What You Eat, You Are

I, Sun Wukong, Great Sage Equal to Heaven, somehow find myself scampering through the halls of Heaven’s Peach Garden, weaving between rows of sacred peach tree plots that seemingly stretch on forever. The air should smell like blossoms and summer, but today it stings a little, sharp like burned incense.

In contrast to the chaos; gods walking up and down, sounds of fighting and crying, the trees stand in neat, identical lines. The soil is limited to a neat 50 by 50 feet square, contained in a white chamber with glowing runes embedded on the door. Some chambers hum softly, like the sound of peaches ripening. Others stay rather quiet. 

“Tang Sangzang, hurry up!” I call behind me. “The gods have almost finished preparing the peaches of immortality! We must find ours before the demons do!”

Zhu Bajie trots beside her, breathing heavily, as usual. He wipes crumbs from his mouth and tries to look the heroic part, but the not-so-inconspicuous bulge of a half-finished mantou peeks from his coat pocket. So I know he snuck food. Again. He always does.

“等一下，孙子” Wait a moment, Grandson. Tang Sanzang murmurs. Her voice is faint, thin—it must’ve been many moons since she last drank ambrosia, I tell myself.

I pretend not to see the tremor in her step.

A monkey king never slows down.

We pass chamber after chamber. Inside each, a glowing peach tree stands guard over a mortal, granting them more time—a few days, a few weeks, a season. Gods carefully remove parts of the peach—not too much at once; a stem, a leaf, a small chunk of the flesh—and delicately lift each soft, moist piece to the mortal’s parted lips, as if offering a blessing.

“Why don’t we have a chamber yet?” I mutter, hopping from foot to foot. “Where is our peach? Everyone else has one.” 

Zhu Bajie opens his mouth to speak, but the moment his eyes meet mine, he closes it and glances away.

Tang Sanzang rests her hand on my shoulder. Her fingers are cool, lighter than I expected. “Ours will come soon,” she rasps.

But her breath breaks halfway through the sentence.

Wincing, I pretend not to notice. Sun Wukong does not notice such things. He has a mission. 

At the end of the garden stands a lofty white gate, guarded by spirits swaying in ghostly, pale white gowns. They bow their heads as we approach—but this time, I do not gloat in the recognition of my power. 

A tall, willow-thin spirit rolls a tall silver basin toward us, its surface gleaming the quiet reflection of the moon. I touch the water and instinctively scoop, as if to capture a portion of the moon. Tang Sanzang gingerly lowers herself beside it. Zhu Bajie stoops awkwardly, and with his clunky hooves, helps her steady her hands.

Something uneasy grows in the pits of my stomach, but I refuse to let it show. I puff out my chest and declare to the room: 

“Stand back, spirits. I shall retrieve the peach myself.”

A spirit hands me a scroll, amusement and sorrow dancing at the corners of its mouth.

Glowering, I snatch it. 

What a patronizing show! I ought to throw him in Laozi’s furnace for that! 

But I don’t. For this is a chart of all the peach trees in this sector of Heaven. Rows of numbers, ripening cycles, lifespans written in code only describable as 苏州码子 Suzhou Numerals, which I never had the opportunity to learn, despite Zhu Bajie’s insistence. I pretend I can decipher it. I pretend I know exactly where her peach should be, where her immortality lies.

Tang Sanzang coughs—just once, but it is enough to reverberate through the whole garden. 

I quickly cease the showboating; I drop the scroll, my staff, and rush over.

“Master,” I whisper, “once you eat the peach, you’ll be strong again. Like before.”

She smiles at me—a small smile, the kind attributed to foolish actions. 

But it’s not foolish? I think. 

“Silly monkey,” she whispers, breath trembling. “Peaches are for growing boys.”

Growing boys. I remember her saying that in our old kitchen back in her hometown of Jinhua, pressing pit after pit into my palm; laughing after I swallowed one and stood there wide-eyed, waiting to turn into a fruit tree.

“Sun Wukong wouldn’t get caught up about a simple peach pit, right?” She thundered in laughter.

吃什么补什么. What you eat, you mend.

Eat peaches, grow in strength.

Eat peaches, glow in health.

Eat immortal peaches from the garden of heaven, the garden of Zhejiang Cancer Hospital, gain immortality… right? Or at the very least a few years, long enough for her to stay through the winter? Even a few months, so we could watch the autumn leaves together again?

She fed me enough peaches for me to become immortal myself.

So why is she the one who’s shrinking?

A bell chimes somewhere in the Peach Garden.

A spirit approaches, rolling a metal tree trunk on wheels clear vines snaking along its sides. They mutter to Zhu Bajie and Tang Sanzang, adjusting straps, checking lines, doing things that I, Sun Wukong, for all my wisdom and training, do not recognize.

Wukong understands monsters.

Not this.

When Tang Sanzang sits beside the glowing basin, a bald man with tired eyes, wrapped in a too-white robe, slips a tiny silver needle into a cold vein on her wasted arm. I wait for her to cry out for Sun Wukong’s help in the way she told me about in the stories when demons seize her.

But she doesn’t. Her breath barely stirs the air.

“Wukong,” she says, without opening her eyes, “stay here.”

I grip my staff so tightly my knuckles turn white.

I lean over her, forehead pressed to her arm.

“But… but you told me the peaches were the key to saving you.”

I close my fingers around hers, whispering a prayer I don’t know how to finish.

Because even a monkey king can’t save everyone.