Page 31 of Caution to the Wind

“He loves you,” she repeated firmly, then coughed at the effort. “I need you to know this, my lovely daughter. When I am gone, you will only have each other and Old Dragon. You must make nice with your father.”

“It’s not me with the problem,” I quipped.

She closed her eyes for a long moment, and when she opened them, they were warm with love. The chemo had taken her hair, straight down to her eyelashes, but she still had the prettiest, softest gaze I’d ever seen. “Your father is a traditional man. He may be Quebecois, but in some ways, his ideals match the traditions of my culture. He expects a daughter to be kind, poised, demure, successful in a quiet way.” Her smile was wide, my favourite of her expressions, a grin meant only for me. “From the moment you were born squalling and kicking so hard he could barely hold you in his arms, Florent didn’t know what to do with you.”

She sighed, rubbing a thumb over my palm. “Your father doesn’t hate you, Mei Zhen, nor is he even disappointed in you. He is fearful for you because he doesn’t understand you, and for a smart man, there is nothing to fear more than that which he doesn’t know.”

“He could sit down and try to get to know me,” I suggested blandly, but my heart was beating hard and slow against my ribs like the tick of a grandfather clock. Something inside me knew that if my dad and I didn’t reconcile our differences now, with Ma still between us to facilitate things, we never would.

“Ah,” she murmured. “Well, one thing you both have in common, the Marchand streak of stubborn pride.”

I couldn’t argue that, but I also refused to admit we were alike in any way. So, after my beat of silence, Ma let out a shuddery breath. “Come closer.”

I swung the tray table out and away so I could perch on the edge of her bed and lean forward toward her open palms. They closed over my cheeks, cool and dry.

My eyes closed to better savour the sensation. Since I was a child, Ma had taken my face in her hands this way when she had to tell me something important.

God, I would miss it.

When I opened them again, her gaunt face was soft and filled with so much love, I imagined I could feel it emanating from her skin.

“I love you, my daughter,” she whispered in Cantonese. This wasn’t an everyday occurrence, this admittance of love. It was a distinctly Western habit to say “I love you” all the time. For Old Dragon and Ma, love was spoken daily by taking care of their family in little ways. Reminding me to wear a coat in the cold. Offering me food every five minutes. Sharing my ancestry with me in stories and customs they painstakingly passed on to me. Even though I was used to their unspoken displays, it felt immeasurably good to hear confirmation of her love then when I knew I wouldn’t have it with me for much longer.

“I know we have been hard on you. Too hard, maybe. I worked too much and left you alone too often. But the day you were born was the happiest day of my life. I only wish I could stay on earth long enough to see all the ways you will succeed, though I have no doubt your success will be bold, rebellious, colourful, and wild, just like my beautiful daughter herself.”

Pins and needles stung the backs of my eyes, producing hot tears that flowed unencumbered down my cheeks between Ma’s bony fingers.

I clasped my hands over top of her own and struggled to find my voice through the tight clutch of emotions suffocating my throat.

“One hundred hearts would not be enough to carry the love I have for you,” I croaked out in Cantonese.

Ma smiled. “One hundred hearts would never be enough to carry the loveandpride I have for you, my Mei Zhen. Remember that always.”

“I couldn’t forget it even when I’m old and grey with dementia,” I joked, trying to make light when my chest felt like a mineshaft caved in around my heart.

Ma squeezed my cheeks as hard as she could, which wasn’t hard at all, and then let me go, settling with a wince back into her stack of pillows. “Now, go back a few minutes in the film. We missed too much.”

I laughed wetly. “Ma, you’ve seen it about four million times.”

“As with enjoying your company, I can never watch it too much,” she declared with a sniff.

And even though I knew she did it just to make me laugh, it worked, and I did.

“Where doyou think you’re going?” Florent asked wearily from the doorway of Ma’s hospital room.

It was hours later. I was packing up my schoolwork from where I’d been studying on Ma’s hospital bed tray, swung out over my lap where I sat on a chair beside her. I didn’t bother looking up at him as I finished my task. It was hospital quiet, especially here in the hospice ward––only the steady beep of monitors, the brush of scrubs and shuffle of cushioned shoes in the hall, the occasional murmur of a television playing in another room or a muffled cry from a grieving loved one. But the air between Florent and me felt especially void, like the air in the Osoyoos desert, flat and muffled.

No matter what Daiyu said, there was an unbroachable chasm between my father and me, and it had existed for so long that I didn’t even care to rectify it anymore.

“Ma’s exhausted; she’s been asleep the last hour, and I just finished studying. I’ve been here since school let out. I need to go home.”

“I’ll order food,” he said in a way that brokered no argument. “We can eat here together as a family.”

“Old Dragon brought me pineapple buns after school, and we ate them with Ma.”

Dad was quiet because he was smart enough to hear the way I’d left him out. The way he’d left himself out, yet again.

“I had an important meeting, Mei.”