“So what happen with this boy?”
I sigh. “Everything. He was my everything, and I guess that’s what scared me the most. I was eighteen. I wasn’t ready to find my everything yet, you know? And of course there’s the family curse.”
“What family curse?”
I stare at her. “You know, the one that’s taken all the men in our family! You and all the aunties used to mention it when I was a kid. You guys would be like, ‘Ah, we are so unlucky, we are cursed to have our husbands leave us.’”
Ma laughs. “You mean family blessing?”
“What?”
“Aiya, we call it curse at first because yes, of course we are sad that our husbands all leave us. But after few years we realize actually, is not a curse. It is family blessing. Because your papa leave me, I become even more close to your aunties. And they become more close to each other too, because they have no husband, no son. And you, they see you as their daughter. It’s like you grow up with four mothers. That is blessing, Meddy. We are very blessed, we have close family.”
My eyes fill with tears. All these years, I have never seen it that way, but Ma’s right. I did grow up with four mothers, and it really has been amazing. There’s been so much love in my life that I took for granted.
“You’re right, Ma.”
“And anyway, it is not curse that take your papa away. We just not work out, it is okay, we move on. And your aunties are the same with your uncles. Maybe at first heartbreak, but after a while it is okay. Don’t miss out on love because you think we got curse, so silly, you. I thought you are more educated than that.”
A laugh bubbles out. My superstitious mother is chastising me for believing in curses. Life could not get weirder.
“That is why you never tell me about this Nathan?”
“Yes and no.” I take a deep breath. “The truth is, I was a different person in school than I was at home. I don’t really know how to explain it. It’s nothing against you or the aunties, it’s just—I don’t know—”
“You feel more free to figure out who are you.”
I stare at her in wonderment. “Yeah. Exactly. How did you—”
“Aiya, you think you are the only one who go to school, is it? I go to college also, I know what you are talking about. At home, I am just Third Sister, no one special, not the oldest, not the youngest. Not the prettiest, not the smartest. But in school, I can be my own person. Not just Third Sister, but me. Natasya.”
“Yeah, that’s exactly it.” All along, she’s understood. Of course she has. Like me, she grew up in a huge, close-knit family filled with overbearing relatives. “So I didn’t want to take him home at first because of that, and then as we became even closer and he became an even bigger part of my life, I didn’t know how to take him home and tell you that we’d been together for more than a year. It felt like such a betrayal to you, and I didn’t know how you’d take it. I’m sorry, Ma. I should’ve had more faith in you.”
“Yes, you should have,” she says, simply. I steel myself for a tirade of guilt-tripping, but for once, Ma is quiet.
“Anyway, then we graduated, and he got a job offer in New York, and I didn’t want to move across the country just to be with him. I don’t know. Or maybe I did, and it scared me to hell that I wanted to. That I would give everything up just for him. So I made myself choose something else. Something that would keep us far apart from each other. But I never could move on from him, because I knew he was the one, Ma.” And the tears come again, as I admit it out loud for the first time. “He was my one, and it killed me, losing him that first time, and I can’t believe I just lost him again.”
“Why lose him again?” She frowns in confusion.
A shaky laugh rattles out of me. “He saw Ah Guan’s feet and he thought it’s my boyfriend, napping in my bed. I couldn’t tell him the truth, obviously, so I let him think that.”
Ma purses her lips. “Ooh. Bad luck, very bad luck.”
“You can say that again.”
“So how? Are you going to chase that boy?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know that there’s anything I can say to change his mind without telling him the truth. And honestly, I don’t want to lie to him. I don’t want to make up some crazy story about how it was just my aunt or whatever who was napping—” Of course, once I say that, I get a glimmer of hope, like huh, maybe I could tell him that it was one of my many aunties underneath the duvet. But as soon as I imagine myself lying to him, everything inside me shrivels up. I have no desire to do so. I can’t stand the thought of having to look him in the eye and feed him false words. “And anyway, I probably shouldn’t be getting distracted by—whatever this is.”