How sweet is the lisp of the swell: How the fog rolls in from the east; it whispers with the traces of heady smoke that obscures the morning light into demure gray. The bell-tower chimes (from where, she does not know) to announce the daybreak, the chime’s rosiness sugar-sweet amidst the drone of modern clutter. The cars tutter past; the rickshaws tattle over cobbled pathways, the shifts of market-goods in Chinatown form cloistering waves that swish with each passing exchange: schh goes the paper money from hand to hand; shrrrh goes the cabbage leaves in the wind as they are hefted into wood boxes. She stares into the sky that shines with a thousand hues, and looks down at the box in her hands.
I am dreaming. She realises — for they have left Chinatown years ago, riding across the waves to a land where the sun rose when the moon ascended over the quiet stall she used to roam. When the mist rolled in, wai po would always hand her a bowl of steaming soup, and ask her to go inside. “It’s cold, Lin. Don’t stay outside. Remember that you can always go home instead.”
Yes, because this was the past. Wherever the jade gates adorned with temple lions rose was a place Lin would never be allowed to trounce upon; relegated to memory alone was the taste of siew mai, dripping away were the soup-fillings that once swelled within 18-pleated xiao long baos. Sights like these were the last reminder of a bitter taste that would permeate her mouth whenever she chewed upon the childhood meals Lin once loved.
She felt her legs stir, and she awkwardly sauntered through the gravel streets as children passed her by. “Lin!” Her name was called, and she turned around. There stood wai po, still frozen in the 1980s. Her hair was primly cut and delicately shaped, though flecks of white hair could be seen amidst the flock of dark black. Her face hid wrinkles beneath alabaster powder, her cheeks pink with sparkling blush. Her frown was eminent. “Dinner is starting!”
Lin frowned — How long has it been? Above wai po’s store, where she sold gleaming vegetables from the farmers’ trucks, was their old home. Seated there at the dining table was mother and father.
Wai po sat opposite to them, behind a bubbling pot of black chicken herbal soup. She poured a bowl for Lin, and then mother and father, specifically in that order. Then, she clapped her chopsticks together: Click click! Lin could faintly remember that it signified the beginning of the meal.
The broth tasted of nothing in this dream. No heat, no sourness. It was as though she were a ghost, and the soup poured into her mouth had simply splashed out from her chin. Instead, her gaze drifted to mother, who had not eaten. She noticed that wai po did the same.
“Ma.” Her mother said. She was hesitant, her chopsticks set aside. “…I was thinking of the future.”
“Good.” Wai po said flippantly. “Masters? Doctorate? Divorce?”
Father shifted uncomfortably in his seat. His blonde hair was shiny with sweat, blue eyes shifting to meet mother’s brown ones. An unnerving hush had fallen between them, even as wai po continued to eat — if she was simply ignorant or undisturbed, Lin could scarcely tell.
“Ma...” She said, trembling. “I want to move in with Will.”
The clink of wai po’s ivory chopsticks came to a grinding halt. Her grip noticeably tightened.
“No.” She said simply, and continued to eat.
Lin looked at her parents. They were seated to the west, wai po to the east, while she sat at the head of the table.
“Ma, this is what—“
“First, you take journalism.” Wai po said quietly. Lin winced — it was as though an inky black aura had begun to seep from her grandmother’s sides, trickling above the table and covering the room in swathes of stifling smoke. “Then, you go with this ang moh man. Next, you get pregnant at 19.”
“I take care of you.” She said, voice icy-cold. “I let you stay here. I take care of Lin while you go job-hunting. You do not teach Lin, I pay for her school, I feed her, I give her a bed to sleep on, and now you tell me you are moving away?!”
“Ma, this is why we want to move.” Lin’s mother said as calmly as she could, even as her father reached to hold her shuddering hand. “You treat Will like an outsider.”
“Because he is!”
“Just because he’s white doesn’t mean he’s—“
“YOUR FATHER WAS THE SAME!”
Silence befell the table.
“Your father…” Wai po began speaking in Mandarin, fuming. “...was also American. American soldier this, American soldier that. He brings me to America, and then makes me do everything — Until he reveals he had his own family all this time, and leaves us alone. You cannot trust them! No loyalty!”
“Will isn’t like that!” Her mother shouted in return, speaking in English. “He’s a good man. He’s been here for Lin and has listened to all your demands: You wanted a Chinese wedding, so we had one. He’s a news anchor, he has a stable pay, and he’s been wanting to get closer to Lin but you’ve been depriving her of a father!”
“She doesn’t need an irresponsible dad!” Wai po screamed in return. “She has me! This is her home!”
“SHE DOESN’T NEED YOU!”
Smack!
The silence was as disconcerting as she could remember. The shaking of her mother’s figure, now standing as she clutched her bright red cheek. Wai po’s eyes, holding the furor of a tiger, were hooded and clouded. But Lin could see within that shadowy depth a deep-seated, turbid grief. It was deeper than sadness, an emptiness so vast and inexplicably infinite it seemed unbearable. It was despondency – an isolating, aching feeling that she could almost see clawing at wai po’s chest.
Her father had silently ushered her out of their shophouse, murmuring comforting words as her mother stormed out, hot tears streaming down like rain. Now I remember, Lin thought. This was the last time I saw her.
When Lin had woken up, she walked to the dining room to see her mother absentmindedly staring up at their altar, where burning candles lay. In her hand was a typed letter from years ago. Lin already knew what the letter said. It was wai po’s death anniversary, when her mother would pull out that pristine next-of-kin notice, where it stated all wai po’s property would go to her.
She picked up a bowl of herbal chicken soup on the table. The scent reminded her of home.
Pain often flowed from generation to generation. In the same way that the nose-bridges of children grow hunched or straight; how some have brown eyes, blue eyes, or a shade in-between — so did the trauma linger within the blood of her mother and her mother's mother. It was a sleeping beast that separated east from west, a lingering echo of malignance that rubbed salt into fissures that bloomed into scars that would last an eternity.
But we have to make do, don’t we?
Lin sighs and stares through the window. She sees the sun sweep out of the clouds to grace the city in new life. The good, the bad, the lessons, the heartbreak, such was the human condition: unconstant, meandering, and wholly incomprehensible. Such was her grandmother like the fog: sundering yet cool in the mist, smothering yet comforting. And yet, despite all this, she closed her eyes and took a sip of her bowl of soup.
It’s cold.
Remember that you can always go home instead.
Home was not perfect. But still, she stared at the bowl in her hands, now growing lukewarm to the touch.
…I miss it all the same.
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