Read by Rebecca Yeo
“I’ve ordered char siu pao,” Mum said. “Your favourite.”
We were sat at a table upstairs in a busy restaurant in London’s Chinatown. The ‘pao’ she'd ordered were white steamed buns with a filling of pork in salty-sweet red sauce. They were a food from my childhood, when I would eagerly devour the fluffy outsides to get to the treasure within, at some point reaching the perfect ratio of meat to dough. I hadn’t stopped then to consider possible spellings of the word, which could shapeshift all three letters, sliding from pau to pao to bao. For me, the buns would arrive with a ‘POW!’ like a hearty blow in a Batman comic.
Around us, people were chattering in Cantonese. Plates of fish and sizzling beef and vegetables fried with garlic sailed to the approving clientele. On the salmon-pink tablecloth, napkins of the same colour sat folded into upright fans. I undid one with a flick of the wrist and draped it across my lap. I lifted the chopsticks to a standing position and slid my fist down their length, flattening the paper casing into a concertina. I laid the concertina on the table and rested the ends of the chopsticks in its troughs. I smiled at my handiwork; the ingenuity pleased me every time.
Mum had been discharged from hospital three weeks ago. The surgery to replace a leaky heart valve had gone well. She had been given two choices: she could have a mechanical valve put in, but this would mean a high risk of blood clots and lifelong anticoagulant medication; or she could have a pig valve, but it would only have a lifespan of ten to twenty years before another operation was needed. Mum had recoiled from a lifetime of medication and chosen the pig.
In the hospital she had pointed out a photo of the surgeon, a smiling Egyptian in her forties or fifties, with grey hair swept back from a dignified brow. Mum had been reassured when she met her, and I felt glad too. I imagined her scalpel slicing with pinpoint focus, channelling decades of learning combined with a surrender to a greater will.
“Thank God I’m out of there. There were some crazy patients on the ward,” Mum said. She re-enacted for my benefit the woman in the next bed waking up in the night, yelling and pulling her tubes out. We fell about laughing as she flailed her arms like a demented octopus.
Our table was being showered with dim sum: prawns on crispy sesame toast, steamed wonton, chicken feet with black fermented beans and chilli. Mum dropped a snowy bun on my plate. “Here’s the pao.” I prodded it to gauge the temperature and took a small bite. Steam escaped from the innards. We sampled each dish in turn, a swirl of chopsticks and fingers and rice.
“Is it true that ‘dim sum’ literally translates as ‘touch the heart’?” I asked.
“Oh, is it?” Her cheeks bulged with food, and I couldn’t tell if she had even heard my question. Cantonese was my father’s language, and my mother had taken it on because it was expected of her, switching between her own dialect and this foreign tongue and English, occasionally throwing Malay words into the mix. She chewed slowly, then put down her chopsticks. “It’s so painful having this operation, you know. I’m not having it again.”
“But you’ll need a replacement. The pig valve won’t last forever.”
“I don’t care. I’d rather die.” Her tone was pragmatic.
“Really?” The couple at the next table swivelled their heads in our direction, and I lowered my voice. “Don’t you want to see your granddaughters grow up?” I thought about my seven-year-old niece, conventional in her liking of pretty frocks and shoes, and my daughter of the same age, wheelchair-bound and tube-fed, usually asleep under a pile of woolly blankets. ‘Granddaughter’ would have been more realistic, but I added the ‘s’ because Mum had said she prayed to Jesus every night to keep my child safe, and that probably counted for something.
I twisted the ends of my chopstick holder concertina, not wanting to weigh up probabilities. An oily film floated on the surface of my tea, where my lips had transferred a dab of pork fat.
“It’s so painful. And I’m old already. I don’t want to live so long.”
I squinted at her in doubt, trying to remember her age. She was over sixty, but looked ten years younger. I wondered how she must have felt on waking up in the hospital with newly acquired chimera status, and was sorry the valve had come from a domestic animal. I wished it had served the heart of a mighty wild boar, its hooves shattering the forest floor and proclaiming the end of days.
“I think you’ll change your mind when the time comes,” I ventured.
“I won’t.” Her mouth thinned to a blade and her eyes bored into me with the disapproval of seven generations of Chinese parents. I looked down at the half-eaten bun on my plate, its gaping centre bejewelled with scarlet slivers of pork. The white casing was already stiffening with cold.
Touch the heart. Absent-mindedly, I traced a small circle on my chest with the middle finger of my left hand, and my right hand pushed the plate away by half an inch, a rejection that might just pass under her radar.
I didn’t believe she had really forgotten I was vegetarian, and had been so for over a decade.
I pressed down on the napkin on my lap, as if writing a covenant with my palms. Even the stoniest of decisions could be undone with time and silence and will.
(c) Junyi Chew, 2022
Junyi Chew lives in the Shire, and writes by candlelight with the ink of a thousand shaggy ink caps.
Rebecca Yeo is an actress and voice over artist who has just completed filming on a Warner Bros feature. She will be seen in The Power (Amazon Studios), We are not alone (Big Talk). She is also the Winner of the prestigious AudioFile Earphones Award for her narration of New York Times bestselling author, Stacey Lee’s, Luck of the Titanic. Film/TV credits include: Doctors (BBC) Stan & Ollie (Fable Pictures) Strangers (ITV/Fox Asia) Friday Night Dinner (Big Talk) Panic (White Night Films) & Stock (Sky Arts).
Comments