the saturdays we have left
Every Saturday, we would walk twenty minutes from home to the nearest dim sum restaurant. We would order the same dishes: taro dumplings, curry squid, lotus leaf rice, and sometimes Malay sponge cake as dessert for me. Then we’d walk twenty minutes back home, where you would sit in a rocking chair and play cards, the television droning in the background. I’d sit by your feet and watch, and you would lean down and lay the cards out on the carpet for me to see.
You would often fall asleep midway through. Even now, I can picture you: head tilted back, mouth falling open, your raspy breath settling into a steady snore. I’d rescue the cards from your hand, gone limp with sleep, and finish the game for you. Solitaire, your very own variation of it, though I didn’t know it at the time. But the basic concept—the winning condition—was the same as any other. Uncovering cards, building foundations, aces to kings. I’d gather the cards, once sequenced and sorted, and place them in a neat pile by your feet. Sometimes, though, I’d build houses from them, structures crumbling and reforming, so worn by time and use that they were unable to stand on their own.
But one Saturday a month, we would forgo this tradition and instead take the SkyTrain downtown, where we would walk thirty minutes from Burrard Station to the dentist to tighten my braces. I’d run ahead, wait as you caught up. You were taller than me, then. You were always trailing behind at a sedate pace, and it never occurred to me to slow down or wonder why. A thoughtless kind of cruelty that belongs to children.
I used to hate this Saturday, this divergence from our routine, the tightening of my braces, the tender teeth. The appointment was always scheduled for first thing in the morning, and I had trouble waking up for anything. So you would unravel the cocoon of blankets you had tucked tight around me the night before, and you would try your level best to stir me.
You told me, once, that a spider had crawled into my mouth while I was sleeping. I still don’t know if you said it only to wake me, but strangely, I’m finding that I don’t mind, not really. (Even though I hate spiders.) Maybe I’m holding on to the possibility that one day I’ll learn the answer to this little piece of trivia, the only thing left unsaid between us. No matter your intention, it worked, and I woke up, horrified and betrayed, because how could you have let this happen.
That was around the time my sister negotiated a weekly allowance for herself, brokering a deal that she’d be home by a certain hour in exchange for twenty dollars. My parents must have been desperate, then. Their wild child, their wayward child. Desperate enough to pay their own daughter to come home at night. I wonder if they knew she used the money to get high.
Of course, I had no power to negotiate, nothing to offer. I wasn’t the one who disappeared, resurfacing only when I wanted to be found. But you had been there, quietly observing in that watchful way of yours, and you started placing a toonie in my hand every week after that. I had no use for toonies—between cards with you, mahjong with Grandma, and reading books in closets—but I saved them up like something to be treasured.
They said you were spoiling me. I couldn’t say I disagreed. Your fondness had stuck out like a sore thumb, made conspicuous by its rarity in our family. Everyone had been annoyed, worried about the indulgence; they didn’t want another headache, another problem. Maybe it’s the condition of being born last—the disappointment waiting to happen. Making sure to follow orders, to not repeat my sister’s mistakes. I lived with that particular expectation for years. It had etched itself into my skin.
Hide your report card, my sister ordered. She didn’t want Mom to know they’d been issued. Run home and delete the absence notice from school. She’d been skipping classes again. Bring home your report card. My mom, ever shrewd, could always tell. Follow your sister, find your dad, bring them home. A frequent request. Can you lend me some money, my dad asked, when I got my first job at Starbucks. Then, another time: Clean this up, don’t let your mom see, he slurred, when he threw up all over the floor after a particularly bad night of drinking. He always, for some reason, chose my room to sleep in, after he tried his room and found it locked. Grandma had only ever wanted me to not be a burden. We’re all tired of taking care of you, Grandma said.
They weren’t demons, or monsters, or all that terrible. They were just ordinary people, trying not to drown. Everything else was collateral damage. But it was your disappointment that left a mark. I could follow that pivotal moment back to the day when I discovered what it meant to feel young and stupid. What it meant to feel ashamed. It was the first time, in my memory, that I had let you down. Compared to their anger, which I understood, knew intimately like the back of my hand, it was somehow much, much worse, much more personal. The weight of your disapproval was a heavy, uncomfortable thing. It felt as though every criticism about me had finally come true, and I hated how hurtfully close to home each one hit.
We eventually ran out of Saturdays.
The truth is, by the time I was taller than you, I’d outgrown them. I was older. Busier. I finally had friends, even had a boyfriend for a second. When Dad told me you’d been hospitalized, it had been a long time since dim sum, the black-and-white television, and cards by your rocking chair. In their usual fashion of leaving me completely in the dark, they didn’t tell me the reason you were admitted. They only told me to visit soon. I didn’t think it was—
I didn’t think.
Hospitalization, to me, meant recovery in progress. Impending improvement. Soon to be discharged, however slow, however long it took. But I was terribly, terribly wrong. Palliative care. You weren’t in recovery. You weren’t under treatment. They weren’t trying to save you. They were waiting for you to let go.
It was a devastating mistake. The time I lost with you. It is unforgivable.
After all this time, the regret…
…Indescribable.
It was your lungs, your smoking habit. You were not quite asleep, but not awake, either. Barely responsive. A machine breathed for you. Your mortality, once inconceivable, had demanded to be acknowledged, and there it was, staring at me dead in the face. It changed the shape of me.
You never seemed fully there on my visits—until one night. You were more lucid than you’d been, suddenly. My dad sensed the change in you, and we called for a nurse. She told us it was not uncommon, and to prepare ourselves. My cousin and uncle, who’d flown in to see you, were on their way to the airport. My dad stepped out to tell them to cancel their flights, to come back.
We were alone. Your mouth was parched, lips peeling from dehydration and disuse. I asked if you wanted something to drink. You sighed in reply, a faint, wispy sound. There was a can of Coca-Cola on your hospital tray, so I slipped a straw into the opening and fed it to you, sip by sip. You watched me, and I watched you. I said nothing at all. The susurration of the ventilator filled the room.
They came back in time. We said our goodbyes. Your eyes were closing and opening, closing more than opening. The oxygen was turned off. You were still holding on, as if waiting for permission. Pass on, we said. We’ll be okay. There was a flicker of something across your face, aware, alive—there and gone. Your chest rose and fell, rose and fell, and then stilled. You died that night.
The sunlight the next day was cruel. A honey bee flew into the house. My dad let it roam the halls, following along, watching as it flitted through sunlit rooms and played among the curtains, before finally slipping out through the front door. He insisted that it was you, visiting, telling us you were okay, that you had moved on. Hello and goodbye.
The armchair in the house sits vacant. The morning sun finds the familiar armrests, the scruffed spindles, the well-loved headrest. It filters dust over the deck of cards, exactly where you left them. I ran my hand over the weathered fabric and missed you so much.
You threw me into the sky, and I was not afraid.