Hagintha Woods

My father first taught me to cycle by placing me on the seat. He looked me in the eye and said: “If you don’t want to fall, pedal fast.”

I don’t feel like I’ve ever stopped pedalling.

–

I grew up Catholic, surrounded by crosses and the Virgin Mary smiling a sad but forgiving smile as if she knew all my secrets and loved me in spite of them. We went to Church and smiled at priests. We did the sign of the cross and we served, so diligently it had to be born out of passion.

My father was a devout warden, my mother a part of the children’s liturgy, a group that strived to make the bible accessible to children. I became a Catechist for a while, teaching the religion to slightly older children. It felt like a natural progression, myself a small boat floating along whichever river I found myself in.

When thoughts of other streams-separate tributaries- came to mind, I entertained them with the curious distance at which a penguin might contemplate flight. Something that was out there, and possible for others, surely, but an idle daydream for me, fun to contemplate but never take seriously. What was the point, when my life was already in motion, the river’s flow unceasing?

It wasn’t fun, and I wasn’t particularly fervent nor inspired, but it was a part of life, and one of habit and familiarity.

Then, during a family trip a few years ago, my siblings and I sat at the dinner table, wheedling out bite-sized pieces of my parents’ pasts between slurps of instant noodles.

In a bid to get my sister into a good school, my parents were mercenary. When they prioritised families with three or more children and my mother only had two, my mother sifted through her past, lifted the medical documentation of previous miscarriages, previous grief held up defiantly like a proof of entry. “Does a fetus not count as a child?”

When they preferentially accepted children of Catholic families, we bundled ourselves up, took two of our aunts, and we all took to the cross.

We were accepted. How could we not have been?

My parents are polite, private, practical. We make a goal, then we see it through- If not with talent, with dogged determination.

With perseverance, you can make something your own, even if it never was.

–

I went to my sister’s school, forever that same boat, traversing the well-worn edges of the same stream. We spoke English. Chinese was hard and complicated, something with way too many strokes that sat strangely on the tongue.

Dialects were a separate beast entirely, a hateful magic that my parents slipped into- away from me- when speaking with their siblings. It slid off their tongues easily, flowing with the ease of habit and familiarity. But I did not know these waters, and was left adrift, without an anchor.

Buay hiao gong. The only words I learned how to decipher. She doesn’t understand.

–

I made friends. We spoke British English with polished tones, sarcasm and fluency coming hand in hand. I fell in love with books.

In said books, love was spoken- exclaimed out into the crowd, declared shyly into the night, sworn with a fierce loyalty. My friends and I spoke about anything and everything. Ideas, hopes, emotions. Words were once again magic, but this time, it was a magic in which I was a participant. When we spoke, our words mingled within the air, creating connection, creating understanding.

For once, I felt truly seen.

When there was fiction, I applied my parents’ determination. I pestered, followed, and questioned. The prospect of losing that connection caused more fear than any worry of being annoying, or a flimsy thing like pride.

But when I tried to bring this understanding home, it sat strangely. In Chinese culture, to care for someone is ensuring them an education, a meal, a stable income. To love is to do, to sacrifice. When we spoke, the words felt like a formality, a cloak of ritual and lip service.

Instead, they loved by provision and control. Do well in school. Don’t act out. Have a good life. Don’t be shameful.

Sometimes when I cried in my room, my father took me out for food I liked. He never asked me what I was upset about. I tried to have noodles and beef be enough, to have the warmth of the soup emanate through my stomach and seep into my heart.

I told my parents I loved them, gave them a hug. They returned the motion, vaguely confused. They confronted this change in me as if I’d brought home a stray off the street. They watched it step on clean marble floors with muddy paws. They did not understand.

But to them, love was to sacrifice, to take action. So they nodded, wiped the floors and tried to return to normalcy. “Some things don’t need to be said,” they said, “Have you eaten?”

My declarations came less frequently, then not at all. My family relaxed.

Telling them I love them before bed, however, I kept, perhaps a willful point of pride. They could learn to get used to it.

–

When my Chinese grades mirrored my alienation, my family asked my uncle to teach me. I remember sitting by a table, a squared exercise book before me. He stared at me seriously, making me feel small and big all at once. “Write what you know.”

一，二。三。小，大，好，花，水。One, two, three. Small, big, good, flower, water.

I pressed the pencil edge deep into the paper, as if I could etch them so permanently into the pages that no eraser nor time would be able to erode my efforts. I scoured my mind for the little I knew, treating this almost like an examination, a test of my worthiness in what I was supposed to have come from but did not know.

When I finished, he looked them over with the kind of care that no adult had ever given my writing before. Finally, he nodded. Told me it was a good start. I beamed.

That was the last time I remembered feeling proud about my Chinese.

–

Math wasn’t my strong point, but my mother- a primary school math tutor- sat by me, teaching me models. I liked the fancy rulers. In math, there were right answers.

My father- a ship engineer- quizzed me on my times tables as he drove me to school. My sibling were good at it, they tell me, had eased the stream I was to follow. It’s in your blood, they assured me.

And even if it wasn’t, determination was.

–

At school, we mocked grammatical errors and mispronunciations. “Ca-lan-dar.” We enunciated like the aunty at the hawker center, before breaking out into vicious peals of laughter, the mimicry it’s own joke.

We all did terribly at our second languages.

My uncle got surlier and surlier, and Chinese became discipline, became strict lines and bland sentences. It became hours upon hours of utter silence as he sat by me, a blank exercise book before me.

It frequently became an exercise in waiting. He waited for me to pick up the pen. I waited for his patience to tire, or for the allotted time to be over. Whichever saviour extended it’s hand first.

I did not write. Not like this. I did not want to.

–

In love with stories, we tried writing our own. They were elementary, of course: basic plots, simple characters. But with the writing, bits of us slipped forth, imbued themselves in the cant of our sentences.

My friend stared at the words that crept out my heart, cajoled by the pen and paper. I felt as though she was sinking through me, experiencing my skin, muscles, the spurting pump of my veins, the truth of me in a way I would never be able to experience for myself. In a strange way, I was envious.

“I like it.” She said, looking at the letters, at me.

“Me too.” I said, the words coming out like a rush of euphoria. Strangely, it felt like I meant it.

–

“She is full of surprises.” My Chinese teacher remarked with an amused smile that curved sharply, herself undecided if she meant the words as compliment or chastisement. “I assign a topic, guide them through the talking points, and she nods and agrees. Then when they hand in their essays, she’s written for the other side! But she does it well.”

That’s because I don’t like you. I retorted quietly in my mind. There’s a secret, vicious joy I’d found in taking the language I disliked, the homework assigned to me, and bringing my craft, my words to it in rebellion, translated roughly with the help of a dictionary.

The emotion flared even higher when I did it well, the unwilling high mark at the corner a testament to grudging acceptance. The satisfaction carried the nicotine edge of addiction, plucking acknowledgement out of a tight, reticent grasp.

But that was not the whole truth.

I simply floated through the day, letting it pass me by. It is only when I sat down to write, when I penned out my draft, that the thoughts occured to me, numerous and delicious. My own opinions on the matters at hand were shut away, out of touch. My pen was the key.

“She is full of secrets.” My teacher stated, distrust and pride warring in her eyes. The conflict in her emotions only made my pride sweeter. She did not know how right she was. She did not know my opinions are locked, even to myself.

–

I reached a crossroads after graduation, the singular stream suddenly widening, splitting into numerous branches, all glistening and leading beyond the horizon. But the river only flowed one way- choosing one meant giving up on the others.

How could I possibly decide?

I spoke to my aunt one day, both of us touching on casual topics whilst hiding our turbulent emotions securely under our collarbones, where they barely tickled even when we swallowed. She spoke fondly of her time as a nurse, roaming halls at night and healing the sick.

It sounded tiring, but manageable.

She supported her siblings, my father included, through school with it. She spoke of blood, laughing at how she was squeamish. I’d come face to face with my own injuries too often to be afraid of gore.

I watched the way my father deferred to her, the respect and admiration in his eyes when he approached her. I drank in the sight greedily.

The time came for me to make my choice.

I applied for a writing course, the secret flame I’d held within me and cradled in the embrace of my ribs. For a long time, I left the rest of the choices blank. What was the point? There was nothing else I wanted nearly as badly, that filled me with a yearning pain so deep that it felt uncrossable.

My choice marinated, the conversation with my aunt coming to mind. There was a feeling of inevitability, an oarless boat flowing down the current, as my fingers penned down an interest in the nursing course. Below my first choice, of course. Just as a safety net.

The news came in a quiet envelope, and when I opened the flap, it sounded like a well-oiled doorknob clicking shut. I’d been rejected from the writing course.

Was there ever a choice at all?

–

I started to notice things at Church, put names to things that were only a vague sense of unease before. We arrived every Sunday, and I prayed for health and clarity, got infused with that signature blend of safety and guilt.

Please, I thought, looking upon the man that stared down at the congregants, let us all be kind.

But when we filtered out the pews, others leaned over and started conversation, not bothering to wait till we’re out the door. Eyes that were turned upwards now slanted sideways, lips from which prayers flowed turning foul. “Didn’t she put on weight recently?”

They ask, “How come your son has not come the past few weeks?” Or my personal favourite: “I’ll pray for them.”

I could close my mouth, but not my ears. The words sidled in, filled my body with a congealed kind of heaviness. I was not, and am not a good person. But I did not feel at home.

I used shift work as an excuse, and slipped away from Sundays and my dad’s disappointment alike.

–

Another aunt of mine clutched at me one night, desperation in the vice-grip tightness of her fingers, telling me that I am Teochew. “Teochew niang.” She says, and makes me repeat it. Teochew girl.

I repeat it, and she tells me not to forget as she walks away, and I nod politely. But how do I hold unto something I’ve never known?

–

At my job, blood was indeed not a problem for me.

But there were things I did not expect. The rotating door of people, coming in unceasingly like the tides. The anger and condescension. Forever feeling as if I had only two hands but sixteen tasks. The constant fear that I would miss something, that it would sound a death knell for a life somewhere.

They were ill. I was overworked. This was an impossible situation. But I set my sights forward, envisioned a goal in the future to keep my eyes on, and kept going. With determination, the unknown can be claimed, made familiar territory.

I am no saint, but I tried to be kind. It was my own form of prayer.

–

Whenever my uncle and I spoke, I tried to do so in Chinese, and he would look at me expectantly. When I inevitably switched back to English, his face fell a little. “Doesn’t your job need Chinese?” He always asked, having traded authority for pleas. “Don’t you wish you were fluent now?”

Aren’t I important? Aren’t we important?

I looked away. I knew the right answer. I am my parents’ daughter. I am adaptable and practical. Temporarily soothing his ego would do no real harm to me.

But still, I couldn’t answer. Anger was potent in my throat, and I turned around.

–

People speak of going back to their roots, of knowing who they are. They mean something different every time.

Is it the way I’d made for myself, the friends and time I took to to try and know where to go? Would it be my family’s expectations, Catholicism, or maybe a stable job? Would it be even further back, the Teochew ancestors I don’t know that set out to sea? Even further?

Maybe Mother nature: Going into forests, oceans, staring up at the night sky, stars twinkling above-experiencing the enormity of life?

How far back should I go whilst I try to stay afloat?

I stopped liking math, one more failure in the list of things I’d set down. My answers had stopped being right, no matter how hard I tried.

–

I made new friends, ones from which English and Chinese slipped from their lips with the ease of the flowing stream. Chinese was not rigid or stiff for them, and I watched at first with discomfort, then later with budding curiosity.

Around them I formed my lips awkwardly around the words. They laughed at my tones, and I flushed, thinking back to when I used to mock mispronunciations, what I thought was a simple joke now startling me with how it burned. I resolved not to do the same anymore.

I used those borrowed tones around my patients, learning specific phrases of Chinese and Dialect. The words, even if badly spoken, sometimes brought a feeling of nostalgia. Hearing them, they stilled, quieted down, agreed to eat.

I wondered if it was a form of lying, speaking with intonations that are not mine when I did not have any of the memories or attachments. But they liked it, and so, I kept using it.

–

I was at a funeral for one of my relatives. I did not know him, not really. I’d seen him, perhaps, but his views, likes, anything that made him who he was were as unknowable to me as a stranger’s. It was a Buddhist funeral, and everyone spoke quietly in dialect. We sat down, spent time around his coffin. We did not talk about him, but we lingered, and we kept him company.

To care for someone is to give them a good life. We took gold paper, folding them into ingots to be burnt, currency that would accompany him to the afterlife. We also burned for him a paper mansion, cars, and servants.

It was poetically beautiful, well-wishes pressed into every careful fold, love in the effort it took to fold stacks upon stacks of ingots.

Be safe. Wherever you’re going, we hope you’re comfortable. We hope you have money.

We placed food under his photo frame, joss sticks burning amongst the bounty.

Have you eaten?

We walked around the coffin, tearing the petals off of white flowers and letting them rain unto the floor. As we stepped upon the petals, we levelled a circle of pressed flowers round the coffin, and the fragrance filled the air like a quiet boundary. I had not shared his thoughts, had only smiled politely at him at family reunions, but with the actions, I could wish him well.

It was a gift. I’d never thought of it that way before.

–

One day, one of those friends, that effortlessly existed in both those waters, showed me a video. In it, a beautiful woman hummed, slender fingers strumming the strings of a zither. I did not understand most of the soulful words.

This did not stop the tears, that breached me like water surging past a cracked dam, flowing unerringly down my cheeks.

“Are you okay?” They asked, and I nodded, but that was a lie. In truth, I did not know.

But somewhere between the start and end of the video, Chinese had started being beautiful again, and whilst I did not regret my decisions thus far, I felt a sense of something I had not felt toward the language before.

Loss.

–

I had more responsibilities at work now, and I applied myself to them studiously. The stretch was exhilarating, the labour exhausting, and each time I looked back and saw where I was compared to where I’d been, it all felt worth it.

Science and the human body is always an inexorable march forward, however, and there is always more ground to cover. The road travelled did not compare to the one to be travelled, and the thought of myself growing more in ways that I did not yet know filled me with a fearful anticipation.

Where would I go next?

Carried by the all-encompassing flow, I sat, attempted to write down a plan, clear my mind. It took me a good while to find my pen, buried under my torchlight and scissors.

The journal took a good deal longer, slotted under my medical books and the stories I still read every time I was on break, like an alcoholic shooting shots of whiskey in a back alley.

I stared at the items for a long time. The journal’s pages were starting to yellow, and the cover creaked when I cracked it open. How long had it been since I’d picked it up?

More importantly, when had I set it down?

I kept moving forward, flowing along the water. But before I’d known it, a stream had petered out, run dry, and I hadn’t even noticed. Where had it lead? Could I live with never knowing the answer?

–

I tried to write where I could. Scribbling words in the borders of paper, playing with phrases when others were asleep. But I was barely juggling everything as it was, and this was one too many. My house of cards started slipping, and it didn’t even bear fruit.

My writing sputtered, snatches of hard-won time spent staring at a blank page. When the ink was eased out, it came out in a thick glob of my hopes and dreams, flooding forward too quick for any sort of continuity.

Locked away in their multitudes of colours and layers, they came forth in a torrent of black.

You can’t have it all, not like this.

Something had to snap, and I wasn’t sure which side I hoped would prevail.

But if I stopped moving forward, was I happy where I was? I thought of my daily life at my job of repairing sprung leaks, eyes now focused on where I was instead of where I could be. Without the shining accolades, the strides I was making, facing the swarm without anything to numb the tides. I could live a whole life this way. I had been for years, not feeling the currents that rolled under, a life of grey.

I had been gliding along, and I knew I could just keep moving forward, but was this a stream I liked?

I was proud of my accomplishments. My father grinned even as I complained, knowing that I’d keep trying anyway. My aunt glowed, seeing the traces of a past life within the days I lived out now. Was it enough?

They had moved forward at their crossroads, more afraid of stopping and sinking, but how would I tell them that in my nightmares, I continued on unthinkingly, streams untravelled withering away behind me?

With perseverance, you can make something your own. But if you can make anything yours with some effort, how do you choose what you want to make yours in the first place?

–

True to my locked nature, the thoughts built up in me till they had nowhere else to go. It might have been a bad decision, but I felt like I’d been going through the motions so much that I was about to burst.

I was filled with resentments and ‘what-if’s up to the ripening point, and if I did not do something, I would either burst or rot. So I bloomed, in the safest way I knew how, making plans and hopes.

But I did not know how to express this, and both did not wish to burden my parents with knowledge and yet needed to let them know all the same.

So I made an exit plan like threading a parachute cord within my heart, and I let them know before I pulled it, but long after I had made it, when they could make my fingers hesitate but the rope was made- whether a noose or a saving rope still to be seen. I hardened my heart.

They are not used to these things, I knew. And I still loved. And I still wanted to be loved. So I lay myself out before them.

I bit my lip, tasted the seep of iron, the living blood under my tongue. I heard the loud creaking of wood, the scrape of my self against the riverbed as I wrenched myself into another, bigger ocean that I’d never ridden. “I have to do this. I will do this. You will not stop me. But I’d like your support.” That was a lie. I never stopped being my parents’ child. I wouldn’t just like their support, I needed it like air.

But I was preparing to suffocate if necessary.

The silence spread. I don’t understand, it said, and a gap yawned wide between us all. I fought the urge to gasp, to take it back. I readied myself to go at it alone.

“If you apply for jobs, I can look through your resumes before you send them.” My father finally said.

“I don’t really understand, but if you have free time, let’s go overseas! Since it’s rare that we are all free now.” My mother said cheerfully to my dad, though we all noted the tang of sadness.

It was not a whirlwind nor a torrent, no large declaration like in my books. All the same, it was a gust of air through a crack in a concrete wall, and so much more than I ever even expected. The rush went to my head, and I felt dizzy.

They did not know what was happening. But with determination, they were trying.

“Have you eaten?” They asked, and we moved to the dinner table.

I wish you eat well.

–

Now, I write. I cup that secret flame, now not so secret, nurtured ever larger within me. I watch Chinese historical dramas with the subtitles on. I can tell when my friends might be pushing themselves too far, or when they can do one more stretch. I try to be kind. My aunt smiles when she hears the news. “It’s good to explore.” She remarks, a vicarious joy in her eye, and I wonder how many streams she’d had to watch dry up.

I tell my parents I love them every night before bed, and they accept it like a routine, the regularity making it familiar.

I inhabit churches the way you do a childhood home- I know the words and follow the steps, but I no longer fit into the nooks that held me perfectly before. I keep my bible, a tale of a Father on high, gifted to me by my father on Earth.

I do not think I have found my anchor, nor my stream. I am a floating boat, drifting along the currents as I gently adjust my sails. I grow without being tethered, adrift and distant, yet feeling everything intrinsically.

I am my parents’ daughter, adaptable and determined. I will step forward, go anywhere the wind takes me, and I will inhabit my surroundings, even if I don’t know how long I will continue down the currents I find myself in.

Perhaps one day I will find some land that makes me want to roll up the sails and run myself aground. Perhaps instead, I’ll find an ocean I’d like to float along forever. Or perhaps I will travel as I do, eyes fixed upon the horizon, always finding the new with the things I want to carry lovingly strapped unto the deck with intentionality.

All I know is that as I move, whether the horizon is clear or obscured with fog, I will continue with pieces of my past on board, lessons, friends, and family that have touched me. Every day, I want to watch the sun dive slowly into the waters, watch the colours deepen and shift till the golden has sunk into the many-hued depths.

So when people ask me where I come from, where I plan to go, or other such unanswerable questions, I will smile and invite them to roam my decks. To travel with me awhile, or bid me fair weather upon my departure.

“Come and see.”

I only wish to care for my history, trouble myself on the present weather, and look upon the next horizon. Let my journey and my choices of what I carry speak for me. I will only continue onward.

Determination is in my blood, after all.

And I’ve never stopped pedalling.