The only thing you could never bear about your mother was that she’d always been a terrible liar, an atrociously unconvincing one. She’d only half-look into your eyes as she told you the things, never acknowledging that her son was listening, really listening.
The moment a man’s heart betrays him so suddenly, you can feel the universe pause. Just for a heartbeat. She sets down her chopsticks before intensely fixing her hazel brown eyes upon you for a moment.
Distractedly, you mumble a response as you take a large bite out of a steaming hot siu mai: How nice, Mother.
The prawn inside the siu mai is oddly sour, almost bitter. The flavor stirs something deep within you; an aching pain you can’t quite place. You reach for a cup of tea hoping, begging, to wash the taste away. As if she hasn’t heard your response or even noticed your pained expression, your mother continues: I was your age. Your grandmother and I had just discovered that the man had been the thief stealing for years from our family’s store.She must see the smirk that coyly threatens at your lips because she reaches out and slaps you swiftly upon your left cheek.
You’re just as surprised at her reaction as she is. He was wearing a green polo shirt when he collapsed, she says to nobody in particular.
Your mother is a lover: she describes how she had grown up in her cousins’ house, a condescendingly big one in Singapore – a laugh – while Grandmother had given her life to her little storehouse in Malaysia and Grandfather gave his to alcohol and Marlboro cigarettes and younger women.
Your mother won’t tell you how she struggled to lift heavy boxes of Tiger beer to Grandfather’s room whenever she could. Summers were so hot and so wet you could almost feel the ghosts of your future choking your skin, she says to you instead.
A pause.
Do you remember your father and I at eighteen?
Yes, you say. Young and naive and you – so blissfully unaware –
We were so poor, she sighs wistfully. That summer your father took me on a date at the fanciest restaurant in Singapore just so we could feel some air conditioning together. We could only order the cheapest: a singular sizzling prawn served on a stone hot plate. The stares from other diners were unbearable. She releases a slow breath as if having overly exerted herself from remembering. Your father didn’t care. He held my hand and laughed as they looked. In that moment I knew deep in my soul I had found the man who I wanted to die with.
A nod; your knuckles are white with gripping the tablecloth. It’s odd to think that the balding foul-tempered shouting man you know was once so valiant, kind, even. Maybe with another family. Your mother glances at you. Every time he walks out our door, a small part of me still wants to follow him into the unknown, just to see if he turns around to check if I’m there, she says softly.
Why?
Your ask is desperate, embarrassingly primal. The miasma of sickly-sweet alcohol threatens your nostrils, and the scar on your left arm pulses with a sudden, sharp pain.
Maybe the summer heat has opened it again.
Your mother is you and you are Mother. Bunny-toothed, soft noses. Round, friendly faces that made Swensons servers and old uncles you both had never known smile widely and swear they knew you from somewhere-just-couldn’t-remember-where. The mole barely behind her right ear is hers just as it refuses to leave your left, no matter how hard you scrub. You are her stories unafraid and her worries released and her fear and her pleasure and all her pain in this world.
Pain, more than anything else, she admits one day, still half-asleep.
The food poisoning that damned siu mai had given you that day so many years ago has long gone, but that bitter, sour taste has remained at the back of your palette all these years, spreading. Permeating almost every portion of yourself: permanent, painful, protective.
One night, you’ll be hunched over at your desk cluttered with excel spreadsheets and stuffed animals given to you by your son over the years when you realize the siu mai’s taste. Recognize its bitterness and swallow the sourness. Two hearts beat in unison until one is drifted away by time, forever.
And you’ll let yourself cry.
You can feel when its pumping will cease soon, when its flow will begin to ebb. You make sure you’re there with her, alone. Older, but young now as you feel your years fade away for the last time. Your mother’s eyes are open – faded taupe. They hold yours – a thrumming hazel – steadfast into the Great Beyond.
Photo by Krakograff Textures on Unsplash
