In the thirty years since she first arrived in Australia, Mum had never set foot in a temple.
She told me this one afternoon as we were hanging out the washing, shaking out damp towels and unfastening buttons on Dad’s work shirts. I’d been detailing plans for my wedding, bowing low to navigate under a rotary clothesline set to her ideal height. Her arms stretched up to clip on pegs; I kept snagging my topknot as I ducked to pass beneath them.
‘There’s a Thai temple near my place,’ I said. ‘I drive past all the time. We could go talk to the monks and see what we have to do for a ceremony.’
‘Oh!’ She grinned at me. ‘I never been!’
‘Really?’ I paused, partway through hanging a pair of shorts, and moved to look at her around a towel. ‘Like, never never?’
I watched her nod profusely as she turned a jumper the right way out. Her voice grew clearer, deeper, in the way it always did when someone brought up Thailand—it was, after all, one of the few topics she found herself the expert on.
‘Oh, I can’t tell you number of times I ask your dad can we go to temple,’ she said. ‘I ask and ask and ask and…I give up. I know it never going to happen.’
I stood there, fiddling with the collar of a shirt as I listened to her describe the logistics of wedding blessings, her eyes bright and hands firm with authority. I glimpsed a version of her I’d never had the fortune of knowing, someone opinionated and excitable, someone who was lost in the language barrier and the distance formed by raising a child to embrace the half of them that wasn’t her.
She seemed so eager, which felt incredibly sad.
I reminded myself that I shouldn’t infantilise her. I shouldn’t pity her. It was the least I could do.
‘Why doesn’t Dad take you?’ I asked. He did, after all, take her everywhere.
She blinked at me. ‘He say he go to temple enough when we go to Thailand.’ She waved a dismissive hand. ‘It’s okay. Too boring for him. He don’ understand what the monks are saying.’
‘But you don’t go that often. To Thailand, I mean.’
Her face was still for a moment before creasing into a pleasant smile. She shrugged and went back to fishing out the washing. I told her I’d take her, and she hummed, eyes fixed on the socks in her hands.
‘You don’ have to, darling. It very far.’
She began to warble an old ballad under her breath. I could almost hear the lute and xylophone notes that would stream from the CD player and out our kitchen window, accompanying the lumbering washer-dryer and an overworked rangehood that chugged spices into the balmy twilight.
I shut my eyes, my nose bristling from the sweet fabric softener, and listened to her gentle song. Mum had always been in the habit of pleasantly and reassuringly smiling through everything.
*
Mum was a devout Buddhist, and when I pictured her, that faith encircled and burrowed deep into her skin where it glistened gold with her every breath and movement. She was tiny and strong, her skin and her fingers weathered from a childhood spent farming rice—she liked to tell me that my fingers were like candles, but that hers were like stumpy Thai bananas.
She spent her days tending to the house and kneeling before the shrine in the sunroom, incense entwining with her humming chants within this makeshift temple. Her prayers for health and protection reached for the Buddha, for the framed photos of her family, distantly familiar faces that I connected with names but an absence of memories.
At all times she was decorated with layers of gold necklaces, bracelets and pendants—Thai tong. As a child, I would stare at her tanned, hairless arms and the intricate chains and think: Why do they say we’re yellow when our skin is the colour of gold?
Tong was the colour I saw when I thought of Mum. The gold phra amulets, draped around our rear-view mirrors, in intricate wooden boxes stored on high shelves, depicted on water-damaged pictures tacked to the kitchen backsplash. The gold incense holders, from which our house chugged tendrils of sandalwood. The tapestries embroidered with beads and golden thread, with scenes from Ramayana or the Himmapan forest.
She told me to put the baskets back in the laundry, a dingy cupboard separating the kitchen from the back door. The washer-dryer and laundry sink sat alongside each other, old companions, with a wide, framed print above them: a tapestry depicting the nariphon tree, a mythological tree whose fruits were said to be young women. Men were always in search of the tree to pick an eternally beautiful wife that would serve them happily. The scene showed men and winged angels plucking the creatures from the tree’s elaborate branches, the willowy women smiling pleasantly as they were taken from their home.
The frame had hung there for as long as I could remember, with Mum handwashing garments or lifting stains as her gaze drifted away somewhere beyond the picture. Whenever I had interrupted her, my voice often clipped with impatience and disdain, she would look at me vacantly and then softly smile.
*
I called to arrange the outing.
‘I’m working that day. Why don’t we do next month?’ Dad said.
I could hear Mum in the background, the clatter of dishes and running water. ‘I think better do sooner rather than later,’ she was saying.
‘Work’s very busy at the moment,’ he said to me.
‘That’s fine, you don’t have to come with us. You don’t always have to drive Mum. I’ll come up and get her, we’ll go to temple, get lunch, and I’ll drop her home after.’
‘I dunno about that. The temple’s down the road from you. What a waste of petrol.’
I sighed, kneading my forehead. Behind me, my work computer chimed with message notifications, incoming emails.
‘It’s not Mum’s fault she doesn’t feel comfortable driving that far. It’s an hour’s round trip in the middle of the day. It’ll be fine. I really don’t mind.’
‘Honey,’ came Mum’s voice, too close to the phone. ‘We go on Tuesday. It’s wan phra day. Very good day to go pray.’
I could hear the enthusiasm in her voice.
‘Okay, Mum. I’ll text you when I’m on my way. Make sure you keep your phone with you.’
‘It doesn’t have credit,’ said Dad. ‘She doesn’t carry it when it doesn’t have credit, so better text me—’
‘I can still text her. She doesn’t need credit to receive messages. Look, I gotta go. Mum, make sure you have your phone.’
*
Mum didn’t regularly use a mobile phone until I was twenty-seven. Before that, she’d been given old brick phones and flip phones. But eventually my parents’ doctor went digital with his prescriptions, and Dad had mentioned that he was considering buying her a cheap smartphone. Something Chinese, he had said.
I’d offered one of my old ones.
‘What’s she gonna do with a phone like that. She’ll never use it. It’ll just be a waste.’
‘She can do tons. She’s home all day, so she’s got internet. You can still chat with people if you don’t have credit,’ I’d told him. ‘Phones do a lot. Like, she can message her sisters on Facebook or video chat. I can set it up. You can have Thai keyboards and Thai newspapers and all sorts of stuff now. I think she’d like it.’
‘Well, I guess if you set it up.’
I’d brought it over the next time I visited, watching her turn it over in her small hands and study the scratched pearlescent backing and the transparent case that was stained an inexplicable blue on the edges. I’d sat with her at the dining table, restoring the phone to factory settings, and asked her if she wanted to get her own case for it. She nodded.
‘Let’s see if she uses it first,’ Dad had interjected.
I’d looked at Mum, who’d acted like she hadn’t heard him. She’d watched the progress bar on the screen.
‘I’ll buy it for her,’ I’d said.
‘It’s not about that.’
‘It’s okay, it’ll only be like twenty bucks. Whatever. It’s a present.’ I’d told her that I would go pick up groceries with her later, and we could go pick one out at the phone kiosk at the mall.
‘You don’ have to, darling,’ she’d said, rubbing my arm.
‘Don’t be silly. It’s your phone. It should feel like it. Maybe you’ll use it if it feels like it’s new and yours. And we can set it up so you know how to text me. Then you can send me whatever you want. Even photos.’
Her lips had made a small ‘o’ and she’d nodded. ‘Okay. Cool. Thank you, honey.’
*
Mum had chosen a lilac case with a flap where she could store bank cards.
She’d hovered behind me as we wandered in confused circles around the kiosk, following as I searched for a cabinet of cases that would fit her phone. When I stopped, I pointed at the glass. Mum looked at the stacks of cases, then at me.
‘Mum, you can pick any of these.’
As she’d tapped the glass, the kiosk worker came around to greet us. ‘Hello,’ he said to Mum.
‘Hello,’ she’d replied cheerfully, before looking at me.
From there, the kiosk worker had looked only to me.
It was a role reversal etched into my bones. As a child, I mistook it for a belief in my superiority and Mum’s inferiority. When I grew older, I saw that it had in fact dehumanised me into an aid, and allowed for others to navigate her without bothering themselves with the inconvenience of her difference. The guilt of it seeped into my memories and slowly discoloured them.
A dark, ugly part of me once wished she would go home and be replaced with someone else, someone who belonged, someone who didn’t elicit glances from the school mums or snide comments from the adults I interacted with. Someone capable of making friends and forming relationships outside of our house. I grew used to the hot, humiliating flush on my face whenever I did something wrong. Arriving in the wrong uniform because it was now summer term. Being told there wasn’t a lolly bag for me because we didn’t RSVP. Left behind on excursion day because she didn’t know to sign the permission slip. Having the plate of kanom returned to my hands at the bake sale because no one was going to eat that.
And then there were the wrongs that weren’t my wrongs, but things I couldn’t comprehend and could only associate with her. Being asked if my dad had checked if Mum was in fact a mum and not a dad, their voices tinged with meaning. Or teachers asking me to explain what it was like under Khmer rule, or to flee Vietnam, or if I’d gone back to Japan to visit family over Christmas. Boys asking me in the middle of class if Dad had ordered Mum in the mail.
The rage was black and heavy. It infested my mind and rotted every moment we had shared. I hadn’t known what to do with it. I could only throw it at her with full force.
Later, as we had navigated the supermarket after leaving the phone kiosk, I watched Mum clutching her phone in its lilac case, transferring it from hand to hand as she grabbed vegetables to fill the shopping basket I carried. She didn’t want to put it away.
Approaching the check-outs, I had gone to use the self-check-out line. Mum stopped me, gently putting her hand on my arm.
‘You don’t want to self-serve?’
‘Too much reading.’ She made a face like it was a hassle.
I trailed after her. How often did she resist change or self-adjust to avoid the possibility of looking foolish, of inconveniencing someone else?
I watched the blonde check-out woman pack our cloth bags, weighing and selecting items on her screen with a nonchalant finger. I wondered if she knew the difference between every type of apple or mango or if she just guessed.
After she’d bagged the final orange, she asked if we had a loyalty card.
‘On card’, Mum had replied, holding up her bank card. A key card without a chip—I wondered why I’d never noticed. When was the last time I’d seen a bank card without a chip?
The woman had sighed, heavy. ‘No…Loy-al-ty card.’
Heat rushed up my neck. The woman stared at Mum, as did the others waiting in the line behind us. Mum looked at me, her lips pressed firmly together, waiting.
‘We don’t have one,’ I said.
The woman’s eyebrows raised as her eyes lifted to me.
‘We’ll pay with card, thanks. Appreciate you being patient.’ The ‘t’ clicked hard against the back of my teeth, and her gaze dropped. My eyes flashed up at the others, now looking at her. I fought the tremor in my face wanting to placate, to reassure.
‘Have a nice day,’ the woman intoned as she offered the receipt to me.
Mum had smiled sweetly at her. ‘Thank you. You too.’
*
Tuesday came and I pulled up outside the house, taking a deep breath and switching the ignition off. Better to go and get her than text her I was here. I pressed my palms against my eyes, then fingers against my temples. I’d been treading waters of irritability all week, with work deadlines and pressures quietly latching onto my feet and trying to pull me under.
That morning, I’d tested a thought with my fiancé that had been steeping in the back of my mind. ‘What do you think about integrating some Thai traditions into our ceremony?’ I asked. ‘I know we’re keeping it simple, but it could be nice to have something cultural on the day.’
He sighed heavily. ‘Why?’
‘Well, I am Thai.’
He came to sit beside me, hands raised in surrender. ‘Don’t get me wrong. It’s not the Thai thing itself, you just keep adding things. It was meant to be short and sweet.’
‘But I think it’d mean a lot,’ I murmured.
‘To you? Or is this coming from your dad?’
‘Of course I mean to me,’ I snapped. The frustration bristled in my chest, and I felt the words fall, fiery and heavy from my lips. ‘It’s part of me, isn’t it?’
He studied the flush that had burned into my face.
Slowly, I looked away. ‘Sorry.’
‘I’m not your enemy,’ he said.
‘I know.’
‘If it works out, we’re doing the blessings at the temple a few days before. I’m still happy to do that,’ he said. He hummed in contemplation. ‘I guess we could include something for the ceremony itself. What were you thinking?’
‘I dunno,’ I admitted, feeling the flush grow deeper. ‘I don’t know anything about Thai weddings. I’d have to ask.’
He patted my hand. ‘Then ask.’
I was almost resentful of the way he navigated these spaces, flouncing through with a weightless curiosity and kindness. It seemed unfair beside the clumsy mortification and guilt that I always pulled along behind me. But here he was with me, consulting my feelings, pulling ahead.
As I pressed the doorbell, I could still feel the frustration stewing in my gut.
Mum greeted me at the front door with a grin, adjusting her cap. It was older than I was, the dark leather cracked and stained. I saw her ponytail swish behind it and I laughed—that cap was Mum’s uniform for outings. She looked like a tiny explorer, brimming with nervous and excited energy for the adventure that lay ahead.
‘Ba,’ she said. ‘Let’s go.’
‘Lell-lell,’ I replied, my accent clumsy. ‘I’m ready.’
She grinned even wider. ‘Yes! Rwell-rwell. Good memory, darling.’
I watched her trot down the driveway. She never corrected me, simply embraced any effort with delight.
There had been a time where Mum and I had occupied our own world. Days were spent making kanom in the kitchen while she told tales of kings battling giant yak warriors on elephants and guardian lion-dogs. We read picture books and practised our spelling together. We drew jungles of flowers, all of them blossoming lotuses, intertwined and tiling my bedroom with every colour in my pencil set. My mae had been the most creative, clever person who ever lived. I talked endlessly to her, moving without hesitation between languages. We were both confident there, in this private world we lived in together. I couldn’t remember when I stepped out of it with both feet, and I wondered if she remembered the last time I called her Mae, and if she had known it would be the last.
*
I’d prepared a playlist of her favourite pop songs that morning, and the car ride was buoyant with the overproduced melodies and Mum singing along with the wrong words. The music distracted from the fact that there were limited topics Mum and I could talk about. Once I asked about the house, what she’d been up to recently and whether she’d heard from her siblings, an abyss between us and the common ground that we searched for endlessly but never quite found our way to.
Sometimes I would try to talk to her about work and my plans; she’d tell me it was good I was working so hard. Sometimes she’d bring up a headline she’d seen on TV—the free-to-air morning shows, not the ABC (or ‘leftist rubbish’, as Dad referred to it). Her takes on issues were often posed as questions: did I think it was terrible that people took government money and did drugs all day, or had I heard about those people who died on boats trying to come here and weren’t those smugglers so evil? I seldom agreed with the perspective; she hadn’t understood enough to discuss it further, or would conclude, ‘I’ll have to ask your dad.’
It made me wonder who she did talk to. Was she accustomed now to her own company and that of the people on TV? Had she simply forgotten what it was like to have friends?
We were passing through Sydney’s lower north shore, beginning to reach the fringes of her world.
I remembered her authoritative hands the other week, gesticulating wildly against the sound of cicadas and lawnmowers when I’d first mentioned the temple. I asked her what Thai weddings were like: ‘Tell me what happens, from start to finish.’
Mum pulled an apple from her bag. ‘Oh, but you don’ need to worry about doing all that.’ I heard the crunch as she bit into it, and peeled a piece away. The apple chunk appeared in my peripheral vision.
I popped it in my mouth. ‘Why do you keep saying that?’
‘Jus’ saying. Maybe people won’t like. Too different. Maybe boring.’
‘I don’t care.’ I glanced at her. ‘Sorry, Mum. That was blunt. I just—none of it is inconvenient. We’ve been talking about it, and it’s my culture too, y’know? I think I’d like to include some bits in the wedding. Not just do, like, blessings the week before.’ I cleared my throat. ‘I was googling some traditions this morning. I like the sound of the string thing, linking the couples together. Anyway…if people don’t like it, they shouldn’t be there.’
She was staring at me blankly.
‘Mum?’
Her eyes twinkled with amusement.
‘I agree,’ she said.
The temple was a large federation house, surrounded by a tall, mustard-yellow fence and canopied with gum trees. Flagpoles stood on either side of the entrance like sentinels, the Australian and Thai flags waving to us in greeting.
I found a park around the corner, tucked between two battered Toyotas. As we approached the entrance, I adjusted the waist on my skirt, eyeing Mum’s black fitted trousers.
‘I thought you weren’t meant to wear tight clothes in temple.’
She untucked my linen blouse a little more. ‘No, no, you good,’ she said. She patted my hips. ‘It’s polite to wear the skirt. I should wear too.’
The house didn’t have a front porch or steps, but instead a wraparound verandah that strongly encouraged exploration. Mum continued to hover behind me as we passed elaborate ponds of carp fish and flowering bushes, studying the dark windows as we wandered up the pebbled path. It led us around the side of the house to a terraced backyard, where an arrangement of stacked chairs wobbled under a delicate pergola. At the far end, a flat-roofed granny flat welcomed us with an open sliding door.
I felt my blouse beginning to bloom with sweat. It had said temple at the front, right? Maybe I’d been too distracted by my clothes. I held my breath, beginning to formulate an explanation for why we were trespassing.
Mum tapped me on the arm: Go look.
I took a deep breath, slowly releasing it as I moved toward the door. Feet planted on the tiles outside, I leaned in and peeked through, noting the pristine red carpet and the tall, ornate gold buddha watching me from its wooden platform at the back of the room.
‘It looks like a temple,’ I said. ‘But no one’s here.’
The creak of a screen door sounded behind us, and we turned as a young man emerged from the back door of the main house. He took each step slowly, his bare feet thumping against the wood, as he watched us.
He bowed slightly, and raised his hands in a wai, palms pressed together at his chest.
‘Hello,’ he said and looked to me.
I looked to Mum.
She was already returning his wai. ‘Sawatdee ka,’ she greeted him.
They spoke in quick Thai, with a lot of nodding and gesturing. I clasped my hands together, eyes moving from Mum to the man, back and forth. My attempt to follow them was performative. After I’d started preschool, Mum hadn’t pressed my Thai language skills for fear I would speak English with an accent.
He nodded. ‘Ah, ah.’
They both looked at me.
Mum tapped my arm. ‘Wai him.’
I quickly raised my hands in a wai at my nose, and bowed my head.
‘Sawatdee ka,’ I mumbled.
He waved us towards the house behind him. He began to ascend the steps, calling to someone inside.
Mum followed. She paused, looked back at me.
‘Come on. Ba.’
‘What did he say?’ I asked.
‘We get more information inside.’
As I clambered up the steps beside her, Mum grabbed my arm. I blinked up at her in surprise, watching the excitement flash across her face. I could picture her proudly arranging the white string in and around our heads, bringing us together as husband and wife.
‘Remember take your shoes off. Make sure you wai the monk,’ she said, hands firm with authority. ‘Don’ point at anything with your feet. I do talking.’
I beamed at her. ‘Okay. Just tell me what to do.’
