The Unwinding of the Miracle - Julie Yip-Williams Page 0,21
die for sure then.” My grandmother spat the words as if her husband were to blame.
My grandfather sighed with exasperation. His wife was a pessimist, a chronic worrier who believed that the worst was bound to happen at every turn. But he tended to bend to her will. “We have no choice. We have to do something,” he said.
My grandparents were unaware that my mother was leaning against the doorway to her bedroom next door, as if afraid to break her monthlong seclusion. She could hear the whispering, even above the squeals of Mau and Lyna, who were playing downstairs. But she already knew what my grandparents were talking about. She had seen the whiteness in my eyes days before. She had been searching for it, dreading it, knowing what it would look like, because she had seen that same whiteness creeping into my sister’s eyes only a couple years before.
While living in Saigon, Lyna had begun to have trouble seeing—trying to place her toys on the table but falling short, missing the door, bumping into things. The doctor they found in the local hospital diagnosed her with cataracts, white protein growths that were clouding her vision in both eyes. He operated on the right eye first, planning to follow with surgery on the left eye several months later, but before that could happen, the Communists won the war, and then no doctors could be found anywhere. The doctor’s prognosis after the one surgery had been guarded. He said that surgery had helped, but the cataract might return to the right eye. The left eye was still untreated, its cataract clearly visible and, to my mother, growing whiter and larger with each passing month.
My mother told no one, not even her husband, about seeing the cataracts in my eyes. What did it matter anyhow? Everyone would know soon enough, and they would all blame her. I was blind and it was her fault. She suspected that it was because of the green pills the herbalist had told her to take during her pregnancy after she, while helping the cook, had accidentally poured a big pot of boiling water on her legs. She had tried to not take the medicine, but her legs had become masses of angry welts that burned like fire. Now, though, she regretted taking the medicine; she should have just endured the pain. Or maybe this had happened because she had eaten too many foods with hot characteristics during her pregnancy—too many oranges, grapefruit, mangoes—and not enough cool foods, like watermelon and lettuce. The heat generated by those hot foods had been too much for her baby. Or maybe it was because of her faulty genetic makeup, which both her daughters had had the misfortune to inherit. Or maybe the gods were simply angry with her for something she had done, and now they were punishing her. Whatever the reason, she had failed to protect not only me but Lyna, too; she had failed at her most basic responsibility as a mother. As the whispering went on in the next room, my mother crawled back into her bed, careful to not make any noise so that she could hide for just a little longer.
My grandparents summoned my mother and father to their bedroom the next evening, after the servants and the rest of the family had gone to sleep. My mother sat on the bed beside my father as she tried to rock me to sleep. My grandparents stood by the window. My grandmother barely looked at me, and when she did she glared. Whatever pleasure she had felt about my presence in the world had turned to something else—resentment, hatred even. My mother could feel her hostility and held me tighter.
“What’s going on?” my father asked innocently. My poor father, whose hairline was already beginning to recede a little—he was truly always the last to know. He was a good son, a good husband, a good brother, and even a good father, although a bit awkward in that role. He had always done what his parents asked of him. He had begun working for the family business at the age of sixteen, loading and unloading heavy boxes and crates and then driving all over the country to deliver the goods for their customers. He had loved school and had wanted to go to Saigon for high school and then perhaps Taiwan for university, so he could see more of the world, but his parents insisted