Why Do You Linger?

I started the list halfway through December 9, 2011. On a page ripped out from my Creative Non-Fiction notebook, under my large, slanted heading of “Reasons to Be Happy,” I scribbled a short list: one, we’d made ice cream in lab. What did it matter that it was below freezing outside? Sugar was sugar. Two, my dad was taking me Christmas tree shopping the next day, which was the definitive kick-off into the holiday season. Three, he was coming home after a weeklong conference in the Virgin Islands.

When I got home, the list was in my front jeans pocket and eight items long. I sat in front of my computer as it stirred from Hibernate, drumming my fingers erratically on my thigh, directly over where the paper was. “It’s done, done, done,” I chanted silently, punctuating each repetition with a tap of my finger. “Nothing more I can do, do, do.”
I opened my email and scanned the Subject column. Ah, there it was. A sharp tap of my finger against the mouse, poised over the blue link, brought me to my Early Decision response. My eyes flitted across the lines of text. I swallowed.
“It’s done, done, done. Nothing more I can do, do, do.”

“Hi, Dad,” I said, aware of how forceful the words came out. I strode over to his bed and hopped up on his mattress, crossing my ankles.
He looked up from where he’d been re-folding his clothes that he hadn’t worn while on conference. We’d been texting all week, so he was aware of the significance of the day. He probably already knew from my blank face, but he asked, “Well?”
I shook my head.
“Well,” he said. And that was it.
I pretended to look around the room while I fought for control of my voice. My hands slid up and down my thighs, passing over the folded paper in my pocket a couple of times. “So,” I said after a moment, “Christmas tree shopping. You, me, tomorrow.”
He resumed his folding. “I can’t.”
But he’d promised me. “Why not?”
“Mama called. She wants to go dim sum tomorrow. Then we’re going to see Yeh Yeh in the nursing home.”
“You go dim sum with Mama, like, every week.”
“Yes, but it’s Yeh Yeh’s first weekend in the nursing home.”
My nails scraped against my jeans as they curled to form a fist.
Dad didn’t look up from his drawer. “You don’t have to go.”
“I know,” I said curtly. I wasn’t going.
“You haven’t seen Yeh Yeh at all in the nursing home.”
“I didn’t know he was there already.” We both knew I wouldn’t have gone, even if I had known.
My father finally looked up to stare at me, his lips thinned into a line, and I held his gaze defiantly. After several painful moments of silence, he said, “Your priorities are really screwed up, you know that? Yours and your sister’s.”

One of my earliest memories is so far removed from my present that sometimes I think it was a dream. Other times, I think, No, no. It was real.
I was sitting on the windowsill in the living room with my maternal grandmother, Mama, and my little sister. We were young enough that Mama had to prop us up like dolls or we would fall over. It must have been spring or summer, because the sunlight was white, blinding, and felt so warm against my face. Turning, I could see Yeh Yeh in the doorway with his hands buried in his jacket pockets, his pageboy cap still on. Had he just come in from outside? He was watching us thoughtfully, seriously, like he was trying to remember something. Or maybe it was us he was trying to remember. Maybe he had already made his decision and was burning this last image of his wife and his grandchildren into his mind.
I didn’t see Yeh Yeh after that, in real life or in photographs, and he never came up in conversation. I knew that my father must have had his own father, but that he was not with us any longer. He must have passed away.
My parents let me believe that until I was twelve.

It is no secret that my grandparents did not marry out of love.
Last year, my father told me, “Your Yeh Yeh chose Mama out of all the girls in his village. It wasn’t because she was prettiest. It was because, out of all the girls, her calves were the thickest. It was a sign that she was sturdy and could handle hard work.”
Mama and Yeh Yeh left the little island of Hae Nam, which lies off the coast of China, and moved to America when my father was six. They did not speak a word of English, nor could they communicate with people who spoke either of the two main dialects of Chinese, but they managed to find jobs in sweatshops. Despite her poor vision and four children, Mama worked in a sewing factory, leaving the house before dawn and returning long after dusk.
After Yeh Yeh left her, Mama stayed in the same house that they’d lived in together, the one that was shared by Yeh Yeh’s brothers and their families. I don’t think I could stand getting up every morning like that. Knowing that I didn’t belong with the people I lived with because they were not my family by blood and now not even by marriage. Knowing that they were aware that my husband left me for another, prettier woman. Knowing that they pitied me.
So I guess Yeh Yeh was right on both counts: Mama was sturdy and she could handle hard work.

I was twelve when, after finishing lunch at Mama’s house, I was told to go say goodbye to Yeh Yeh. Mama opened the door in the kitchen, which I had always thought was a closet, and led me down a steep staircase to the basement. Thick clouds of cigarette smoke made me gag. Mama motioned expectantly to a mah jong table surrounded by four old men.
“Bye bye, Yeh Yeh,” I choked out, unsure of which man I was supposed to be addressing. I fled back upstairs and to my father’s waiting car, my sister just a step behind.
“How was lunch?” my father asked, watching us in the review mirror to make sure we buckled our seatbelts. When he saw that we had, he pulled away from the curb.
“I didn’t know Yeh Yeh was still alive,” I said, wide-eyed.
“Of course he’s alive,” he deadpanned, as if I were a simpleton. As if I’d seen Yeh Yeh every week for the past decade that he’d been gone. “What else would he be, dead?”
“I thought so,” I muttered, feeling my cheeks burn.
“I thought so, too,” my sister said. I could hear my disbelief echoed in her voice.
My father glanced at us in the review mirror again, but said nothing.

Even though Yeh Yeh was back from the grave, it was like nothing had changed. He never spoke to me, and he avoided all family functions. I only saw him when he grabbed a bowl of rice from the kitchen or when he took a smoke on the porch. My parents rarely made me venture into the basement, especially after I mentioned how I coughed on the smoke.
Even now, I don’t know why Yeh Yeh bothered to come back at all. Or, more importantly, why Mama let him stay.

Two years after he returned to our lives, Yeh Yeh was diagnosed with stomach cancer. My father asked him what he wanted to do about it. Yeh Yeh said, “Nothing.”
Yeh Yeh changed his mind a year later, but by then, he needed a big surgery. Complex. Risky. The doctors said, studying Yeh Yeh’s x-rays, he might not make it out of the operating room, let alone the medically-induced coma. And if he did, he probably wouldn’t last more than six months.
Two days after his surgery, Yeh Yeh still hadn’t woken up. The hospital said they would wait another day before they took him off the machines, but if we wanted to say our goodbyes, now was the time.
Eleven of us crammed into Yeh Yeh’s hospital room. Mindful of the limited space, we moved in a slow rotation, giving each individual a chance to stand next to Yeh Yeh’s bed. When it was my turn, instead of saying a few appropriate words like everyone else had, all I did was stare down at his gray, wrinkled face. Eye crust caked his eyelids. The tubes in his nose, mouth, and arms made him look more robot than man. But even without the tubes, I did not know the man lying on the bed, on the brink of death. I wondered who in the room actually did.

It was silly for eleven people to be packed together in such a small space. My sister, cousin, uncle, father, and I stepped out into the deserted hallway. Though we might have been out of the room, the oppressive mood still weighted our tongues. The only one who seemed immune was my Uncle Wing, who had neglected to bring his daughter and wife to the gathering.
“I never liked him,” he said with preamble in his accented drawl. “Even when I was younger, when I was supposed to idolize my father… I never liked him. I hated him. What he did to my mother… Disgusting. When I was younger – “
“Wing,” my father said. He shook his head. “Now’s not the time.”
Uncle Wing clasped his hands in front of him and shifted his weight back, at ease. “Why not?”
“It’s not the time,” my father repeated. “Not for this.”
“The truth doesn’t change now, just because he’s dying.”
“Wing.” It was one syllable, but it was enough to make my sister and I draw together, like penguins huddling against the Arctic cold. “He’s on his deathbed right now. Can’t you give him peace? Can’t you even do that?”
Uncle Wing’s voice began to rise. “All I’m saying is – “
“It’s not the time,” my father said again, louder.
“Gentlemen!” a nurse said, glaring at them. “If you don’t lower your voices, we’re going to ask you to leave.”
No one dared to speak after that.
Uncle Wing was right, though. What Yeh Yeh did to Mama was disgusting. Leaving her, reappearing years later. What he did to her before he left, too. I still only know the very skeleton of the beast, but even that much has the taste of bitter poison.
Sometimes I wonder, why does my father still go out of his way to take care of Yeh Yeh? How can he just forgive him, after everything?
Maybe he’s just grateful that Yeh Yeh bothered to come back at all.

Yeh Yeh woke up from his coma the day they were supposed to take him off the machines. He has since exceeded all the doctors’ expectations. They gave him half a year, and he’s on his third now. But his stomach won’t hold down any food, he can barely walk, and every movement brings him pain. Moreover, he looks less and less human every time I see him, like a man who is suffering from an internal quicksand which swallows all that he is at a slow, measured pace.
Three times, he went back to China. Each time, he swore he would stay over there, where he was happy, until he died. My aunt and uncles agreed to split the cost of shipping his body back to the States when his end finally came. Three times, we gathered for heartfelt goodbyes with stiff, forced cheer and stray tears. Three times, he returned.
My mother told me once that her friend’s father lived for three weeks after he left the hospital, before his body succumbed to lung cancer. It was just long enough, she said, for him to see all the people he needed to see. As soon as his business was done, he passed away.
So tell me, Yeh Yeh, why do you linger?

“Maybe it’s just me. Maybe it’s because at work I see people like your grandfather all the time,” my father said during our rescheduled half hour drive to the nursery to pick out a Christmas tree. This particular car ride consisted of my father’s monologues and long silences, during which he carefully considered what to say next. He questioned me sporadically, but I knew that this was not a two-way exchange.
“At the hospital, I see how lonely it can be, how lonely they are. It might not mean anything to you, but it means something to them when you visit.”
As he searched for his next words, I studied his solemn profile in my peripheral vision, how his jaw clenched and unclenched, how his eyes stared straight ahead unblinkingly. Neither my grandfather nor my father was known for being verbose. How, then, did they spend their time together? Did they converse haltingly, like this conversation? Or did they sit in silence, watching a re-run of a Hong Kong drama that had been popular twenty years ago? The drama, definitely. When my father focused on the small screen of the television, he probably wore the same glazed expression that was on his face now.
I realized that joining my father for a nursing home visit would mean something to him, too.

I visited Yeh Yeh in the nursing home on December 18, 2011. It was not because I took pity on him, on how awful it must be to wake up in the morning to discover that the day would be identical to the previous one. My grandfather deserves no pity. He pursued his own happiness as far as he could, regardless of how his actions would affect those who loved him most. For his sake, I hope it was worth it.
No, I went to the nursing home because, as much as I hate Yeh Yeh’s unwavering selfishness, I love my father more. I did it for him.