If I Could Tell You by Lee-Jing Jing Page A

received a huge box of birds’ nests and could she spare a moment to help, then went to ring me up. When we got there, Yang and I, she was sitting behind the counter, precious bits of nest sticking to the dark pink of her blouse. There you are, she said with a click of her tongue and an impatient sigh, as if she had been waiting for me all the while and I was late yet again in picking her up from the market. As if it were just another Saturday morning. When she stood up her legs gave way, and Yang jumped forward in time to collect her in his arms. In that instant, I saw how little she was and imagined her a child; light, helpless, smelling of that damp sweetness all children have.
    At the hospital, the doctor said it was just dehydration, that they just need to have her stay for a few days. He was a young doctor, but already complacent. He sounded like he wanted to be elsewhere, the golf green, perhaps, and I struggled to contain myself while he rattled off the usual about keeping watch over my mother, accompanying all of it with an easy smile that never once reached his eyes. It’s alright, Yang said when he tried to kiss me goodbye. But I pushed him away, thinking, no. No, it’s not.
    Jie
, she says again, and I look straight at her, as if everything was all right and she wasn’t lying there with a tube stuck into her hand, forgetting that I am her first-born.
    Did you see him? she says. Isn’t he handsome?
    I do nothing but nod.
    We’re going to get married, she says. We’re going to run away.
    Oh, I say. When?
    I don’t know yet, she says. Haven’t decided. But, and she pauses for dramatic effect, soon, it has to be soon. I am about to nod again when she says, it worked,
Jie
. What you told me to do, it worked, she says, smiling, smoothing her hand over her stomach lovingly.
    There is a knock on the door and a nurse walks in. I wonder what she is thinking, watching the two of us, faces close, because she stops just after a few steps into the room, and asks, whispers if she’s alright, if we need anything. She keens her head forward as she speaks and I feel as if I have to shout in reply, she seems so far away.
    She’s fine. It’s okay, I say.
    The nurse nods and walks out again, shutting the
    door quietly behind her. She’s a young one, not one of those hardy veterans who march straight in, making me feel the need to get up and stand straight while they did their work.
    Who was that? my mother says, and I say it’s nobody, nothing and start to shush her because I can see that she is in-between knowing and not knowing. In a few minutes, her eyes are closed again.
    While my mother sleeps, or pretends to, I think about what the conversation had been leading on to. The heart of it, as yet untouched today and only today because we have done this before. Been over it too many times for me to count. Sometimes she talks about what names to give, what to call the baby if it were a boy, or a girl. She would add that the baby needed an English name, times were changing so quickly. Her colleague at work had suggested “Kim”, for a girl, which was good because “Kim” sounded like “gold” in Hokkien and was easy to pronounce. I’m glad she doesn’t go into it today, because when I get up and turn to my father, I see that he has woken up, has been awake for a while now and it wouldn’t have been good to have the words in the room, with all three of us in it at the same time. I fuss at the bedclothes for a bit, then ask him if he is hungry, if I should ask Yang to bring us something to eat. But he says nothing, goes up to the window to look out, linking his hands behind his back. It was the first thing my father noticed, going in. You can see the garden from here, he said, hastily snapping the curtains back so that I had to shield my eyes from sunlight flung too quickly into the room. The garden is a good square of green with a stone path winding around closely cut grass, plants which bloom all year long and palm