In gaps between teeth
Ashley Li, 2T6 Fitz
Artist's Statement: As a daughter of immigrants, there is a lot that is unspoken in our household. The intergenerational gap between my parents and I is one separated not only by age, but also by culture, identity, and a sense of belonging. As children, we often see our parents as only that—our parents. The person who made us breakfast every morning as children, and the person whose dinner-table politics frustrate us as adults. We view them in the context of our lives and our worldview. But who was ‘dad’ before he was ‘dad’? And what was gained and lost in that process?
I have never seen my father cry. He’s done it before. Behind hospital doors and in the men’s washrooms at funerals, his spine had curled concave until there was nothing left of him to shield a family with. But never in front of me. Why is it painful to imagine that our fathers were something before they were our fathers? If I ask, he may tell me that he comes from a country where the river is so clear you can drink from it. Where you never wake up before the sun does. A place where no one is sick yet, and farm boys like him still dream of the world every night. If I ask, my mother may still remember what it’s like to kiss a boy who held a song in the gaps between his teeth. To fall in love with the way his red-tipped ears always betrayed him when they spoke. May tell me that once, my father biked forty-five minutes just to hand her a rose in a plastic bag and then bolt. She kept the rose in a book, never telling him that it had wilted on the way there. I never ask. Come home, he says. I wonder if it’s too late. If I have lost my mother tongue in too many foreign men’s mouths. He never thinks it a waste to pray for me to gods I don’t believe in. Never blames me for being worlds apart, with my entitlement and rapid-fire English. When I’m asked where I am from, I do not stutter like he does. My father cannot go home. Home is a place between time, perpetually half-memory. It is two ghost ships sailing antiparallel, suspended between age and country. Home exists before the funeral, after the birth. It is laughing with all your teeth because there is no one to miss. What I mean to say is my father cannot go home, so he becomes home. How do we forgive ourselves for what our existence has stolen? I do not call. I came home too late. My father is asleep in the armchair, upright, his phone is still playing old Mandarin songs. I forget why I left in the first place.
