She looked exhausted. She was still in her blue cleaning uniform, likely coming
straight from work. A sour trace of sweat clung to her.
“When we got married, he promised we’d settle in the city,” she said. “I’ll burn
him the grandest paper villa.”
I handed her the price list.
Housing in Guangzhou was impossibly expensive. A paper villa was something
she could afford. Perhaps that was a kind of comfort.
She reached for it. Her knuckles stood out.
Her hair was auburn streaked with purple, like a bulb about to burn out; white
showed in wide patches at the roots. She leaned on a cane.
“Worked herself half to death sending her son to America,” she said loudly,
perhaps hard of hearing. “Might as well have raised a suckling pig!”
I leaned close to her ear, repeating services and prices.
Raise sons to support you in old age?
Her standing here alone was the answer.
Her eyes were swollen; she hadn’t stopped weeping since she came in.
“I gave him everything,” she cried, clutching my hand as if I were her son.
“I don’t understand. Why? Why would he do this to me? Why would he take his
own life?”
She held on to me, speaking in broken bursts, about the years she had raised him
alone, how hard it had been.
I understood her love, her grief. And something else beneath it. Something that
pressed in, almost suffocating.
A thought surfaced, sending a chill through me. Perhaps it was exactly this love
that had consumed him.
I glanced at the wall clock. Ten minutes to closing. I swallowed the words rising
to my lips.
The man and the woman started arguing the moment they stepped inside. At
first, I couldn’t tell what they were to each other. But as I listened, it became clear
they were brother and sister.
The brother accused the sister of neglecting their bedridden mother. The sister
shot back that he had done nothing, yet had the nerve to take their mother’s property for himself.
One demanded the funeral costs be split evenly. The other insisted the
inheritance be divided on the spot.
Neither of them looked at the photograph of their mother on the table.
I offered the service brochure.
They didn’t look at it. Chose the cheapest package.
I thought of it then. Death has a way of making things plain.
The little boy sat in his father’s arms. His father was trying hard to remain calm.
The boy looked carefree. He gazed around with quiet curiosity. A funeral home was
not a place he would often come to.
He turned to me, blinking. “Auntie, Mommy will sleep here for a very long time.
Will you take good care of her?”
His eyes were clear.
Perhaps this was how his family protected him. A mother who was asleep would
one day wake. As long as you waited patiently.
I met his gaze. “I will.” At least for as long as she remained here, I would.
Her expression was calm. Calm to the point of unease. After hearing the details,
she chose the mid-tier service.
“He hated our father’s violence as much as I did,” she said, her eyes hollow. “But
in the end, he became exactly what our father was.”
I returned the silence she had just given me.
Some tragedies were carved into blood.
Her grief was tangled with something like release. Or perhaps, her smile held a
burning guilt.
“I’m not a bad daughter,” she began.
I waited.
“Six years. I cared for her day and night for six years.”
She looked up, searching my face.
I had seen such faces before.
Six years was too long. Even love exhausted itself.
I understood.
The man said only one thing, “That was my ma…”
His crying was restrained. Something rose from the chest only to be smothered
deep in the throat.
Men do not cry easily. At least, that’s what we’ve always been told.
So he didn’t.
He lowered his head. His shoulders trembled, just slightly.
If he had been a woman, I might have reached out, patted his back, said
something—anything.
Instead, he spat on the floor. Before I could react, he’d already rubbed it away
under his shoe.
I turned my face, letting that stain disappear from view.
Almost closing time. I thought there would be no more visitors today.
My phone vibrated.
The lock screen: my mother holding me as a child.
I heard Adma’s voice: She’s just sleeping.
I bit my lip.
She had been sleeping for twenty years.
And I was still waiting for her to wake.
Still hoping.
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