when he has or is about to do something he is not supposed to be doing. I am surprised she has woken up without my noticing. Usually I am watching, or making myself useful, like putting the fruit and flowers away, letting fresh air into the room. Okay, no. I lie. The things that need doing take no more than ten minutes. And I watch her enough. I have seen her scared, mumbling in her sleep. Or lying peacefully, flat on her back, hardly moving so that paranoia soon takes over, and I stare, move in close to pinpoint the rise and fall of her chest, her silent breathing. Then I pick up a magazine. These are magazines I would not otherwise have read or even touched, if not for the stash they keep in the waiting room that I have faithfully plundered only to toss into the first trashcan that I see when I walk out of the building. Today, it is
Home and Living
. I was finding out just how many different things one can do with old newspapers when she woke up. I put it down, spread open on the night table.
She says it again, I got something to tell you, come here. So I do, lean in until I am clutching the cool metal rails by the side of the bed.
My dad is right behind me, jammed into a corner of the little couch they have in all the nicer rooms, the private rooms. Only, nurses come and go every ten minutes so there is no “private”. But it is not too bad. They have comfortable chairs and lovers seats that my dad cannot resist sinking into. Once he does, he is asleep in five minutes and I am left angry because we are supposed to be each other’s company. So I resort to the used magazines smelling of other peoples’ fingerprints. He is still asleep. I know because I can hear him making little noises, short puffs of air, the very ones he used to make when I was ten and he was home on a Sunday afternoon, too tired to do anything but slump next to me while I watched my saccharine teen dramas on the living room TV. Back then I would stare at him during the commercial breaks, at his sprawled limbs, the deep maroon of his wide-open mouth. And then I would prod him in his side and have him swat blindly at me to make me stop. My mother would be somewhere else — in the kitchen, on the phone, at the market. I can never remember. Her presence during my childhood always possessed the quality of a faded picture; left with just the yellowed edges of someone’s day at the beach, a wide-open smile reduced to a small patch of white in a tea-stained blur.
What is it, ma? I say. You thirsty?
I do not wait for an answer. Am already pouring water out of the clear, plastic jug and into one of those sickly blue cups they seem to use in all hospitals. I lift the straw to her mouth, watch the action of her permanently lined, coral lips as she takes the tiniest of sips. Okay, enough, she says, pushing, and then waving my hand away.
Listen, she says.
Yes? I say, trying on a smile.
I can tell, at that moment, that she is not properly with me. I know because the hardness around her mouth and eyes, the hardness I have known all my life, is not there right now. Her cheeks are flushed and she is almost giggling, putting a hand up to her mouth so that I do not see her teeth. I have a picture of her looking like this, fresh and girlish, with her friends in front of a large ferris wheel, many years before I was born. Her hair is long and straight, swept up by the wind as she half-turns away, laughing covertly. When my mother says,
Huay
(that’s her older sister), you remember what I told you the other day? I am relieved and almost proud, because this means I am starting to be able to tell and I can prevent the little shocks and aches that I used to get at the start.
I say no, I don’t remember. Because I cannot come up with anything else. I am not quick like her friend, Old Wang, who kept her sitting, waiting safely, after she had wandered alone out of the house and into his Chinese medicine store a half an hour’s walk away. He told her they had just
Home and Living
. I was finding out just how many different things one can do with old newspapers when she woke up. I put it down, spread open on the night table.
She says it again, I got something to tell you, come here. So I do, lean in until I am clutching the cool metal rails by the side of the bed.
My dad is right behind me, jammed into a corner of the little couch they have in all the nicer rooms, the private rooms. Only, nurses come and go every ten minutes so there is no “private”. But it is not too bad. They have comfortable chairs and lovers seats that my dad cannot resist sinking into. Once he does, he is asleep in five minutes and I am left angry because we are supposed to be each other’s company. So I resort to the used magazines smelling of other peoples’ fingerprints. He is still asleep. I know because I can hear him making little noises, short puffs of air, the very ones he used to make when I was ten and he was home on a Sunday afternoon, too tired to do anything but slump next to me while I watched my saccharine teen dramas on the living room TV. Back then I would stare at him during the commercial breaks, at his sprawled limbs, the deep maroon of his wide-open mouth. And then I would prod him in his side and have him swat blindly at me to make me stop. My mother would be somewhere else — in the kitchen, on the phone, at the market. I can never remember. Her presence during my childhood always possessed the quality of a faded picture; left with just the yellowed edges of someone’s day at the beach, a wide-open smile reduced to a small patch of white in a tea-stained blur.
What is it, ma? I say. You thirsty?
I do not wait for an answer. Am already pouring water out of the clear, plastic jug and into one of those sickly blue cups they seem to use in all hospitals. I lift the straw to her mouth, watch the action of her permanently lined, coral lips as she takes the tiniest of sips. Okay, enough, she says, pushing, and then waving my hand away.
Listen, she says.
Yes? I say, trying on a smile.
I can tell, at that moment, that she is not properly with me. I know because the hardness around her mouth and eyes, the hardness I have known all my life, is not there right now. Her cheeks are flushed and she is almost giggling, putting a hand up to her mouth so that I do not see her teeth. I have a picture of her looking like this, fresh and girlish, with her friends in front of a large ferris wheel, many years before I was born. Her hair is long and straight, swept up by the wind as she half-turns away, laughing covertly. When my mother says,
Huay
(that’s her older sister), you remember what I told you the other day? I am relieved and almost proud, because this means I am starting to be able to tell and I can prevent the little shocks and aches that I used to get at the start.
I say no, I don’t remember. Because I cannot come up with anything else. I am not quick like her friend, Old Wang, who kept her sitting, waiting safely, after she had wandered alone out of the house and into his Chinese medicine store a half an hour’s walk away. He told her they had just
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