“It’ll be like those paintings we saw today,” he said. “One day at a time.” He squeezed my hand.
“I got up today,” I said.
“I am still alive,” he replied.
“I am still alive,” I said back, after a moment.
* * *
? ? ?
When Mah came back from Taiwan I went over to her place for a belated New Year’s dinner. I picked up a roast duck from ABC on my way down, Mah’s favorite in Chinatown. She updated me on the family gossip: Third Uncle lost a pile of money on a faulty stock tip from Cousin Ling’s Singaporean girlfriend. Big Auntie Mo’s youngest daughter was pregnant again by her useless, cheating husband—at least he always brought back the latest Japanese foot creams and Thai textiles from his “business trips.” Mah rattled off story after story, and I listened with one ear while I stuffed myself with crispy slivers of duck skin, Mah’s famous pork and shrimp paste dumplings, too many triangles of scallion pancake.
“They asked about you,” she said. “？‘When is Jane coming to visit us next time?’？”
My family used to plague Mah with questions about who I was dating, if like so many daughters of their overseas friends I’d end up marrying a kindhearted, goofy-looking white guy who ate hamburgers for breakfast, lunch, and dinner; or maybe I’d choose a handsome Black man for my husband, someone charismatic and tall like Will Smith or Barack Obama, they suggested, a good match since I was so tall myself. Just imagine it, one uncle declared: Your child could be the next Jeremy Lin! In the last few years, however, the inquiries stopped.
I stood up to clear the dishes from the table. “Mah,” I said now. “Do you ever get lonely?”
She frowned slightly. Wrinkles gathered at the corners of her eyes. “What a silly question,” she said. “Why would I be lonely? I have Jesus. He is walking with me all the time.”
“But don’t you ever wish—”
“You ate enough?” Mah said. “Still some rice left in the pot.”
“All your sisters are married, and when you go visit, everyone’s coupled off. You don’t feel left out?”
Mah helped me carry the rest of the dishes from the dining table into the kitchen.
“Jane,” she said in a quiet, steady voice. “Is that why you never married? Because I didn’t . . . ?”
After Baba died, there was a gentleman from Mah’s church who came around. He brought her gifts from his garden, chrysanthemum leaves and gai lan and morning glory. In exchange, Mah packed brown paper sacks with winter tangerines from her backyard tree. Then, he was gone; a job transfer to New Jersey.
“It’s not too late,” she said. “You can still—I pray for you.”
I stayed quiet. After stacking the dirty plates and bowls in the sink, I turned the faucet on and squirted blue liquid soap to soak them.
When I turned around, Mah said, “I saw your father’s grave this time.”
I didn’t reply. My breath was caught in my throat.
“I drove to the mountain,” she said. “It’s a nice place. Clean. Good air up there.”
I asked if she went alone. She nodded.
“I didn’t cry,” she said, as if she were proud of it. “I told him some things.” She paused for a long while. Finally, she said, “I told him: I forgive you, my husband. Jane’s father. I let you go free, now.”
“You said that to him?”
“I don’t understand why he did it, but I forgive.” My mother fixed her gaze on me. “You have to forgive him, too.”
“Me?” I said. “Forgive Baba?”
“For leaving us,” she said.
I shook my head, and Mah sighed.
It wasn’t me who had to forgive my father. It was him who had to forgive me. I was the one who told his secret—I outed him to Mah. It was my fault. I was the one to blame.
“Let me show you something,” she said.
Mah took out her phone and scrolled through her pictures from the trip. She stopped at a group photo of my father’s side of the family and zoomed in on the man seated next to her at a large circular table laden with at least ten or twelve dishes of food.
“Remember this uncle?” I nodded, even though I didn’t. “Your father’s younger brother.” She said his Chinese name. The middle character of the three was the same as my father’s, the way my Chinese name shared the same middle character as all the cousins of my generation. “Almost like a twin, when they were kids.”