by Roselle Lim
You never told me, but I knew.
How he sent letters but you never replied. Instead, you burned them so I couldn’t find them.
But I knew.
My love is different, for I have chosen well. You will see, Mother.
You finally met him. It was as inevitable as the sun rising over the horizon.
I had feared this meeting from the moment I decided he was mine.
You didn’t find him suitable.
I love him.
I love you.
I don’t want to choose.
Mother, you will make me choose.
I can’t.
I will break your heart because I will choose the future.
I will choose him.
I want to spare you this heartbreak, Mother.
Don’t ask me to choose.
Please.
Ma-ma’s choice. I couldn’t imagine how hard it must have been for her. I didn’t blame Laolao for her disapproval—my father had ended up abandoning Ma-ma. He should have loved my mother as much as she had loved him.
There was no trace of her agoraphobia back then. Miss Yu and Celia both concluded that it had been Laolao’s death and my father’s desertion that triggered the condition—or at least the severity of it, since the seeds of it were within her since girlhood.
I pulled my phone from my purse and sent Celia a message.
Me: So I have been reading my mother’s journals . . .
Celia: Hahaha. Do I want to know?
Me: No, nothing like that. She’s writing about my father.
Celia: Heavy subject. Do you want company?
Me: Yes. Part of me is nervous about reading them.
Celia arrived three minutes later. She sat in her favorite chair with her arms crossed over a frock printed with white cats. “Why are you so nervous?”
“I have a feeling there will be more about my father,” I replied.
“Oh.” She frowned. “I never met him. I was away when they were dating. Then I traveled around Europe after that, and by the time I got back, he had left. I asked Miranda if she wanted help in tracking him down, but she adamantly declined. She said she knew where he was and that he had made his choice clear. We left it at that. The neighborhood doesn’t talk about him much for obvious reasons, mostly out of respect for her.
“Miranda was always one of those people who spoke little, but she had a sharp mind. I often wondered what she was thinking at any given time. I imagine that what she wrote in those diaries will give you some sort of closure, or even a better understanding of who she was as a woman. And maybe it’ll show you more about her relationship with your father. It was too painful for her to tell you when she was alive.”
“I suppose,” I said.
“Since I don’t have a hot date tonight, I’ll keep you company.” Celia pulled out her cell. “I’ll cook. Do you want pizza or Thai?”
* * *
I went through three more journals with no additional insight into my father. They seemed to jump back and forth in time to reflect whatever was on Ma-ma’s mind. However, there were many entries detailing her depression, which were heartrending to read.
Sadness isn’t something I can ever shake.
Wherever I go, she follows.
She ties me to the bed and holds me down until I have no energy to get up. She robs me of any small joy like stealing the sweetness away from sticky sesame balls or the tangy note from sliced green mangoes.
If I could banish her, I would.
Yet I’m afraid.
I fear she is a part of me.
We will never be separated.
I reached for the kettle to pour myself another cup of tea. “I wish Ma-ma had gotten help.”
Mental illness was a foreign concept in my culture. To my people, superstitions were more real than depression or anxiety. Instead of therapists, we saw doctors, herbalists, feng shui consultants, and acupuncturists. We would rather believe in spirits, luck, ghosts, and demons than the discipline of psychology. Perhaps it wasn’t that my grandmother had refused to see my mother’s condition, but rather that she could not see it.
“Your grandmother was from another generation. Was it possible? Sure. Unlikely? More so.” Celia sighed. “The only thing you can do for Miranda now is to listen.”
After the pizza ran out and the hour grew late, I sent Celia home with the reassurance that I would contact her if I needed anything. Besides, I wasn’t alone. The cat curled around my belly as I read. The more pages I consumed, the more I began to realize that I was more like my grandmother in terms of personality than I was like my mother. Laolao found happiness in cooking and felt the call to help those around her. If my grandmother had been alive when I was a child, perhaps I could have helped heal the fracture between her and Ma-ma.
The second to last journal meandered back and forth in mood between anxious ramblings and Ma-ma’s depression after Laolao’s death. As painful as it was to read, I kept turning the pages, hoping and wishing that I would read about Ma-ma experiencing joy again. The tone of her writings changed at the end. I sat up, jarring the napping cat from my belly.
Oh my love, you give me such joy.
I knew you were the one when I first heard your voice.
Nothing made me happier.
I never thought I could ever be in love.
This could only be about my father. My stomach clenched at the thought of what I might find in these pages. I didn’t want to learn about him, but I couldn’t help but keep going. As I read, I was submerged into my mother’s first foray into love—happy, hopeful, infatuated. The journals existed out of time, with stories of their courtship intermingled with vignettes of their marriage. He’d made her happy once, only to break her heart afterward. All I remembered was Ma-ma’s sorrow, pain, and anger. The triumvirate of emotions tugged at my throat, reaching down into my heart as it locked my limbs into place.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Mother, if you could only see what I see.
Push aside your rash judgments.
Give him a chance.
He makes me so happy.
Please.
“Laolao didn’t approve of Ma-ma’s husband,” I murmured to the cat before taking another sip of the tea. “Can’t say I’m surprised, since I don’t like him either.”
The cat placed a paw of solidarity on my chest.
“He should have been there for her. She needed him.”
Meimei tapped her paw.
“I know that I should let it go. Anger poisons.”
Father. No other word caused me more rage and anguish. As a child, I’d fielded questions about my absentee parent, swatting them away like fruit flies in the heat of summer. The questions stopped when I claimed he was dead. It wasn’t a lie because it was plausible. And while I had asked the neighbors about my grandmother because I wanted to know more, I never asked about my father because I was afraid of what they might say: that he never really loved my mother, and that he wouldn’t have loved me.
My fingers found the place where I’d left off. Ma-ma’s diaries shone a spotlight on the creature I kept in the darkness, fattened by hatred and bitterness. Since I was a child, I had considered my father a monster. It seemed it was time for me to confront him through my mother’s eyes.
Mother, do you remember the morning we decided to elope?
I wanted to leave, but he wouldn’t allow me to go without telling you. He insisted. He didn’t want our relationship to suffer.
You never cared for him, but he held you in great esteem.
So I stayed and waited until you came home from the restaurant.
I spoke my heart’s desire.
You said it was too soon.
But this was what I wanted.
And then you wit
hheld your blessing.
The dishes smashed. The apartment shook with the thunder of exploding ceramics. White powder sprayed from the opened cupboards, creating an impromptu blizzard. False snow created from the debris of the dishes.
I burned the pages we wrote together in your recipe book. I destroyed what I knew would hurt you the most.
This was the consequence of your anger, Mother.
In a last bid, I prostrated before you, but you cast me away.
You never saw me leave.
I found out later from the neighbors that you lost your sight for a week.
This entry was out of order. Old Wu had mentioned how much of a temper Laolao had had. Although I hated my father, I felt horrible for Ma-ma. This was the time she ripped out the pages in the recipe book to hurt her mother. It confirmed what Old Wu told me. Ma-ma fell in love with someone Laolao deemed unworthy and had lost her mother in the process. She must have been as angry as my grandmother. This explains why Ma-ma had been so supportive about anyone I’d decided to date. She’d wanted to spare me the sting of a parent’s disapproval over my heart’s choice.
She had tried her best to be the mother she’d wanted, the one Laolao couldn’t be.
I read on with a sense of dread, bracing myself against the revelations regarding the man whom Ma-ma had given her heart to.
My husband.
You love me for who I am.
You found me when I suffered in darkness.
You charmed me with your love for Teresa Teng and parcels of glutinous rice with Chinese sausage wrapped in banana leaves.
When you played “Sono andati?” from La bohème, you collected my heart.
Your talent, my love, was one of the many marvels I saw.
As long as we are together, happiness is within my reach.
I love you, Thomas.
My Thomas.
Thomas Kuk Wah.
The diary slid off my lap, slamming with a thud onto the floor. My hands shook. An earthquake vibrated from my bones, trembling, causing my teeth to clatter together. I wrapped my arms around myself to suppress the tremors. The cat jumped off me.
I closed my eyes.
Mr. Kuk Wah was my father?
The musician whose erhu played to my soul.
The man who refused to let me run away from the mess I’d created.
My father.
Starlit fireflies danced before my eyes. I calmed my breathing to stop the Tilt-A-Whirl sensation brewing in my stomach. I wondered whether I could ever regain my balance. I didn’t understand it. He had never said anything. Mr. Kuk Wah had begun appearing on Grant Avenue when I was six. We’d become friends when I was on my way to pick up mail from the Chius’ convenience store. He’d played my favorite piece from La bohème for me. La bohème. Ma-ma. He’d never said anything about it or acknowledged me as his child. All these years and all our talks about everything from music to love. I found him so easy to confide in.
He was my friend. I’d even told him about the bullies at school. He had listened to me and comforted me with a rendition of “Three Little Maids from School.”
He was my father? But my father was the beast. A horrible creature who’d abandoned my mother and me. He’d never cared about his family. My hatred for him was a tattered cloak—woven with vitriol and aged by habit.
I took a deep breath to calm myself. If there was someone who I’d wished was my father, I might have chosen Mr. Kuk Wah. In hindsight, I could see what his appeal was and why Ma-ma was smitten. He’d been here all this time, and Ma-ma couldn’t see him because she never got out of the house and he had always been a little farther down the street and away from the neighbors.
He had mentioned his wife. He could have remarried. Perhaps that was why he had avoided Ma-ma. But it didn’t make any sense. None of it. Why had he abandoned us, but continued to see me? Why hadn’t he told me who he was? These were good questions I needed to ask the next time I saw him.
Right now, my mother’s words were an anchor I clung to, to stop the world from spinning. I must know her side first so I would be prepared with the right questions for my father. And the harder I struggled to cling to my hatred, the harder it was to grasp, like attempting to squeeze a fistful of water.
I had to continue reading. My mother hadn’t finished speaking to me.
I picked up the diary and returned it to my lap. My fingers trembled as I turned to the last page I had read.
Mother, you should have been inside.
What were you doing outside of the restaurant?
You shouldn’t have gone outside.
If you stayed inside, you would still be alive.
Mother, why did you go out?
The lines repeated themselves for pages and pages with erratic handwriting. The paper they were written on undulated like waves on a seashore from the enduring moisture of Ma-ma’s tears. The rising anxiety from my mother’s thoughts vibrated my fingertips. The cat squirmed from the disturbance.
The next entry was dated months after the death of my grandmother.
It’s strange living away from the only home I had ever known.
This new apartment in Nob Hill feels like an itchy sweater in the winter.
I’m happy to be with Thomas, but everything else feels out of place.
The noises, the people, the buildings are odd.
I don’t want to go outside.
Mother died going outside.
I feel more comfortable with my books while I wait for Thomas to come home.
He’s been having problems finding a job and I think moving back into Mother’s home in Chinatown is best for us. I can’t deny that I want to be back to the only place I’ve felt at ease.
I want to go home and this isn’t home.
I couldn’t imagine Ma-ma living anywhere but here. This entry contained the first signs of her agoraphobia. She had never taken to change well. Moving out to a new place must have been stressful for her.
I gripped the edges of the journal tighter. I’d known about Laolao’s death, but the details of my father’s departure were unknown.
One day, my love, you will play for the symphony.
You need to believe that your seat is waiting before an audience.
I wish I could banish your disappointment.
I see you come home, time and again, without the job you deserve.
I hope you know that I will always believe in you, Thomas.
You will succeed.
Mama once told me that a talent like yours . . . your erhu can tame dragons. The same dragons that adorn your arms.
You are strong, my love.
Give it more time . . .
Father or not, Mr. Kuk Wah and his erhu played to the soul. I had never imagined two strings could create a bridge into one’s being, the way his playing did. It was his true voice. Even Laolao had acknowledged it. No wonder Ma-ma and I were held spellbound. The erhu spoke every emotion, and its vocabulary was melody instead of words. Even now, I yearned to hear it.
Father. Why didn’t you tell me? You must have known I was your daughter because you kept coming back to see me. Or did you not know?
I had too many questions. Questions like marbles poured into a balloon, unsettled, bulging, and threatening to break through the thin latex.
I had one journal left to read and no room inside me for the words right now.
The sky was the darkest shade. The candles on the coffee table had diminished into stumps while the clock ticked, marking the time I had wandered into the forest of my mother’s thoughts. My dreams would be restless tonight.
* * *
The next morning I invited Celia over for a breakfast of congee with pickled cucumbers and shredded pork. The dried scallop and duck wings added an extra dimension of flavors to the plainn
ess of the rice porridge. Crowned with delicate rings of spring onion and golden bits of fried garlic, the bowls of steaming porridge were comfort food. Our toppings of choice were crunchy pickled cucumbers and sweet shredded pork floss.
“So you’re down to the last diary,” Celia said. “How do you feel?”
I appreciated Celia being respectful in not asking for details. I wasn’t ready yet to disclose my father’s identity because of all the questions I still had. I placed my spoon into the empty bowl with a sharp clink. “I can’t stop thinking about my father. With all of our family secrets, how does he fit in? I can kind of understand why Ma-ma didn’t tell me about Laolao. Their relationship was complicated, but full of love. It was made worse when Laolao didn’t approve of my mother’s marriage, but after all these years, I think Ma-ma still mourned her mother. It was too painful for her to talk about.”
“And your father?”
“I always thought she hated him, but now that I’ve read the journals, I see that she did love him.”
Why had Mr. Kuk Wah left us? Hadn’t he loved her as much as she had loved him? Again, questions cluttered my brain, overwhelming in their number and importance. I wanted my father to return so I could speak to him.
Celia turned her head toward the windows facing the street. “It’s early. You have time to finish that last book. Good thing it’s the weekend. You can read all day.”
“Do you mind if I text you if I need something?” I felt silly for asking, but she smiled as she packed up.
“Of course not. It’ll be a welcome distraction from playing sudoku.”
Celia waved goodbye as she let herself out.
I transferred my attention to the final journal on my lap. Its weight was deceitful. An object so light couldn’t possibly contain all of my hopes and apprehension. Taking a deep breath, I dove in.