I hadn’t already been very good at empathy.

As I wrote this story, I was mulling over legacy and inheritance, how the way I experience the world now is affected by the way Chinese Americans were treated then. The panic around the bubonic plague resonates with that of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent wave of Asian hate, for instance; questions of femininity and labor persist as well.