“O Time the fatal wrack of mortal things”
-Contemplations, Anne Bradstreet
The first time that he told me he loved me he stood barefoot on those sands and now my lips are stained cranberry with wine and oh how the sun glimmers upon that wine-dark sea. He told me he loved me before he ran off to Amsterdam with his Candyland Barbie now the lone and level sands stretch far away I can see off into the horizon the Sun draws tears to my eyes the same as the night that he left me the waves crash onto the shore and return how far back do they go are these the same waves that foam upon the coast of Great Britain or do they dissolve into the great current out of the cradle endlessly rocking? My two eldest identical in face and temperament always liked speaking Dutch more than Chinese too confusing they said but my youngest my strange wandering Max always came back to me the blue ribbon tied around my woven hat he used to untie it and wave it and it billowed in the salty wind I can smell it the crabs scuttle along the shore the waves flip them upside down the bitter aftertaste of grapes stings my tongue and the piercing laments of seagulls sting my ears.
The world takes the apple does not fall far from the tree all ships cross the horizon in time I waited at the pier and watched my babies sail off into the distance and then I scroll back miles through my phone to see their voicemails now my baby birds have flown leagues from the nest in circles around the world. Only one remains summer turns to autumn one year gives way to the next and now my beautiful house by the sea is creaking and lonely…
* * *
I did not always love my darling Pieter. I did not always speak English. Back when I was a young lady bussing tables, my face clear of wrinkles, at the only restaurant in Galveston where I could speak my native tongue, I was alone. My mother told me a few weeks before I left Hong Kong that I would do well to find a well-off husband who spoke perfect English and lived in a two-story house with three bedrooms. And yet, when I came to America, I found myself surrounded with gluttons whose stomachs were bigger than their bank accounts. Those rare few with stable incomes and uncaged ring fingers seemed but a myth to me.
In five years’ time, with barely enough money to start a new life and a limited grasp of the English language, I packed up my things and flew to Pennsylvania to live with my mother’s elder cousin, a pompous lady who demanded to be called Madame Zhou. As insufferable as she was, her fluency in English and my college degree from Hong Kong landed me a job in the pharmaceutical industry.
My job didn’t require me to speak advanced levels of English. That is why, when I met my Pieter during a run-in at the bank, he and I both in a hurry, he bluntly corrected my English during my feeble attempts at communicating with the clerk. And yet, there was something about the other person that drew us to each other. I’d run into him at the mall shopping for new upholstery with my incorrigibly unpleasant aunt, at the fabric store purchasing ribbon for my new friend Jessica’s gifts, even at my pharmacy where he had gone to pick up antibiotics for his strep throat.
Finally, my Pieter mustered up the “balls” (as my close friend Jessica would put it) to ask me out on a date, and he took me to the botanical gardens, where we spent a grand total of one hour before my ceaseless sneezing became too frequent.
He told me, “Let’s settle for ice cream, then.”
And that was that. I bought myself dresses with my pharmacy money, each more floral and magnificent than the last, so that I could accompany my boyfriend to sit-down restaurants and promenades around the city. I remember the dress I wore when my Pieter got down on one knee and put a rock on my hand. It was a crystal blue. It went down to my ankles—for modesty, just as my mother would have wished—where it sat comfortably above a pair of foot ache-inducing white stilettos. He took me right outside the botanical gardens in memory of our clumsy first date, where he dirtied his dark gray polyester pants proposing to me. I said yes.
We absconded away and settled down in a two-story house by the beach in a far off land with a patio and a hammock, almost what my mother had imagined for me. He gave me first the gift of two identical boys between whom we spent months finding ways to differentiate. Our rambunctious twins spent the majority of their childhood chipping wineglasses and destroying child-proof locks. My Pieter called them “chores.”
Thus when my perfect Max looked up at me as I held him in my arms after a laborious birth, I prayed that his formative years wouldn’t be as troublesome as the twins’ were proving. Though my darling Max turned out to be a very even-tempered baby, however, he posed his own challenges. My wonderful Max shoved his auspiciously-shaped nose in books all day, first thin hardcovers with pretty pictures and then children’s dictionaries. I would try to get him to speak to me every day at the breakfast table and every night as I told him bedtime stories, but my baby boy would never open his mouth. Pediatricians couldn’t figure out any medical rationalizations for my child’s oddities, but psychologists could. It was a bit of a last resort—I firmly objected to my husband’s urges to get my perfect Max checked out by a psychologist after the first few promptings. Yet despite my unwavering opposition to psychologists, weeks, months, years flew out of the window, so to speak, while my innocent Max had not said a word.
Our psychologist, an aged woman with gold-rimmed spectacles who was absurdly named Dr. Tooth, came up with a diagnosis in less than two hours of examining and drawing pictures with my strange Max. My youngest child, my brilliant Max, was placed along the autism spectrum.
Dr. Tooth recommended weekly visits to help my unique Max start to speak. She claimed that his extraordinary intelligence meant that he would have no trouble mastering the English language, and of course she was correct. My remarkable Max had a rapid transition from speechlessness to fluency in English, Chinese1, and Dutch.
Even so, my husband never looked at my perfect Max the same after Dr. Tooth’s diagnosis. He showered the twins with praise and attention, but he studied my poor Max with looks of morbid curiosity and neglect so awful that it pained me. It was around that time, I gather, that he started seeing another woman.
I never met her. I never even learned her name. But one terrible morning, I woke to find a hastily scribbled note on my nightstand bearing the sickening news that my loving Pieter had gone back to his birthplace with his new fling.
A couple weeks later, he sent a tacky postcard wishing our twins good health and beckoning them to visit the next summer. But not my spurned Max.
Sometimes I heard my faultless baby boy crying one room over. I’d settle into his bed and hold him, assuring him that his vader loves him. I wonder if my perfect child heard my cries too. I wonder still if he could tell that I didn’t know if I was lying.
* * *
“Hallo, mama.”
“Ah! Hao hai zi2, you didn’t forget to call your poor mother! It’s gotten so late. I was about to go to bed.”
“You know I don’t forget easily, mama.”
“Your brothers should be more like you. Naughty creatures.”
“There was never any hope for Casper or Christian. They operate as a pair.”
“Hei! Don’t be too harsh on your brothers, ah? Family never turns its back on family.”
“False.”
“They love you, bibi. Forgive them, hai meh?”
“I’m sure they do love us… sometimes.”
“You have your father’s disobedient ears, ah. You all do.”
“. . .”
“Did you hear me?”
“Mm… I wonder if he’ll be there to see me graduate.”
“You should ask him yourself, mah. I’m sure he’d love to hear from you.”
“Right. I can feel the love from all the way across the Atlantic. Don’t lie, mama.”
“So mean to your own mother all the time!”
“It was just a fantasy.”
“They think of you sometimes. Just the other day your brothers sent me a lovely postcard with that Rembrandt you like. I can tell they want you to visit them.”
“Mama, you grant them too much latitude! Why must we always act first? Love runs both ways. Just because baba sends you money doesn’t mean he thinks of me. And just because Casper and Christian send you pretty pictures doesn’t mean they care. How big is the stack now and how many times have they visited? Let them run from us.”
“You get in your own way, zai zai.3”
“I’m right.”
“If you want it very much, I could give your vader a call. Tell him to show up at your graduation, ah?”
“No, mama. You do his job and yours just fine.”
“Zhen de jia de4?”
“Zhen de. Well, I should go. I’m hungry.”
“Hey—drink water, okay? You cannot drink all those chemical drinks all day or else you will become ben5 and fail all your classes! And gain some weight while you’re away at college, ah? How are you supposed to bring home a rich husband if you’re so skinny? Eat more protein! But not those fake fast foods with the preservatives. You know how to cook. Don’t become a xiao dou dou6 just because you’re away from mama! And go to bed early tonight, ah? Don’t be reading your books before bed time. Your eyes will stop malfunction and you’ll go blind in your sleep. You want to go blind in your sleep, meh?”
“…Yes. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“Okay, go go go. You said it, ah? Not me.”
* * *
It’s just like I told you, bao bei. Don’t you see? God creates rocky paths up the mountain so that we can bask in the view that awaits us at the end.
I know, mama. But what if he deserts me just like baba deserted you? I don’t want my doll’s house to become a prison.
My perfect child, I wish you wouldn’t worry so much.
Mama…
I know you don’t trust very easily, zai zai. You have scars, gashes cut deep into your heart. But this man… he is truly your shining knight. You know, I worry about you sometimes, because you see things different. You see what is hidden from the eye, and sometimes that means that you disregard the straight path ahead. But watching you talk about this man, this man who was bold enough to take such a grand leap of faith… well, only those special few mothers get the privilege of witnessing their babies so fulfilled. You deserve those sweeping palaces and towers in the sky that you hung on my refrigerator. My perfect baby deserves the world.
…I love you, mama. Don’t ever leave me.
Aiyah, what nonsense! Of course I will live forever. Drink my tea and maybe you will too, hai meh? It’s not too late.
In your dreams, mama.
- Mrs. Wolfe speaks both Mandarin and Cantonese, as well as a smattering of other dialects. However, Max only ever mastered Mandarin; he is relatively conversational in Cantonese but not fluent. ↩︎
- Chinese. It translates to “good child.” ↩︎
- “My child” or “my baby.” ↩︎
- “Really or not really?” ↩︎
- Stupid. ↩︎
- “Little potato.” ↩︎
Above painting: The Artist’s Garden at Vétheuil by Claude Monet