Mother Before Woman

Nobody understands a mother’s heart, you say to me, pain escaping your voice, tears trapped in your throat. I called you on the phone because I love you. I called because I still could, because I know the time we have left in this cycle is numbered, our yuan fen as grandmother and granddaughter is both infinite and limited.

You are getting older, as am I. I am desperate to share some more moments with you, recount some more memories from my childhood and from yours. You tell me it’s too painful, talking to me is too painful – it’s better to be far apart than to be close and hurt each other. The important thing is that we’re both alive and well. What does it mean to be alive?

Mom is sick, but not too sick. The pandemic got her too, but she’s slowly recovering and that’s good news. You tell me she’s too skinny, it's sickening. You feel sick to your stomach. How can a woman allow herself to be so thin? Sick. You cannot stand her. She used to love designer clothes, and now she does not care how she looks, dressed head to toe in sale items and old t-shirts — a walking image of a woman who has given up. Expensive clothes will always make a woman look dignified, you say, like your friend’s cousin’s daughter who is a lawyer – she is so elevated, you look at her and you know she’s successful. Not my daughter, you continue, she is lazy and has always been lazy. Her laziness is why she has Covid. I’m supposed to remember this means you love her. You are concerned about her health, your heart aches to see that she stopped loving herself in a way you understand, like buying nice, expensive dresses as a reward for working hard. If your daughter were prettier and healthier, you’d be able to rest.

Because you know how poverty can break you, how the world can tear you from limb to limb then turn around and ask why you’re laying there, bare and scorched on the ground. Being pretty and healthy is the only evidence you recognize as survival.

I’m supposed to make this obvious translation in my head before I speak. I know that now. Instead, I say to you that it’s unfair to jump to conclusions, that we cannot blame people for getting sick, that how my mother dresses is her choice. I don’t like it when you talk about my mother this way. That’s when you start to cry.

Maybe you’ve never stopped crying, not since you were six years old, the last time you remembered being cared for. The oldest of three sisters and three brothers, you were mother before you were woman. You were always needed, but what did you need? I’m not sure. You’re not sure. You never had the time to wonder. Self-reflection is a dangerous luxury.

What happens next I cannot curate or manage, because you don’t allow for that. You scream, you shut down and disassociate, you allow yourself to escape into a womb of despair. Self-reflection is a dangerous luxury, and so is communication. No one taught you how to use your words. No one bothered once asking what you had to say. Why should you have to communicate now? Why can’t we just understand? Our expectation for you to say what you mean makes you so tired. This is why I don’t talk to you, you say. You don’t agree, you don’t listen. You’ve changed. I’m too old, too modern, too western to possibly be the same granddaughter you raised. I used to be so sweet, so precious, a little anxious, a little timid, and just like you. Now I look down on you. My mother raised me wrong when she took over. You love us so much and we’re both ungrateful. You’re hanging up.

Your daughter. You once brushed her long hair gently with tenderness and adoration, and with your calloused hands, molded her from a girl to a woman you wish you had been. You wet your hands and knead the dough. It’s not exactly to your liking. No matter how hard you push and pull, the dough refuses to keep its shape. You wet your hands and add more flour. You continue. The dough has risen and is bigger now. Even harder to shape as your hands grow tired with age, adorn with new grooves and trenches, bones stinging from the medicine that keeps your cancer under control. You keep trying. The creases in your hands grow deeper. This time, instead of molding the dough again, you break it in half and throw it in the garbage. If we would just listen for once, submit for once, live the life you want for you, you wouldn’t have to accept that though you have more days behind than ahead, you have never felt alive.

How can you die when you never got to live? You were always somebody’s sister, somebody’s mother, somebody’s wife. You were not your own. Your mother beat the childhood out of you. Your husband beat the human out of you. You beat the childhood out of your children, but you know to stop before you kill them. You’ll break them in half and throw them in the garbage, but you would never kill them. No. Not when you know how painful it is to die before having a chance to live.

We don’t talk for a couple of weeks. You decide to find rest in despair. Finally, some peace and quiet. I try to keep you company there, but it was the only place that truly belonged to you, and you wanted it to stay that way.

You will not stay long though, because you know you cannot yet die. You still have to be wife, sister, mother, friend. You cannot die yet because you’re still waiting to be loved. How can one die before they experience love? It must be coming soon. Just a little longer. You’ve loved so strongly your whole life, you loved the way you knew to love. Your love wasn’t perfect, sure, but at least your daughter never went hungry, your son grew up strong. What goes around, comes around, you’ll be loved anytime soon now. And so you wait for love. While you wait there are many missed calls from me. You don’t answer because you’re busy waiting for love.