Chapter 4 #5
I felt a surge of protective concern watching her, as if she were the baby and I the parent, and if I could just care for her well enough, all her suffering would go away.
“So,” she said. “The funeral is tomorrow.”
In a calm and distant voice, she recounted the details.
Her older sisters both lived in Guangzhou, and they had organized the proceedings.
It would be a small affair. Gonggong had no surviving siblings.
Our generation would be represented by my cousin Sting and his wife.
I didn’t know my cousin’s Chinese name; for as long as I could remember, we had all addressed him as Sting.
No one else was able to come back to China in time.
“Is there anything that we can do?” I meant myself and my sisters. “Like, send in a video or something?”
“No, it’s okay. We aren’t playing videos.”
“Will there be like . . .” I didn’t know how else to put it. “Like, any special traditions?”
“Not really,” said my mother. “Well, I suppose we’ll set up an altar. But they weren’t that religious.”
I had no understanding of Chinese burial rites.
I’d never attended a Chinese funeral, or any funeral for that matter.
I had visited the ancestral grave in my father’s village—the plot where his grandparents, great-grandparents, and great-great-grandparents were buried.
But I’d never seen such a plot on my mother’s side.
I’d never thought to ask why they didn’t have one.
“Is there an ancestral grave?”
“No, I think we’ll cremate him.”
“Will there be a procession or anything?”
“No. You’re really not missing much, Lily. It’s okay.” She wiped her mouth and cleared her throat. “The important thing is just for you to remember that your gonggong was a good man. There aren’t many good men like that anymore. He was kind.” She nodded. “He took good care of his family.”
I began to cry.
My mother watched me for a while and then handed me a napkin. “Don’t cry. It’s bad for your heart.”
I wiped my eyes. “Don’t you want to cry?”
“I did cry,” said my mother. “When I just found out. And I cried a bit on the plane. But now I’m done. You can’t feel that way all the time. It’s not good for you.”
AFTER brEAKFAST WE RETURNED OUR TRAYS TO THE COUNTER and took the escalator back upstairs to the arrivals lounge.
I felt a low thrum of panic. Her flight wasn’t until one o’clock; we had four more hours to kill.
It was just barely enough time to head into the city, but she didn’t want to leave the terminal.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be around my mother.
I’d just never known how to spend time with her.
My mother’s love was expressed through worry, and most of our conversations involved whether we were fed, if we had slept, if we had done all our homework, and if we were getting in trouble.
Because I was the smart one, the responsible one, I became her repository for my sisters’ problems, and whenever I had my mother to myself, all we talked about was whether I thought Jasmine was having sex already, and whether she had a new boyfriend, and whether that new boyfriend was too old for her.
I hated these conversations; I hated being burdened with problems that I had no power to fix.
Every time we were together I counted down the minutes until I could be alone, and then the moment we parted, I was racked with guilt.
I always wanted to run back to my mother, to offer to spend eternity by her side.
But I didn’t actually want that. I just wanted to feel like I was the kind of daughter who did.
Once, when I was in ninth grade, my mother had told me that it was lucky I was so good at school, because if they didn’t have me, if they just had Jasmine, then my father would have killed himself a long time ago. Keep it up, she said. So that was the kind of relationship we had.
“Taiwan is a good country,” my mother murmured, peering around the airport. “Very clean, very civilized.”
I hadn’t realized this was her first time in Taiwan. I’d assumed both my parents were familiar with Taipei, but then, what reason did they have to come here? They weren’t from here. When they flew home, it was to the mainland.
“Why didn’t we move here?” I asked.
“Your father wanted to go to the US.”
“No, I mean like—after the war.” My grandparents hadn’t been ardent Communists. They didn’t love Mao; they’d survived him. “Why did you all stay in the mainland?”
“Because your grandfather is a patriot,” said my mother, as if this explained anything.
THE GIFT STANDS WERE BEGINNING TO OPEN. THE METAL GRATES were gone, replaced by soft lights and smiling attendants in tight buns and crisp uniforms. Embossed tins in elegant stacked displays: mooncakes, nougat crackers, tins of loose-leaf oolong, and pineapple cakes in six different flavors.
My mother examined every shelf with great interest. One by one she held the items up to me and asked if I wanted them. “What about a wooden comb?”
“I already have a comb.”
“What about these pineapple cakes?”
“I don’t like pineapple cakes.”
“Oolong tea? This rose oolong looks very good.”
“Mom, I have another month here. I can get oolong tea on the street.”
“Oh.” She put the tea tin down, and only then did I see the dazed expression on her face. My chest tightened. “Of course.”
We drifted from one gift stand to the next. They all sold the exact same products, but we treated each new storefront like it was full of promise, like this one tin of pineapple cakes might be the best of all the pineapple cakes we’d seen.
“So the program,” said my mother. “Are they teaching you any Chinese?”