twice a day or eat dinner at night. Just going through the motions, not really feeling or thinking.
As I robotically raised my clasped hands for what felt like the thousandth time, I couldn’t stop picturing the last worship with the entire family, BD. Before Disownment. My parents had just finagled a copy of Xing’s senior-year transcript, which had taken many phone calls, too many threats, and probably some misdemeanors since Xing had made sure the transcript was never to be sent home. He was already accepted into medical school, his future secured, but my father had spent our rare family time screaming at him for getting a C. Xing had stormed out without worshipping Yéye. Did he know then that he would never be back in this house, be a part of this tradition again? And I couldn’t help wondering . . . was I following in his footsteps?
I couldn’t let it happen. Because unlike Xing, I couldn’t handle being on my own. He had always been rebellious, often choosing the wrong path on purpose just to piss our parents off. The opposite of my instincts.
As soon as I finished the last arm raise, my father cleared his throat. “Seeing Xing should have jolted you, Mei. Study hard. Bring honor to our family. Do not disappoint us. You know the stakes.”
Xing and I are different, I told myself over and over as I tried (and failed) to fall asleep.
At four in the morning, extra pressure on my bed stirred me from my hard-earned sleep. Without opening my eyes, I knew the unwelcome visitor was Nǎinai—the only person with the gall elderly status to regularly intrude on her sleeping hosts in the hopes of waking someone to keep her company.
She spoke in Mandarin. “Mei Mei, you need to learn obedience. Just look at your father, the epitome of xiàoshùn—always putting me first, never asking questions. He was obedient to Yéye until the end—no, past the end. After Yéye’s death, your father paid the proper respect, refraining from cutting the hair on his head and face for a hundred days.”
That wasn’t noble. Just sad. The only way my father knew how to express himself to Yéye was through an archaic tradition done after death.
“But don’t worry, your father wasn’t always that way. It can be learned.” She guffawed suddenly, loud and throaty, startling me. “He was so naughty as a child. How he loved to eat. Whenever I gave him money for a haircut, he would spend the dollar on beef noodle soup and just accept the beating that followed. So naughty, just like Xing.”
My heart ached for my father, who grew up in a different time and had it so much worse. Had he been scared? Confused? Resentful? The few times he had talked about Yéye, he’d spoken with such reverence.
Nǎinai inched closer and leaned over my still torso. “One time, Yéye caught him smoking and used the cigarette to burn his arm. Your father never smoked again.”
I pictured the three welts of scar tissue on my dad’s arm. Whenever I asked where those came from, he just grunted. Nǎinai obviously didn’t know he continued to smoke for years, a pack a day, in the basement. The only way Yéye helped him quit was by dying of emphysema. So many secrets. So much left unsaid. I was guilty of the same, like father like daughter, carved from the same múzi.
She patted my leg. “Try harder. I know you can do it. You’re at MIT because you’re a hard worker, like me. Did you know I joined the army to escape the Communist War? Then, in Taiwan, I argued my way into the police academy.”
For the first time since the onset of her dementia, I felt that thread that connected us. I used to look up to her for her independence, the fight she had inside. My chest used to puff when my father told me I reminded him of her, the highest compliment he could give.
But then she pressed a finger to the off-center mole on my forehead, which was visible now that I was lying down and my bangs had fallen to one side. “We should remove this. I could cut it off for you, to help you catch a man.”
And with that, our moment was over. She shuffled out, muttering about finding a knife for the goddamn mole that had plagued me my whole life.
After wedging a chair beneath the door handle to keep Nǎinai and her knife out,