Silence

Something felt awkward. Something was out of place. The atmosphere was tense. I stared at both of them. They were silent.

“Hurry up and eat breakfast,” my father said sharply. “You’re going to be late for lab again—and we have to drop your mother off at the hospital today.”

“ Hospital? Why?” I questioned with a mouthful of noodles.

“ Your mother,” my father pause, “has to go see the doctor, she’s going in for surgery today.”

“Wait, what? Why?” I questioned.

 This was the first encounter I had with my mother’s breast cancer. I did not know what to feel at that moment. So, I turned to anger, which seemed just right for that moment. However, it isn’t in my nature to stay angry for very long, so the feelings quickly dissipated into hurt. How could they not tell me? Why did I have to find out on the day of the surgery? I could tell at that moment, my junior year of high school was not off to a good start. The car ride to school was silent. I stared out of the window, thoughts going through my head a million miles per hour. So, does that mean mom will die? What am I going to do? What can I do? The longer I sat in that backseat the worse my imagination became. Images having to come home to an emptier house popped into my head until sadness absolutely overwhelmed me. I knew absolutely nothing about breast cancer. I thought all illnesses ending in “cancer” meant death. I felt the car come to a stop, however I remained in the car for some time. I wiped the remaining drops of tears silently from my face and took a deep breath to control my voice.

“What time is it?” I asked.  “The surgery, I mean.”

“I’m supposed to be there at 8:30.” My mother replied, still facing forward. I looked out at front door of Berkeley High. I leaned over to the front seat and kissed my mother on the cheek.

“Good luck,” I told her, not knowing what else to say. I opened the car door and walked out. I heard the car drive away. I thought I would be able to continue to go to school as if nothing happened, to suck it all in and walk through the front door. Then fate had it that my friend, Judy, who was in my same morning lab class had also just been dropped off at that moment. Oh no, I thought, I can’t talk to anybody right now. I just can’t. Please do not notice me. I opened the front door. Please don’t, don’t notice me. I’m almost through the door. Please—

“Ina! Wait up!”

She jogged to catch up to me as I silently cursed to myself in my head.

“Hey— hey, what’s wrong?” she asked. Then it began. That moment where everything would be better if people just didn’t ask. The moment where a simple “are you ok” just pushes it all over the edge and the Niagara Falls begin. What was even worse was that she was prepared.

“Here, take this.” Somehow, magically, she had tissues with her. Tissues! They were, at that moment, enemies to the wells of tears threatening to leave. With the provocation of tissues, the tears began to flow freely. I began sobbing and thinking to myself at the same time. Crap. Okay. Stop crying. Right now. Right this instant. Anytime now would be great. I began to walk a little quicker and Judy had to speed walk to catch up to me. I just wanted to disappear. It was Monday morning, I had lab, and I just had a bomb dropped on me. After a couple more steps, I stopped. I couldn’t go to class. I had enough of the “are you okay” moments.

“I’m going to go to the bathroom,” I quickly mumbled, rushing down the stairs that I had just walked up, leaving Judy by herself, assuming she would just head to class. She probably did. Once I reached the stairs, I felt I could breathe a little again. Instead of going to the bathroom, I just sat on the bottom of the staircase. I sat there for a long time, letting the silence once again surround me, this time coming in comfort.

Coming home from school that day, the house seemed to be darker and colder than usual. My mother was in her bedroom resting from her surgery. I looked at my father, who was cooking in the kitchen, but the question I had about how the surgery went never left my mouth. In most Chinese cultures, it is uncommon for parents to talk to their children about adult issues anyways. To me, it also seemed like the inappropriate time to pry and pick at a present pain. Some things don’t seem as bad as when you actually say them. So, I just headed towards my room in silence and stayed there until my dad called me down for dinner. At that moment, my mother also called me to her room. My mother’s left arm was held up by strap that resembled those used for a broken arm. I stood near the door of the room, unsure of what to do or what to say. I gave her an awkward smile as she noticed my presence.

“ Come help me put on this robe,” she said weakly, holding the robe out towards me with her right arm. I took the robe and slipped it on the right side of her body. Then I looked at her left side. I hesitated.

“ It’s okay,” she said. “ Just drape it over my shoulder.”

I did as she asked. We started to descend the stairs slowly, me not knowing whether to stand ahead of her to catch her if she falls or stand behind her with my arms on her back for stability. I ended up at her side with an arm extended to the back and front of her body, careful to avoid bumping into the injured left side of her. We made it down the stairs with success. My father sat her down in her designated seat at the kitchen table as I fetched her a bowl of rice and a pair of chopsticks. I discovered she had no trouble eating by herself, which came as a relief. Her ability to move, eat, and talk was a positive sign to me.

We all ate our food in silence.

The rest of the week came in a blur, with everything becoming lost in my jumbled mind while Saturday approached. I found myself sleeping through most of that day, wallowing in my own bodily sluggishness that comes from too much time spent in bed. Sometime after noon, the phone rang. The phone in my room had a highly annoying piercing ring that always tortured my ears forcing me to pick it up; good for the caller, but not so much for the girl half asleep in bed. I groaned as I untangled myself from my covers and scrambled to reach the phone at the foot of my bed.

“Hello?” I asked groggily.

            “Ina?” replied a familiar male voice.

            “Yeah. Adam?”

“Hey, what you’re doing today? Can you come out?”

In my mind, I heard myself think, you can at least tell Adam, he’s your boyfriend. It’ll be all right. I hesitated.

 “Uh, Adam, I don’t really feel like going out today.”

“Oh.”

I opened my mouth to speak.

“Um.” I hesitated again. I opened my mouth a couple more times but only the sounds of awkward, “um’s” came out.

“Look, if you don’t want to come out, it’s okay.” Adam laughed gently.

“It’s just I found out … that … my mother … has,” I gulped. “ Breast cancer.”

“ Oh. Is it terminal or is it benign?” he replied rather calmly. I looked up at the ceiling of my room.

“What’s the difference?” I asked.

“Well, terminal is deadly … and benign is not.”

“I … uh … I’m not sure actually, they didn’t tell me anything. I don’t think they’re comfortable with it yet.”

Even with my hesitating words, I felt a sudden pang of hope. So there is a chance that I was worrying over nothing. A wave of relief washed over me.

“ I’m sure it’s benign. Don’t worry too much.” Adam stated calmly.

Adam’s comforting words itself made me tear up a little. I remembered the mark on his chest and the story of how he had open-heart surgery as a child. No wonder he we was so understanding of this sudden illness.

“Look try to get the full story from your parents first, okay?” He continued. “Don’t start worrying about things you don’t really know about.”

After Adam hung up, I realized that what he said made a lot of sense. I had just assumed the worst without really thinking about it. Looking back on those days, I realize that it took a long time for both my parents and I to get more comfortable with the topic of breast cancer. Day after day, we had to slowly adapt to this new change to our lives. However, this case didn’t extend to the rest of our relatives and my mother kept her illness a secret from others. She was ashamed and embarrassed. When her absence was detected during family reunions, my father and I just said she was sick and was not feeling so good. I knew then that we were also embarrassed on the subject, as if it was a humiliating secret kept from society that we felt should never surface.

However, when my relatives did discover the real reason for her absence, they reacted exactly as we expected, loud, talkative, and a little pissed that we did not tell them earlier. However, it seemed as if the thing my mother needed most at that moment was actually someone to talk with in order cure herself of her own mental struggle with accepting the fact that she has cancer, something she still couldn’t find the courage to discuss with me yet. Night after night a different relative, and soon extended family friends, would call to ask about her well-being. I don’t know if most people are aware of this, but when Chinese people start chatting, they’re conversations are not only long but they’re also very loud. The instant my mother and the person on the other end of the phone finished discussing the current state of her breast cancer, they started to converse about all the possibilities of how to revive her health, which would help her in the long term run. This practice with talking to others helped my mother become more comfortable with sharing her breast cancer issue with others.

During that time, my mother became increasingly familiar and comfortable with the topic of breast cancer, however I wasn’t as adapted to the issue as she was. I kept to myself most of this time during school. I acted the same way I usually would around my friends and during class. Nobody really suspected a thing. That was just how separate my home life was from my school life. I didn’t feel the need to tell them, and they never felt the need to ask. Judy, interestingly, never questioned about that day she found me crying, and I never felt the need to tell her until I was comfortable with it first.

As time passed, I soon discovered what I needed. I needed the same cure that my mother had, somebody to talk with about this problem. At first I thought it would be too awkward because this dilemma wasn’t occurring to me, and I never liked to talk about something that I’ve never experienced firsthand or wasn’t at least partially knowledgeable about. Even so, I decided that being holed up within my own mind did not seem like the best alternative, so I decided to just take a deep breath and venture out. Luckily, the first person I was talked to about it was actually a friend whose mother also happened to have breast cancer so it was easier discuss my feelings with someone who had a similar experience. Like Adam, he explained to me that breast cancer was very common in women of her age, and it absolutely does not mean imminent death. Even though there is still a hushed silence over the sensitive topic between my parents and me, I know that all I want to do for them right now is to be optimistic and hopeful for the future. If one were to look at the best perspective, my mother would most likely recover in about 5 years.