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In the middle of winter, when it feels like the light won’t ever return, I walk down the street and think of my ma. Three years since I last spoke to her. What would I even say to her now?
Wǒ shì yi gè puo nǚ’ér yīnwèi wǒ bù kěyǐ yuánliàng nǐ.
I am a bad daughter because I can’t forgive you.
Wǒ shì yi gè hǎo nǚ’ér yīnwèi wǒ xiǎng bǎohù nǐ miǎnshòu wǒ de fènnù.
I am a good daughter because I’m trying to protect you from my anger.
I put my head down and keep walking. I recall a time when I was young and my ma found me on the steps outside our apartment reading a children’s version of The Odyssey from the library. How upset she was that I didn’t have my own, and even though she could never read something like The Odyssey she eventually went out to buy it for me. A hardcopy, leatherbound, with blue and silver spirals on the cover. In the story, Odysseus sails for ten years to reunite with his wife and son, but by the time he returns, he is so traumatised by the journey and the acts of violence he has had to commit that he spirals into a rampage of murder.
I’m not sure why I loved The Odyssey as a child, except to say this: I knew what it was to be the child of someone who had suffered because of a long, hard voyage.
And when that person was violent, I knew to blame the voyage.
Even if that voyage was taken, ostensibly, for me.
*
I walk on wearily, in a circle, around the block. The cold, hard earth underneath my feet and the sharp wind whistling past. At some point, I think to myself, I don’t know if I can continue.
When did I forget to blame the voyage?
My ma decided to come to Australia in 1990, right after the Tiananmen Square massacre. I imagine my ma at twenty-six (the age I am now), leaning over a balcony in Beijing, the night of the protests, looking at the burning city below and listening for the future. Wanting more for herself.
She arrived in Australia a year later, in debt and knowing no one. Despite aspiring to be a writer, my ma worked in a denim jeans factory, then a chocolate chip factory, then a fish and chip shop.
We lived for most of my early life in the predominantly white suburb of Elwood in Melbourne, the beachside town where the fish and chip shop was located. During this time, my ma was racially abused by customers and members of our family were often reported to border control (my ma’s sister, visiting for a holiday, was once arrested and detained for several weeks despite having a tourist visa).
Our apartment, on top of the fish and chip shop, was derelict, with bright green mould blooming on the ceilings and the acrid smell of grease always present. The odour clung to our furniture, bedding and clothing.
My ma spent close to a decade working in that shop, selling fish and chips for ‘five dollah’, trying to save enough money to buy a proper home for us. But by the time she could, she was so traumatised by the work and her life in Australia that she had become paranoid and violent, and I had cut contact with her.
I imagine her now, all alone, standing in a big empty house waiting for me to return. I imagine her at the doorway, waiting to show me the place. Wǒ zhōngyú zuò dào le. I finally did it.
How do I tell her now?
Ma, I don’t want the house.
I would have rather had all the time with you.
*
I remember one of the last things my ma said to me before I stopped speaking to her. That she wanted to write a book, a trilogy (how ambitious, I remember thinking). One for each generation of our family.
I remember she said to me: Nǐ kěyǐ bāng xiě zuìhòu yī gè, yīnwèi tā shì guānyú nǐ. You can help write the last one because it will be about you. Isn’t that always the case? I begin where she ends.
If I were to write a book about my family, the opening scene would be:
I walk down the hallway and into a bedroom. I wake my ma up and ask her to sign a permission slip. She starts yelling at me and goes to raise her hand. I scream out.
At this point, I have stopped walking. The memory threatens to overwhelm me. I brace myself against a streetlight, my hand clutching the cold metal of the pole.
The trees and the birds and the sky above me are at a standstill.
The story of Odysseus ends in The Telegony with Odysseus trying to kill his second son, Telegonus, in a fit of paranoia. In the ensuing fight, Telegonus defends himself with a spear but in doing so, accidentally impales his father and kills him.
How does a parent learn to forgive their child?
How does a child learn to forgive their parent?
*
Three years since I last spoke to my ma. What would I even say to her after all this time?
Ma, I finished university.
Ma, I still have my copy of The Odyssey.
Ma, I became a writer.
Just like you.
Ma, forgive me.
Ma, protect me.
As I try to get back to you.
*
In the middle of winter, when it feels like the light won’t ever return, I walk down the street, and the sound of caw-caw flying above draws my face upward towards the sky.
It is as if the bird call is saying no matter what you lost, you will always have the trees. You will always have the sky. The sky so pale, and the moon which has this afternoon come out early—as if the moon itself is trying to rebalance the world with light.
It is still winter, but the world opens itself up to me: bright, cold and alive.
In the middle of the street, I take out my phone, unblock my ma’s number and then press call.
It begins to ring.
Author’s note: The title of this piece takes inspiration from the Peter Gizzi poem ‘The Winter Sun Says Fight’.
