This is a piece of short fiction. It first appeared at Linden Ave. Lit.
Father’s homily is running long. The criss cross, gold-lined embellishments against the purple stole begin to dance and swirl before my intense attention is broken.
“Lito?” I see, as if out of a fog, Father pointing to me. “Do you have any words?”
My mouth feels like cotton. I knew this would happen - I am her only child. But my anxiety usually dictates that I end up unprepared. Losing one’s mother, I’m learning, can churn one’s anxiety through the roof. I’m woefully unprepared.
And that’s why I’m here, standing in front of an expectant crowd, entombed in my own grief, without a damn thing to say.
***
After the reception, I thankfully have some peace. No more, “sorry for your loss”es or variations on “you know, public speaking is actually the most common fear!” Instead, I can close the door, turn on a record, and start walking through the things I need to do.
Lists are good. For me, especially. So, in the quiet of my childhood home, I list the things left; the ones after “bury mom.”
2. Sort through my old things and decide what to trash and what to donate.
3. Repeat for Mom’s stuff.
4. Sell the house.
5. Fly back to Portland.
I’ve given myself two weeks to do this before I head back to Portland and I feel the bile rise in my stomach as I think about all of it. But it’s better than thinking about her.
I hadn’t realized but I’d been absentmindedly thumbing through the record collection. My fingers have settled on this: an original pressing of The Beatles’ Revolver. Mom’s favorite. I don’t know if she’s trying to send me a message, but if so, count me out.
I put the record down, walk to the doorway, turn off the light, and close the door.
***
When morning comes, it spills in through the blinds and pours itself across the mass of unwashed clothes and old figurines gathering dust on my dresser - various versions of Batman modeled after iconic runs from legendary comic book artists. She’d kept my room as I’d left it 7 years ago, when I first moved out of state. Kung gusto mong ibumalik, anak. You’ll always have a room here.
I sigh thinking about that goodbye and wonder if I’d gotten it wrong. 7 years. And I’d only visited a handful of times. Mom never pressured me to come back. Though, I could hear it in her voice during our monthly phone calls - the longing, the wondering if I was fine, the hope that I might break up the monotony of her days alone. I know she probably wanted me home. I know it. But I also know that her stubborn mind wouldn’t have allowed her to say it. Her son, her Little Hero, her Rizalito. She spent the last 7 years without me.
If I’d only known…
I stop myself.
I’m not really sure what I would’ve done, I guess. But then, as was her way, when it came to her household, she always had the last say. I’d always have a room and it would be kept as she pleased. I didn’t need to know why we were moving into that house because it was just better - trust her. And so of course she didn’t tell me of the cancer eating her up the same way it ate her mother. All because she wanted to make our phone calls “pleasant.”
Unilateral decisions. Zero agency. I was just a tiny boat carried on the crest of her titanic wake.
After breakfast, I make my way over to her dresser, trash bag in hand. Pulling open the top drawer, my suspicions were born out: a massive collection of papers and documents comes jumping out like the hoarder version of a jack-in-the-box. Receipts. Instruction manuals. Nothing obviously important.
As I make my way towards the bottom, I find a set of envelopes bound by a rubber band. Yellowing and a bit frayed, they’re clearly old. They’re also all sealed, each addressed to my father. The father that abandoned us when I was 6.
Curious, I tear open the first letter. It’s dated October 7th, 2000 - the day I turned 18.
Honey,
Your son is now fully grown. I wish you could see him - I wish you wanted to see him. I’ve worked for the past 12 years to lose my anger, pero nandito pa ren sa dib dib ko. Why didn’t you call him? Ever? Do you know what it’s like to carry the memories of his disappointed face around with you every day? Talagang magkapal ang muka mo.
I’ve given up on you. I have. But he hasn’t. And it’s clear. But it also isn’t going to last forever. So if you wish to salvage any kind of relationship with your son - this bright, ambitious, Rizalito of ours - then you need to get past yourself and reach out. He won’t be waiting forever.
- Helen
By the time I finish reading, I notice the paper is moist with my tears. I begin to rip open the others and voraciously read my mother’s words - written so plainly in her voice I swear I can hear her whispering into my ear. It’s only when I whittle the stack down to a handful of letters that I realize the sun has set and re-risen around me.
***
“I don’t get it. You’re telling me that your Mom wrote secret letters to your Dad and…never sent them?” Coop, my buddy, has always had a hard time keeping up in conversations. Could be my fault with my tendency to try to weave multiple threads into one coherent conversation. But then I see him struggling with the ketchup dispenser at our In-N-Out and I’m pretty sure it’s also at least a little bit on him.
“Yes. That’s exactly what happened, man.”
“So,” he says as he shovels some animal fries into his mouth, “why? Like, what was the point?”
“I really, really don’t know, Coop. Like, my Mom was a vault of secrets sometimes. Did you know that I once asked her why we didn’t have any Filipino friends and she just shrugged? Literally just shrugged at me then walked away. I was so, so frustrated about that.”
I scan the room and my eyes fall on a mother and son. The boy’s mop of hair sticking to his forehead, his soccer jersey and shorts pocked with blades of grass. Forgot that Saturdays in October are AYSO days. The local group meets around the corner from here, at Dana Middle School. I smile a bit as I remember my mom on the sidelines cheering me on: always running from some event to work, she’d be in her lab scrubs while the other moms wore sun hats. I shake the memory away as Coop snaps me back to reality.
“Why, though? Like, why would something like that annoy you? I mean, not that I’m an expert on the Filipino diaspora being that I am clearly Black -“
“Clearly,” I interject.
“- but if we’re being honest, Hawthorne isn’t exactly home to the biggest Fil-Am community, right? Like, it was you and…who? The Cruz’s? And they moved to Torrance after like two years, man. All I’m saying is that it’s kind of wild to blame your Mom for something that, demographically speaking, was totally out of touch with what you were hoping for.” Coop punctuates that insightful bit by chomping into his Double Double.
“Right. Yes…that’s…fair. But here’s the reason I bring that up: in one of her letters, she…” I suddenly find myself tensing inside, “…she…she indicated that she stopped going around Filipino spaces because she couldn’t bear to think of my father. He reminded her so much of home; he was home. And when he left, she felt adrift,” I say as I salt my fries with a few tears.
Coop puts his hand on my shoulder and allows me to have this moment. That’s why we’re friends. And why even after all this time, Hawthorne still feels like home. I look back up and see the mother and son raise their heads out of prayer as they smile at each other and tear into their food. I don’t know how many In-N-Out visits my mom and I made. For a while, it was the only thing we could afford. I see an image of her getting up to fill up another cup with lemonade, turning to smile at the younger me eating his food and looking out the window, oblivious to it all.
I don’t shake that memory away.
***
I’ve extended my stay now, phoning Carl back at the office to let him know that I’ll be taking them up on using the full five weeks of leave time to process my grief. This first week’s closing and I’ve found myself returning over and over to the letters.
First, I find myself gripped by a sadness that feels like it’s burrowed deep into my stomach. My mother’s secret pain; not only in dealing with her illness, but in dealing with that gaping hole in her heart.
Then, I find myself enraged that she didn’t think to ask me. That in her attempt to be selfless, she selfishly prevented me from sharing in this burden with her. And, more, left me nothing to hold onto but - as I’m now understanding - a false image of a distant and cold mother.
Finally, I end up exhausted thinking of how lonely it had been in this house for the both of us. Side by side, pushing our personal torments uphill for 16 years. A pair of brown-skinned Sisyphi - is there a plural form? - except our sentence is self-imposed.
I fall asleep, again, clutching her letters and meditating on that truth.
***
Nearing the end of my leave, I’ve settled into a bit of a rhythm: wake, pack a few more pieces of Mom’s, flip through her letters, go for a jog, and maybe have dinner at one of my favorite haunts. Sometimes it’s Aloha Teriyaki on Prairie with Coop. Sometimes it’s Dino’s on Inglewood Ave. by my self.
But always, always, thinking of this woman I spent my entire life crafting a flimsy and failing portrait. So, day-by-day, I find my way edging closer and closer to her until, now, I’m back at her plot and looking at her headstone. It’s unseasonably cold, even for Rose Hills, but the wind isn’t what’s making me shiver.
Looking on, I start:
Here lies love. I think that’s what you would have liked me to say, Mom. A love so fierce that its vision sacrificed companionship through your own journey of grief and restoration in service of protecting her most precious joy. I’m most sad that I won’t have that chance to say thank you - nor to scold you, I guess, for lifting that load yourself. You didn’t have to, no. But you did. And so, I need to say I’m sorry. Sorry for the hurt I inflicted. I know I would have reacted differently if I’d known, but I also know I wouldn’t have lived the life I had if I’d known. You took up this burden and gave me the world. And what is that if not love? Here lies love.
***
My phone’s been blowing up all morning; mostly calls from Coop. I’ll call him when I’m on the road. Just one last scan of the rooms. I’m ready to go home.
I don’t know if peace is a thing I was meant to find; I don’t know how one crafts it out of a relationship forged in secret struggle and played out over distance. But if it’s possible, I’m on my way to healing. As I leave the keys in the mailbox and turn to fix my eyes one last time on this old house, I pat the stack of my mother’s letters in the interior lining of my coat. I’m ready to go home.
Boxes are packed and the final pieces on contracts signed. Hopping into my Tacoma, I fire the engine up, look in the rearview at my things piled high. I take a deep breath and navigate my way to the freeway entrance: 5 Southbound to Los Angeles, the opening riff to I Want to Tell You blaring through the speakers.